French Language Orientation for first- and second-year students

“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can; there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.”

                                                                                                                          Sarah Caldwell  

Studying a foreign language has innumerable rewards! It is fascinating, stimulating, advantageous and appeals to all ages. Globalisation has broadened career opportunities and learning a foreign language is an icing on the cake. It can benefit ones career prospects, help in pursuing higher education overseas, in travel, and so on.                             

More than 220 million people speak French in five continents. Learning French can open up study opportunities at renowned universities and business schools, and students with a good knowledge of French can vie for jobs in many corporate sectors in India. Learning French language in India has immense career benefits.

Keeping this in mind, first and second year UG students were offered a certification course in French Language -Beginner Level for sixty hours commencing July 2019. The HOD, Prof Nikitha Sreekantha organised the orientation session. The orientation course for the beginner level was conducted on 16th May 2019 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. Prof Nikitha Sreekantha-HOD, briefed students about the course and emphasised that students should abide by the rules and regulations and maintain a code of conduct. Sixty interested students from first and second year were selected to form part of the programme.

Ms Anisha, the French Language trainer pursued Dentistry from DSI and has been practising for a couple of years. Her passion for learning French Language resulted in her taking up French course and she has completed learning 4 levels out of 6 [till Intermediate] and now she is devoting all her time in teaching French to students who follow a similar passion.

Ms Anisha introduced herself in French and suggested all the students do the same! Within a few minutes, her effervescence ensured that all students learned the basic introduction in French. She taught them French greetings. It was a good way to help students feel at ease and understand basic introductions. Next, she taught them French alphabets and the right pronunciation. This was followed by students learning to count numbers till 100. Surprisingly, students were able to learn the basics really fast as Ms Anisha insisted on the drill session; wherein; every student in the class repeated everything she said. Students copied the whole lot from the whiteboard and practiced the right pronunciation.

After an hour of basics, she moved on to teaching simple French Grammar. She explained the verb conjugations, gave a few examples and very soon the students were able to conjugate many verbs. For practice, she gave them a few verbs to conjugate. Thus, the French orientation session came to an end.

The-just-getting-started students are now looking forward to their French learning journey!