vendredi 6 novembre 2009

18 weeks of learning French

18 weeks... I just passed the 4 month mark.

I did a lot of CBF this week because I thought it's way too easy so I hope to finish the whole thing now. Meanwhile, FSI has proven to be getting difficult quite quickly. I wanted to finish Chapter 7 but I was falling behind. I found that the gap they gave you wasn't enough time for me to finish the sentences so I'll have to do them a few times over from 7.8 onwards.

I started my second week of my evening course and unfortunately I didn't like it as much as the first week because I preferred the previous teacher :( Still, the teacher that we have isn't too bad it's just that I preferred the other one personality wise.

I'm finding it really hard to find new 'language exchange partners' mainly because people aren't online much or if they are, they don't have their MSN or Skype program open. Mainly now, I only speak to one person (quite often) and 2 others every now and then. I wish I could speak to a bigger variety of people but it's hard to get in contact with them and also some conversations feel so stilted and boring. I dunno... with some people you seem to have an instant rapport/connection but with others it almost feels like a job interview we're you're just asking a serious of questions and it feels a bit cold and boring to me.

Speaking of job interviews, the topic of jobs comes up a lot.. job satisfaction, having days off or holidays (which les Français really do seem to have a lot of! ;) ), being unemployed and looking for a job, etc.

One person just got married and he showed me some of his wedding photos which was pretty nice considering we haven't even spoken much up till that point.

I don't like stereotypes but I've found most of the things I've read are true. ie that the French like le ciné and comics books (bandees dessinées) a lot. I've also learnt that they like camping, and prefer to travel inside their own country rather than internationally.

I also had some bizarre encounters this week. One was with a 27 year old girl who spoke (typed) like she was about 15 using lots of slang, abbreviations, etc, but also with the sorts of questions she was asking me. Turns out she's Algerian and living in Algeria (I'm getting a bit sick of people lying on their profile when they say they live in France and they don't!!) She didn't introduce herself or anything.. she launched into a tirade of how she couldn't do something on her computer and could I help her? I could barely understand what she was saying and I tried, but alas, my French and Windows skills are just not up to par... She kept asking me if I see kangaroos all the time in Australia and she was just saying really really immature things. C'était très bizarre..

So far I have:
  • Done up to the end of Coffee Break French - Lesson 47 (of 69 lessons)
  • Done up to the end of Assimil - Lesson 83 (of 113 lessons)
  • Done up to the end of Live Mocha - Lesson 26 (of 50 lessons) 
  • Done up to the end of French in Action - Lesson 18 (of 52 lessons)
  • Done up to the end of FSI - Lesson 47 (tape 7.8) (of 189 lessons)
  • Done up to the end of FSI French Phonology - Lesson 3 (tape 2.1) (of 20 lessons) (none this week)

0 comments:

Enregistrer un commentaire

Related Posts with Thumbnails