Europeans: Daylight Saving Time has ended and you need to set your clocks back an hour (except in Iceland where DST is not used.) DST will begin again on the last Sunday in March. North Americans: Your DST will end next Sunday; except for those in Saskatchewan, a small part of British Columbia, Hawaii, Arizona [...]
Full Story »About Jennie
Website: http://www.ielanguages.com
Jennie has written 665 articles so far, you can find them below.
Everyone speaks Franglais.
Have I mentioned lately how annoying English words are in French? Just over the past few days, I’ve heard people speaking French say speed, soft, borderline, bad trip, VIP, people, and flashy when they could have just used French words in their sentences. And of course they pronounce these words with French accents, which is [...]
Full Story »Colin Powell’s Words of Wisdom
From the only Republican I like, Colin Powell, on Meet the Press, October 19, 2008: …I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I [...]
Full Story »Apéro and Universités
Friday night at an apéro chez des amis, we somehow got on the subject of universities. David mentioned that his mom’s cousin teaches French in Boston, and at the end of each semester, she had to let her students fill out evaluation forms. Everyone but me was surprised and thought it was a bad idea. [...]
Full Story »Ship or Sheep or Disgust?
I’m preparing the audio files for our Phonetics labs at home, and I’ve been listening to the units in our book, Ship or Sheep?, written by two Brits about 25 years ago. I got to Unit 4 on the [æ] vowel sound and noticed the dialogue they had written using as many words as possible [...]
Full Story »Pour mes amis canadiens et canadiennes:
Meilleurs vœux pour le jour de l’Action de Grâce! Happy Thanksgiving! P.S. I’m jealous your election is tomorrow instead of 3 weeks away! I ♥ Canada.
Full Story »The Story of the Missing Ballot
Once upon a time, there was a young girl who had grown disillusioned with her country. It was too religious, too conservative, too intolerant. I’ll move to France, she thought, and maybe one day my country will get better so I will be less ashamed of it. So off to France she went, and there [...]
Full Story »Le Retour des Alpages 2008
I just returned from the Retour des Alpages festival today in Annecy. I managed to take more pictures than last year, though I didn’t see much of the parade from where I was standing. Once again, I was constantly reminded why I hate being in Annecy when it is really crowded. Usually it’s the little [...]
Full Story »I love technology, but I love it more when it actually works.
This week was the start of our language labs at the university (i.e. 9 out of 12 of my classes). They only run for 10 weeks, so we don’t start them when regular classes start. Unfortunately, our brand new computerized language lab is not working properly, so we can barely use it. Instead, we’re running [...]
Full Story »The Past, Poverty & Perspective
Thanks to David’s dad and his generous gift of Chèque Lire, I got yet another French as a Foreign Language book at Decitre today, in an attempt to improve my faltering French since I can’t afford actual classes. The first chapter was about traveling, and more specifically, Quebec. The second chapter was about rencontres and [...]
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