La Cuisine

By the way... I hope you all enjoyed our little feast we had on the last day of French class! Just for the record, we ate Brie and Camembert cheese with baguettes (French sticks... not light sabers, although that could be fun too).

I seriously hope your parents aren't mad that I have introduced you to such expensive taste so early on in your childhood!! Thanks again for your gifts. What a sensational class! And you are all so fortunate to have such a wonderful teacher too in Mr Woody; be nice to him! I will make sure to say goodbye to you all before I leave Peachgrove early next week

Je vous manque!!

Bonjour à tous!

Apologies for not being on here sooner but as promised, I will do my absolute best to keep up some regular French orientated postings! It has been really strange seeing all your smiley faces around school and not actually teaching you anymore :-( but thank you to you all for still giving me a wave and saying hi, much appreciated!

Seeing as we left off last term talking (or maybe more specifically.... eating haha) about food, I felt some info on food would be appreciated. Food and meal times in France are different...

Breakfast
Breakfast is always a very light meal, generally consisting of breads etc. One will have toast with jam and spreads, a hot drink such as coffee or tea with fruit or fruit juice. They wil also eat croissants, but it is uncommon for French people to eat croissants at every breakfast (trust me, you get sick of them very quickly!!). They're mainly eaten on weekends, when people have time to go to their baker and get them fresh! They will also buy baguette (french bread) fresh from the baker's most mornings.

Lunch and Dinner
Lunch is usually eaten at some point between 12pm and 2pm, and dinner in the evening after 7pm which is very similar to the meal times here in NZ. However, meals usually consist of three courses every time - an entree or starter, your main meal, and finshing up with a selection of cheeses or a dessert. In Paris restaurants the peak hours are 1pm for lunch and 8pm for dinner. The Parsien youth however, tend to have dinner later, around 9pm to 11pm (I don't know about you all, but I would be staaaaaaaarving by then!). The meals are typically accompanied with a different wine. The meal may be followed by a digestif — a small dose of liqueur or other highly alcoholic drink! (That might explain a lot lol..)

Hope you all don't miss your French (and French teachers) too much!! Merci encore for showering us with gifts haha and your lovely card! I will continue to put French culture postings up on here. Teaching a language in person is hard enough so I feel teaching it online might be a wee bit of a stretch for me but atleast you will be learning something!

M.

Cheese... You know, cheese!!!

This is totally unrelated to anything we have been studying French-wise in class but...!

I just wanted to take this chance to give a great, big, wonderful shout-out to you Room5ian girls in "Annie" - You are all sensational and it has been spectacular seeing you all in the spotlight!!

Well done to you all. You should all be very proud of yourselves! Break a leg for the rest of the season (Not literally Spud... Enough broken body parts from you lol)

Pictures and Story Time

ABOVE: The Champs-Elysee and Arc de Triomphe at night time (Not my own picture, so not that talented haha!)

ABOVE: The view from the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower

These are the photos from today that didn't show up particularly well on the wall, my own fault really!! If you have ANY questions about Paris or some stories about travelling there, please share them with me! I have become quite accustomed to the story telling talent of Room5ians!!!

Enjoy,

M.

PARIS - City of Lights!!

Bonjour tout le monde,

J'espère que vous avez appris quelque bonne infomation sur la ville de Paris. C'est une ville merveilleuse!!

The "Time Out" link will take you to a website about Paris and the things that there are to do there.

The other is a site dedicated to pictures of Paris. The photos website is really cool with some fantastic black and white shots as well as some photos taken at night time.

I know you are doing a photography unit at the moment with Mr Woody so maybe you will get some good ideas?

http://www.timeout.com/paris/

http://www.photosparis.com/

Countries - les pays

This is just a list of some of the countries we discussed today AND I have done my research and given you a list of some of the more . . . avant garde names you were keen to know about!!

La République de Madagascar - Madagascar
Le Kazakhstan - Kazakhstan (Note that this is masculin!!)
La République des îles Fidji - Fiji
L'Afrique de Sud - South Africa
Les Caraïbes - The Caribbean
La Thaïlande - Thailand

These are just a few . . . It is your homework to research some more country names and I recommend babelfish.altavista.com, freetranslation.com or Wikipedia

C'est super!

YAY we will be back this week... How exciting, feels like ages since we have even stepped foot into Room 5! Will be great to see all your smiley faces again :o)

Just as a little heads up...
This term we will be focusing on French culture, travel and French speaking countries with a few handy phrases and grammar thrown in along the way. It will be sensational!

M.

A question for you to ponder...

We all know that French is spoken in France, but...
Did you know that it's also an official language in 31 countries and is the second most frequently taught language in the world after English?

My question to you is...

Can any of you name some of the places that French is spoken?

Comment on here and tell me your ideas/suggestions! Hope you're all having a wonderful holiday :o)

M.

Clips from today

Bonjour.

Just a quick posting about the clips I shared with you in class today...

If you wish to view Joey trying to speak French, click on this link here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=DqwzvtjeYBQ. That particular episode was Season 10, Episode 13, "The One Where Joey Speaks French" if you wanted to get your hands on the full ep.

To see the students at West Spingfield laughing in a French accent at Lisa Simpson, click on : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bznMiMQvEQE. This ep is called "Trilogy of Error" and is from Season 12. These links are both from YouTube and are only snippets of the full episodes.

And for real Simpson's fans, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bCD8CGt0hg&mode=related&search= is where you go to see a vid of Bart on a student exchange in France.

The music I played today was by Soprano, Marilou and Garou. Use Limewire or any equivalents and see if you can download some music and have a listen. This is just something you can do over the hols, but no pressure!

M.

Last day

Wow I CANNOT believe it is the last day of term already. Term One has flown by!

It's been wonderful getting to know you all over the past six weeks or so and I hope you have enjoyed the time we have spent in your class. Keep it up over the hols, Mme. E. has a posting on her blog with a link to a website aimed at learning French. It deals with what we have learned with Hangman and wordfinds etc so you should check it out. Good fun.

Anyway, enjoy yourselves over the next few weeks. Have a happy and safe Easter. Joyeuses Pâques mes amis et appréciez vos vacances!

M.

Test time again - Wed 4th April

Bonjour classe,

Just a quick note on what to expect tomorrow... The test will be run by Mme Emma and she will be testing you on the colours and adjectives we learned last week. Without giving too much away, you need to learn your colours in BOTH the masculin and feminin forms. Remember, sometimes certain colours are spelled differently when it is used with a feminin noun. You should have written these all down so make sure you check out your vocab books and if you missed out on that (for whatever reason) please get together with a friend/classmate and review the vocab together. This is the LAST test for the term so let's try and make it count!

Mel

Bonjour tout le monde!

I thought it was about time I put up another posting on here and I thought this blog would be about one of the most amazing art museums in the world! For any Dan Brown fans, the Louvre Museum in Paris is probably a place that you may already know something about!

The Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre en français) in Paris, France, is the most visited and one of the oldest, largest and most famous art galleries and museums in the world. The building was previously a royal palace, and is famous for holding several of the world's most prestigious works of art, the most famous (and most visited) works being Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Canova's Cupid and Psyche and Alexandros of Antioch's, Venus de Milo.

With a record 8.3 million visitors received in 2006, the Louvre is widely seen as the most visited culture and art museum in the world. It's also the most visited monument in Paris.
In the 1980's, the president of France, François Mitterrand, calloborated with modern architects to build two large glass pyramids in front of the Louvre Museum (see photo). The construction of the pyramid triggered considerable controversy because many people feel that this futuristic building looks quite out of place in front of the Louvre Museum with its classical architecture. Many view it as "a scar on the face of Paris" ... Quite harsh!!

Hope you enjoyed this little bit of info. I have been fortunate enough to visit the Louvre a few times and you can take my word for it - relish every moment in there! It isn't just the artwork that is fascinating, the building itself is an actualy palace and it stretches for ages.

À mecredi,

Melissa

Vocab test for Wed 28 March... as in two days away

Bonjour Room 5,

I received a comment on my blog asking about what to prepare for with this weeks vocab test so I thought I should chuck another post up on here and those who are regular bloggers can pass on the message!

The test will be on the days of the week and the months of the year. There will be 14 questions. It will differ from the previous tests in the format because it will be about translation!

For the first lot of 7 questions, I will read out a day or month in FRENCH and expect you to write the answer in ENGLISH! For the other 7 questions, I will read out a day or month in ENGLISH and you must write down the FRENCH translation.

eg - I say "saturday", you write down "samedi". I say "juin" and you write down "june". By the way, these two examples won't be in the test! :o)

This test will only require you to revise and remember the words to do with days and months that we learned last week. This is not so much an aural test as the previous ones have been, it is a test about translation so when you are studying, please learn both the English and French words!

I can't stress enough just how important spelling and accuracy of words are! Highlight words that have any types of accents on them so that you don't forget because they can be the difference between getting full marks or not. This is really your last opportunity to score some "bon-bons" off myself and Emma for this term so make sure you revise and think about it between now and Wednesday! Remember you need to get 100% before you get any lollies!

Bonne chance à tout. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment.

Mel

Disney it ain't..

I am not ashamed to say that I am a HUGE Disney fan, owning several movies and watching them over and over again (c'mon I'm sure most of you do too, don't lie!!). SO I'm going to go with the assumption that you are all familiar with Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disney makes it out to be a wonderfully delightful story where everyone lives Happily Ever After BUT in actual fact, the real story of the hunchback is not as sweet as the story you are all familiar with. In the real story, the events are far more depressing that in Disney's colourful, musical adaption!

Quasimodo is a disfigured man with a hunched back who lives in one of Paris' most esteemed cathedrals, Notre Dame. His mother abandoned him at the steps of the cathedral when he was an infant and the evil archdeacon Frollo took Quasimodo in. Because of his appearance, Frollo forbade him from leaving the walls of the cathedral and made him the bellringer. From his tower, Quasimodo could see into the city square and this is where he first laid eyes on Esméralda, a beautiful, wayward gypsy who roamed the streets of Paris. Quasimodo immediately fell in love with her.

However, Esméralda did want Quasimodo, she only had eyes for Phoebus, a soldier in charge of keeping the peace in the streets of Paris. But Phoebus was already engaged to Fleur-de-Lys which initiated a terrible love triangle. Even though Phoebus loved his fiancée, he could not help but be infatuated with the beautiful Esméralda.

Pheobus and Quasimodo were not the only ones who were obsessed with the gypsy. The archdeacon, Frollo, was also in love with her. But Frollo's love was an unhealthy love, a jealous love. He decided he must destroy Esméralda because she did not return his love. So one night, as Phoebus was secretly coming to see Esméralda at her home, Frollo followed him and lurked in the shadows. Just as Phoebus entered Esméralda's home, Frollo stabbed him!

Because there were no witnesses, Esméralda was accused of stabbing Phoebus. When Quasimodo heard of what happened, he left the bell tower to help the woman he loved to escape from the law and from Frollo. When the police came to find her, she had already fled to the safety of the Court of Miracles - the secret hideout for all the Parisien gypsies. Meanwhile, Phoebus was recovering from his wounds and realised that Esméralda was dangerous and bad for his reputation, and he returned to his fiancée Fleur-de-Lys.

Eventually, the Court of Miracles was stormed by Frollo's army and Esméralda was captured and charged with attempted murder. She was sentenced to death.

In prison, Frollo approached Esméralda telling her that if she married him, he would get her out of prison. Esméralda told Frollo she would rather die than marry a monster. Hurt and rejected, Frollo carried on with the sentence and Esméralda was hanged at dawn.

Quasimodo saw the hanging from his tower and ran down as fast as he could to be with Esméralda, but it was too late, she was already dead. Overcome with absolute grief, Quasimodo entombed himself in Esméralda's grave, and died with her, their skeletons forever intertwined.

This story is a huge part of French culture. If you ever get the chance to visit Notre Dame in Paris, the cathedral where this story takes place, make sure you keep an eye out for the elusive bellringer. I never saw him though :-(

Pretty different to the story you know huh? For a full plot synopsis and more information on the author, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunchback_of_Notre_Dame#Plot_summary.

REMINDER: French vocab test

Just a reminder to you all...
As per last week, Wednesday class will begin with a short quiz on what you learned in French last week. There will be eight questions about telling the time and the test will follow the same structure as last week.
Quesitons will be on how to ask the time and giving a reply. May I suggest revising the accurate spelling of the words and numbers; spelling is very important!
If you have any queries, post a message on here and I will try and answer your questions as best I can without giving too much away!
Bon week-end,
Mel

Some facts about France and French culture etc...

Hey guys...

I thought it would be useful to post a blog up here once a week that has to do with French culture and places. Just a few facts and a bit of an interesting read - don't worry, I won't be quizzing you on any of this! :-) I feel it is crucial for you to know something about the the country the language you are studying orginates from; it helps with understanding and concepts later on down the track.

So when I was trying to think of something extreme and radical I could put up on here, it hit me!!... What is the one thing people associate the most with France/Paris... La Tour Eiffel bien sûr! I thought a post with a bit of info on the extravagent building would be a great start. I have been fortunate to climb the Eiffel Tower twice (and YES I took the stairs all the way!!..Phew!) and it is a true asset to the city of Paris.

The Eiffel Tower was built in 1887 and is an iron tower that stands beside the River Seine in Paris, France. It is the tallest structure in Paris and possibly the most recognized monument in the world. Named after its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel, it is the most visited monument in the world; 6,428,441 people visited the tower in 2005 (YAY ONE OF THEM WAS ME!!!) and more than 200,000,000 since its construction.

Including the 24 m antenna, the structure is 324 m high, which is about 81 stories. In 1902, it was struck by lightning, which meant that 100 metres of the top had to be reconstructed and the lights illuminating the tower had to be replaced, as they were damaged by the high energy of the lightning.

The structure of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7300 tons. There are 1660 steps BUT I ONLY CLIMBED 720 BECAUSE it is not possible for the public to reach the summit by stairs. For safety reasons, everyone has to take an elevator to the top platform. The tower also sways 6-7cm in the wind.

Hope you enjoyed reading a bit about the most famous monument in Paris.

Melissa

Hi Room 5...

Just thought I had better add a normal post on here rather than going on about badgers (as cool as they are).

In keeping with the thème français, I have got a website here that should really inspire you to speak French. It should also make you realise that you need to listen very carefully to Miss Mel otherwise you will make the same mistakes as the poor man on this site does. No doubt you will be familar with what's on this YouTube link but I thought it was very appropriate seeing as most of you are all beginner French.

Enjoy the vid, feel free to leave as many comments as possible. I'm stoked to be on here now and I get very excited when I get an email saying someone has left a comment... *sigh* how lame! Thanks to those of you who already have and grands mercis to those who have encouraged others to visit this rockin blog too.

À semaine prochaine,
Melissa

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DqwzvtjeYBQ