Vous pouvez lire et ecrire. Zero (her dog) ne peut pas ni lire ni ecrire (new words)
Oh, oh, it’s like the Spanish leer (I cringe to think they pronounced like lire but, oh well) and …….. (Sp. escribir)
Zero va a l’ecole pour etudier la biologie.
Biology or dog biology? (we’d mentioned earlier la biologie des chiens)
Oui, la biologie des chiens.
[Good discussion here with her: I pointed out that she did not understand the word ‘la biologie’ and I should have written it down. She said she probably would have understood it by itself but I used it in a sentence. That further pointed out that I am making the classic mistake of FL teachers in talking too fast. The stories are too complicated and it gives her too much to process, i.e. she understands the French, it’s the story details she loses track of. To slow me down I must gesture and point. Duh.
Her attention and memory are demonstrated by the fact that she asked about the word si: “Didn’t you say you used si in another context?” Me: “Yes. Si means if in French and in Spanish. It means ‘yes’ all the time in Spanish [sort of]. In French it means ‘yes’ only when in answer to a negative question like ‘you aren’t going are you?’ and it is ‘yes, I am’. Nyah: Yeah. You said it once and you were like ‘Oh! I’m surprised I used that automatically.” [referring to the fact that I had apparently acquired that usage without realizing it]
Ou est-ce que Zero va pour apprendre a ecrire et lire?
San Tan [her old school]
Qu’est-ce que vous avez dit a Zero quand les jeunes gens ne veulent pas [I screwed up the tense there] etudier avec un chien?
I don’t remember what you said I said [laughing, demonstrating exactly my point that she understands the French but the details of the story elude her]
Nyah dit donc a Zero qu’il y a une ecole pour les chiens.
Oh yeah, a school for dogs! OK, there you go.
…. qui veulent etudier la biologie.
Biology. Yeah.
Mais qu’est-ce que c’est comme biologie?
K-9 biology. [demonstrating conceptualization rather than rote repeating]
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Me: what about going back over the old words we had?
That’s OK as long as they are not ones I know know, like shark or strawberry.
Me: What happened to ‘qu’est-ce que c’est’?
I got it right!! I said ‘what’! Then I second-guessed myself. I said ‘what’!
Me: I caused you to doubt yourself.
Yeah. I know it. Don’t worry about it. Do I know them? Yes, I know them.
[there was more discussion in English in this lesson than we’ve ever had. But we went on to Lessons 53 and 54 in good order]