Tag Archives: Roger W. Smith my French teacher

my French teacher

 

Eileen McCauley began her career as a French teacher at Canton High School in Canton, MA.

I had her for two years of French in my freshman and sophomore years. I loved her class.

She had a great influence on me, like most good teachers, in awakening and fostering in me a love for learning languages, for the languages themselves. It got me started on a lifelong course of language study which has been pure joy.

There were no audiovisual materials for language study online or at home back then. I would monologue and recite the French passages in my French textbook over and over again while doing my homework. I would assiduously apply myself to memorizing the vocabulary list at the end of each chapter.

I once said to my older brother, who also took French, that when I recited le train out loud,  it seemed different to me than the English train. I asked him, is this the case with you too? He said, no, it didn’t.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   June 2020