The Big E – Ecouter and Repeter
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By Elaine Lessig
We are all about to share a lesson “en francais”, in French, and so much more. Once upon a time long, long ago in a typical suburban town on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, a ten year-old intellectually curious girl was presented with a Le Petite Larousse French Dictionary. She had actually pleaded for the book for weeks. Thrilled to finally have her very own edition, she executed her best script handwriting on the book plate inside the front cover. There she noted the date, occasion, and her name. Could there be more joy from a gift? Considering that she still has the book after all these years should be a hint. That the book is mine cannot be a surprise.
In September of that year, the local school board voted to approve a new program: language immersion. At a designated time every day, pupils would be introduced to a foreign language through conversation. Our class was slated to converse in French, in increasing amounts of time throughout the school year. Every lesson began with two instructive words, “ecouter et repeter”. Listen and repeat, as I called it, was my favorite time of the day. For those who loved the lessons, it was divine to hear the conversation begin, but other classmates quickly dropped their heads onto desks in despair.
The holiday break in December became the obvious time for some tweaking. Beginning in January, parents could choose if their children would continue with the language immersion program, or elect to withdraw. Those decisions provided the French teacher more opportunity to focus on the students eager to absorb the language while the others could enjoy other enrichment activities more appealing to them. From that time forward, the floodgates opened for me. The “je parle francais un per” became “j’aime francais avec mon coeur”.
By the time May came along, I wanted not only to continue to listen and speak those words, I longed to see them in print, too. Thus, the desire to own a French dictionary was born. A few weeks later, I came down with measles. Yes. We got measles in my once upon a time, long before the creation of a vaccination to prevent it. During my long days in quarantine at home, while I recovered from the unwelcomed effects of the disease, I was presented with five hundred pages of pure bliss, the Petite Larousse Dictionnaire. To see the very words that had only been in my head directly in front of me was a dream come true.
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Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=218106
Posted by AnthonyA
on Dec 19 2021. Filed under Current Articles, Featured.
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