Ail ou radis — Are you ready?

You are probably wondering what garlic (ail) and radish (radis) have to do with the omnipresent topic of the Brexit, aren’t you? Absolutely nothing. I decided to write about something completely different this week because I like reading and sharing personal stories and I feel this is also the intention of our regular posts. So back to garlic and radish! :-)

In an earlier post I wrote about the English language in India being one of the most obvious traces of the British Empire and my experiences with people’s attitudes towards English.
I also study French and in total I’ve lived 3 years in France (as an Au-Pair and a student at university). So what about the French attitude towards English?

First, I’d like to make one thing clear: I’m not trying to encourage stereotypes by simply stating: French people don’t know how to speak English. One should rather look for reasons and explanations and not generalize. So that’s what I did. I found this interesting article in French( http://www.lexpress.fr/education/pourquoi-sommes-nous-si-nuls-en-anglais_1550045.html) with the title Pourquoi sommes-nous si nuls en anglais? (could be translated as follows: Why do we suck so much at speaking English?). The article states that French pupils, compared to other European countries, show insufficiant English performances. But the article also tries to explain where those bad results come from.
The French colonial Empire was by 1900 the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. Bernard Delesalle gives a historical explanation stating that as the French imposed their language in different places of the world they noticed a lot later than other countries the necessity to learn a foreign language. But the article also discusses the French educational system as an important factor influencing pupil’s attitude towards the English language. In most French schools ‘reigns’ the elite club — so language learning seems to be reserved to the upper class rather than making it accessible for everybody. Also, the focus is put on written tasks rather than oral expression.

Personally, I agree with the article’s main point being the differences in the educational system. When I was studying English in France I have to admit that my English suffered a lot. I really missed spontaneous tasks and discussions in class — I normally had to hand in written tasks every week. But I also noticed that some of my French friends were kind of blocked when it came to speaking English (or any other foreign language). When I asked why they often said that they were afraid of making mistakes and that a lot of teachers expected perfect utterances. I believe that in Germany this is the other way around, one should first speak and overcome this mental block.
Another important reason is simply the phonetics. French and English being so different it is hard to e.g. cut off the nasal sounds when speaking English.

In general the attitude towards foreign languages was a topic that often came up in discussions with my French friends. They were kind of impressed with other countries abilities to speak foreign languages and simply tended to accept that they ‘sucked’ at it. But as I said at the beginning of my post, this is not an attempt to generalize by saying that French people suck at foreign languages. During my intership in a French high school I could also observe that there is a shift towards oral expression in English classes and that teachers do their best to motivate their pupils to speak and express themselves in class. I think that there are a lot more interesting factors and explanations to take into consideration and more research is to be done in this field.

I would like to end this blog post with a rather funny article I found stating that “more than 13,000 French high school pupils have signed a petition calling for the English section of the Baccalaureate exam to be cancelled because of “comprehension difficulties”. ” (http://www.thelocal.fr/20160620/thousands-of-french-pupils-protest-hard-english-exam).
Of course there were reactions from other French students that such a petition doesn’t change anything and that it’s even a shame. Have a look at this article and tell me what you think about it. ;-)