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I'm stuck with a little bit of a hiccup in my life, and I'm writing it here so I can just get it out on a surface to read it over. I need to go over some history of my life first before I go into detail.
My last name is Lavoie, I was born in a small town in Quebec called Stanstead, I am fluent in English and I speak broken French, my only problem is, I want to learn fluent French. I lived a 5 minute walk from the U.S Border, which means that the town I lived in was completely Bilingual. My dad is fluent in both English and French, and my mom is English. My parents only spoke to me in English as well as they sent me to an English school. I moved to Ontario years ago and now I've lost a lot of my French. I'm in grade 10 now and I have a fascination with languages. I have to choose my grade 11 courses, and French is obviously one I will take.
My school offers 3 levels in French: Core French, an easy level for people who want to get the basics down and learn French slowly. Then there's extended French, a level for people above Core, who go into a class where the teachers speak only French and there is a much more advanced level of learning.
After that, there's immersion. This is for people who have spoken French or have taken immersion French their entire life. What I'm aiming for, is Extended French.
My dad argues that I should stay in Core French, keep my average up and make it so University's will like my average. However I want to take extended French because I think that I can manage it, however I'm not 100% sure.
My options of taking an exchange program aren't possible, and I have no relatives who live in Quebec. I have been checking out French websites and T.V shows to try to build up my vocabulary, and it has been working slowly. My question, what are your opinions.
As a disclaimer, your opinions will not be my only source for information, and to show my level of French, I'm going to try and translate some of this post in French. It will be really bad and I just want to place it there so Franco-phones can gauge my level of French. There are no accents in the translated version and I'm sorry about that.
+ Show Spoiler +J'ai une petite probleme, et j'ecris ma probleme ici so je peux regarder ma probleme sur papier. Je dois dire mon histoire avant j'explique mon situation.
Mon surnom est Lavoie. Je suis ne dans une petite ville dans Quebec qui s'apelle Stanstead. Je peux parler en parfait Anglais, mais mon Francais n'est pas bon. Je veux apprendre Francais. J'ai vecu dans un place qui reste pas loin de les etats unit. La ville est bilingue est j'ai parle seulment en anglais parce que je n'ai du pas parler en francais la. Mon pere peut parler en francais et anglais, et ma mere peut parler seulment en anglais.
Je ne peux pas mettre les accents dans la text et je suis desolee pour ca. Je sais qu'il y a beacoup des fauts. Merci beaucoup.
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I did French Immersion from grades 6 to 12, and having an environment in which the teacher and all of my classmates spoke French worked wonders for my learning and eventual comprehension. Judging by your translation, which, although imperfect, still gets the point across without a problem, I'd say you could probably handle the immersed environment; in the end, it depends on what you're comfortable with, though.
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I stuck with French all the way through high school, IB French Language B or something.
It was brutal. It destroyed my average. I thought my French was good, but IB French ( = extended French?) proved me very wrong. Shit got so confusing after a while, there were a billion tenses and vocab to remember, so if your background isn't too good or if you aren't a language wiz, I suggest just sticking with core French.
Getting into a good Uni/College is more important than becoming bilingual. You can always do that later AFTER you've been accepted, if you really do want to learn.
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Belgium9949 Posts
Take the core class imo. Your basic grammar and sentence construction is still way too bad for an advanced class.
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J'ai un petit probleme [les problemes sont toujours masculins!], et j'ecris mon probleme ici pour que je puisse [subjunctive] regarder mon probleme sur papier [not 100% if this expression exists in french]. Il faut que je raconte [sounds nicer ^^] mon histoire avant que j'explique mon situation.
Mon surnom est Lavoie. Je suis ne dans une petite ville au Quebec qui s'appelle Stanstead. Je peux parler Anglais parfaitement, mais mon Francais n'est pas bon. Je veux apprendre le Francais. J'ai vecu dans un place qui n'est pas loin des E-U. La ville est bilingue et j'ai parle seulement en Anglais parce que je n'ai pas du y parler en Francais. Mon pere peut parler en Francais et Anglais, et ma mere peut parler seulement en Anglais.
Je ne peux pas mettre les accents dans le texte et je suis desolee pour ca. Je sais qu'il y a beacoup de fautes. Merci beaucoup.
Don't learn french phonetically from Quebec shows, it's grammatically wrong all the time, and the sounds are rather awkward.
My experience with IB French B is very different from WheelOfTime's, but that's because I had been taught French since kindergarten and already had a certain level of fluency in it, despite rarely speaking it. We just dicked around in the class.
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Belgium9949 Posts
On February 16 2010 12:53 tirentu wrote:
J'ai un petit probleme [les problemes sont toujours masculins!], et j'ecris mon probleme ici pour que je puisse [subjunctive] regarder mon probleme sur papier [not 100% if this expression exists in french]. Il faut que je raconte [sounds nicer ^^] mon histoire avant que j'explique mon situation.
Mon surnom est Lavoie. Je suis ne dans une petite ville au Quebec qui s'appelle Stanstead. Je peux parler Anglais parfaitement, mais mon Francais n'est pas bon. Je veux apprendre le Francais. J'ai vecu dans un place qui n'est pas loin des E-U. La ville est bilingue et j'ai parle seulement en Anglais parce que je n'ai pas du y parler en Francais. Mon pere peut parler en Francais et Anglais, et ma mere peut parler seulement en Anglais.
Je ne peux pas mettre les accents dans le texte et je suis desolee pour ca. Je sais qu'il y a beacoup de fautes. Merci beaucoup.
Don't learn french phonetically from Quebec shows, it's grammatically wrong all the time, and the sounds are rather awkward.
My experience with IB French B is very different from WheelOfTime's, but that's because I had been taught French since kindergarten and already had a certain level of fluency in it, despite rarely speaking it. We just dicked around in the class.
pretty sure he hasn't touched the subjonctive yet
edit: and there's way more errors in there obviously
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Core class... you're not really at that level. Ottawa offers a program where you take 5 weeks in the summer and do an immersion program. If you're worried about marks, jsut do that instead of trying to hash it out in the immersion school program.
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On February 16 2010 12:55 RaGe wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2010 12:53 tirentu wrote:
J'ai un petit probleme [les problemes sont toujours masculins!], et j'ecris mon probleme ici pour que je puisse [subjunctive] regarder mon probleme sur papier [not 100% if this expression exists in french]. Il faut que je raconte [sounds nicer ^^] mon histoire avant que j'explique mon situation.
Mon surnom est Lavoie. Je suis ne dans une petite ville au Quebec qui s'appelle Stanstead. Je peux parler Anglais parfaitement, mais mon Francais n'est pas bon. Je veux apprendre le Francais. J'ai vecu dans un place qui n'est pas loin des E-U. La ville est bilingue et j'ai parle seulement en Anglais parce que je n'ai pas du y parler en Francais. Mon pere peut parler en Francais et Anglais, et ma mere peut parler seulement en Anglais.
Je ne peux pas mettre les accents dans le texte et je suis desolee pour ca. Je sais qu'il y a beacoup de fautes. Merci beaucoup.
Don't learn french phonetically from Quebec shows, it's grammatically wrong all the time, and the sounds are rather awkward.
My experience with IB French B is very different from WheelOfTime's, but that's because I had been taught French since kindergarten and already had a certain level of fluency in it, despite rarely speaking it. We just dicked around in the class. pretty sure he hasn't touched the subjonctive yet edit: and there's way more errors in there obviously
Yeah you're right  .
Thanks for the advice and I like the criticism. I agree my level of French is pretty abysmal and I would have a rough time, if not fail the course if I went into extended.
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Omfg, learning French is like learning how not to DT drop against a Terran for me...
+ Show Spoiler +Jk. French is still hard though. -.-
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Don't worry about it too much. You're going into grade 11, which doesn't matter too much. Give the extended french a try if you want. If you do well, that's great, if not you can switch down to the regular french.
If worst comes to worst and you suck then you might have to use one of your spares for some easy U/M(can't remember the exact code) to give you a good mark for your top 6 courses when you apply for school.
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i still want to harpoon the shit out of my HS french teacher. fucking whale bitch
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I wish i spent more time in French classes... right now I am totally illiterate in French TT__TT
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If 11th grade core french is anything like 11th grade core english, then I definitively suggest you aim for extended french, or whatever it is called.
People in core English learn absolutely nothing worthwhile from what I heard (never been in such a class but I know a few people who are).
Or at least give it a try; you've got nothing to lose, and to be frank at high-school it's mostly motivation that determines if you succeed or not..
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EPT
