I had my first TalkAbroad of this semester on February 28, 2024. This was my third TalkAbroad conversation since I began taking French at ODU. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This conversation was awful. There was very little that I was able to understand. Even after adjusting the volume multiple times, asking for my partner to repeat herself repeatedly, and letting her know I didn\u2019t understand, it was nearly impossible to move forward. I would look at the question that I was pretty sure she was asking and what she was saying didn\u2019t sound anything like what I would expect to hear and I could barely even pull out recognizable words that would help me piece together what she was trying to say. What I was able to understand is that her name is Nawel and she is from Tunisia. She has a brother, sister, mom, and dad. She eats similarly to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was about to give up and stop the conversation because nothing was being accomplished, but I decided to move on by asking the questions from our TalkAbroad Devoir #1 and answer them, even though I had no idea what she was saying. I just wanted to move along through the questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first two TalkAbroad conversations were difficult, as someone who has only been learning French for a few weeks, but I actually enjoyed the experience. I felt like the conversations went pretty well and the partners were very accommodating to a new student. I left both conversations with more confidence in my ability to speak French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This most recent conversation was not the same experience. I did not gain any confidence in my ability to speak French and I\u2019m feeling more apprehensive about my next conversation. The one positive I will add from this conversation is that my partner did repeat words I mispronounced so I could hear them pronounced correctly. That kind of practice is extremely helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had my first TalkAbroad of this semester on February 28, 2024. This was my third TalkAbroad conversation since I began taking French at ODU. This conversation was awful. There was very little that I was able to understand. Even after adjusting the volume multiple times, asking for my partner to repeat herself repeatedly, and letting her know I didn\u2019t… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27072,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27072"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":656,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/547\/revisions\/656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/sbuckhalter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}