Fearless in France
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Before I left to come to France everyone I talked to always said “You’re going to have so much fun!”. If I had a dollar for every time someone said it to me I could probably afford my plane ticket home. Even so, they were obviously right, I had the time of my life and am so grateful for this opportunity and experience.
While getting to travel all across France as well as a number of other countries I promise I actually did school work as well. I think that is kind of a big part that is skipped over. So, here’s a quick breakdown of the classes I took while here.
My first class was obviously a French class where we were all evaluated and put into the level of French class that would help us most improve. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say that the class helped me to learn French. The professor did her best to cram a lot of information into four months, making it hard to focus on one topic and really understand it. However, I do think I improved my grammar thanks to the class, but my ability to communicate with the people in the city really came from outside experiences.
The next class I took was called “US Legal Systems” and I took it at the local university here (in English). In all honesty, it was just an ok class. The professor was obviously French but it was her first time giving this course so it was a bit all over the place, and she was weirdly obsessed with Thanksgiving. Additionally, with the way the French school system works, I had no grades for the class except for the grade I got on the final exam.
I also took a French gastronomy class which was so much fun because we were able to try an array of French food while learning about local culture surrounding food. Overall the class was quite easy and there wasn’t too much homework to do but the midterm and final exams were brutal.
The fourth class I took was a sociology class where we learned quite a bit about the history of France and how the culture and society developed. This class was really easy in that most of the time the professor did all of the talking and we just kind of had to sit there and listen. The professor also gave us typed-out notes for each section so it wasn’t necessary for us to take any unless we wanted to. As for the exams, they consisted of written essays based on articles or pictures that he gave us.
The final class I took was less of a class and more of an internship. While my majors/minor are not at all related to teaching I still thought it would be a cool experience to intern at a local school and teach English. I recently went through a program to receive my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate (TEFL) so I thought it would be good to have experience in a real school. Through this internship, I created lesson plans that I would then go through with my students at the school. I went 4 days a week and worked with an array of different levels of English language learners. It was hard sometimes because, come on, an American girl coming to teach a bunch of middle schoolers English? They were much more interested in doing the exact opposite of what I told them to do. Either way, though it was very fun and I loved my students.
And those were all of the classes I took and I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Overall the hardest thing during all of this was the fact that everything was in French. It is a French language immersion program so it was what I was expecting but it was truly very intense. While being here I have actually forgotten how to say words in English. For some reason speaking in another language for too long makes you struggle to find the words in either language.
Thank you everyone for reading this semester and I will be back to share my experience in Switzerland starting the beginning of February.
Profite bien tout le monde!
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