To celebrate Mardi Gras with a French flavour I organised a French movie afternoon and Crepe party on Sunday 21st of February at my place with a dozen French speaking friends and students.
The movie was "La Mome" - literally the kid / l'enfant - This is the story from the legendary French singer Edith Piaf. The movie is featuring the actress Marion Cotillard who was awarded a Cesar at the Oscar ceremony, let's note this is the first French movie ever to be awarded two Oscars
Was it a good choice for a light "crepe party" afternoon as the movie is Grand, Emotional, Sad and Captivating? I lightened the atmosphere with regular pauses, some of them were compulsory as we had a couple of technical issues with the DVD and some to pass around to the guests the tasy savoury and sweet crepes.
A bucket of crepes was perfumed (heavily :) with Rhum Charrette, from the Island of Reunion, a French Department in the Indian Ocean (Departement Outre Mer) next to Madagascar Island.
All in all it turned up a great social cultural event to practise French!
If you would like this type of events organised at your home, why not organise a French crepe party at your place for an evening or an afternoon with some built-in language lesson or French touch (music, movie), just outsource the whole to .... Veronique, contact me for information
Au revoir
Veronique
http://www.ouilafrance.com
Friday 26 February 2010
Thursday 4 February 2010
Tips and Tricks to lean languages faster
On Thursday 29th of January 2010 I was presenting at G Manchester Casino at the Business Independence Networking Event organised by Paulette Campbell http://www.wednesdayscoaching.com/%20some some tips and tricks to speed up languages.
The evening was celebrating Art and Culture. I partnered with Paul Brotherton, painter and art teacher who exhibited some of his paintings while I was sharing with the audience some Best Practices.
Get your drivers right!
You can set a specific medium to long term goal to learn or fresh up your language skills.
eg: move to the country within 2 years, visiting relatives in the country, interest in the culture, partner from the other country, expand your work opportunities
On the contrary the “next year January resolution” could quickly vanish
Build the learning into your daily routine
You can take every opportunity to use the idle time while in motion:
e.g. listen to a language tape course when drive, to language MP3s when you jog or perform routine mandatory tasks:
eg set your phone language settings to the foreign language, sign post various items and pieces of furniture using post-its, listen to the foreign country radio on the web
Use it!
Your skills will become rusty or you will get frustrated if you do not make the most of your new skill! There are multiple opportunities to leverage languages in a social, professional or fun environment.
Practically in Manchester and in many other cities in the UK (London, Birmingham, Newcastle, etc) there are informal language meetups (http://www.meetup.com) where you can practice the language in a social environment at your pace and when you are free.
In a work environment sell your skills on your resume and with your employer. This competency is an asset for a growing number of companies.
It is more fun and efficient to learn a language with a friend, partner, relative, this is a great way to increase practice opportunity and enjoy your learning.
You find the curriculum difficult?
We all have various abilities with languages. Assess your strengths (vocabulary? oral skill? grammar?) and development areas (grammar?, or?). Assess to the second level the strengths and development needs. Grammar difficulties are too generic, what type of grammar issues do you face: tense, sentences syntax, etc). Each of the difficulty has a root cause and approach to mitigate
Gain confidence with your strengths and build a plan for each of the level 1 and level 2 development need. The rest will come with perseverance!
Do you have any specific questions for your case or somebody else you know of? Just contact me and we can investigate the roadblocks and solutions for your language curriculum.
http://www.ouilafrance.com
The evening was celebrating Art and Culture. I partnered with Paul Brotherton, painter and art teacher who exhibited some of his paintings while I was sharing with the audience some Best Practices.
Get your drivers right!
You can set a specific medium to long term goal to learn or fresh up your language skills.
eg: move to the country within 2 years, visiting relatives in the country, interest in the culture, partner from the other country, expand your work opportunities
On the contrary the “next year January resolution” could quickly vanish
Build the learning into your daily routine
You can take every opportunity to use the idle time while in motion:
e.g. listen to a language tape course when drive, to language MP3s when you jog or perform routine mandatory tasks:
eg set your phone language settings to the foreign language, sign post various items and pieces of furniture using post-its, listen to the foreign country radio on the web
Use it!
Your skills will become rusty or you will get frustrated if you do not make the most of your new skill! There are multiple opportunities to leverage languages in a social, professional or fun environment.
Practically in Manchester and in many other cities in the UK (London, Birmingham, Newcastle, etc) there are informal language meetups (http://www.meetup.com) where you can practice the language in a social environment at your pace and when you are free.
In a work environment sell your skills on your resume and with your employer. This competency is an asset for a growing number of companies.
It is more fun and efficient to learn a language with a friend, partner, relative, this is a great way to increase practice opportunity and enjoy your learning.
You find the curriculum difficult?
We all have various abilities with languages. Assess your strengths (vocabulary? oral skill? grammar?) and development areas (grammar?, or?). Assess to the second level the strengths and development needs. Grammar difficulties are too generic, what type of grammar issues do you face: tense, sentences syntax, etc). Each of the difficulty has a root cause and approach to mitigate
Gain confidence with your strengths and build a plan for each of the level 1 and level 2 development need. The rest will come with perseverance!
Do you have any specific questions for your case or somebody else you know of? Just contact me and we can investigate the roadblocks and solutions for your language curriculum.
http://www.ouilafrance.com
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