In my second year of school French (age 12) I was third from top in a class of 36 children, it was all downhill after that. The fashion in teaching at that time changed from “copy off the blackboard” to audio-visual. Unfortunately for me my learning style is mainly kinaesthetic, I need to write stuff down or make an emotional connection before I can retain information. Watching slides of Jean and Colette and their various domestic situations left me cold. Having nothing to write down meant I forgot quickly and soon stopped caring. Years 4 and 5 reverted to the parrot fashion style of learning, luckily for me we were encouraged to write stuff in our notebooks and we learned how to conjugate regular and irregular verbs in various tenses. We conjugated verbs, had tests on how well you could conjugate verbs and I scored around the middle of the class. As an intellectual exercise I could cope but to me French was as relevant to my life as a crossword puzzle, an intellectual trinket of no practical importance. I left school at (nearly) 17 without French “O” level. I took and failed the exams to neither my teacher’s nor my surprise. I couldn’t see the point of it.
When I left school in 1971 I could still conjugate verbs (if I thought about it) but I couldn’t make small talk or order a drink in a café, or do any of the little social things that make going to France fun.
Fast forward to 1979. I had left school in 1971 and worked in a pharmaceutical company for two years, then as a junior chemist for the Ministry of Agriculture where eventually I had the good fortune to be allowed a three year bursary to study for a BSc degree in Chemistry. As a full-time student I was allowed to study up to five subjects at local authority adult education classes for free! (This was Newcastle upon Tyne and a Labour council) and I decided it would be interesting to pick up French as a form of relaxation to counter the academic rigour of Pure Chemistry.
My teacher, Graham, who became a good friend at the time (although we have subsequently lost touch) made French fun, I attended his classes for two years until I finished my BSc and I was posted to Wales in 1981.
I treated the Wales job as an overseas posting and I spent a year (once a week) attending classes in Welsh. It was a tough language to absorb but at least I learned enough to read the road signs and a few phrases to surprise and amuse my bilingual colleagues at work.
I was only settled in Wales for a year and a half, then my career sent me around Wales, Newcastle and Warwickshire for several years before I finally settled in Kent.
Language evening classes resumed in 1985, with Italian as the focus for that year. Then work and other studies took over for three years until 1989 when with a massive change in direction I became self employed and finally had the freedom to do more of what interested me.
I returned to studying French in 1990, this time it was during the day (no more evening classes), I joined a class who were half way through the BBC book “A Vous la France”. I stayed with that class through “France Parler” and “France Extra”. In 2001 I decided to work on my weaknesses (mainly grammar) and took an Open University course; L120 in French. It was a good decision, it made me work to a much higher standard and improved my understanding of the importance of grammar and gave me insight into how French society works.
So there I was coasting along, attending a class once a week, changing days and times over the years but with the same teacher (Jenny) until her retirement in 2004. By then the class was called “Avançons” and we were a class that focused on conversation.
Jenny retired and Catherine took over. Catherine was and is an excellent teacher and I kept up my lessons every Monday morning until last year (2008), when I had my Damascene moment . . .
To set the scene: when I originally joined Jenny’s class there was a lot of enthusiasm for town twinning between Ashford in Kent (where my class was held) and Fougères in Brittany. One of the “professeurs” in Fougères (Bobbi) arranged an exchange with Jenny’s class in 1991 and off we all went for a visit. Sue and I stayed with a delightful couple and we have kept the exchange going between the four of us for 17 (soon to be 18) years. Each year we have spent a few days together, alternating France and England usually, although last year the four of us went to Hungary together, and this was where the pivotal moment occurred for me.
I had been speaking mainly French for two or three days and I asked Jean-Pierre casually how my French sounded to him. He thought for a moment then said “50%”. I realised then that with my level of study I had “maxed out” and I was unlikely to make more progress without a huge effort (or emigrating).
I had recently read a book about the 80/20 Principle. The idea behind this book was that 20% of what you do gives you 80% of the results so the key to success is to identify the 20% and focus on it. The converse is to identify the 80% of what you are doing that is only giving you a small payback and stop wasting effort on it.
I had been incubating the idea of studying Spanish for a while, for the last ten years we have been going to Spain for a couple of weeks in the winter, and I began to think that if I spent the same amount of time on learning this new language as I was spending maintaining French, I would at least be able to communicate at a basic level within a year.
At the end of summer term I announced that I was going to take a year off from French to study Spanish. It has been an interesting journey…
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