What does Journées Portes Ouvertes mean? And How To Succeed in College.

Journées-portes-ouvertes
Just back from Aix-en-Provence, where Jackie and I visited a potential faculté, or college... and it has nothing to do with fashion studies!

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TODAY'S WORD: les portes-ouvertes

    : open house (U.S.), open day (U.K.)

Thanks to Nancy, Katia, and Audrey and all who helped with the English translations when I posed the question earlier on Facebook! My mind was drawing a blank. Does this happen to you, too, when you study languages for so long and are multilingual?

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FRENCH PRONUNCIATION

Improve your spoken French with Exercises in French Phonetics
Listen to Jackie pronounce today's word and example sentence: 
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Les portes ouvertes. Aujourd'hui, Maman et moi sommes allées aux portes ouvertes en faculté de langues à Aix-en-Provence. Open house (or open doors). Today, Mom and I went to the open house at the language college in Aix-en-Provence.


A DAY IN A FRENCH LIFE

    by Kristi Espinasse

Learning How to Learn

If it were up to the Gods of French Academia, they would have my children declaring their future careers by the age of 12.  But how can a kid know whether he wants to be a scientist or baker before the age of adolescence? 

Neither of our children were able to declare their future metier at such a tender age. Max, who now studies international trade in Aix, once chose literature--and lived to regret all those book reports. And his sister, Jackie, eventually found her way into fashion studies. She will take her baccalauréat exam (graduate high school) this June, and is set further her fashion studies this fall. Or was....

"I would like to be a writer like you," Jackie recently announced. Once I picked myself up off the floor, a smile began to form across my face. Wasn't that ironic! I thought. At her age I wanted to be a fashion designer! 

"Don't worry, Mom! I want to somehow combine the two fields...."

Jean-Marc and I had mixed feeling about this recent vocational switch-a-roo. But in the end I realized that what's important is not what we study, it's how we study. What's important is to learn how to learn.

The language arts school that Jackie is interested in cites a 4 percent success rate for students who are coming in from vocational schools. But Jackie is not daunted. "I think of you, Mom," she says, remembering the story of how a D student made it into college on probation and went on to graduate cum laude.

It's funny how Jackie remembers that, and this tells me two things: she really is listening to me, and two, she's got a good memory. With those two tools she is on her way to succeeding in college. Add to that a steady stream of motivation and determination and her success in at la fac is surer and surer. 

What, dear reader, would you add to that? How can a student succeed in college? 


COMMENTS


Jax-n-max
Jackie and her brother, Max, in the college town of Aix-en-Provence

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Sunrise
Sunrise with Almond blossoms. Photo taken here at our vineyard. 

FORWARD THIS
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une roue

Cartable or French schoolbag (c) Kristin Espinasse
Back to School or la rentrée. Max and Jackie in 2004, at our old home in Les Arcs-sur-Argens

une roue
(roo) noun, feminine
1. a wheel

la grande roue = the Ferris wheel
une roue dentée = a cogwheel
un bateau à roues = a paddle boat
véhicule à deux/quatre roues = two-/four-wheeled vehicles
une roue de secours = a spare wheel or tire
une roue de transmission = a driving wheel
la roue de la Fortune = the wheel of Fortune
la cinquième roue du carosse = an entirely useless person, thing

Expressions:
être en roue libre = to freewheel, to coast
pousser à la roue = to lend a helping hand
se mettre en roue libre = (fig.) to take it easy, to do as one likes
faire la roue = to do a cartwheel, (also) to strut about, to swagger; to spread its tail (peacock)

Le succès est comme une grande roue; on ne peut vraiment apprécier la vue que l'on a d'en haut que si l'on redescend quelques fois. Success is like a Ferris wheel; we can only really appreciate the view that we have from up high if we come down a few times. --Yvon Deveault


A Day in a French Life...  by Kristin Espinasse


Six-year-old Jackie is already asking for wheels! Put-putting along the autoroute in our micro car, Jackie shrieks when a cherry red sports car whizzes by:

"Ooh là là! Une FAY-RAR-EE!"

"No, Jackie, that isn't a Ferrari. That is a Toyota!" her brother insists.

My daughter has been hounding me for wheels for some time now. To be clear, she is only asking for two wheels (and not the kind you see spinning under French teens as they speed through the village, zig-zagging through traffic). The wheels Jackie longs for are attached to a hefty, multi-pocketed cartable.

I don't blame my daughter for wanting wheels on her schoolbag—you should see the amount of books she has to carry home each day! After one year of yearning for such a schoolbag-sur-roulettes, her wish was granted. Thursday morning she gingerly wheeled her new bag into the schoolyard....

Soon enough she discovered that the cartable à roulettes wasn't so easy to navigate through the hordes of bag-encumbered élèves. So she pushed in the collapsible handlebar, hoisted the bag onto her back, and threaded her way through traffic to class.

This morning at breakfast she inquired about graduating to four wheels. "Maman," she began, "quand je serai grande, tu m'achèteras une voiture?"  I'd better start stashing euros aside now. The good news is I'll have an extra year to save as French teens don't start driving solo until they are dix-sept years old.  

French Vocabulary

une autoroute
(f) = a motorway

fay-rar-ee = pronunciation for Ferrari

un cartable (m) = schoolbag

une roulette = a small wheel

une élève (f) = a student

maman (f) = a mother

dix-sept ans = seventeen

Wheels
Update: Jackie, 5 years after this story was written... The wheels get bigger every year. Soon she'll be driving.

A Message from KristiOngoing support from readers like you keeps me writing and publishing this free language journal each week. If you find joy or value in these stories and would like to keep this site going, donating today will help so much. Thank you for being a part of this community and helping me to maintain this site and its newsletter.

Ways to contribute:
1.Zelle®, The best way to donate and there are no transaction fees. Zelle to [email protected]

2.Paypal or credit card
Or purchase my book for a friend and so help them discover this free weekly journal.
For more online reading: The Lost Gardens: A Story of Two Vineyards and a Sobriety