Monday was my first class as a graduate student. My Monday class is 2.5 hours and is called
“Stylistics and Semantics”; it’s about grammar and writing. The class itself was not overly different –
we discussed how to use various conjunctions that express causation; however,
the end of the class was a 40 minute in class essay, in French of course. I’m accustomed to writing about three 4-5
page papers in French for each French class AT HOME and UPON REFLECTION. This is definitely a different world
here. Just for next week as homework, I
have to write a 5 page paper “Why Teach”, do 4 pages in a grammar book, and
prepare a 10-15 minute presentation on how I would teach the Imparfait (a grammar
tense)… One class down and a few more to
go!
Tuesday I had the first half of “Advanced Workshop in
Contemporary French”. This class sounds
really neat. The Tuesday portion will
focus on discussing films, the history of the events the films are based on,
and the impact of those events. This
class is an oral class – so “no” papers.
Our homework each week will be to read two documents sent to us and to
watch the movie before we come to the class (hardest part since they won’t play
at my place). Then I will have a total
of 4 oral presentations – 3 throughout the semester and 1 as a final. My first presentation is next week.
Wednesday was “Applied Methodology” and was much the same as
Monday’s class since my MA advisor, Mme Boularès, teaches both. We discussed didactic and pedagogic terms. At least for this week, we just have to read
two short chapters in a book that (as I’ve started already) is quite dense and
will require multiple reads to understand.
The class is connected with my class observations that I’ll be doing at
NYU (observing NYU professors teach undergrad study abroad students French)
Thursday was a really long day as I was on campus from
9:45am until 6:30pm or later. I went to
campus early to watch the film for next week and then proceeded to work on
homework until a 4 o’clock meeting before my 5 o’clock class. The meeting at 4pm was with the Assistantship
advisor, Isabelle, who wanted to make sure we had a firm understanding of the organization
of French education and the bureaucracy involved.
Thursday class is going to be the highlight of my week.
Period. It is the second half of “Advanced
Workshop”. The professor is Patrick and
he is amazing – I grinned throughout the entire first class. His focus is on the linguistic part of our
film/history class. His job is to make
us speak better and he does so with flare.
We’re going to have lists of words to memorize and I don’t even know
what else! He was just so enthusiastic
that the class will be a great way to end the week.
Throughout the week, when not in class, I mostly ran little
errands and got started on the homework, since there is quite a bit of it! Tuesday morning, I bought the majority of my
books and then passed the afternoon running errands and chatting with a
classmate, Katherine, until my evening class.
Other than that, everyone is very busy trying to get settled in and not
fall behind on the work. I have to
admit, it’s been quite a good first week.
Oh, and I bought stamps... They were so cute! Too bad the ones for America aren't like these!
No comments:
Post a Comment