This time in two weeks, I will have finished French- hopefully (options dependent) forever.
I've been learning French since I was in primary school, so this is a pretty big thing to consider. Especially as I didn't want to take it for GCSE (I wanted to take German)- at the time, the French teacher and some of the people in the class were fairly awful, so, as we say now, to take French, you really had to want it. I put it down as my second option, hoping for German, and was fairly gutted when I found out. However, no one would swap with me, so I stuck with it. Thankfully, we got two new (much better!!) teachers, and the class ended up being really nice, mainly because anyone who wasn't committed had been scared off by both the previous teacher and/or the prospect of GCSE.
Over the last two years, I've really enjoyed our French lessons. We've got a comparatively tiny class, so the lessons are a lot more
relaxed, and we probably got more support than the other languages. I
mean, both Spanish and German have around 30 students, whilst we have
17. Earlier this year we even had two teachers at the same time, which
was really helpful for our coursework!
The class size has also resulted in some great- if weird!- whole-class conversations. A friend and I were discussing which our favourite lesson was based upon people in the class, and we both agreed it was a bit of a no-brainer: it just has to be French!
Finally- very silly story alert- French was the class that really made me 'realise' that we were in Year 11, way back in September. Basically, all the MFL teachers are renowned for letting the Year 11's have hot drinks and biscuits as part of the lesson, so seeing older students walking around with kettles, milk etc. in that part of the school was something I got used to in Year 7. Then, a couple of weeks into the first term of this year, it was my turn to fill up the kettle: and I suddenly realised just how 'old' we all are. When I was younger, it was such a big thing: look at the big kids, they get to have hot drinks in lessons! Well, I was one of those big kids.
Funny, the things that make you realise just how much time has really passed.
Just to finish, I looked through this blog to find out what I'd posted before concerning French; the main ones were when we got espresso coffee, the time I helped out at my teacher's son's school and the very recent French visitors. I've noticed that these are largely food related. Whoops.