I have spent as much time learning French as I did learning Spanish. Yet I feel a whole lot more comfortable when I’m on Spanish speaking territory than when I need to speak French.

I took French in secondary school. It was “kind of” mandatory for the pre-academic stream, which I was in, at least for the first 3 years. Two hours a week in lessons, and another 2 or so in self studies, for 3 years. Very little interest from myself. Unlike English, you don’t meet the French language a lot in the Netherlands where I grew up, and unlike German, French has no familiar ring to it. Moreover, I spent my holidays in those years in Ireland, Norway and Germany, where English and German are of much greater significance.

As for Spanish, one of my examination projects in Secondary school was about the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I chose the subject myself out of my own fascination. I had left secondary school for about 2 years already, when I decided to spend one month of my holiday learning Spanish in Salamanca. I started really at zero, although I had had some exposure to the related languages of Italian, French and Latin. For a month, I lived in a Spanish host family where all conversation at the table was Spanish. There was no other option. Many of my fellow host-children didn’t even speak English. After two weeks, I joined a tour where everyone was Spanish speaking, and when the month of learning was over, traveled through the country with my brother for another two weeks or so.

From the situation I put myself into, you could see that I really wanted to learn Spanish. And as I put myself in that situation, my desire only grew stronger. The host parents, who were very warm and kind people, would jokingly say “no Espanol, no comer” – if you don’t speak Spanish you don’t get to eat.

A friend of mine went to the same town a year later, joining the same Spanish course. But his interests were more with partying and unlike me, he had rented a room in an independent student apartment. His main desire was to have a good time, and I’m sure he did. But as his desire to learn Spanish wasn’t as strong, he really didn’t speak much Spanish after a month in Salamanca.

The point is not that Spanish is so much more interesting than French. Had I, at the same age, taken to go to France to learn French, I would have been able to learn the language as well. It was “having to” learn the language when I couldn’t really see the point myself that put me off French early.

Put in a Singapore context, I have the feeling that for many children and young adults, my situation with French applies to their mother tongue. How many students learn their mother tongue with the same passion as they would learn, say, Japanese or Korean? If you are required to learn something, but cannot see the significance, desire simply goes down the drain. And as desire leaves, so does learning efficiency.