An appropriate title for my granddaughter’s French lesson today. For only the second time in over a year and a half I forgot to record it but we did a review that I did record. I have trouble grasping how much French she knows. I told her today that if she were to come regularly (she stopped regular visits before Christmas) her French would skyrocket.
Today I showed her pictures of a hotel and asked her to write down the first letter of the new word: windows. C’est un hotel avec bien de lumieres, balcons et fenetres, so f for fenetre.
This was done for 11 pictures. She got ‘triste’ from Spanish plus the picture and laughed at my fruits de la mer for seafood b/c I called the lobster a crab. It’s time for a visit to Red Lobster. I also did not know the French for lobster; the one I used was for a spiny lobster and a cognate with Spanish. We discussed the word for cruise ship when I introduced the word for ocean-going vessel. So I gave her the word for cruise ship which I happened to know and I’ll bet later she will know that word.
She said she already knew milk and even told me the lesson we used it in. I had forgotten. She has tied divers to diverse. We discussed the difference between mise en scene and decor for setting or situation. She took two film classes and learned quite a bit. She’s majoring in East Asian political science and a secondary in linguistics. Yea! That’s grandpa’s girl.
Another word she may remember although it wasn’t part of the lesson was chair – flesh. We had chaise for chair and I mentioned that the English chair is not a cognate (except historically). So I’m expecting her to know flesh later on. That is the sort of thing that binds a word to the learner’s LAD.
I surreptitiously introduced the expression bien de for beaucoup. I was surprised she knew petits pains for rolls.
All this was unwritten for her. So we went through her initials as I displayed the pictures again and asked what the letter was for and she answered with the English.So my plan is to go back to the earlier lesson and have her identify the personages like Shakespeare and Hillary Clinton by saying c’est X. She is remarkably resistant to speaking. She is at about the point in terms of hours where she may begin speaking. We’ll see.
I have a lot of work to do to bring the lesson numbers up to date and figure out to the last detail how to work the voice recorder…. and not forget to turn it on.