We had to miss a lesson today (she was dog sitting) and Monday (we had an appt over in Phoenix), and yesterday we were talking so extensively I realized I hadn’t been circling. So I made a rough segmentation of the topics we’ve covered: animals in the house, people in the house, animals in the sea, in the woods plus who is on the boat and where it is going, and why, etc. We have any number of people, incl. “the family” and we have the Frere Jacques song. I forgot about the Marseillaises, plus there’s the song from my French class about the kids being bored on Sunday plus a song from Les Miserables.
But what stuns me is the richesse of the circling possibilities. It does remind me of what I did with Latin and the Cambridge Latin Course stories and also a beautiful book in Spanish about Peter Rabbit – Querido Pedrin by Alma Flor Ada, gorgeous illustrations by Leslie Tyron. They allowed a lot of discussion which I now recognize as circling. I am not sure how TPRS-y this is but my idea is to review all this vocabulary b/c I’m sure some things like ‘something else’ and ‘soeur’ might have not been repeated enough and I want to reinforce them all. I think TPRS says 80% and she’s way over that, so maybe I’m panicking too soon. It’s probably that obsessiveness that got me to learn so much grammar.
It is interesting to watch some carryover from her grammar classes in Spanish. But the whole business with est-ce que as the most common interrogative and its effect on inversion requires massive use and circling certainly gets that.
It is fun to watch her focus on the story so much she catches me as when I questioned why the boat taking them to Germany was flying in the sky rather than going by sea and she pointed out that the family is French so there’s no way to get to Germany by sea – geography aside. So the boat flies – another good regular verb along with voyager. So often she straightens me out and when she stumbles it’s b/c of story content, not language.
This may turn out to be amazing and by next summer I’ll be back on moretprs, reporting on this.
Two stories 16 lessons in (July 30):
Il y a un ours. Il habite dans le bois. Il a un ami, le lapin. Le lapin et l’ours mange les feuilles et l’herbe.
Mais l’ours veut manger quelque chose d’autre. Qu’est-ce que c’est qu’il veut manger? Il veut manger des crevettes. Mais il ne trouve pas de crevettes parce qu’il habitent dans la mer.
Ah! C’est bon! On voit la mer de du bois. L’ours va a la mer pour chercher a la nourriture et cherche les crevettes dans l’eau. Le lapin voit son ami l’ours du bois ou il a des autres amis, les loups.
Mais les loups mangent les lapin et ce ne pas bon pour le lapin. Parce que son ami, l’ours, aime le lapin, il ne mange pas les crevettes. Il va a son ami, le lapin. Les loup n’aime pas l’ours parce qu’il est plus grand que les loups et mange les loups!
Dans l’histoire, est-ce que l’ours mange les crevettes ou les loups?
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Une autre histoire il n’y a pas d’animaux. Il y a des personnes.
Les personnes sont francais et ils s’appellent Monsieur Un, Monsieur Deux, et Monsieur Trois.
Monsieur Un veut boire de l’eau.
Monsieur Deux veut boire du vin.
Et Monsieur Trois veut boire du cafe.
Les trois francais vont au cafe.
Ils veulent boire, mais l’un boit l’eau, l’autre boit le vin, et Monsieur Trois boit le cafe.
Le garcon du cafe est allemand. Les francais boivent le vin, le cafe, et l’eau.
Qu’est-ce que c’est que le garcon allemand boit?
Oui, cest ca, la biere.
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Hopeless stereotyping, I know. And any corrections on vocabulary, grammar, etc. let me know. I’ve exhausted the French books on grammar I have (the one from 1901 translates ‘voiture’ as ‘carriage’, not car, and has a sentence: Negroes have dark skin and big mouths. Don’t think that would pass the editorial board. So much for people who say they can’t recall any racial stereotyping in textbooks), so I will order one that got a good review on Amazon.