So I got the results of the French test, and yippeee I did it, I passed and was the fourth highest mark in the class, lol, I sound like kids. Anyway, when handing out the papers the teacher asked me: “ you were the only one who got a full mark in comprehension, and you got the highest mark in composition, but you have a problem with the grammar, you should work harder on it. I don’t know why is that? French is a very logical language”. It was only then when I remembered the funny discussions about the logic of French that my husband and I have, what we “students” say about its logic and what Zizou mentioned in one of his comments about his friends saying that the beauty of French is in its weird logic.
Once I remembered all this I couldn’t hold back my laugh, and I’ve noticed that when I laugh the whole class including our teacher, they all start laughing and find it really difficult to stop.
She said to me: “come on Eman, you’ve learned GERMAN, don’t try to convince me French is more difficult!!”
The thing I can’t actually explain is that no matter how something is really difficult, if I get to understand its logic then it becomes a matter of hard work for me to learn. Which reminds me of a teacher in Jordan with whom I had a course in the basics of the French language. He was awesome, a great teacher indeed, but he had only one little problem when he wanted to encourage us to learn more vocabulary. He used to give us the lyrics of a certain song, play the song for us repeatedly and then ask us to learn the words by heart for next time. Then he gives us a quiz next lesson asking us to write down the words. And my problem is I can never learn anything by heart unless I understand the meanings, that’s how my brain functions. I told him that I must know the meanings to be able to remember the words. He didn’t want to explain, and said it’s a new teaching method that was more effective, although I disagree with him, because I hate being treated as a computer where one can input data in my memory and that’s it. Anyway, I asked my husband, who was my fiancé back then and he interpreted the song for me, and I was the only one to get a full mark in the quiz, so the teacher was like: “so now you’re convinced that my method works?” and I answered: “now I’m sure it doesn’t!”. I mean I was the only one with the full mark, others didn’t even pass!
I guess it’s always better to make the students learn after understanding what they’re actually learning, and even if the teacher don’t give meanings, one should look them up in the dictionary by himself.
But well, I love the sound of French, it has this melody in it, it’s nice, and when the teacher tested our reading yesterday I was rated very good, although my husband is convinced that I speak French in a German accent, lol, yes, he heard me reading loudly once, and I was pronouncing “culture” as “kultur” and “sud” as “süd”, lol. Even the teacher, whose mother is German, was shocked when I said
“Psychologie” in German pronouncing the “cho” as “sho” and the “gie” as “g” instead of “j”. So it sounded “p-sy-sho-lo-gee”, lol, and the problem is that every time I make such a mistake I realize what I’ve done, which makes me feel so embarrassed, and the rest of the class go like: “what’s wrong with her? Why does she always have this weird way of pronouncing words?”, and this is enough for me and for the teacher to start laughing like crazy.
And although I reach home exhausted, but I must say that I owe this course big time.