The start to what will be a great day!
Mar. 10th, 2011 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpAn old friend reminded me recently of my habit, back in the day, of turning an unpleasant task into a game of sorts. And I just ran across an example of it.
Back in high school, French was pretty much my only stumbling block in terms of studies, which in retrospect was a good thing, else I would have snoozed my way through all of my last two years of high school.
After all this time, I can't decide whether the coincidence of having a French teacher for a mother was a help or a hindrance. It meant lessons both at school and at home. Conversationally, my mother was not of much help, as she was more interested in cultivating perfect pronunciation than in conversing, with the result that—upon my utterance of anything in French—she'd lead me in repeating the uttered words and phrases over and over again until (I guess) she was tired. In mimicry as in memorization, mindless repetition only gets you so far.
Another form of torture she devised was the compilation, by hand, of what she called "verb charts." In retrospect, I can see that this was her way of codifying her preferred method of learning, which was to write things out. (Something that I learned to do, too.)
A verb chart basically summarized all of the conjugations of the various tenses, arranging them in five columns. After a chart was completed, it could be used as a reference (or it could be written out again).
In any event, a day or so ago I ran across a chart I had written for the verb être, and in the lower right-hand corner, in the same ink and hand, there is a notation—4:26—indicating how long it had taken me to create the chart.
After four decades, I can only note that my penmanship could have been better.
Galina will likely start heading back to these northern climes tomorrow, which means I should get a fire lit under the current assignment, so as to leave me some time to do some, er, tidying up.
To work!
Cheers...
Back in high school, French was pretty much my only stumbling block in terms of studies, which in retrospect was a good thing, else I would have snoozed my way through all of my last two years of high school.
After all this time, I can't decide whether the coincidence of having a French teacher for a mother was a help or a hindrance. It meant lessons both at school and at home. Conversationally, my mother was not of much help, as she was more interested in cultivating perfect pronunciation than in conversing, with the result that—upon my utterance of anything in French—she'd lead me in repeating the uttered words and phrases over and over again until (I guess) she was tired. In mimicry as in memorization, mindless repetition only gets you so far.
Another form of torture she devised was the compilation, by hand, of what she called "verb charts." In retrospect, I can see that this was her way of codifying her preferred method of learning, which was to write things out. (Something that I learned to do, too.)
A verb chart basically summarized all of the conjugations of the various tenses, arranging them in five columns. After a chart was completed, it could be used as a reference (or it could be written out again).
In any event, a day or so ago I ran across a chart I had written for the verb être, and in the lower right-hand corner, in the same ink and hand, there is a notation—4:26—indicating how long it had taken me to create the chart.
After four decades, I can only note that my penmanship could have been better.
Galina will likely start heading back to these northern climes tomorrow, which means I should get a fire lit under the current assignment, so as to leave me some time to do some, er, tidying up.
To work!
Cheers...
