Jason

My name is Jason and I grew up speaking english (believe it or not.) My major is French and my minor is linguistics. I am studying French because I love the language and I love learning languages in general. I have four formal semesters of French teaching but while growing up my parents were always trying to get me and my siblings to learn the french language. We have gone through 5 different versions of the Learn to Speak software and countless other pieces of computers software and audio files. At one point we even were taking French tutoring from a lady who could speak 15 different european languages. She was really old and terrifying but my sister picked up almost a perfect French accent by listening to her speak.

The reason my parents were so into french is because they have had a burden or desire to go to the French-speaking world as missionaries even before I was born. I personally didn't start applying myself to learning French until college. While growing up, I have tried learning by many of the different teaching methods we learned about on the first day of class in some way or another and I am not sure what is best. However, I know the way that I like the best is one on one interaction where I can get immediate feedback on my pronunciation and help with understanding. I really strongly believe that the only way to truly learn a language is by being immersed in the language and culture because learning a language is not simply a matter of understanding a string of words that make up a sentence but understanding the culture, context, history and the people that are speaking the language.

Eventually I chose French as my major because I was originally doing International Business with French as my language but discovered (rather abruptly) that I strongly disliked business. I also could see myself being a missionary to the French-speaking world and so I thought it was a good match.

I have had basically no experience teaching a language or really teaching anything. My mother is a science teacher for the 5th and 6th grade so maybe it is in my blood. I guess time will tell! Katie is my sister!

Just a quick edit: I just remembered that I was tutoring an American this past semester in French. I was really an awful teacher. Mainly I just tried to get him to speak the language and try to make the connections as far as putting sentences together with the vocabulary he had learned in our sessions. It didn't work out very well.