Online Classes

I knew I was going to be behind on my work when I got home, because there were still in class sessions up until the Friday before I left. I didn’t go in that Thursday or Friday because I got the email about going home on Thursday morning. My friend explained to everyone in my classes why I wasn’t there, but I emailed all of my professors ahead of time as well.

I didn’t do any work while I was in the hotel or on my way home on the flight, because I didn’t want to put extra stress on myself. I did stay in touch with a couple professors to keep them updated on my situation. After a day or two being home I tried to start organizing myself. My program actually shut down right before all of the schools shut down in France, so I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do my classes remotely for a split second.

CIREFE had decided to switch to online for the rest of the semester, since no schools were allowed to be open as an order from the president of France. The president of the school wrote to everyone not that long ago that they are still not certain about how they would give us final exams or whether this semester would count towards a diplôme in the language level (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, or C2). My French professor at my home university says they would still transfer over the credits no matter what CIREFE does, because they wouldn’t want to penalize me anymore than the situation already has.

I actually didn’t hear back from one of my professors for a couple weeks. All of my classes, except for one or two, felt completely unorganized in the beginning. I miss having a set schedule. Unlike my home university who is currently using Zoom (a video chat service) for all of their classes, all of my classes are just assignments so far.

For my study of the language class, he sends us the assignments and then gives us the correction the next time we are supposed to have class. Sometimes he has us submit the work he has us do, so he can correct it and use it as the answer key. I just had an evaluation for his class at home and he gave us three hours to do it. I took it at 8:00 a.m. while those in France took it at 2:00 p.m., which I was fine with. I’m happy asked to make sure the times worked for everyone.

For my reading comprehension course, she gives a PowerPoint that has links to assignments we need to do. In this course we mainly read and answer questions to upload onto a google drive. I feel like I’m still a little behind with this course because she gave us a packet to do before everything shut down. She said we can do it on our own time, but I prefer due dates.

I don’t really do much for my oral comprehension course. We had one evaluation from home. She pretty much just gave us a practice test to prepare us for the final examination. She could end up assigning us something randomly, but I doubt that.

For civilization, he is just giving us notes to read through. I really like the way he formatted them because it’s how I normally write my notes. My creative writing teacher decided to use Padlet to assign work, which seems to work well for this class. For TEFL, we are going to be watching videos of past students teaching and basing reflections on them as well as creating our own lessons. We will most likely speak on Skype for class, but we’ve only done that once. For our lab class for pronunciation, we sent in recordings of ourselves for our first exam. This class would probably profit in using Zoom, so she can hear us and correct us but she pretty much just sends the lessons on paper with diagrams of how your mouth should be when pronouncing different vowels.

I’m still waiting to see what my oral expression professor decides to do. She’s the one that hadn’t reached out to us for a couple weeks, so I emailed her. She ended up emailing back the next day to everyone. She assigned some work to do to make up for the lost time. She’s still just trying to figure out how she wants to teach the class, which is understandable because it is meant for us to speak and interact. I suggested using Zoom to her, but we’ll see what she decides.

I miss having real classes and interaction with other students so much. I really wished some of my classes used Zoom, so I could have real input from hearing and speaking the language. I feel like I am just constantly doing homework, since I don’t have any lectures and I have to teach myself or at least review. I know I’m lacking the entire immersive experience that my study abroad was supposed to be, but I do all of my work and I’m pushing myself everyday trying to stay connected to the culture and language. I know I wont reach the level of competency I could’ve gained by the end of the semester if I were still in France and none of this ever happened, but I’m trying my best to fill those gaps.

Currently we are on a two week break. I really wish they would’ve decided to just push through it so we wouldn’t still be doing work three weeks into May. It’ll probably help get some of the teachers organized though and if the quarantine goes on until June then at least I’ll have something to keep me occupied.

Stay safe and healthy everyone.

À bientôt

– Nicole