Ashley and France : October 2, 2014

Wow, it's been a month for me here! Days are up and down, but overall, I feel I am truly living here, although at one point I felt little burned out on French and wondered, "Where's my Italian?" Nevertheless, I love French very much and it's been in my life now for seven years, so that's a good sign it won't be going away anytime soon. I'm pretty certain that by now the lady at the boulangerie, the lady at the tabac, and the guy who works at the supermarché know my face well and probably think, "There's the foreigner with the interesting accent again. She keeps coming back." I joke about that to my IES friends; we certainly have plenty of inside jokes to share. I especially enjoy my conversations with Shadi who is in my phonetics class. We share a similar sense of humor in general.

This was my second week teaching English for my internship. I played hangman and made conversation with the British French students during our hour of conversation together. They're all nice, polite kids with a brilliant sense of humor. I'm certainly learning a lot more British English words, like cook for oven, and a variance of pronunciation. It's quite fun for me. I'm pretty sure my accent sounds more British in some ways when I speak to my students in English. It just sounds different; I avoid the slang I use at home as best as possible to not cause confusion. Plus I think it's probably from conversing with the French British kids. My accent unconsciously tries to adjust to matching their own every time.

I enjoy very much planning lessons for my students. In my middle school class, I worked with them on categorization. I would write the word clothing or house on the board and ask them to name clothing items, or things found in a house, eating versus cooking utensils. It was a good exercise in general and I learned a few more words in French. I played Simon says with them a bit too and I think they enjoyed that, considering the fact, they were reluctant to change groups with the other half of their class.

The high school students were a little more difficult, so I had to exert more authority in my tone of voice, which was a little bit exhausting. I do appreciate being addressed as Madam by my students, since that is certainly a title of respect in France. It meant at least that they took me seriously, which was a relief. I worked with them on the conditional and using phrases like I would, I should, I could in a sentence. I liked checking each of their work individually, answering any questions I could. Their answers were certainly amusing, like If I were a millionaire I would buy a lot of drugs, When I was young I would act like a princess. I love my job!