To say that Beginning Italian Conversation class is going very well might be a bit of a stretch. There are only 4 students and the teacher. The first 3 classes were great. On our 4th class, we began studying direct & indirect object pronouns, some of which agree in gender & number with the subject. Others do not; it also depends on the verb used. Well, that spells mass confusion for us! After the first hour of that class, our teacher actually suggested that we take a break – something that has never happened before. We were confused & she was frustrated. I was NOT looking forward to this week’s class. I arrived a little early. When no one was there at about 3 minutes until the start of class, I seriously thought about making a mad dash for it. Just then, I heard footsteps. Yes, it was the teacher & 2 of the other students. We did our oral exercises with trepidation from the handouts that she gave us. She then said that we would play two games. In the first game, she wrote the names of either famous people or fantasy/storybook characters on a slip of paper. We each chose a slip of paper, not knowing who the character would be. We were to write at least 4 sentences describing the character, then read them to the other students so they might guess who it was. My slip of paper said “Superman.” I know how to say that he likes flying. I also know how to say that he wears red & blue, but I do NOT know how to say superhero, cape, tights or that he fights crime. I repeated to the class what my limited vocabulary allowed me to, then added something about him not liking robbers. Lucky for me, they guessed from that. Otherwise, I would have been struggling to come up with more descriptions! Our next “game” involved us listening to a tape. We already know that we’re not great at listening to authentic Italians speaking Italian. There might have been an audible groan in the room when she got out the boombox. It happened to be an Italian recipe, which she played for us about 6 times. Our job was to list the ingredients, list the amounts of the ingredients & then write down how to prepare it in as much as detail as possible. I managed to get all of the ingredients, most of the amounts & maybe half of the preparation. I told her that we’d be great failures if we actually had to make the recipe based on what we could understand! She said that she should bring an attractive Italian man to class to speak to us; that way, we might listen more intently. I don’t think that would help. We’d be looking at him, daydreaming & still only understand about 1/3 of what he would say!
Come?!
09 Saturday Feb 2013
Posted Studying
in