I've had a very diverse history of language learning. Throughout all of my experiences, however, I only had one teacher who was a native of the target language.
Madame (Hereafter abbreviated as Mme.) Hoveland was my French teacher my senior year of high school. I had taken (and enjoyed) beginning French the year before from an American woman who taught Spanish and French, and I was hoping my experience with Mme. Hoveland would be similar.
It wasn't.
It's eerie how the list on page 435 of MCM follows the differences I experienced VERBATIM! She was much more relaxed in her methodology, but she also had significantly higher expectations. A clear example of the contrast between her and my previous teacher was with spelling. Mme Hoveleand was far less patient with students who had problems with French phonetics, while Mme Kuettner (whom I had the year before) was very patient with poor spellers.
I could bore you with the details, but I've had a few complaints about the length of my blog entries, so I'll cut this one short and see you all in class tomorrow.
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2 comments:
I think I understand your experience with your French teacher, since i had a pretty much the same story with one of my native teachers of English. In my case, the problem was not only in the high expectations that she had for us but also in her unwillingness to learn about our language and culture, which resulted in a number of cultural misunderstandings and conflicts between her and our class...
I actually enjoy reading long entries, but then again, I don't reply to every blog entry. I just read them all.
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