By KWAMBOKA OYARO
Some of the students have never been in a French class but, they must introduce themselves to one another. She starts by introducing herself.
Je mappelle Annette Msabeni, Je suis a professeur a Alliance Francaise. Et vous? (My name is Annete, I am a teacher of French. And you?)
Readily, she assists the students to introduce themselves and writes on the board the words to use and asks them to pronounce after her.
She points out that unlike English, French is a word with feminine and masculine words whose spellings and pronunciations are different to show the gender the speaker is referring to.
As they introduce themselves the females say they are etudiante [students]while the male introduce themselves as etudiant.
From now on, the students will learn and practise basic sentences, using subject, verb and complement. With the help of video tapes and audio cassettes, they will learn how sentences are constructed, finally moving to the formation of the more complex sentences and other tenses. And teacher Annette will assist them in their pronunciation by asking them to repeat after either her or the tapes.
The students follow the new book, Cafe Creme, which is a new approach in teaching French as it is more interactive.
Teaching French can be fun, she asserts, especially when using a communicative approach which makes student to start speaking right from the first lesson.
Through teaching a foreign language, she has met many different people who have made her learn more skills on how to communicate with people.
Its fulfilling when you watch your students progress in the language. It makes me happy that I am able to share the language and culture I have learnt from the French.
The teaching career has developed her personality and she has learnt to be patient with her students who have different learning capacities.
It can also be challenging teaching a foreign language to people with diverse ages, professional backgrounds and with varied interests. Sometimes it is overwhelming to meet individual needs.
Most days in a week she teaches six straight hours, that is two hours per class for her three classes. This can be tiring.
But the 27-year-old teacher must ensure that her class remains interesting throughout. Thus she varies her teaching methods. She makes sure the students are involved in the lesson either by listening to tapes, watching a video, acting a passage, writing or practising pronunciation.
Annette always had a bias for languages. In her primary school and at Bishop Gatimu Ngandu Girls High school, she was among the best students in English and Kiswahili.
After sitting her fourth form examinations in 1992, she started French classes the following year at the French Embassy in Nairobi before joining the University of Nairobi in 1994 to study a Bachelor of Arts degree. She did module one to 24 which made her qualify to pursue French as a foreign language along her major, anthropology. Normally, students who study French at high school are the ones allowed to do it at university.
To strengthen her French, she travelled to France through the French cultural centres exchange programme. While there she lived with a family and this improved her communication in the language.
At the same time she studied at Luniversite de la Sorbonne in Paris to improve her language before doing her masters degree in sociology at Luniversity de Norterre in 1999-2000.
Annete chose teaching because as a former student of French, she can identify the problems students studying a foreign language go through and she is in a position to guide them.
Since I went through the same challenges in understanding the language, I understand the students weak areas especially in differentiating the articles which are either masculine or feminine. Besides, it is interesting to teach a foreign language.
Although French language opens a whole new world to its learners and is marketable - someone with good knowledge of the language has an edge over others in the job market - it attracts few people. Many people believe it is hard and they dont attempt to learn it and many of those who begin drop out after awhile.
Jobs with the United Nations require bilingual people and French is one of their working languages. In her case she got a job after only a month of searching.
Students who would like to become teachers of French must be motivated and interested in the language. This can be cultivated by reading books or works in French, listening to French music, join the French club at Alliance Francaise or their institutions.
They must also interact as much as possible with French speakers through social gatherings or at the Salle de Detente at the French cultural centre where students engage in diverse activities and get to perfect their spoken language. This can also be done by visiting French speaking countries through exchange programmes available through the French Cultural Centre.
French is the second most spoken language after English, so by learning it you are improving your chances in the job market. There are many opportunities once one has the knowledge, she advises.
Copyright Nation Newspapers