Goodbyes

Today, during our regular chapel time, we had graduation for the students who are finishing this semester. Two of the students took their test early, and have already left. The other four are pictured here with our teachers and some of the school administration.

There are many goodbyes in missionary life, but the exciting part is that we know so many people all over the US and the world now.

After graduation, we had our last test of the semseter. (It was a little weird to have graduation first. All four of the graduates in the picture took the test at the same time I did.) It is a relief to have all of the tests over, and all of our paperwork for the semester completed. We have a few days off, and we will begin the next semester on Monday.

Update

Wow... it has been over a month since I last posted. I didn't realize how much time had gone by. We have all been doing well, but just busy. Since spring break, we have had lots of test, projects, etc. Our biggest challenge was a presentation in chapel this past Wednesday. It was 20 minutes... in French. We breathed a big sigh of relief once that was over!

Now we have another small presentation for class (5-10 minutes), the usual homework, and tests. I will be posting more and catching up on pictures. I just need to upload the pictures from the camera first...

Right now in class we are studying reflexive verbs. There is a lot of new vocabulary as well as a lot of rules (and of course exceptions to all of the rules, then some exceptions to the exceptions.) They can be very important to get right. If you read Stephen's post about smelling bad instead of feeling bad, you will understand.

Tests

Here are the tests that we have:

1. Dictee (spelling tests)
Every Wednesday we have a dictee. We started with 100 words. They are cumulative, so we have to keep studying the words from the beginning as well as the new ones. Some of the challenges are the accents, remembering which nouns are masculine or feminine, and trying not to use English spelling. I was never that great at spelling, and now my English spelling is getting confused as I learn the French spelling.

2. Dialogue.
On some Thursdays, we have to say a dialogue that we have memorized. These have been fairly easy.

3. Verses
For our Bible workshop we have to learn a verse every week. We say these in our regular class every day, and by ourselves in class on Friday.

4. Mini-tests and Tests
On Fridays (except field trip days) we have a mini-test (quiz) or a test. These are either over one chapter/ section (mini-test) or over everything we have studied to that point.

5. Mid-terms
We just took our mid-terms this week. We had oral exams scheduled individually on Tuesday and Wednesday, and our written exam on Thursday. Then we had Friday off! (Our teacher is gettting married on Saturday, and she needed the time to prepare.)

6. Bible Workshop Test
We have our first test for our Bible workshop on Tuesday (at the end of our regular class.) We have to write 2 verses, say 2 verses and take a test on certain vocabulary words.

We stay pretty busy studying for these!

Homework

Each week, in addition to our classes, we have homework to complete. Between classes, kids, and all those other tasks that are part of life we manage to squeeze in the following:

1. The most time consuming part of our homework is Rosetta Stone. We were required to purchase the software as part of our school program. We have to do 67 hours of labs by the end of the semester. This works out to just over 5 hours per week. There is a four part section where we see and hear french words and pictures, and section where we practice speaking, and a section where we practice typing. We use a French keyboard on the computer, and now my English typing and spelling are very confused.
The program is not hard to do, but it is hard to fit in time wise. I usually try to do at least one hour when Caleb is napping, but on Wednesday we have a different schedule. So far we have both been able to keep up with our work.

2. We have had a few oral assignments where we had to ask someone certain questions. For one of these we had to ask a francophone (someone whose native language is French) 5 questions about themselves. The students who are attending the Bible school here were all very patient with those of us who stumbled through the questions and tried to understand the answers!

3. We have written assignments to go along with what we are learning in class. We usually start these in class so that Kathleen (our teacher) can see if we understand the concept before we do the whole exercise wrong.

4. Of course, we are constantly trying to review and study. I will do a post tomorrow with the tests that we have every week. We are also studying to be able to speak and understand, not just pass a test or quiz.

5. We turn in a paper every week with our "listening" and "social activities." We have to listen to 5 hours of French. This can be TV, radio, music, movies, etc. We have to go to one social activity where people are speaking French. This can be something as simple as going out to eat, or going to a children's storytime at the library.
After our break (next week) we will also have to include reading in French and French conversations.

6. We are required to meet with one of the Bible students for one hour a week (in at least 3 separate meetings). We read Bible verses to them, and they correct our pronunciation. The Bible school students each have a personal devotional book (culte personel) that they complete as part of their assignments. We have a copy of this as well, and take our Bible reading from the passages there.
This has been a great opportunity to get to know one of the students. I practice French conversation with my student. She speaks English quite well, is very patient, and is a great teacher. We end up meeting 3 times a week, and usually read and talk for 30-45 minutes each time.

7. We turn our "Culte Personel" books in each week to show that we have done our reading. We are supposed to try to write something each day to practice our French writing.

French Numbers

Learning French feels much like being back in Kindergarten. We learned the alphabet- same letters as the English, in the same order, but different pronunciations. It was funny to have our class of adults saying the alphabet together, over and over.
We also learned the days of the weeks, months of the year, and other things that reminded me of the things that you would learn in Kindergarten (or pre-school.) One of the things we learned was numbers. We started with the numbers 1-31 so that we could do dates. Then a few weeks later, we learned the rest of the numbers up to 100.
The numbers are similar to ours at the beginning...
1-un
2-deux
3-trois
etc, etc,

But some of the higher numbers are a little different. The word for 60 is soixante. When you get to seventy, instead of a seperate word, you say soixante-dix (60-10) then you keep going
soixante et onze (60 and 11)
soixante et douze (60-12)
soixante et treize (60-13)

When you get to 80 it is quatre-vingts (4-20s)...
quatre-vingt-un (4-20-1)
quatre-vingt-deux (4-20-2)

As you get higher and higher, the numbers get longer. You end up with
99-quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (4-20-10-9)

This makes sense if you think about it- four twenties plus ten plus nine is ninety nine. It just takes a little getting used to! The first few days after we learned the numbers, we took turns counting in class... Anna, you count from 51-60, then David, you count from 61-70, and so on, until everyone had a turn. It was quite amuzing!

Our classes

It is hard to see the building from this picture, but this is the building in which we have our classes. I was sitting on the front steps of our apartment building when I took the picture. As you can see, we have a very short walk to go to class.
I have the morning class, and Stephen has the afternoon class. We each have six people total in our class. Having a small class size helps with learning. (There are a little over 30 students in the language school and 12 are beginners.)
We have an average of 15 hours per week of class, about 5 hours each of grammar, dialogue, and conversation. On Wednesdays we have one hour of chapel, one hour of small groups (the men and women meet separately), and a one hour Bible Study.
I have class from 8:30-11:30 on Monday, Thursday, and Friday. Tuesday is 8:30-12:30. Wednesday I have class from 10:30-12:30.
We started with phonetics. That part was very hard! We will be working on phonetics/pronunciation all semester. Now we have memorized some basic dialogue. We started on grammar with nouns. Last week we moved into verbs-- conjugating, etc.
Our teacher, Kathleen, is very nice, and incredibly patient. She seems to have a good sense of how to explain things. When someone is having trouble understanding, she always thinks of another way to explain it.
At the beginning she spoke mostly English to us. Now, she will speak mostly in French, but if we really are not understanding, she will use English. She is really good at making sure everyone understands completely before we move on to something else.
The Wednesday morning chapel service is from 8:30-9:30 and is completely in French. All of the students from the one year Bible Institute, the language school, and all of the staff attend. The next hour (9:30-10:30) the women and men of the language school meet separately for small groups. This time is not required, but is nice to get to know the other students.
The Bible study on Wednesday is from 1:30-2:30. That is a time with all of the language school students. We are only required to go to 5 in a semester. We have just have one of those so far, and we went over some of the songs that we sang in chapel. The teacher says everything in French, and then in English to make sure we understand. We go very slow, and things make more sense to me. We also did a short Bible lesson/sermon this week, point by point. It was exciting to be able to understan some of the things from French. I think it gave us an idea of what we are working toward.
Anyway, this is a lot of typing. Next time I will just put some cute pictures of the kids.