Throwback Thursday

This one is from 1982 when I was a student at the Alliance Française in Paris. I was in the second semester of my French studies and the class was leading up to le degré supérieur. There are three Americans in this class, one of whom (Jane) was in our program. Our teacher was named Monsieur Grand.

That's me in the white sweater. I was 22 years old. The woman next to me is German.

I remember that he would start each class by calling on students randomly to conjugate a verb in a certain tense. They were always the hardest tenses, like the imperfect of the subjunctive or something similar. I was not very good at it. But he gave us hints to help us along, after thoroughly embarrassing us. Of course, we were only embarrassed in front of him. Nobody in the class wanted to be called on and we were never critical of each other.

The whole class. Our teacher, M. Grand, is standing in the back. Jane is in my row, to the left by the window.

I passed the class and went on to the oral exams (very stressful) and got my certificat de français parlé and diplôme de langue française.