Well yesterday morning I had my French oral exam. I had to speak in French for 10 minutes! Ahhh! I was shaking I was so nervous! But I made it out alive without throwing up or passing out so that's good! I had to spell my first and last name, tell her what the date was yesterday, talk about myself and my family, and talk about the United States (she gave us a list of possible things she would ask us) Let me just remind you though that she's asking me all of this in French so it wasn't that simple. I've definitely learned French since I've been here, but since all of my classes are taught in English and I speak English to all of my friends I haven't learned as much as I thought I would. I wish I knew more French, but I definitely wouldn't trade it for the friendships I've made with Anna (from Sweden) and the Finnish girls :)
Our afternoon class was International Tourism and it was the first day of our presentations. Each group was given a specific destination to research and we had to write a paper and make a powerpoint presentation about the tourism within the destination. Luckily I did not have to present yesterday (I'll be presenting on Tuesday) because the professor (who doesn't even deserve the title!) was SO rude to all of the groups that presented. She interrupted people while they were in the middle of talking to criticize them. Our class has more or less become a family since we've been here so were were all getting really mad and defending each other.
We are not required to dress up for our presentations, so most people don't dress up. One of the guys, however, did dress up in a suit and tie. She called a girl out in front of the entire class (who was in the suit & tie's group) and said she was dressed poorly, had bad posture, and wasn't presenting the work correctly. She was dressed the same as everyone else who presented besides the guy standing next to her. Regardless of what the teacher thought, she shouldn't have said it in front of the entire class. When she interrupts a person to criticize them it throws them off track of what they were talking about, which makes them more nervous. Our presentation is only supposed to be 20 minutes long and if a group went over 20 minutes she would get mad and act as if they were wrong for going over the time. All of the groups went over 20 minutes because SHE continued to interrupt them while they were talking!! The entire class had their jaws dropped for the majority of the class. She only gave one compliment the entire class (which lasted 3 hours) and that was to the girl who she made cry! And the girl who cried was not the girl who was called out in front of the entire class. Most professors will let you present and will give comments AFTER you're done. The Finnish girls said this and Charlotte from Hong-Kong agreed too. And this isn't a French thing either because we've already had 2 presentations and neither of the professors interrupted or criticized while a group was presenting.
Stiina told me that in her classes in Finland they follow the "hamburger method" for comment/critique.
Bun-positive remark
Beef-critique/negative remark
Bun-positive remark
This woman needs to add a little more bun in her life!
I don't know how she calls herself a teacher either! She's given us about 60 sheets of paper that is all in French. The reason she gives it to us is so we can look at 2 small graphs that are so hard to read because the copy machines at school are awful! And half of her powerpoints are also in French which is ALSO useless to us! We are in the English course! But according to her she knows everything!
I'm just going to have to breathe on Tuesday because I would love to tell her how I feel! The whole class was on the verge of telling her that yesterday. One of the girls suggested (in a much nicer way than I would have been able to) that she leave her comments to the end of the presentation because that makes the person presenting lose focus of what they were talking about. Other people asked her if our 20 minute limit for presenting included her interrupting us. I think she realized how heated we were because she had to ask us to be quite and calm down lol and she said she would try to be better on Tuesday. Good god! She's ridiculous! I wish I could have recorded it just to show you how awful the class was!
Ok I hope you enjoyed my ranting! lol I think I could have written it all in caps to show how mad I was! Wish me luck on Tuesday! haha
On a happy note: My Dad and Kirsten are coming to France on Friday! I will be meeting them, and the Killians in Paris on Saturday! :)
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