Describe something you did to learn another language.

I'd like to talk about the year I spent keeping a spoken diary in English, which turned out to be the most useful thing I've ever done for the language.

I'd been studying English at school for ages, but it was all grammar exercises and reading passages, so I could explain the present perfect and still freeze when somebody actually spoke to me. A cousin of mine, who works as an interpreter, suggested something simple: every evening, record two minutes on my phone describing my day, then listen back the next morning.

The first few recordings were painful. I'd pause every three words, and hearing my own voice made me want to delete the lot. But I stuck with it, and that's where the progress came from. Listening back, I noticed the same gaps over and over — I didn't know how to say I'd run into someone, or that a meeting had dragged on — so I'd look those phrases up and deliberately use them the following night. After a few months I was speaking for five minutes without really stopping.

As for how I felt, it was embarrassing at first and oddly satisfying later. A year on, I played the very first recording next to the latest one, and the difference was so obvious that I laughed out loud. It taught me that speaking is a habit you build, not a subject you study, and that a few awkward minutes a day beat a long lesson once a week.