France Tales

You are browsing the archives of 2008 June.

I noticed today that some stores had their sales signs up in Toulouse. Some of you may know that in France stores are only allowed to have sales 2 times per year. Once in the winter and once in the summer. I wrote a post about it in the winter that generated quite a response. [...]

This fact was one of the other things I learned while teaching my students in Le Bataillet. Michel Drucker had both Serge Gainsbourg and Whitney Houston on for a joint interview. Michel Drucker is a known television host who does serious interviews but also cultural happenings. Serge Gainsbourg goes on to say some inappropriate things [...]

In France once per year there is La Fête de la Musique. It happens on June 21st every year. It is the longest day of the year and music occurs throughout every big city and small town. I knew about it but was unprepared for how enormous it would be. Every corner had a different [...]

Balkan Beat Box will be performing live in Toulouse this evening. Today is La Fete de La Musique in France. That means all cities and towns are having music all day long and well into the night. Concerts in every public square and every musical style. I started listening to Balkan Beat Box last year [...]

This is a little inside joke. I kept saying “stage” when referring to this training. Some of them said their previous English teachers told them you can’t say “stage” in English and you have to say training or continuing education. While I agree, I don’t think this weeklong intensive training course fits the description of [...]

Of course jokes work best when you don’t have to explain them, but for non-native speakers learning humor and understanding it presents big challenges. We did a short exercise where they had to think of a joke, translate it into English, practice telling it, and then tell it to the class and try to explain [...]