Let’s be honest…

Learning French is exciting in theory.

You buy the Circle planner or a simple notebook, maybe even a grammar book, and you picture yourself making steady progress every week.

But then, when you actually sit down to study, you hit a wall.

What do you write? What do you practice? Where do you even start?

Textbooks give you stiff, lifeless sentences that no French person has ever said.

Real novels feel completely out of reach.

They are too long, too complicated, too discouraging.

Articles and worksheets don’t hold your attention.

And so your planner stays empty.

The guilt builds up.

Instead of feeling like a learner on the right path, you feel stuck, circling around the same problem again and again.

Picture yourself opening a short French story.

Not a children’s book, not a heavy classic, but a story that is short enough to finish, accessible enough to follow, and rich enough to give you new words, useful expressions, and fresh grammar in every chapter.

You start reading.

The characters come alive.

The mystery unfolds.

You find yourself turning the pages not because you “should,” but because you actually want to know what happens next.

And at the same time, almost without effort, you are gathering vocabulary, copying down natural French sentences, and noticing grammar patterns.

Suddenly your planner isn’t empty anymore.

It is filling up with real, living French that you have pulled straight from the story.

Instead of guilt, you feel proud.

You have finished something in French.

You have learnt from it.

You have built momentum.