interview

Some neighbors are coming over in a few minutes to interview me and my parents. The interview is apparently a French project. I don't think it requires the kids to speak any French; my parents, after all, don't speak it. But I'm probably going to give the kids a hard time by speaking in French. If they're like I was back in French 1, they won't understand a thing unless I speak at a crawl. Heh.

For me, French didn't start to come together until I went abroad and stayed with a French family. This happened during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. The experience forced me to rely on my French, and by 1986 I'd had four years of it. Classroom French isn't living French, though; moving one's "passive vocabulary" over into the other library we call "active vocabulary" isn't always easy, and while I did improve by leaps and bounds over the course of a month, I was by no means fluent. Fluency didn't arrive until college, where I continued to study French and spent nearly an entire calendar year in Europe-- first in Nice, France, and then in Fribourg, Switzerland. I often lament that I used to be good enough to pass for French, but given my lack of practice over the years, those days are behind me. I still consider myself fluent, because "fluent" doesn't mean "perfect," but near-native fluency is beyond me, now. I'd have to spend an awful lot of time speaking French to regain what I've lost.

I have no idea whether the kids who are going to interview me are interested in pursuing French, or if they view it merely as a requirement. But if they need tutoring... well, I'm here another couple of weeks.


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