Improve my French

because I went to New Caledonia and spoke French with some success. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without the classes and practice I’ve done. I managed to telephone for a taxi, buy food and other things, find my way around and help the friends I was with to do things. It really did make the holiday more enjoyable, particularly in rural areas where English wasn’t so widely spoken.

The greatest moment was probably the mining museum at Thio where the guide didn’t speak English, so between some fairly vigorous acting out of the commentary and repetition of key points on his part, some vague memories of school French from the others, and a bit of translation from me, we were doing quite well. Then a French couple came along, and they spoke reasonable English, so that made things easier, as they wanted to practise their English.

has DVDs and I found two travelogues which included New Caledonia. Borrowing these seemed like a good way of doing two things at once – improving my French and finding out more about where to go on my holiday. This afternoon I sat down and watched these, and managed to understand a reasonable amount. It’s also given me a better idea of what to do when I get there. I really want to go to Ile des Pins now.

I have decided to enrol for another term. I’ve graduated to Intermediate 1 :)

was last Wednesday. It went well and I certainly wasn’t the worst by any means. The revision really paid off. The class is a good combination of grammar, vocabulary, repetition and conversation.

We also got some homework, which I have just finished. I’ve also done some of the extra exercises in the textbook. I figure I might as well maximise the opportunity to learn from this course.

I have the textbooks, complete with CD. I am going to do some revision this weekend.

and got confirmation in the mail today.

I learnt French, and I haven’t kept it up. I’m going to New Caledonia for a holiday in November, so I thought it would be great to be able to speak enough French to get around. During the week I popped in to the Alliance Francaise to find out about classes. They gave me an assessment to find out what level I should be at, and I was quite pleased to discover how much I remembered. Now, to enrol for the classes!