Finally I got a lesson going via an iPad. It went OK, but Nyah wanted to talk about where we were going with this. Uh-Oh.
So we have the summer. She wanted to know if I was interested in going on. I said my motivation was very high. She said hers was not since we’d been off for so long (but we had survived earlier gaps longer than this). The lack of face-to-face aggravated the sense of distance. OTOH, she talked specifics about what she wanted to work on, etc. I suggested we do a very short grammar bit on verbs to get her to the point where she can stitch together a sentence starting with present tense -er verbs. Pretty simple.
She mentioned vocabulary and went on to say she liked doing the picture files (PFs) without trying to make a story out of them. (They lend themselves to short vignettes, which is ideal for learning/acquiring). So I’m going to spend all day tomorrow on this project and have a lesson ready for Monday which will overcome some of the glitches that occurred today, my first time using the iPad. She wants me to send her the verb charts I’d made up.
So my hope is to keep her involved long enough to get past this artificial distancing – some projections give June 8 for AZ, others sooner. The only advantage to it is she won’t be skipping days due to her mother’s schedule. I believe that once we get back into it, she will be on board. I sure hope so. She will not be taking French in college. If she cannot physically attend college, she may be able to continue even past matriculation.
Because I started this poorly maintained blog of mine on tprs with her, I plan to start with a couple of other students; I’ve already started with my son on Spanish and others will no doubt prefer Spanish. That’s fine b/c the whole point is to show teachers that you do not have to build an elaborate structure of themes and grammar points and practices and dialogue memorization to teach a language successfully.
May 6, 2020 Nyah texted me on May 4 that she does not want to continue. Je suis desole. Today I am stripping the “classroom” and storing some items I may use either with another student who had wanted French or to give me material as I write up our sessions on this blog or just throwing away stuff. Sad.