20100503

2010.05.03 Mon.

I realized that I should intently listen to the lectures as a listening practice. It is sure that we carefully listen to lectures when we have not understood the contents. However, we tend to listen to the lectures less seriously when we have already understood them. I argue here that we should not do so.

Generally, for the improvement of language fluency, we need a lot of time on practicing processing the language. It is also true to the listening ability. And, attention! The entire lecture is given in French; this can be precious time for the processing practice. So, in order to take the most of the class, we have to consider it as a listening-practice opportunity and listen to it intensively.

Another thought on listening. Is there any significance in the noises in the background of listening materials for practices? In some listening materials, there are noises that hinder the understanding. For example, in the background of dialogue on the street are noises of cars. I believe these noises are to interfere with our understanding, and they works when we want to examine the ability to listen to words, in spite of the noises.

Ordinarily, however, listening in the class should be supposed as a practice. In practicing the process of understanding languages, we need materials that we can understand easily, because we can exercise the ability only when we understand materials. On this ground, I believe noises that hinder the understanding must be harmful to nurturing listening proficiency.

20100502

20100502 Sun

Since I could not write any post for this blog in the morning, I stayed at a café with my laptop from 13:30 to 19:00. Several points are different from weekdays at the cafe.

First, we cannot stay the interior just with a drink; we need to order something to eat in order to have a seat inside. So, I had a seat on the terrace, although it was cold and also rained, furthermore. Later, I could move into the interior and have a seat there. Sigh…

Second, the prices of drinks seemed more expensive. I didn’t ask about or confirm the prices of other drinks, but hot chocolate I ordered was 2.2 Euros, while it is 1.5 Euros on weekdays.

I will not go to the cafe any more on weekends.

20100501

2010.05.01 Sat

I went cycling today. On the morning, I went to a super market for a Japanese cuisine, but it was closed. So, then I lost things to do today. As I do when I have nothing to do, I went cycling in the afternoon. To the south of the town, there is a vast forest, which I like to go through by bike. Here are some photos from the cycling.

20100430

2010.04.30 Fri

Those who cannot speak the language spoken there are inevitably seen less intelligent than he actually is. In my class is a classmate who cannot speak English or French. He seems stupid, and which is because he cannot speak English or French, I believe.

I visited a bigger city with my friend to buy a pair of shoes for badminton. We had asked a guy in a badminton club where we could buy shoes. However, at the shoes shop, there were no shoes for gyms. We had no idea about other shops, so we asked locals two times. The second shop which we were told of was exactly we wanted; it was for tennis, table tennis, and BADMINTON! I could buy a pair of shoes with which I would not be likely to slip on the floor of gym.

We noticed that we had not paid for the lunch; somehow we forgot to pay when we ate lunch. Of course I paid for it afterwards, but it is interesting that clerks did not notice us going out without paying, either. How could it possible? It is probable that the clerk forgot to ask for payment when we ordered foods, although we are supposed pay at the time.

I was almost cheated also. Just after we entered a super market, we were talked to by a black man. He demanded us to leave our bags at the entrance. I was easily taken in, and was about to leave my bag. Then my friend suddenly went for the exit, so I followed him with my bag. In retrospect, the black man would have been trying to cheat us of our bags. I should not have been so credulous!

At night, I joined a party. There I knew an interesting game called “Puissance 4” or in English “Connect 4.”

20100429

2010.04.29 Thu

I bought a French keyboard. As I wrote before, I have been wondering about the most convenient way to type letters with accents such as "é". The biggest motivation of buying the keyboard was that I wanted to use a web service called "smart.fm," where I cannot type letters with accents with my Japanese keyboard. Though I did not want to increase my belongings, it is still nice if I can solve a problem by a moderate amount of money. It cost 23 euro.