Speech for Advanced French Class, May 2010

I read the following report in French in front of the class. And did rather well!

It took major preparation. My french tutor and I recorded it and I practiced, practiced and practiced. What I also did to make it easier from me to read, was to make a script with a larger font, and we underlined syllables and made notes to help me to remember pronunciation in the areas that I was having problems with. When it was time for me to present, I treated it as a Open Mike, made a couple of jokes and rattled it off with only a bit of help from my tutor. He was taking the class too. Methinks my French teacher was fairly impressed...amazed as she suggested it would be OK if I only did a short paragraph or just a few lines. Written out it was almost a page and a half.

The English version is after the French version. I think there is a little variation between the versions, as I made a few changes while practicing and not going back to make changes in the English.

La République de Bénin

Le Bénin est un des plus petits pays d'Afrique. C'est légèrement plus petit que l'état de Pensylvanie, réduire de l'est à l'ouest avec un 121 littoral de km, et à peu près 692 km long. A l'ouest est Tongo, au Nigéria de l'Est et au Niger et à Burkina Faso du nord.

Du dix-septième siècle jusqu' à 1894, Bénin a accueilli un royaume africain a appelé Dahomey. De 1894 jusqu'à ce que 1960 Dahomey était une partie d'Afrique d'ouest française. La République Indépendante de Dahomey a existé de 1960-1975. Dans 1975, le pays était renomme « La République Populaire de Bénin » après la Boucle de Binin.

Essay for Advanced French Class, March 2010

I very serendipitously signed up for an advanced french class. While I was signing up for French 101, I saw a Francophone Culture class listed...sounds interesting. So I signed up for it too. Afterward, I went to talk to the course instructor about books, she told me it was taught in FRENCH! I was going to cancel, but when she found out why I was taking french, she thought if I was willing to take the class anyway it would be a good way to submersed myself. We agreed that it would be Pass/Fail.

This was a expanded question I did from a story we were reading. I wrote my response in English and then ran it through an online translator. Hey, if you ever need an online translator, I recommend http://www.freetranslation.com/. It did a bang up job of translation English to French...but, a sucky job with French to English. There was a lot of times I had to bounce back and forth between the translator and a French/English dictionary for this class.

Even though this class caused me major anxiety, (actually all the classes did) I'm glad that I took it. Not only I got to hear real French for a three hour block every week, but the course work was an great mix of literature, movies, poetry and discussion. (Yeah, I didn't really understand most of the discussion but I was hearing French)

The Guest, by Albert Camus (Fench version follows)

Question #5: Would I have acted like Daru if I was in his place? Justify your response.

I have read and reread the story several times and with the class discussion on existentialism I can see the parallel between Daru reactions and my possible reactions to the situation in the story. This leads me to believe that I would have acted in the same way as Daru did given the identical set of circumstances.