Wow!

Wow! It's been crazy busy these past couple of weeks!   I can hardly believe where the time has gone!  Had some fun with my senior class this week when I put up a picture of a man proposing to a woman in a restaurant.  It didn't really look like a very fancy restaurant but he was down on one knee with ring in hand.   We did a role play where they took turns playing both people in the photo while I circulated around the room to listen to the conversations.  When you first think about it you might think that this would be an easy task for seniors to do, but really, it posed some challenges for them.  How do you express the feelings that you can see in the photo?  There was a wide variety of conversation but many had the one thing in common that I was surprised to hear; and that was the use of "vous" in the conversations.  It was a true testament to the fact that we always tell our students to be "polite" when speaking in French and that the French people truly cherish this part of their culture.  On the flipside, it was also the perfect time to remind students that you must take each scenario into account in order to determine whether "tu" or "vous" should be used.  We chuckled about it when debriefing about the topic knowing that we certainly should be "familiar" with our future spouses should that be the end result of the "conversation".  :)  It was also a great opportunity to talk about what possible conversations could be occuring.  Perhaps the answer was not "yes"; perhaps it was "no".  What could the followup response be?  How would the conversation continue should the answer be no. Are there terms of endearment that might be used during the conversation?  Would you tell the other person that you love them?  Do you have a "loving name" that you might use with your future spouse?  A great conversation to have.  Once we had discussed these kinds of things and also brainstormed some more vocabulary and ideas on the board; my students redid the role play.  What an improvement!!  Truly getting into character is most important!!  :)