Entry #2: First Day

Last Friday was my very first day in GEOS Language Plus. From what we had discussed the other day, my host and I decided I'd be starting at 12:30. I arrived there 15 minutes earlier than I was supposed to, so I took some time to visit the school (it's actually really small in there) and familiarize myself with the material and meet with my colleagues. Then, my host gave me my schedule for the day. She told me I'd be attending two classes : one based on  grammar and the other on conversation. The first one was only starting at 1 pm, so I  had to sit in the student lounge, waiting for the class to start. Actually, I'm really glad I waited at this exact place because I was able to listen to many conversations. I found it really interesting to analyse what the students were saying. They were making so many mistakes, but still I was able to understand. In fact, it was the perfect time to use one of the strategies we learned in our program : to  listen closely to what other people say and how they say it and then correct it. So here's one of the sentences I tried to correct : 

''Other day, I go in elevator and I listen music and the man saying something I don't understanding.''

would be ...

''The other day, I went into the elevator, while listening to music, and a man told me something that I didn't understand.''

I realized how important it was to those Italians to learn English. They were always trying to use this language even for the most trivial things such as what happened in the elevator. Each time one of them was using Italian, the others were shouting : ''in English, please!'' They are practicing whenever and wherever they can. It's really inspiring.

I heard other conversations during the time I was in the lounge and I was surprised by how many languages I was able to differentiate. The ones I've been able to identify are English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic.

When 1 pm finally arrived, I went into classroom #6 for the grammar class. The teacher was a little bit late so I had the chance to discuss with the students in the class. There were 6 of them and they were all from different nationalities. Also, they were all here to learn French. I found it very funny because they were asking me so many questions about conjugations and they were asking me to translate some words for them. Then, the teacher arrived and we started the class. The subject of this day was the food, so we learned how to pronounce and write every single types of vegetables, fruits and meats. I was laughing at how easy those exercises were, but then I realized ... there are some words about food that I don't even know my-self ! Like ''choux-fleur'' or ''asperge'' (which I learned were ''cauliflower'' and ''asparagus'').

The second class was at 14:45. It went really well, but I didn't learn anything that really marked me. 

In the end, I didn't do a lot this day. I was observing and taking notes of how things works in GEOS and I think it will help me for the next weeks. Next Friday, I'm supposed to start doing some tutoring, so be sure to read my next posts to have some feedback of it ! 

Bye