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My experience of learning French at Language @Leicester:
This semester I took my first French class because I was planning to go to Paris this summer. The class took place every Thursday evening for two hours over a period of 10 weeks and I wrote a diary for each week (see appendix 3). Our teacher’s name was Sonia Alba, a young female PhD student who was a native French speaker. There were 25 students mainly from China and Europe in the class who had no previous experience of learning French. We sat in rows with the teacher at the open end behind a table mainly standing at the front of the board.

Sonia believed that teaching is done by doing, therefore she made us complete many activities in the classroom which may cater for kinaesthetic and social learners. However students’ needs and learning styles vary and some auditory or visual learners may prefer learning through other methods such as lecturing instead (Harmer, 2006).
Sonia mainly taught using Test teach test approach where she first tested us on the new target language to see what we already know. She then taught us what we do not know which is very efficient and then re tested us again for further practise (Harmer, 2006).With this approach I managed to learn many vocabularies related to everyday activities, family members and how to give directions in a short space of time.

Observing and participating in the lessons allowed me to pick up different teaching methods and see how students including myself respond to them.
For instance I liked how Sonia always did a recap on the previous lessons in the beginning of each lesson. This helped us remember what we learnt and was helpful to students particularly those that missed the sessions.
Sonia always made us work in pair...

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...conclusion, attending French classes made me realise how difficult it is to learn a new language no matter how motivated you are. It also made me have more sympathy for my summer school students who would be taking beginner English classes. In addition it gave me insight to some of the challenges students might face learning a language such as staying motivated. Besides, it made me appreciate the importance of giving a purpose for activities and clear outline for my lessons.
However unlike my French teacher, I will drill and recycle the target language more often with my students so they can improve their pronunciation and speaking skills. I will also give my students a clear outline with all the aims of each lesson stated. In addition I will carry out some assessments regularly in order to motivate students to revise the materials and to monitor their progress.

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