Bingo!....and other games

I’ve been playing games to learn – in class and elsewhere.

The first game we played in class was a variation of bingo. Each student created his/her own card and inserted different numbers from 1-59.

 

Geneviève, our instructor, called out numbers at random. The first person to have all the numbers in a row called (up/down/diagonal) yelled: "Bingo!" Sounds easy? It is if you know your numbers in French. If not……

Another game was to match names and pictures. There were a lot of pictures I could not name at first.  My picture dictionary is a great help.

Another game is called in French “le bonhomme perdu”. We know it as....

One game I made up uses index cards – one colour each for the subject (I, you, he, she….), verb (to take, to understand…), and tense (passé composé, present, futur proche).

A card from each pile is turned over and I come up with an affirmative statement and a negative statement for each round. I have used this to study with others. We write out our statements and then read them to each other. Later we take them back to Geneviève to correct.

I approach my studies like a game as well.  I see the different pieces and liken them to puzzle pieces. Sometimes they are only separate pieces and I don’t see a pattern. Other times I can see where they fit into the bigger picture. It is my sense that over time more of the pieces will fall into place.

That happened recently.

We have been learning different "pronominal verbes." Last week we had an introductory lesson on using pronouns to replace direct objects and indirect objects. In our study group this weekend, we had a hard time figuring how this worked in French. I designed a diagram that we puzzled over.

In the end we decided to ask Genevieve to explain it further.

When we came to class today, it was today’s topic! She read our minds!

“Pronoms personnels: complément d’objet direct et complément d’objet indirect.”

Pronouns can be used to replace direct objects (I like chocolate – I like it) and for indirect objects (I bought chocolate for the other students – I bought chocolate for them).

They can also be put together: “I bought it for them.”

In French, however, the same sentence looks like this: “Je le leur achète.” (literally: “I it them bought.”).

Nevertheless by the end of the class….

I got it!
(I guess you had to be there). 

One thing is sure, I will understand English grammar better after these studies as well.

I would never be able to do this as well without a group to work with. We have a lot of fun. There is the usual “5-7” on Thursday evening (cinq à sept jeudi soir),

and this week I invited some of my classmates to my house to study and have dinner. Three of them came at noon on Saturday and we worked through the material and made up sentences. After we started to get hungry we put away the books and brought out the wine and cheese (3 kinds – and not a cheddar among them: goat, blue and camembert).

Our conversation was French for the most part – a couple of times we spoke English, but we really try and stick to French. André helped make dinner (he loves to cook).

For dessert, I found a chocolate crêpes mix at the chocolate museum. Deanne brought over the fixings for the filling. C’est bon! André’s taking a picture:

Afterwards we played more games:

It was a great day.

Sunday was the first Sunday of Lent. I felt more comfortable singing with the choir and a couple of the members said my pronunciation was very French! It helps that in the practice we repeat the lines again and again.

I’m not quite dreaming in French yet, but there are times when it feels like I’m in a dream.