When I reached high school, we started to concentrate more on French grammar. In my day, we did the Grammar Translation version of language learning. The Grammar Translation method of teaching Language Learning focused on the teaching of French grammar, French sentence structure, oral drills, and teacher error correction unlike today's Natural Approach or TPR (Total Physical Response which I will talk about in a later post.
We had a thick French grammar book we studied from. The French grammar book was more like a combination French grammar workbook, paragraphs about different aspects of French culture like places in Paris to visit, French food, French music and French geography. We also talked about other countries in the world that spoke French such as Francophone countries.
I studied French grammar in English and French and we did a lot of verb drills and dictation. The teacher would say Je vais, Tu vas, Il va, Nous allons, Vous allez, and ils vont. And we would repeat after her these verb drills day after day.
In Intermediate French, we started learning more about different French tenses. In Beginning French, I had learned about the simple present, simple past and simple future. In Intermediate French, we learned about present gerund, past gerund, the conditional, and the progressive French tenses. In many ways, the French verb tenses are very similar to English verb tenses. By learning French, I learned a lot of Latin words and I learned English grammar at the same time.
Just like Beginning French, we talked about French culture in English. We ate French foods, read about French culture in Paris Match and L'Express.
However, it was in this Intermediate French period that we started to have pen pals from France. The teacher assigned us each a pen pal from France so we would write long letters in French about ourselves and our pen pal would write to us in English. Having a pen pal opens you up to learning about another culture and it motivated me to write long letters in French to that person. I really polished my written French because of the pen pals I had.
I wish I had stayed in contact with my pen pal, but sadly, we lost touch. I just remember that experience as a great way to talk to a peer while motivating me to learn a second language.
No comments:
Post a Comment