Well this week was our first week of actually being in a class where the teacher and all the student speak French. It was a bit of a shock seeing how nieve I have been for the past 6 months really, not learning enough French and then since we have been here thinking that it wont be that bad, or that someone would help us. Turns out when your 21 and in a different country you cant exactly ask someone to make it all better.
Our first lesson was a real wake up call. The 4 of us sat eagerly awaiting our first real challenge and at some point during the 2 hour French monologue that the professor began I realised that this will not be as easy as my past carefree self has thought. I came out of the lesson not knowing what it was about, what I was suppose to do or what the aims are for the subject.
For the first two weeks of being here we had been kind of wrapped up in our own little bubble, there are 4 of us who all speak English and a little bit of French and we have been tackling the language together up to now. I found it really hard to understand people when I first arrived but one of the other girls would always tell me what had been said and mostly I was able to respond, also most of the people we have tried to have a conversation with in town bailed us out with their English too. Turns out that in Uni this is no help.
I have done what any self respecting adult in this situation would do, and that is to vow never to go back to that first class.
On our second lesson we were lucky enough to meet a French student who studied in Huddersfield last year so knew what kind of a situation we were in and very kindly explained what the teacher had been talking out. Again I had no clue.
The third and final lesson of our week got off a little better, we were send around a gallery space to draw and copy parts of the work which we liked, the professor came and spoke to us 1 by 1 and took the time to speak slowly and make sure that we had understood everything which was a breath of fresh air!
I definitely didnt expect the lessons to be this hard, when there is no clue as to what they are talking about – for example a picture, some writing etc, then it is tremendously difficult to pick out the words of meaning in the fast dialogues. But I am here now so I need to suck it up and deal with it.
Bryoney Fawn 