Foreigners often make fun of French people for their poor language skills: they are seen as unable to have a good accent in any language.
Even if solutions were proposed in the past, like learning English in primary schools, French people regularly complain about the English level of their fellow countrymen. In this global world, English-speaking students have obviously more chances to find a job than the others. Nevertheless, English (and knowledge of languages in general) remains at the bottom of the French Education system priorities.
First of all, there is a clear problem regarding to the contents of language courses in France. Pupils must learn grammar for years but they are not taught how to give an oral speech ! Moreover, teachers speak, answer and communicate only in French during the class: the teenagers only listen to audio tapes, which is far from being attractive!
The problem comes from the pupils too. They are ashamed of speaking with the right accent: they are absolutely not used to it. When they are asked a question, they answer it without even trying to improve their pronunciation at all (what the teacher does not require anyway). This feeling of shame is not to be related to any anti-Anglo-Saxon (especially anti-American) feeling within the French society, but rather to a mistrust regarding the English language and to the lost pride of French. Indeed, our language can no longer compete with English on an international point of view.
The successive French governments have been claiming to be fighting for the protection of the French language, which contains more and more English words. The Toubon law for instance, imposed French as the official language in French companies. Any advertisement on television or in the newspapers containing foreign words must be translated. However, this law had very little effect and new English words are still being inserted into the French language day after day. And the wide-spread and Anglo-Saxon Internet vocabulary will not help to reverse this situation!
It would be nonsense to try to “save” the French language and to prevent English words inclusions, as if France were a Gallic village, surrounded by nasty Romans!! The German language is full of French words imported during the XIXth century and German people do not have the feeling to speak French at all. Scandinavians are known to be excellent English-speaking people, and yet neither Swedish nor Danish are dying languages. Why should it be otherwise in France?
English-speaking people are blamed in France for not speaking any other language as well but unlike French people, everyone can understand them, in China, India, Germany and so on…
There could be some simple methods to improve the English level in general: teachers must only communicate in English with their pupils, so that they appropriate this language. Then many more movies and programs should be broadcasted in original version in theaters and on television and all interviews or talks of famous foreign people on the daily news should be subtitled and not synchronized. The impact on the general population could be huge if they got used to listening to English programs.
French politicians dare to make such decisions. In the first place, this could look like a the defeat of the French versus English. But people could take great advantage of it and on the long run, such decisions would turn into a success.
February 26th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Very interesting article… And definitely relevant: I must admit that I began to improve my English and my German after the Baccalaureat, after 7 years to learn both languages! This is a shame that so many young students can not speak more than 3 words in a row… Herve, you explain that we only learn grammar : that’s totally true.. And the main problem is that even after 7 years studying grammar, we are not able to write a text in a perfect English (or German etc.)…
Your vision of the mistakes made by teachers, pupils and governments is perfect. The 2 main things to stem this problem would be, in my opinion, 1) teaching more hours at school to study foreign languages (how can you really improve your skills with 2-3 hours a week…) (and teaching foreign languages differently: focusing on talks in small groups seems essential, making students read books in English or German or Spanish etc….) and 2) having more films in their original versions on TV, especially the TV series watched by teenagers. A friend in Norway explained me TV series like Friends are broadcasted in English which enables people to get accustomed to hearing English…
A key problem is that our French system doen’t want to accept globalisation… Norammly, our politicians and teachers should explain “today, a student must speak one or 2 foreign languages. It is essential to be integrated in our globalised world and to have the opportunity to work abroad or in France with foreign companies”… But our education system is reluctant to talk about the “real” business world so… Consequence : we have a really unfair system where the elite can really learn foreign languages (by going abroad or thanks to the classe prepa or private lessons) and the others can not even use the basic skills they should normally learn until the baccalaureat.
FInally, I want to thank you Herve to talk about the fact that the students are responsible too. When I remember my lessons at the high school, nobody wanted to talk and the students who dared to were considered as “has been”…tThere is a lot to do to change the minds of both pupils and teachers!
May 14th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
A good example of the European reality : the Grand Prix Eurovision (I know it sucks but Lordi was pretty funny last year !). Officials languages of this show are French and English. At the end of this contest, journalists of each country must tell, whom their fellow countrymen gave their voices to.
Of course every speeches were done in English… except for the French and the Belgian one !
It has been a little surprising to me in the case of the Belgians : not all of them are French-speaking, so even if only the RTBF (French-speaking public television) was broadcasting the show, they could have respect Flamish people: either they should have called themselves Wallonie or they could have spoken in English, in order the whole population of the country to understand the speech. You can think I am fastidious, but I think all Belgian people deserve respect (especially when they are a majority). Is it compulsory to be intolerant, since you are French-speaking ?
Then, as expected, the “France 3″ channel journalist gave the results in French.
A question I asked myself : did she have the right to speak in English on French television ?
It would anyway have been a scandal if she did !
March 21st, 2008 at 7:16 pm
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