This is where you will add content on your second TalkAbroad experience. You will include information on your partner and your conversation, including your perceptions on how well the conversation progressed, your strengths, areas for improvement, cultural understandings, etc. In addition, indicate what improvements you made from your first TalkAbroad conversation.
For this TalkAbroad session, I spoke with Clémence. She is 31 years old, from Benin, and works as a translator. In school, she studied linguistics and languages for four years. She asked me why I chose to study French, to which I then said I never thought about it before. In all honesty, this was a stalling tactic, but then I came up with an answer saying that I studied French because my best friend also studied French. This is a true statement, by the way, but it took me a while to think about how I wanted to phrase it. Clémence corrected me on how I said the phrase “best friend” in French since I got the order mixed up, and the best-to-worst descriptor family always confuses me. One thing to note is that it was harder for me to understand the basic information she told me, especially where she was from, because I am not used to hearing French without a France-based accent. Even so, she was kind enough to repeat herself when asked or my face showed a lot of confusion.
We also talked about occupations, to which I also had to stretch my imagination to its limits because my vocabulary was readily suited for the task. I resorted to describing the jobs or workplaces instead, and thankfully she understood what I was trying to convey. It turned out that I did know at least part of the building title, but I was second-guessing myself. This could serve me as a lesson on just trying out the words first. From what we discussed, I would say that we are both more on the pessimistic side when it comes to our perspectives on the job market, but now that we are both either employed or soon to start at a job, we are more uplifted. Nevertheless, we agreed that we were the lucky ones to find work in the first place.
Finally, we chatted about our habits in diet, activities, and exercise. She was much healthier than me since she partakes in a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, and meats, but we were similar in the way that we both prefer to do walking as our primary form of exercise. Additionally, neither of us is fond of drinking, smoking, or any other unhealthy habits. When I was answering the sleep prompts, she helped to correct my use of “dormir” versus “sommeil” since I swapped them accidentally. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get to sections 4 and 5 because time ran out, but I was much more relaxed and confident in my French-speaking abilities for this second TalkAbroad session.
I think I improved in respect to not getting caught up on not knowing the specific vocabulary for what I want to say, and instead work with my TalkAbroad partner so they can help me expand my vocabulary.