My classes) at the Institut de Touraine are more like a combination of elementary/high school and college than I thought they would be, mostly because I have the same classroom and professor all day. Not every day is the same length, and there are a lot of discussions and independent work. It’s different, but I like it. The cafeteria just has vending machines as far as I can tell, but I heard you can get a full meal. I’m not sure where, so I’ll believe it when I see it. The library (also known as the médiathèque) has books and computers but also chess and checkers, which is interesting. It’s also only four rooms and not its own building. Classes start at 9 and end at 12:20 on short days and 4:45 on long days (which are twice a week). There’s a 20 minute break around 10:30 (and a 15 min break around 3 on long days). Lunch is an hour and 10 minutes on long days. I don’t always have that much time to eat between classes (and I never did before college), so I like it.
My class does a lot of grammar, specifically verb tenses. Sometimes we have short writing assignments to practice, and when we finish a unit, we play Kahoot to review (something I haven’t done since high school, but it’s fun so no complaints). We also listen to music and fill in blanks with missing lyrics to work on oral comprehension, and we talk about different things like ecology and music. On Monday afternoons, we work on pronunciation, and on Thursday afternoons, we work on whatever we need to (review worksheets or writing).
I’ve had a lot of exams over the past three weeks, but they weren’t that bad. One was a production orale (5-10 min presentation) over a cause that matters to you (I chose access to clean water). There were also two productions écrites (200-250 word writing assignments), two compréhension orales (listening to something in French while answering questions about it), and two compréhensions écrites (reading something in French and answering questions about it). The oral comprehension is the hardest for me, but I think I’m getting better at it.
