Students Make Introductions in French

Presentations Build Language, Friendship Skills

“Je me presente.”

With these three words, the students of Maria Razi’s French III Honors class, pictured above, began their self-introductions in early October.

These presentations are an important step on the long journey of learning a foreign language, but every step is worth it.

“Speaking another language,” said Maria, “opens so many doors, broadens our horizons, our knowledge, our understanding of others, of other cultures, that it enriches us tremendously.”

To help students unlock those doors, Maria guided them through the preparation and oral presentation of a self-introduction, in which they shared information about themselves, their studies, their families, preferences, and more.

Maria said her classes are very fortunate that there are two students from France in GSA’s boarding program this year. One goal of the assignment, she said, is for all her students to be able to “begin a conversation with them, introduce themselves, ask them a few questions, and perhaps, hopefully, begin a friendship with them.”

“I am very proud of how hard my students have been working and the extraordinary progress they have made since the beginning of the school year,” the teacher said.

One of those students is Ansel Tenney, who got a lot out of the assignment. “I enjoyed it,” the 10th-grader from Sedgwick said in an interview.

“I think the way she designed the assignment was very individual. We each got to learn about things we’d like to be able to talk about, which I think was cool. We don’t all want to have conversations about the same thing, I don’t think.”

The teacher’s techniques, Ansel said, worked well for him. “The way she works with broad memorizing is effective, I think. It’s essential for [learning a] language to memorize it.”

“She went one by one to each student and had us recite to her and then correct our individual presentations.”

Ansel struggled at first with pronunciation. “Sometimes when I read a word, I couldn’t pronounce it,” he said. But he created his own helpful guide. “I wrote out the way it was supposed to be pronounced but with a different spelling, emphasizing each syllable.”

This extra effort should help Ansel bring his French proficiency closer to where he’d like it to be. “Outside of the classroom, I don’t know how well I’d do right now, but my hope is to be close to fluent and be able to have a conversation with someone.”

By itself, this is a worthy goal, but Ansel has something bigger in mind. “One of my hopes is to go to college or university [in France] when I graduate from GSA.”

But first, he should visit France. “One idea I have is to create an ISIP project that I can do there and do a college hunting trip at the same time.”

Best of luck, Ansel, and many thanks to you, Maria Razi, for challenging your students and helping them to grow as language learners and people.

Visit the George Stevens Academy YouTube channel for a video of three students introducing themselves in French.