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As grammar, vocabulary seems essential for a language,,, I will try a website called “smart.fm.” In past, I was told of the website by my friend, but I have never tried it.
At night, I joined a party at the school. It was reconfirmed that I am not good at enjoying parties like that. I really admire a friend who appeared enjoying the party much. I would like to acquire the “ability to enjoy himself” like his.
After school, I send a request for permission of stay to the office. I was not sure about the procedure, but a madam at the local office was so kind that she wrote address on an envelope.
I realized that we need grammar knowledge in order to talk about complex matters. For example, words like “if” are necessary to make an assumption. So that can be a strong motivation of learning French.
The first day of my language school. It appears that teachers at the school don’t speak English. That is why their orientation was not understandable completely… Additionally, I understood almost nothing of the test for class allocation. As expected eeeeasily, I was allocated to the lowest class whose students were all Japanese.
Lectures are given entirely in French, which I think is ineffective. Declarative knowledge like meanings of words or grammar systems should be discussed in a language students understand, I believe. We, beginners, don’t fluently understand French, so it takes much time to explain things in French. The only way is to show many examples and let student find grammatical rules.
But an interesting point is that discovering grammar rules can make language learning more enjoyable. When we take to something, it is a strong factor that we ourselves find them and have affection to them. Similarly, if we find grammar rules by ourselves from given examples, we may take to them.
Another ineffective teaching method is listening. At the very beginning of French learning, we don’t know almost all the words of listening materials. What could we understand of materials full of new words? It was completely ineffective!
Having said that, I will just adapt to their method. One of my beliefs is “Circumstances are not what we struggle to change, but what we adapt to.”
Though it is Monday, our language school was off; it is Easter today. Invited by my friend, we visited a castle. Cousin of his host mom was visiting her and they took us to the castle. The cousin was with her family: her husband and two kids. She is French and her husband is English. So the kids speak French and English. They taught us a French word “froid” that means “cold.”
As I returned home, my host mate had returned from her trip to Paris. She is a South American girl who I can hardly believe is younger than me. Surprisingly, I was found out to be shy in a minute…
I use a notebook when I talk with my host mom. I hardly understand any word she says, and hardly pronounce any word I want to use. Needless to say, but unfortunately, she doesn’t speak English. It inevitably leads to talking on a notebook. Moreover, we don’t actually make sentences; communication with just a few words that we find on my electronic dictionary.
With this “notebook conversation,” I heard about a Sunday Market at the breakfast table, and went to see it. There were about 60 booths, which were selling vegetables, cheeses, breads, dried sausages, fish, flowers, clothes, bags, watches, furniture, etc.
What seemed French was that some people had baguettes in their hands or bags. And, there were several shops that demonstrated functional peelers, which is common scene on TV in Japan. I bought a croissant at a baker’s booth. The bakery’s madam is so talkative; she always keep talking or singing :)
