Saturday

I just finished the first pass of chapter three in the French Without The Fuss book. It was a tough one, with a lot of vocabulary and unusual sentence structures. I made myself go through all of the exercises, and I got most of them right. The next pass is going to be to reread the material again to pick up things that I blew past first time, or didn't really understand. And I found how to made most of the French accent marks in WinWord, which helps me 'feel' as if I have the words. (I'd do it here, but the method is apparently different in a browser than in Word. ) All of this is good for knowledge and comprehension, though just for reading and writing. (Actually, more the former than the latter. I can read a phrase in French and translate it to English, but I can't really take the same English phrase and translate it to French. At least, not yet.)

I'm a little concerned about being able to say the words correctly,though, and as for understanding them when they're spoken by a native -- well. I may have to see if the French teacher is available for private lessons, just to work on both of those. Simple conversation to correct my more egregious mispronuncations. There are actually two French teachers that I know; one is much friendlier, but is an American who speaks French, while the other, who is a bit cold, is a native of France. We'll see. I figure that I can go another two or three months before this is something I need to address.

I was going to bake a cake yesterday but time got away from me. Perhaps tomorrow?