Pourquoi your English is probably better than you think
Une lettre ouverte to French speakers learning English. If you are not French, feel free to forward.
If you are a French speaker learning English, this one is for you. If you are not, pass it on to someone who is. Tout simplement.
I am Neil. I am a British English teacher, I live in Spain, and I run Le Hub Franglais, a Substack written specifically for French speakers learning English. There is a reason I am writing to you today, and it is not to sell you a course.
It is to tell you something I think you deserve to hear, and that almost nobody says out loud.
Your English is probably better than you think it is.
You have been told for years that your accent is a problem, that your grammar is approximative, that you mix up phrasal verbs, and that you sound trop French when you speak. You have been corrected, marked down, and made to feel that fluency is a finish line you keep failing to cross.
So let me say it clearly. Native level fluency, the kind where nobody can tell you are French, is probably not going to happen. Not because you are not capable, but because you are an adult, you have a life, and you have a French brain that has been wired for thirty or forty years to do things in French. Ce n’est pas un défaut. It is simply how adult language learning works.
And here is the part that changes everything.
Once you accept that, you stop trying to disappear into English. You stop apologising for sounding French. You start using the English you already have, with confidence, and you discover that it gets you further than you imagined. Native speakers do not care about your accent. They care whether they can understand you, whether you are pleasant to talk to, and whether you have something interesting to say. Trois choses you almost certainly already do well.
The job of a good English teacher, in my view, is not to scrub the French out of you. It is to help you communicate clearly, fix the things that genuinely cause confusion, and stop you worrying about the things that do not.
This is the philosophy behind Le Hub Franglais. It is a relaxed space to enjoy speaking English. The posts are short, bilingual, and honest. We talk about ship and sheep, the difference between le passé composé and the present perfect, why phrasal verbs feel so cruel, and how to actually use English in real life without losing your mind.
If any of that sounds like the conversation you have been waiting to have about your English, I would love to have you with me.
Subscribe to Le Hub Franglais. It is free. It is friendly. And it is unapologetically pour les francophones.
À bientôt, Neil