Love all of these! Just want to add La Famille Belier to this list. We had a substitute who showed us this movie at the end of the year, and it was absolutely beautiful!
Hi Elyse,
Not being creepy, but I have the same French and English teachers as you did!
Firstly, thanks for all your posts and answering and marking on here. It honestly feels so reassuring to know that you all are here for us in times of indescribable stress and anxiety.
I was just wondering how you learnt your grammar for French? I understand you did beginners, I'm currently doing continuers, so I think there is more grammar involved there, however, I'm just struggling a little with remembering the rules and where and how to apply them. I write a lot of responses, but whenever I need to use a tense that isn't the present, I find myself picking up a dictionary again!
Thanks in advance! Hoping you're having a good time in Venice!
Hey Jane! Nice to see a local online!
For grammar, I made palm cards that I would study from. When I studied French, I'd just memorise the irregulars because you have no choice. So I'd have in my head: "suis, es, est, sommes, etes, sont" and I would visualise the "je/tu/elle" that comes on the left of the little graphs we make in my head. So I could shift through them quickly to choose the one I needed. I'd love to say I knew it off by heart every time but I did have to come back to the little chant in my head! As for the regulars, I learnt to become quite quick at them throughout the year, but I started with the same kind of little conjugation chant. When I got into an exam, I'd write down the conjugation table at the top of the page as soon as I could, so when it came to the writing section I could just refer to my little graph at the top (which takes a whole 30 sections to draw up a few)! I know that some dictionaries have this little conjugation table in them, but you're right, we can't rely on that! So that was my technique.
In saying that, I'm studying Italian A1 in Uni now, and I'm taking a different approach. I'm committed to being able to know them off by heart and not relying on the little chant in my head so much. This is mainly because the purpose of my Italian here is so that I can speak it more than anything else, and I can't be pausing to chant the conjugation every time I talk. So, I've been doing exercises of writing the same sentence out, but with a different conjugation for me, for you, for him, for them, for us, etc, each time. So this is some self directed learning because I'm not studying this for a HSC exam, I'm studying this to be able to communicate, so it's a little different. If you have the opportunity, I'd try do something similar. In a way it's almost like you're making a worksheet for yourself! They say practice makes perfect, and I know grammar and verb conjugation makes me want to stick pins in my eyes but knowing conjugations quickly and accurately really saves so much time in an exam!
Hopefully this gives you a few ideas about how to go about it all