Recapping a character in her story:
camarade de chambre…..
Oh, roommate
hote………
that’s why the little tent is there (noting circumflex accent on hote for host i.e. loss of -s-)
Il est seul.
Yeah.
Il n’a pas des amis.
Yeah. Well, his roommate.
Oh, c’est un ami.
Yeah.
Ils aiment danser. Ils aiment aller aux boites pour danser et ecouter la musique.
No. Danse? No. They like music.
Qu’est-ce que c’est comme musique qu’ils aiment?
All of it. Not country.
Ils aiment toute la musique sauf Country.
Yeah, no one likes Country.
Ou est-ce qu’ils vont pour ecouter la musique. A la boite?
On the phone and stuff. Who goes somewhere to listen to music? (showing full comprehension and putting me in my place b/c I’m going out tonight to do just that 🙂
Est-ce qu’il y a quelque d’autres amis
Wait, what? Oh, other friends.
Comment est-ce que Drake a trouve les amis?
I don’t know. School?
A l’universite. Oui.?
Yeah. Or at school.
Est-ce que Megan et Arthur etudie la comme Drake? Practique……
I don’t know what they do.
Est-ce que Drake a son travaille au restaurant a un chef? Vous savez qu’est-ce que c’est un chef?
Boss! (there follows an exchange where she explains that because Drake works at a restaurant, she still thinks of chef in its English meaning. This indicates to me that she works with each word to clarify it for herself.)
(Expresses frustration at the details I’m asking for, “too much to them.” They don’t need this much to them; they just need a name and that’s it. She always says my stories are too complicated but yet she resists making up her own as part of “asking the story.” She says the characters should just be stick figures and brain dead. At this point, Oct. 5, 3 months into the lessons and 25 hours, I feel like I am not asking stories the way tprs suggests and I may be missing something. I also find that PQA works well with her. I’m keeping in mind that some tprs teachers do only PQA or only stories and you can’t be rigid, but I don’t want to miss a rich resource just b/c I’m not doing it right.)
Nous avons un probleme.
What?
Les histoires ne sont pas interesantes.
Yeah. Why? Because I made it that way.
Exactement. Pourquoi, par example, Josh ne travaille pas, il n’est pas assasin, ne pas voleur…..?
I don’t know. He’s just Josh. Drake and Josh ……… Josh is definitely not interesting. (this is beginning to take a strange turn)
Pourquoi?
Because that’s how his character is.
Mais vous avez fait sa personalite. Pourquoi vous n’avez pas fait une personalite interesante?
They’re funny. Josh and Drake are both funny.
En quel sens?
I don’t know, it’s been like years since I’ve seen the show(note two things here: she understood ‘sens’ even though we have not ever written it or noted it – she just got its meaning from the context and cognate status – PLUS she explains, to my surprise, that these characters do not come from her imagination)
Me: Show??
It’s a show. (there follows a somewhat tortured discussion of her attitude toward the stories, ending with “it can be about a cardboard box for all I care”!!
Est-ce qu’il y a quelque chose ou vous vous amusez?
Yeah.
Ou?
Everywhere.
Je veux un example. Ou est-ce que vous vous amusez?
I don’t know. Why do you make it so difficult? I have to come up with something. Ugh.
Vous voulez que je moi je fasse les histoires?
Yeah.
Vous aimez mieux que moi…….
Yeah. You come up with the stories. Like a trip to the zoo.
(the session ended there with us agreeing I would come up with stories. There are lots of things I can do besides make up stories or in addition to: she loves to draw the story as I tell it; she will read stories I write and answer questions about the story – and I can think of some things to do with that trying to get her to give input to the stories; I can draw pictures and ask her to listen to me describe them; I can pull out some of hundreds and hundreds of “picture files” I have and use those to stimulate a story; and I found recorded stories in Fr on the internet she can listen to and we can pull up another movie trailer like Scream and narrate it. Then I can focus more on PQA. I recall explaining to her why her grandmother and I got married – she enjoyed that and comprehended it fully. But I wrote this out to show how you can run into a stumbling block and analyze what happened to correct it or move past it.
The main purpose of these write-ups has been to provide evidence of comprehension.
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