So since tomorrow I'll be done with my second week of class and have my schedule figured out, I thought I'd tell you all a bit about my classes.
Topics in Advanced French Language and Composition:
Out of the four French grammar classes that IES offers, this is the highest one and thus we sort of got to choose what we'll be learning. Since it's the highest level, it was optional, but I realized that I'll probably never study fine points of French grammar on my own and I could definitely stand to review some things (relative pronouns?! the past subjunctive?!). The professor, Madame de Pous, is who I aspire to be someday. She wears bright blue eyeliner every day and lots of purple and has ridiculously spindly legs (which I could do without). She's intimidating but interesting and has a good sense of humor. And she knows everything ever about French. We do some grammar exercises and some vocabulary and culture. Last night we went to a lecture about Poland just to practice listening and such. It was basically a panorama of Polish history and some culture since the beginning of Poland, and although it wasn't very well organized it was super interesting. And since we actually had to take notes, I managed to pay attention for the full hour and a half. As a side note, I learned that croissants are a Polish invention. What?! There's a 3 week long Polish festival in Nantes this month, and I'd rather like to go to more events, especially the pierogi-making class.
Theatre Production:
An odd class. There's only 8 girls in the class, including me, and it is taught by Monsieur Mariel, a typical theatre type. We've spent much of the two classes we've had playing theatre games, which are very complicated when in French, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know what to do half the time even if they were in English. We've done a lot of massage, a lot of partner acting activities and a lot do with making sounds and facial expressions. We were just told on tuesday that the play we will be working on from now on, and putting on at the end of the semester, will be created from the works of Albertine Sarrazin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertine_Sarrazin
who we will all be playing in different sketches. I think Monsieur Mariel will be basically writing the play himself, or piecing it together from her works, and he said it will probably incorporate dance at some points. It sounds like it shall be very modern and bizarre, but fun. Overall, there's very little work for the class, since everything is in-class, except for one or two weekend rehearsals. And plays are always a hoot.
Teaching Internship:
Obviously, most of the class consists of the internship itself, which is shaping up to be a right shit show. I'll post about that later (after it actually materializes). But the class is good, mostly about ideas for lessons and what our goals should be when teaching. I think it will be very helpful, both for the internship itself and as a good introduction the the profession of teaching. It is also going to require quite a bit of work, as we are supposed to record lesson plans meticulously and make notes as to how classes went, and there's an oral project at some point as well as a final reflection. And I don't get credit for any of it from UPS. Harumph. I'm trying to forget that little detail so that it doesn't affect my work for the class, which I intend to do anyways.
Sociology of Culture:
One of the classes I finally decided on at the University of Nantes, after trying out quite a few last week. There's only 35 students or so in the class, which is fairly small for a college class here, and it's a little more interactive than some (although French students really seem to hate participating in class, so there's often painful silences). I'm the only American in the class, although there's quite a few Erasmus students, which I think the professor likes, since it is about culture after all. So far we haven't really gotten past the sociological theory part of the class, but I think it should be decently interesting, and if nothing else fairly easy to follow.
Spanish:
Also at the University of Nantes, and quite interesting. I'm currently taking 3 consecutive 1-hour classes on Thursday, and just had the last two classes for the first time today. The first class is Expression Orale, which is basically conversation class. It's taught by a young Spaniard (with a fantastic accent) who basically has to struggle to get the Frenchies to say much. And I don't blame them completely, because many of them don't speak Spanish well at all. Today we played a game with numbers, and then played a vocabulary game, and next week we're going to talk about the Geography of Spain (!!!!). Since my Spanish skillz have definitely decreased since coming to France, this shall be quite beneficial.
The other two classes are taught by a different professor. The first hour is Latin American Civilization (basically a rehash of the Colonial Latin America history class I took freshman year) and the other class is A Panorama of Mexican Cinema, which should be interesting. The annoying thing is that the professor continually switched back and forth between French and Spanish, which makes taking notes incredibly difficult. Most of the time I didn't even realize when he changed languages, since I can understand both fine, but it's definitely not going to help me keep the languages separated, which is what I'm having the biggest issue with right now. I'm currently thinking it would be incredibly beneficial for me to spend the summer in Spain.
So there you have it. I'm only taking 5 classes (I'm counting Spanish as one, because although it's technically three different classes, it's only 3 hours total), and not getting credit for one, so academically this semester will not be very beneficial. I'll probably only get to take classes for my major and minors next year. But I'm going to be extremely busy basically all the time, mostly due to my teaching internship and extracurriculars, so its okay.
Bon weekend!
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