Monday, January 5, 2009

Up and Running

Today it was "resumé d'un text"...or how to write floral French about a philosophical and pedagogical extract of prose.
I am not short of opinions and ideas, but the challenge is to put them into acceptable French with the aid of a dictionary in a short time period.
The French teacher was very helpful, and seemed to imply that I could adopt the tactic used by politicians when asked awkward questions by a journalist, ie turn the question round and tailor it to something that I can answer! The questions that we went over today seemed to be open to the point of agrophobia, so it looks as though my hobby horses can be produced in the lightest of disguises.
The hiatus of holiday time which depressed me so much has now given way to frantic activity, study and work.
Spirits are up, the temperature is down and the wood stoves are working overtime.
More soon...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So glad you are feeling better. I am looking forward to more stories about your students.

The only problem with answering questions like a politician is to avoid sounding like a politician! I always tell my students to answer the question they are asked and not the question they wish they are asked. Then again, I don't ask them to write it in French.

Good luck on your resumé d'un text. You seem very well prepared and I'm sure that you hate people telling you that you are going to do fine. I hate it when I'm stressed about something and people say, "You'll do fine!" But really, you'll do fine.

Lucy said...

Ooh la la, good luck! There's some quote from Francis Bacon I think that I can't seem to find about the English being little given to philosophy. I like the idea of a question 'open to the point of agaraphobia' and the image of disguised hobby horses...

Glad you're picking up!

meggie said...

Those cycles of furious rush. I know them well, I see them in my daughter, & the down side is she tends to crash, once she stops.

Good luck with your compositions. How hard it must be to work in another language.

Anonymous said...

So glad lightening is happening. Ride, baby, ride!

Rosie said...

Dingo the questions are open so that they seem to be deliberately allowing the candidates to talk about their experiences over long careers in fields as diverse as classical music, jazz and pop, and how to go about teaching these very different specialties.
Lucy, it seems to me in French culture speak that there is not much calling of spades spades
Meggie, yes I am a runner and a crasher, but its not been fatal yet!
Lady P..we're all hanging on ...