I am on fire this week! lol! I've blogged every single day! Can you tell I have a break from French class. lol! Every time we have an exam it's followed by a mini break. Which I have to say is really nice.
My class is really intense and while Madame Benedict is fabulous she's one tough cookie! Last Wednesday, we had our exam and the oral portion was pure torture.
For me, saying words in "liaison" is very difficult. Native french speakers will say two or three words all together so they sound like one word. For instance, "c'est quoi ça?" (what is it?) or "neuf ans" (nine years old) is pronounced so quickly it sounds like one word. Unless you know how to read and write you'd never guess the person speaking just said two to three separate words. Madame Benedict is constantly telling me "non, taileen...liaison" and I have to repeat the words over and over until I get it right. Which is a little stressful for me. And when it during an exam it's even more stressful.
The first sentence I had to read on my exam was "Le robe est plutot belle." I read it too slowly. So Madame B took points off for not rambling the words together. So she made me repeat the phrase. When I tried to say the sentence in one quick breath I pronounced "est" like it's pronounce in Spanish! Ugh!! That lead to more repeating and questions about which verb I was congugating. More points taken off for this error! As she's writing more zeros and ones I feel my confidence go down right along with my grade. In the final section, I had to create sentences using "Que" and "Qui". Now I feel like I have a good grasp on which word to use depending on the situation but I tend to mix up the pronounciation which gets me in trouble especially when I'm already nervous. So sure enough I said "Que" when I should have said "Qui"! Ugh! And once you say the word there's no going back. You've said it and you can't change your mind. So more points taken off! With my confidence shot, I continued with the written part of the exam. But what I really wanted to do was walk right out of that room and never come back!
I scheduled a doctor's appointment about 2.5 hrs after my class thinking I'd be done with my exam. Wrong. As I was trying to finish up the exam I kept looking at my clock... 9:50... 10:00... 10:30... I had two choices... leave and see if Madame Benedict would let me finish the exam after our break or cancel my appointment. So what did I do? Cancel my doctor's appointment. I didn't want to have this French exam hanging over my head for the next week and a half. Rescheduling a doctor's appointment is so much easier!
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