She taught me a lesson in tprs today. She did not recall ‘conte de fees’ = fairy tales and I tried to remind her by finding a picture of a fairy or other related items and she kept insisting ‘in English’, which is exactly what tprs requires, “Tell me, in English, I know what all the rest are; that’s the only one I don’t know.” Then it dawned on me, “Oh, yeah, in English pointing to the words.”
When I blurted out “fairy tales”, she said triumphantly, “See how easy that was?”
I had 3 sets of pictures, one for Cinderella, one for Little Red Riding Hood, and one for Snow White.
She questioned my use of “in the mountains” when the picture looked to her like the town was “on” the mountain. The ensuing back and forth was all in French ……….
Let me make it clear that at this point Nyah is not yet producing French. According to Slavic, students in regular classes begin emitting language toward spring. For Nyah, a solo student, we are at 9 months, so we’ll see.
When I said Hood did not obey her mom, she yelled out “obey” when I repeated it as if she didn’t understand. She makes it clear she understands with vocalizations and strong disagreement, like with me calling a picture with sparse trees a forest. When I showed her a picture of a pair of shoes lying lost on the steps for Cinderella’s story, she immediately questioned two shoes instead of only one.
I introduced ‘affreux’, frightful, without writing or translating it. We’ll see if she recalls it.
Il y avait une ville dans une valle parmi les montagnes There was a town in a valley among the mountains: I used ‘among’ and she called the English before I could point to it. She explained that was because that’s pretty much what a valley is. Cute.
Her strengths at this point are easy recall of vocabulary, concentration, an insistence on making sense of what she hears, and consistency in attendance. She has a helpful interest in grammar (she caught me using a subjunctive the other day and shouted, “What’s that?!” Today I used the past participle of ‘boire’, bu and she immediate asked, “What tense is that?” I introduced ‘inconnu’ for stranger and she asked me if the other word for know had the same pattern for forming ‘unknown’; I said yes, it is insu and she was satisfied)
We work on word building, so I pointed out ensorcele from sorcier, bewitched from wizard.
She got half-sister from demi and soeur, I guess demi from demitasse – not sure.
All of this is very exciting when you are in the middle of it, but it requires a huge amount of work. Some of that includes working on my own French.