Friday, August 31, 2018

LangFest in Montreal

Last week I went to LangFest in Montreal. This was certainly an exciting experience for me as a language teacher. It was good to share one's doubts and limitations in the journey of language acquisition. I met some famous language experts there who really changed my outlook on language learning. We need to stop trying to be so perfect. With my considerable knowledge of Spanish I never really had to face that. But now that I am doing French I see my limitations daily and realize how far a journey I am still having to go before feeling comfortable. There are questions that come up I cannot answer in the spur of the moment. What is a language teacher to do? Send them to Google Translate? The best strategy is to learn, learn, learn on my part by watching incessant Netflix movies. This surely worked for me for learning Spanish in the past. Well, one month into my French and German classes I do have a very happy feeling about this school year. Three of the four classes are a pure joy to deal with, one still needs a bit of a behavior adjustment which I will deal with next week. I did realize that I will not have any problems teaching German, my native language, though I haven't spoken it very much in the last 40 years. It's still in my head, not to worry.

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