I decided to take a bus ride this morning and caught the Montmartrebus, that little electric bus that I mentioned in an earlier posting. It wandered through the streets of Montmartre, up to the Place du Tetre and then down through the narrow streets eventually getting to Place Pigalle. On its route it passes the Moulin de Galette, a restaurant with one of the old windmills still above it. It is not the original Moulin de Galette, rather the Moulin Radet 6,but it is still very impressive. 
Otherwise it was a fairly quiet day. In the afternoon, Virginia and I took a walk through Montmartre, stopping to admire the beautiful old buildings and look at the bust (literally as well as figuratively) of the entertainer, Dalida.
Virginia had an easier day at school but she is amazed at the lack of knowledge about Australia. Not, of course, that we expect people to be terribly knowledgeable about the country, but one would have thought they would have heard of kangaroos, koalas and kookaburras. But no, and Virginia is now committed to sending them pictures of these strange and exotic animals.
Because of Virginia's background and work in adult education she has been fascinated with the school and the manner in which the teaching progresses. As anyone who teaches knows, beginners courses, or courses in a new subject, are among the easiest to teach. That is because it is a pretty safe assumption that all of the students are at the same level. As one progresses, of course, the disparity between good students and poor students becomes increasingly greater. This problem is compounded by students who often believe their skill level is higher than it actually is or teachers who insist that if you are in an intermediate class, you are on page xxx of the text and if you are not it is, somehow, your fault. Another problem which is probably unique to a course like this is the variety of backgrounds from which the students come. This extends to peripheral areas too. For example, a Japanese student was quite distressed when she found out that there were not separate men's and women's toilets since she was culturally not attuned to sharing toilets in the French manner.
Virginia ran into or observed all of these problems in her French course. The first day, she was in so deep she thought she was going to drown. The second day, she was surviving with a few tentative strokes but still spent much of her time under water. The third day saw her treading water and by the fourth day she was actually swimming; making some progress. Since the course is ten days all up, it took almost half the time for her and the school to achieve her comfort zone. It is also inexplicable to us why this ocurred when there was a test on the first morning which took almost two hours and which should have been an excellent guide to her existing level. Clearly it didn't work since at least one of the students in her class spoke such fluent French that she was moved up to the most advanced level and another young woman had only a handful of words and had to be moved back to the beginner's class. That is an error rate of 40%! Mind you, as teachers, both Virginia and I have had the same experience when we taught subjects at what was supposed to be intermediate level.
Anyway, tomorrow we'll be back on the tourist type things. After Virginia finishes her classes for the day we are going to explore a couple of the old arcades which are supposed to be quiet beautiful. But more on that tomorrow.
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