FRENCH LANGUAGE

My first French Language lesson took place at school when I was seven years old. My first recollection was that as a class, we had to read a story in French and our teacher explained the meaning as we went. I will never forget that story, because it was very sad and seems rather a strange one to use to teach young children.

In retrospect, I wondered if my imagination had been playing tricks on me, so I recently tracked down and purchased a copy of "La vie de Madame Souris" on eBay. It turned out that my memory had not been faulty.

"La vie de Madame Souris" was the first of three books published in the series "Le Français pour les Jeunes". The other books were "La vie de Madame Lapine" and "Les Lapins et les Souris". They were published in 1926 by the author G. Gladstone Solomon A.R.D.S.

Madame Souris had a nice house with a pretty garden. She had a son called Louis and a daughter called Yvonne. Louis had a ball and a gun, while Yvonne had a doll and a box. On the third page of the story we learn that their father, poor "Papa Souris", has been killed by a naughty cat. Illustrations include Papa Souris being chased by the cat, Papa Souris' dead body and Papa Souris' grave, complete with a headstone bearing the inscription "Papa Souris Âgé de 11 ans tué par un chat".

Much of the French curriculum at that particular school was spent learning the tenses of French verbs. For each verb we learned the Present, Perfect, Past Historic, Imperfect, Future and Conditional tenses. Motivation to learn at this school, was mainly provided by frequent use of the cane, for those who were slacking in their studies. Another thing I learnt was that the French word for a "bogey-man" is "croque-mitaine". Of course this is not something you need for most conversations, but it seems to impress people with your knowledge of the language, if you do manage to find a way of slipping it in. After four years at that school my written French was strong, but I couldn't hold much of a conversation.

I then moved to another school for eighteen months, where the class was conducted in French. If you needed to speak English because you didn't understand something, then you had to request permission in French to speak English. If you needed to go to the toilet, you had to ask in French or else hold your bladder until the end of the class. For the last ten minutes of each lesson we would stand in a line. The teacher would ask the first student in the line a question. If the answer was right, then the next student was asked a different question. When a student got an answer wrong, the question then passed down the line until someone got it right. That person then moved up the line to the front of the first person who got the answer wrong. Participating in this quickly established ones abilities relatively to other class mates. The great thing about this teacher was that if anyone spent too long near the bottom of the line, you would receive private tuition, until you improved dramatically. This way no one ever got de-motivated. When I left this school at age thirteen, I could hold quite elaborate conversations with local people while on vacation in France.

I then continued to learn French up until O levels at my senior school. This school made extensive use of a language laboratory. My class mates were well behind me in both written and spoken French. By the time I took my O level at age sixteen, my standard of French had dropped to well below what it had been, when I had joined the school at age thirteen.

In my opinion using a language laboratory is far less effective than having a whole class session lead by a good teacher.