French-Class French
I'm here in Chambery, a town about an hour outside the 2nd largest city in France: Lyon. Well technically, I'm outside of Chambery, but my town is so small it's not likely you would even find it on Google. "St. Paul Sur Yenne"....heard of it? Didn't think so.
When I arrived here on February 16th, I had a hard time speaking, even with my Grade 11 University French course completed at my Canadian highschool. I knew how to say "Can I go to the washroom", I knew how to conjugate verbs, and I had a decent vocabulary. However, no teacher ever found it nessecary to teach me (in my 13 years of learning the language!) how to ask questions, or how to carry on a basic conversation. Yes I had the building blocks of French swimming around in my head, but how to put them together was beyond me.
After two weeks of living in France, I was still hopeless at saying more than a few words here and there. At the end of my 2nd day at school though, I could suddenly speak in full sentences! I had been speaking and listening to my classmates all day, and by the evening something had clicked. I think that day I spoke more French then I had in total since I was 4 years old.
Now I'm going into my 4th week at Lycee Vaugela (my highschool in France), and I'm able to understand better, speak more, and formulate more difficult sentences. But I still have quite a 'pet peeve' about my French language education.
After 13 years of learning the Second Official Language of Canada, shouldn't I be fluent, or near so? I would like to know what the flaw is in our education system, where it goes wrong in teaching a 2nd language. There's a Mexican girl named Illiana who is also on an exchange here in Chambery, and she had been learning English for maybe 10 years. She's perfect at it! She has nearly no accent, and she can speak just like I can - slang and all! So I ask again...What's wrong with Canadian schooling?!
When I go home, and I go to my Grade 9 French co-op class, I will stress the importance to the teacher of conversational and USEFUL French. I'll make it my duty to teach those Grade 9 students how to ask a question. Somebody has to.
When I arrived here on February 16th, I had a hard time speaking, even with my Grade 11 University French course completed at my Canadian highschool. I knew how to say "Can I go to the washroom", I knew how to conjugate verbs, and I had a decent vocabulary. However, no teacher ever found it nessecary to teach me (in my 13 years of learning the language!) how to ask questions, or how to carry on a basic conversation. Yes I had the building blocks of French swimming around in my head, but how to put them together was beyond me.
After two weeks of living in France, I was still hopeless at saying more than a few words here and there. At the end of my 2nd day at school though, I could suddenly speak in full sentences! I had been speaking and listening to my classmates all day, and by the evening something had clicked. I think that day I spoke more French then I had in total since I was 4 years old.
Now I'm going into my 4th week at Lycee Vaugela (my highschool in France), and I'm able to understand better, speak more, and formulate more difficult sentences. But I still have quite a 'pet peeve' about my French language education.
After 13 years of learning the Second Official Language of Canada, shouldn't I be fluent, or near so? I would like to know what the flaw is in our education system, where it goes wrong in teaching a 2nd language. There's a Mexican girl named Illiana who is also on an exchange here in Chambery, and she had been learning English for maybe 10 years. She's perfect at it! She has nearly no accent, and she can speak just like I can - slang and all! So I ask again...What's wrong with Canadian schooling?!
When I go home, and I go to my Grade 9 French co-op class, I will stress the importance to the teacher of conversational and USEFUL French. I'll make it my duty to teach those Grade 9 students how to ask a question. Somebody has to.
posted by michelle* at 3:24 a.m.
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