STUDENT BLOOPERS
and others, too!
Love the student bloopers. One of mine (the weakest by far!) wrote "Mes
parents scient le chat sur le lit." Another that comes to mind was years
ago when a student at a language camp wrote home saying "Je mademoiselle
vous."
All of this reminds me a "blooper" that came from the pen pal of one of my
French IV students a long time ago. My student said she got a letter from
her new French pen pal who was writing to her in English. The pen pal
stated: "My sister and I are binoculars." My student was quite puzzled, but
she knew enough to be able to find out what her pen pal really meant and how
the mistake was made. She looked up "twins" in the dictionary and found
"jumeaux" and "jumelles." Then she looked up those words and found that
"jumelles" also means "binoculars." I was pleased that my student knew how
to find out what went wrong. I use this all the time as an example of how we
shouldn't take the first definition we see in the dictionary. It gets the
point across a lot faster to be able to give them an example of a French
person making a mistake with our language. Feel free to use it if it helps
anyone.
Helen Pope
French Teacher
Bedford County, VA
Back in my college days of learning French I had a blooper myself. I was living with a family in France. As many of you know, lots of food is served at French meals. I was full and needed to communicate that. So I said "je suis pleine" = "I am full" (or so I thought!) Rather I had communicated a slang expression meaning "I'm pregnant" They corrected me by saying that I should say "je suis rassasiée" instead. My students always enjoy hearing about my bloopers.
Marcia
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