Reflection Month: #1

It's been a while since I updated anything about my journey to learning French. Tests have been taken, compositions have been written, and articles have been read. Monsieur has definitely been keeping me on my toes and since today is November 1st, I thought it was about time I updated you on what I have been doing.

Here's a review of what I went through and their outcome for the past two months.

• Oral exam. We had our first oral exam three weeks ago and, I have to say, it wasn't too bad. Monsieur had us choose a poem and memorize it: Le Corbeau et Le Renard and La cigale et la fourmi. Both poems were fun to read, but I chose Le Corbeau et le Renard. I wanted to do both, but let's face it. Life as a college student, you sometimes don't have enough time to do all of the things you want to do in one weekend. Plus my body likes to decide to, on its own accord, to sleep as much as possible because it knows that we are not going to go to sleep during the week. But I did pretty good on my oral. That reminds me, I need to email my professor and ask him what my grade was....Hopefully it was an A....or at least a B+! 

• Composition. Monsieur gave us a prompt to write about the first time Obama ran for President. Needless to say, I got an A. You know, after I gave my first draft to Tutor. I need to buy a gift for him for the all the trouble he's going through reading my "Me Jane....you Tarzon" speech.

• Presentation. We are currently reading Le Dieu du Carnage and my partner and I had to speak about the pages we were assigned on, in French. The presentation wasn't too bad. I just wish I was able to articulate my answers better than: Elle était fâché avec lui (I wonder if that's even grammatically correct. We're currently reviewing personal pronouns and I still get confused). I kind of like this book, plus I always feel proud of myself when I understand what I'm reading.

• Written exam. I did good on my first exam, but I could have done better (got an 80%). The tense worksheet I created really helped. I talked about it in my previous post: Study Habits Improved: # 1. A tip for all you language learners, if you're doing drills on spelling, make sure that you spell it the first time. My mistake was spelling the word wrong the first time in my worksheet and then using that as a template to continue my drills. So when I got the exam, I spelled the words correctly from my worksheet, but because I never noticed that I spelled it wrong, Monsieur, of course, marked them wrong. I lost a lot of points because of that. Struggles, I tell you. My second exam, I did much better (I got an 88%). I studied with one of my classmates and that definitely helped. I think I need to review more on my own before just to make sure I don't forget any material to go over. 

As you can see, Monsieur has given a lot of assignments to enhance our French skills (bless that man).

Au revoir!

Comment t'allez vous?

Well I have officially begun my blog to my journey to French fluency. This year is definitely going to be challenging. In one week, I will be heading back to school and one of the classes I will be taking this upcoming semester will be once again French. I have made it to the intermediate level, but the summer can make you forget the things you had memorized only three months ago (three months is a very long time). My French professor will be named Monsieur for the sake of me not getting in trouble in the future. You can never be too safe, I always say.

With that being said, Monsieur and I have one week until we meet face to face once again; and, from past experience, he will expect me of retaining at least common sense in certain things. We can only pray for that when the time comes.

Not to mention, Tutor better be prepared for the many questions and slight panic I will possibly develop as the semester goes by. Oh, he's going to love me since we're living in the same dorm.

Last year, I have learned a lot about learning a language. Always study something every night, stay super organized, and, for the love of god, DO NOT procrastinate. The last one was my biggest downfall. I would try to make over 100 flashcards the night before the test. By the time I was done making them, I just wanted to hop into bed and watch some TV. I would barely study ten of them before giving up and succumbing to sleep (maybe it was because I was studying on my bed...nah).

New goals are definitely in order. I have thought of how I plan to devote my time to learning the language this summer and plan to apply them as soon as the semester starts. I'll keep you updated and let you know how my first day of classes start with Monsieur.

Wish me luck!