That’s pronounced mee-r-teal (remember to swallow your “r”) and we agreed she looks better in real life (unlike me, who looks better in pictures…). Anyway, she didn’t want to have her picture taken and is fighting a cold but she is as cute as she can be and very good--she looks very French. I got her name from Elliott Hester, a blogger for the LA Times (“Postcards from Paris”) who highly recommended her.My first session was on Tuesday; and we just finished our two-hour session this evening. We will meet for two hours twice a week for the next two or three weeks depending upon my fortitude (and bank account). How great is it that she comes to my apartment for our lessons!?
So, how am I doing?? My head is spinning! Want to feel stupid?? Try to learn a foreign language at age 56. (Or am I 57? No, I’m still 56…. Told you my head is spinning…) I am trying to remember how far I’ve come over the past several years with improving my knowledge of the language but oh, I feel so stupid while Myrtille is working with me. Yesterday morning, I went to the area around the Sorbonne (the famous University of Paris’ humanities department) on la Rive Gauche (the Left Bank of the Seine) to pick up an intermediate study book (note that she didn’t ask me to get a beginner version!) from a five-story college bookstore. Mission accomplished, I then wandered into a café to study for a couple of hours—where better to do that than in the university area surrounded by many students doing the same thing, en francais, bien sur!
Myrtille uses a variety of methods in her teaching. She speaks and writes questions for me and I attempt to answer her while she records on paper what I’m saying. Then she analyzes and corrects my mistakes and my pronunciation—all the while explaining the proper grammar, verb tense, placement, etc. For example, instead of saying, "Je ne parle pas francais tres bien" (I don't speak French very well), I should be saying "Je ne parle pas tres bien francais" (as if they couldn't tell!) She wants me to do more writing and gave me several assignments in the workbook for next Tuesday (thank goodness there are four days before then). She also gave me a French website and suggested I log on to practice hearing the exercises as they are displayed on the screen. That’s my biggest problem—training my ear to recognize what’s being said. I’ll keep you posted!
