After preparation weeks of preparation, students traveled all the way to Dallas to participate in the Texas French Symposium. Junior Tyzic Pina, a member of the French National Honor Society and an AP French 4 student, was participating in the 55th annual Texas French Symposium on March 22nd and 23rd.

Q: What events are you participating in?

A: I am competing in poetry and sight-reading. For poetry, I have to memorize a poem that is up to 2 minutes and recite it, but sight-reading has less preparing to do because they show us a passage when we get there and we have to recite it with the best pronunciation.

Q: Have you participated in the symposium before?

A: No, this will be my first year.

Q: Why did you decide to go this year?

A: My friend told me it would be fun.

Q: Why did you first decide to take French?

A: I went to Pin Oak Middle School, and we were required to take a language. I could not decide between French and Spanish, but I decided on French because I knew my family wanted me to do Spanish.

Q: What do you hope to get out of this event?

A: I am excited to improve my French skills, but mostly I want to meet people from other schools that are studying French.

Q: Do you know what poem you are reading?

A: I am reading “J’ai tant rêvé de toi” by Robert Desnos.

Q: Is there a reason why you chose that poem?

A: I asked my French teacher for a suggestion and that was the first one.

Q: Is there anything you like about that poem?

A: My teacher actually picked it as a joke because it is super emotional, and she knows I am not that kind of a person.

Q: What is your poem about?

It is a super emotional love poem.

Q: How long have you studied French?

A: This is my fifth year.

Q: What made you stick to it for so long?

A: I am really interested in the way languages are related because sometimes knowing French words can help me understand English in ways I did not know before.

Q: Can you give me an example of that?

A: Well, when I do things with grammar rules in English, most of the checking I do is just if it sounds right or not, but with a foreign language, I do not know what sounds right, so I learn the names of tenses and parts of speech that I did not know the name of in English.

Q: Are you planning on taking French 5?

A: Yeah, I have already signed up for it for next year.