Back to my Arabic and French lessons – Arabic was fine initially until the time I was in second form when the ustaz we originally had left, only to be replaced by one with a heavy Kelantanese-accent despite his Al-Azhar training. I never saw the letter ‘A’ for my test papers in Arabic ever again. As for la langue Française, it wasn’t until second form that I joined the French Club. The club was très formidable, and we had a great teacher – Mlle. Rebecca Welch. We used this book called Methode Orange which also had a listening audiocassette to help us learnt the lenggok of the pronounciation. As it was a club, the whole thing was kinda fun as we took part in the annual La Soirée Française, an evening of performances from schools that had French classes, which included TKC and SMS Selangor.

I took the exams for both these languages at SRP level (that’s PMR for all you young ‘uns) when I was in fourth form. Surprisingly, against all odds, I did better in my Arabic then I did for French! Not having an Arabic or French-speaking person to converse with on a regular basis meant what (little) I learnt was dissipating into the black hole that sits in the brain somewhere (okay, I suck at Arabic – I don’t think it’ll help if I had an [insert Arabic nation here] neighbour anyway). I could still pronounce French words properly (no problems with ordering from a French menu when I was in Paris a couple of years ago), can count and the usual bon jour, merci and voulez-vous coucher avec moi. Okay, I have never used that last one.

Some friends of mine are at the moment enjoying French lessons by having a teacher coming to the house an hour a week, through schoolofeverything.com. I had no luck finding a teacher teaching Japanese in Sheffield using the said website, nor were there any night classes at the local college. I hear the university does courses but it sounds pretty serious (probably meant for businesspeople) and somewhat pricey. Until I found this on Amazon.com – a series of books titled Japanese From Zero.

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