Editor’s note: Dan O Patrick was admitted to the university to study journalism. It soon dawned on him that he was required to learn French, among other course units. This is what he found out.
“You’ll be required to learn French, heh. The unit is not easy,” a second-year journalism student remarked when she heard that I had joined campus to undertake a journalism course.
I did not take her seriously, but I would later learn that she might have been right in many respects.
Kiswahili and English are Kenya’s official languages.
This is to say that many kids who did not study French or German in high school face a huge challenge in their quest to master foreign languages, including French.
What’s more, the situation aggravates for comrades whose love for skiving classes comes second only to partaking of frothy waters.
An account of events during the first semester of learning French at university will illustrate this perspective.
A few weeks after starting my French unit, I was looking forward to the French lecturer canceling parler (French oral exams), but that did not materialize.
On the material day, Mademoiselle divided us into two groups; one group was to take the exams that Friday, while the second bunch took them the following Monday.
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