Bonjour, je m'appelle Marilyne. Je suis française. Je vie en France. Hi, my name's Marilyne. I am French. I leave in Amiens, to the north of Paris, in France. I am looking for language partners in Chinease or English. I have only studyied Chinease for once Year. I need to practice conversation. I understand English quite well. But, I’m speaking like a first year learner. I also would like to understand basic oral Li dialect (Li minority of the Hainan island). 你好， 我叫Marilyne （玛丽琳）。我是法国人。 我住在法国,亚眠（Amiens)，(Paris)巴黎的北边。 学习汉语一年到了。 我也说英语。 我也想听懂黎语（海南少数的黎语)。 I propose to trade 15 minutes of Chinease/English/Li for 15 minutes of French. If you agree to speak 90% of Chinease/English/Li during these 15 minutes, contact me to book a timeslot. Later, we could increase to conversation slot to 30+30, or whatever you will fit both of us. Warning: don't contact me if you're looking for a lover. I AM NOT interested in finding love on line.

About failure: we are all afraid to fail We are all afraid to fail. Maybe you and I are not afraid to fail in the same kinds of circumstances. But everybody is afraid to fail in some circumstances. It’s OK to be afraid to fail. But it becomes a problem when this fear stops you to act and when it appears too often. It becomes a problem when we are so afraid that we need to have a specialist to do what we didn’t dare to do. It’s too often the case when we face a technical problem or a scientific problem. Let’s say your toilet flush is leaking. How many of you would open it to look for what is going wrong? Raise your hand. Who, would have first call the plumber? Raise your hand. [A better example?]. I guess you can find other examples, where you didn’t dare to act, where you preferred relying on a specialist, while you could have tried it. This day, at the science festival, this group of pupils was accompanied by their teacher. She told me she appreciated my reaction when I mistook. I showed that it wasn’t a big deal. And when I teach those pupils to do the trick, I encourage them to immediately try it. They showed my mistake. If their calculus is wrong, they would have a second try. And the teacher told me that too often, they are fearing mistakes. It reminds me of my students, especially first-year student. They have to solve exercises. At the beginning of the semester, it is not rare to see that the majority of them don’t write anything on their paper, before the solution is shown. Each time, I have to encourage them to write something, knowing it will probably be wrong, at first. And it’s necessary. Most of them don’t want to write anything wrong. Do they imagine they could correctly write it on the first try from scratch? (320 words)

A mistake in a magic trick at the science festival It was during the science festival in October 2019. Some colleagues and I were at the entrance of the science faculty. We were welcoming small groups of school and high school pupils, from 11 to 16 years old, 5 to 10 pupils at a time, with one or two accompanying adults, teachers or parents. I am a computer scientist. I had three activities. The first was a magic trick that introduces binary coding. The second one was a paper Turing machine. And with the third, I introduced the experimental approach while teaching pupils to fly a randomized-form object. Hence, I could adapt to the pupil’s capacity. I had 4 groups, 30 minutes each on Thursday afternoon. It was Friday afternoon; my second group was an eleven-year-old groups. Because of their young age, I decided to start with the magic trick. I would guess the number they would choose. I asked them to secretly choose a number between 1 and 64. And I show them 6 cards. On each card, 24 of those 64 numbers are written. For each card shown, the pupils had to tell me whether their chosen number was on the card or not. And I announced my guess. Let’s say they had chosen 54. I announced 52. Bam, Wrong Guess! The pupils had diverse reactions: puzzling, smiling, laughing at me. One of them instantly told the proper number. I was slightly disappointed. And in my mind, my automatic thoughts were full of self-judgments in a split second. I sloughed of those judgments and asked them for a second try. This second time I guessed right, and I continued the interactive demonstration.

use of 的 Why is it necessary to use 的 in this sentences : 昨天晚上他喝了太多的酒。 If I say 昨天晚上他喝了太多酒, what could a Chinese person understand?

looking for language partner for learning Chinese Hi, 

I can chat in French or English. I would like to chat once a week in Chinese.
Please message me if you agree available.
Hear you soon.
Marilyne 玛丽琳

chatting in Chinese and French Bonjour,
J'apprends le chinois depuis presque un an. Je recherche un correspondant pour discuter en chinois et en français : la moitié de la durée choisie dans l'une des langues et l'autre moitié dans l'autre. 
Nous pouvons utiliser l'anglais ponctuellement.