Precerpt from My 20th Language: L4, French - Later Opportunities
Later Opportunities for Refreshing Skills From time to time over the years, I have had opportunities to refresh my French, sometimes just a little and casually and other times more formally. French remains a strong language, but reading and writing have emerged as the greater strengths, mainly because of lack of opportunity for communication. When my daughter was taking French in high school (she took 4-5 years of French), I would be able to communicate with her and to help her. She did not consider it helping, however, when I would send notes in French about any absences or other issues to her homeroom teacher, who was also her French teacher. Once, I wrote an excuse in French poetry. Her teacher read it to all the French classes, immensely embarrassing my daughter—but it was fun to have some interaction with French again. Another opportunity arose when I was working on my PhD in Moscow. The university required proficiency in a foreign language. No, Russian did not count; ...