This week, for my final entry into my inquiry process, I undertook a more challenging task. I decided to watch a full-length movie in French. I considered whether or not I should use subtitles, but in the end I did, with the understanding that the goal of this process is to deepen my understanding of the French language.
The film of choice for this entry was the classic film: Amélie. I have long heard the soundtrack to this film by Yann Tiersen (also a classic) but until now I had not seen the film itself. The narrative centres around Amélie, a quirky young girl who finds love after taking on the personal mission of showing acts of kindness and justice to those around her.
While I deeply enjoyed the plot and cinematic techniques in the movie, there were many words used that I had never heard before. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to hear several words which I have only learned over the past ten weeks. Understanding new vocabulary in context has given me greater confidence that I am able actually able to retain new words, and that I have not reached a plateau in my own development and understanding.
The inquiry process over the last ten weeks has left me with two new goals. The first goal for my continued language learning, would be to simply keep on exposing myself to French dialogue delivered at a natural speed. In order to get a better grasp of nuanced language, I will need to simply encounter that language more often. My second goal, will be to seek out opportunities to practice speaking French, so that my ability to communicate improves along with my ability to understand. I greatly benefited from learning language through a diversity of modes, and while I found some to be naturally easier than others, it was precisely the variety that helped me to learn all that I did.
