Having taken French for since 5th Grade, I was placed in the Advanced French class to enhance my speaking, writing, and listening abilities throughout the course of the year. Unlike any other French class I have ever taken part in, Madame Wildfong centralizes her lessons on connecting with students in different manners. For example, instead of taking notes and tests on grammar lessons, Madame prefers that we immerse ourselves in the language through film creation, story writing, and even building models with Play-Doh!
In previous French classes, I had learned how to use the imperfect and past tense through notes, test taking, and revising; however, everything changed at Mass Academy. Although it might seem counterintuitive, Madame Wildfong structured her lessons to barely include any of those factors. Instead, we watched fairy tale movies because they are structurally designed to include both of these tests primarily. Indeed, I was able to gain a new perspective on not only learning French, but learning altogether. By watching movies such as Beauty and the Beast in French, I was able to pick up on the differences in these tenses. On the right, you can see the finished product of my Fairy Tale which focuses on the Fairy Tale I created to portray the improvement I made in my writing quality.
While watching Beauty and the Beast was able to teach us how to incorporate two different tenses into our writing, Madame Wildfong also uses movies to communicate one large part of French class: culture. In particular, Azur et Asmar, produced by Michel Ocelot, aspires to teach us the different cultural aspects between the language in different regions. In fact, the story transforms its setting from Europe to Asia in order to display varying aspects of culture for both of the francophone regions. Moreover, I was able to practice writing within both the tenses once more because we wrote a journal entry at the end of the unit (Attached to the left). Fortunately, the class is based on growth, so I was able to analyze my flaws and develop strategies to improve upon them later on.