It would be so much better if I meant French food or French cooking. But I don't.
I mean my reading knowledge of French class. That I'm taking to fulfill my third foreign language requirement. Like two of them won't cut it. Bleah.
All in all, the class itself has been really interesting and manageable. I like the teacher, and he does a good job of making life easy (by providing extra lists of vocabulary so that we don't have to do quite so much dictionary-thumbing) and interesting (by choosing good articles) for us. Class time passes pretty quick. So it's okay.
The bad things sort of outweigh that, though.
First, I spent $178 on textbooks, three of which are packets (which means that I can't sell them back). I've used them a total of three times. That's annoying. While I would rather read the articles we've done than dry, disconnected things from readers, I'd rather have had the choice to NOT BUY THE READERS. $178 is three weeks of groceries, two months of gas, four trips home, eating out five times, or a year's wardrobe for BeeBoo. (Not all of those things, one of those things as many times as I said it). So it bugs me that I spent it on books that I didn't use. (The "that I didn't use" being the operative phrase here).
Next, I don't know that my ability to read French is any better as a result of taking the class. I've learned a lot about how to use my dictionary and wordreference.com in order to prove that I'm capable of reading French, but I can't say that I've learned much other than several useful fixed phrases.
Maybe most annoyingly, I just don't care for French. **caution: rant ahead** I'm a pretty open-minded language learner. I mean, I study Spanish in ALL of my time. (Not just free time....ALL of it) And I took Portuguese and enjoyed it even though I get frustrated at my bad accent. And I'd like to learn other languages, difficult but useful ones like Swahili and Arabic. So I went into this whole French thing thinking that it'd be a pretty sweet deal....I'd learn a little about the language, not have to speak, get the culture some. But the more of the rules I learn, the more convinced I become that it's a ridiculous language! I guess not all languages can be as orderly and rule-based as Spanish. :-)
And last, but not least, we meet RIGHT in the MIDDLE of my day, EVERY DAY! So BeeBoo has had a REALLY BORING seven weeks...we don't do much other than watch her BabyTime (sign language...that's just what she calls it) every morning, scramble to get ready, run to her friends' houses to play, come home for nap, eat dinner, do some family time, go to bed, repeat. Bleah.
But, I'll be done next Wednesday. And I'll have almost a month before I have to be a teacher-student-mommy again. I'll get to just be a mommy for a while...and hopefully I can be a fun one since I won't have this silly class in the middle of every day!
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2 comments:
I've never had much desire for French. Never. And I've always had trouble pronouncing it. Also, money for books is lame. I'm suddenly remembering that I'm going to have to add that to our budget (ie, credit card for first semester). Blah.
I'm also not very clear on my language requirements, since I'm doing Comp Lit. On the one hand, I'm worried I'm going to have to take a bunch of intro classes. But on the other my impression is that they're somewhat flexible and the fact that I'm emphasizing critical theory/film might actually count as one "language", and I already have Spanish and English. My fingers are crossed...
I'm doing a comp lit minor, and they're happy with just my Spanish. I checked my handbook for the major requirements, though, and they ask for two for doctoral students. I'm sure it'll be different where you are...but that's what they ask for here. :-)
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