That’s me half way through my 10 week beginners French Class.
The class numbers have dropped by half and I am most definitely the only beginner.
I do enjoy the class , we have some fun and I always learn something even if it is just a new word.
Early on I realized that maybe before I took a french class I should of taken an English class…..
Then tonight I was horrified when we practised our French numbers by doing the times table.
I have never known my times table off by heart so when everyone else could just real off the answer they had to wait for me to work mine out, at that moment I just wanted to die 🙁
One thing i know for sure… I will never be able to hold a conversation in French but I certainly know more now than I did 5 weeks ago.
My homework or Devoirs was to write about myself.
This is what I wrote and all of it was done using books notes etc.
Salut
je m’ appelle sally. je suis anglaise.
Jai quarante-huit-ans.
l’habite avec mon deux fils. ils sont dix-sept et vingt et un ans.
je adore le montagne.
Je vais a les alpes francaises et je frais souvont le ski.
Its half term next week and I hope I go back to finish the course 🙂
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Must say it seems a hard way to start learning French. I did it at school but went to conversational French for evening classes and a similar one for Italian and they didn’t bother going through the verbs etc. but whole sentences and phrases which are in common use. This made more sense. Philip picked Italian up speaking and listening but did go to some language classes in Italy. Hope you can put it into practice when you go to LesGets.
You will find you learn loads next time you are in France because you have some basics to hook the new stuff on. But yes, to get good at a language you have to live it and breathe it for a while. My German is pretty rubbish these days – I can understand it find but it is an effort to fish the words out of my brain (despite being brought up with German) but if I go there for a week, all the words leapt back to the forefront of my brain.
I’ll have to lend you Joe’s timetables wallchart. I keep hoping by having it next to his bed they will just seep him into his brain whilst he is sleeping.
When I was at school my German had a fit because she had to teach the whole class English grammer before she could teach any German grammer… Although I left school hardly able to speak a word of German I did pick it up after spending 6 months there… So just do a “Geoff” and go to Les Gets for 3 months!
Well done, it will be interesting to hear you converse with Thierry when we are over in January 🙂
Oh, and as for times tables, I could never do them either! But I’m improving now, because for quite some time now, I go through them at night to push out all other thoughts from my head so I can go to sleep at night. But if you ask me what seven eights are now, I’d have no idea!
Not that I’m a dab hand at French either, but I’ve spotted an error or two in your devoirs! Only minor ones: ‘j’habite’ and j’adore’. I don’t know what the last part of the sentence about skiing means, though, so you’ve beaten me there! 🙂
Sally I did an french course back in 2004 ..we didn’t do any of this…I think your course is very advanced. You are on a beginners course which should not included a times table.
I can understand everything you written in french. I can read more french than I can speak but I get by.
Do not beat yourself up over this, French is a very hard language to learn, especially if you have no one to practice with. I knew some before I went on holiday..but I learnt far more there.
Lets say you ever other skills which I do not have, and never will, we cannot do it all! xx
I can feel for you with the times tables. I can’t do mine either due to the school doing a funny experimental way of learning it for my year. It didn’t work!