Les Virelangues

Tongue twisters. Did a lot of them today, both in French and English! More on this later...

Had a gripping two hours on on Les OGM (Organismes génétiquement modifiés) with the troisième INTER for their Geography/History of England-in-English lesson. Much as I enjoy a little information on these things, two hours was a bit much...and I definitely felt like more of a pupil than an assistant! Was very interesting to see how they react with a different teacher, and in a way, how I work with another teacher in another subject. Since I have never done history or geography since I was about 13 years old, and only have knowledge based on my own interests, I am never sure just how much help I can be!

So, back to tongue twisters. In the Language Club today we played 'Guess Who?', and I had a very lovely conversation with one of the Troisième EURO whose enthusiasm for learning English really showed. In fact, so much so that I found myself promising that I would start a conversation class a lunchtime a week so students could come along and practise in an informal environment. Was not planning on doing such a thing yet (as it is hard to fit in all the classes people want me at), but his little face!! Sometimes I just can't say no, especially to enthusiasm. We also did some English tongue twisters (The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday), and they made me say some too. Thought it would cue some embarrassment for me, but because the group was small and they also find them hard to do it wasn't at all like that. Here's one to try:-

Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien de chasse.
A hunter knowing of hunting should know how to hunt without his hunting dog. (pretty much)

This day of Virelangues was not finished here! I ended up running the majority of the troisième EURO class (I had mentioned some things that might work with the teacher, but wasn't aware I was doing them on the day! But I think it's better that I'm kept on my toes...) so we did another English tongue twister. In particular,

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Was lots of fun to teach them how to say it, more fun than I thought it would be originally. I then picked ten children at random, some of whom I know are confident speakers, to play the Lifeboat game. The bare bones is that you have ten different characters on a lifeboat, but limited space, so each person in character has to argue why they should be allowed to stay on the boat. The rest of the students had to decide whether they lived or died. Kudos to some of the more persuasive speakers in the group is all I can say!!
Lived
- Sailor (only one who could navigate the boat)
- President of the United States ("everyone would think I was assassinated and it would start WWIII")
- Scientist (sole person who knows the cure for cancer)
- Child ("my life has not begun yet")
- Popstar ("if I die, all my fans will become hysterical and start killing you and themselves")
- Ex-soldier ("I know survival techniques that will keep everyone alive")
- Doctor (only one able to treat ill people)

Died
- Multi-millionaire (Originally lived when he promised to give his money to the survivors, but when asked the same question when on the lifeboat replied with "I don't know". Moral: never let your guard down!)
- Widow (with 12 children...what can I say? They just weren't very persuasive!)
- Amateur sailor (the other students decided he was "useless")

All in all, a good day...managed to fill in the bits on my CAF form that they said were missing (even though I swear I had answered those questions!), finally do my laundry and actually have an evening where I had the time to watch some French television and catch up on the English television I had missed. Spent rather a long time on YouTube also watching a French comedienne called Florence Foresti... one of my favourite clips was her sketch Je n'aime pas les filles, I think even if your French isn't amazing the fact that a lot of her comedy is physical means that you can follow a lot of it without even understanding the language.

Words that I have learnt today:-
- pimpante - spruce/smart
- grand malade - insane
- bouffon - jester
- argile - clay
- béton - concrete
- platane - sycamore
- collants - tights
- chier - shit (among other choice words!)
- abeille - bee
- faire des bêtises - do stupid things

The picture is of the basketball net. Shot in colour, came out black and white because there was absolutely no colour in the sky. Tricky.