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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

I'm Still Alive

Local time: 22:49
I only have 11 minutes until the internet cuts out for the night, which seems to be about the time I get ready to start updating this thing on any given night. I'm just going to write as much of an update as I can in that time.

We've had two full weeks of class already, and I have pages and pages and pages of notes to peruse and distill and compile. I do intend to pass on a little of what I learn here to my remote audience, but that will not happen in the next few minutes.

We have two hours a week of language study included in our class schedule, but we had to fill the first couple weeks of allotted language time with improvised lesson plans while we waited to get licensing to use Rosetta Stone for our whole class. The first Monday, Martina taught an hour lesson, basically going over uses, spellings, and pronunciations of key words and phrases in French. On Thursday, the plan was for her to expand on that for another hour. Unfortunately, she'd also committed to taking a few students into town to buy some essentials during the time preceding class, and she called Magdy to tell him she wouldn't be back in time to teach. So I found myself 5 minutes before class in front of all my peers preparing to teach them to speak French. I had no lesson plan, and no clear ideas for what would be a helpful curriculum, so I asked everyone what they would like to learn how to say.

By the time Martina entered the classroom, the center of the board featured the ever-useful language-learning staple question "Where is your cow?" along with the many possible answers: "here," "there," and "everywhere." Over the course of the lesson, my students filled their notebooks with the phrases "chocolate bear," "wooden rabbit," "rabbit in the woods/in the forest," "unicorn," "unicorn of the sea" (because Kevin asked how to say narwhal in French, and I didn't know), the numbers from one to ten as well as sixteen, the colors in masculine and feminine, both the French and the Swiss manners of saying "one-hundred and eighty," and "Do you think you could, perchance, possibly repeat that, if you please?"
I really tried to work with everyone on their pronunciation. I had everyone clear the phlegm out of their throats for 3 full seconds to practice the french R sound. The numbers five through ten, I told them, were pronounced "sank, cease, set, wheat, 'nuff, and like cease but with a d." Then, I explained that the end of the word "quatre" was suppose to sound like skidding your bike tires on a gravel road. Martina was horrified at what I was doing to her language.

Some of my classmates mentioned later that my French lesson was a highlight of week 1 at YWAM. I felt that way, too. I doubt the effectiveness of my methods in that particular instance, as I was basically translating unordered and thematically unrelated tripe of which it would be impossible to remember much, but I found that I really enjoy teaching. Having enthusiastic students who asked me to translate useless phrases was certainly helpful to the experience, but I think I've discovered a legitimate passion.

On our first Tuesday night here, we had Swiss Night, which meant that dinner was cheese fondue and dessert was chocolate fondue. This was to be the first of many meals that Matt thought was lacking in meat. The following week, we had cheese soup, served with bread. It's not the same as fondue; it's way more delicious, according to no one but me. All the food here has been delicious, down to the sandwiches inside our backpacks that get smashed when we snowboard.

1 comment:

  1. Teaching French IS so much fun. You can even go into class with a lesson plan and still enjoy students asking how to say what they really want to say at the moment: "One must not wear shoes", "one should not make signs" (on a sign), "the guinea pig had a baby" are just some of the most recent ones. Mmm, maybe you've found your calling....

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