I have met quite a lot of new students in the past few weeks, and inevitably the question of why they want to learn French crops up at our first meeting as [a] I am curious, and [b] well, there is no real [b] - I am just curious!
Most of the time, people get quite embarrassed, and mutter quickly that
in Britain, we are very lazy and we expect everyone to speak English when we go somewhere on holidays or for business...
I often have to disagree with this statement: I have been teaching French since 1991 in Scotland, and have seen
a lot of very motivated individuals, who undertake the study of French either for a short holiday or because they love France or for business related reasons... There was never the sense, for me, that British people were particularly lazy, or that they were uninterested. All I have seen in the past, and even today, is a bunch of sensitive people, who want to improve on themselves.
Do I think that languages should be promoted better at school? Of course, I do. I am annoyed that languages are often not compulsory at school: a lot of my older pupils do find it very draining to try and cope with the basics of the language when they have not acquired them at school. I am angry as well at the lack of grammar these days in the curriculum: grammar may seem evil and overrated, but I can assure you that it really helps if you want to speak in another language in a way that is not full of clichés, like a little parrot.
Anyway, here are some of the comments made by my students on their registration forms:
- I'd like to be able to get by in France on my own
- Switzerland!
- I enjoy travelling and would hopefully like to move to France in a few years
- I have a property in Nice
- Plan to live in Paris for 2 months next year
- To be able to communicate in another language in the hope that I can one day move abroad
- To be able to speak French in France
- Why not?
- To have fun
- To keep the brain occupied with something else than computers
- I love the language
- Rugby world cup!
- My interest and to assist with my work
- For pleasure!
- To try and maintain my level of French and also improve on it
- I travel a lot and would like to live in a Francophone country.
- Enjoyment: keep up skills and knowledge
- Because one day I will be fluent
- My girlfriend is French and I want to communicate with her family.
- If I don't keep practising I'll forget it all
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why people want to take up French, or brush up on their existing skills! Some people do it just for the hell of it - a bit like like climbing the Everest - because it's there - while others have a specific objective in mind: property, retirement, love, sporting events...
Learning another language is difficult and can be disenheartening at the best of times (hey, look at me - I have been struggling with English for the best part of 16 years... Although fairly fluent, I still find things I don't know, and I still mispronounce words for everyone's enjoyment!!)
I have just started last February to take up Russian though, and I have to say this has been a truly humbling experience, as the language is quite remote from the other languages I have been known to speak with more or less fluency. You do go through ups and downs: when you finally think you are beginning to 'get it', something else crops up, and you're back to square 1... The other thing that has really bugged me is, you practise things in class, bits of 'conversation' etc... and you arrive in the country: you are lost! Can't seem to do anything right! But in the end if you keep at it, you reap some rewards: you manage to buy your own train tickets, you have a kind of conversation with other people, you get a glimpse of the country from the inside, you compliment someone on the meal they have prepared in a language they understand (well, or kind of understand, given my half-baked Russian)... Just those little things make it all worthwhile...
More on why you should learn another language
here, and more on the
debate of how to improve Britain's language skills.Lxox
