Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘French & Spanish’ Category

Aside from the very first French course that I did with them, I have always went down to the Open University before signing up for a new course and had a look through some of the course books.

I’m sure that lots of people have probably done that at one time or another and there are all kinds of approaches that you can take to looking at the books for a possible course. What I did was to have a look at a book about half-way into the course and see if I could understand the words. You might think that this approach would only apply to language courses but in fact it’s equally applicable to all subjects. Certainly I was happy enough that I could understand the words and concepts at about the half-way mark in my current course.

Why half-way though? Well, the OU books seems to be written in a slightly odd way sometimes either by accident or design. Often I’ve found that the first chapter of a book is particularly difficult to follow and one suspects that’s because they want to knock people out of the course early on or rather they want to knock out people who would probably not be up to doing that particular course. Thus the first chapter or two of a book aren’t worth looking at. By the end of the course presumably you’ll have learned quite a lot so you might not initially understand the concepts being spoken about at that point. Therefore, to my mind, the middle is the best spot to aim for.

Why didn’t I just do the “is this course for me” self-assessment test instead? Well, in the case of the languages I didn’t go on the results on said tests for the simple reason that they don’t work too well for me. I don’t do cross-words in English and wouldn’t expect to be able to do them in French yet the tests had things quite similar to cross-words in them (which I couldn’t do). Therefore, glancing at the course books before the course worked better for me than the tests that are available.

However, aside from the books, you can find an increasing number of blogs being written about various courses by students and tutors. These are extremely variable in quality of course as are blogs everywhere. However, you can find truly excellent ones such as Anne’s on various themes from the A207 history course and you can find tutorial notes, revision notes, even complete assignment answers on various courses if you care to look.

But should you look very hard online? For instance, whilst Anne’s site has a fantastic amount of information it’s so much that it has me thinking that perhaps A207 isn’t the course for me (it’s on my rather long short-list). Similarly, I’ve said that the workload on ED209 is pretty substantial on this blog, so would that put someone off doing it? Is too much information about a course beyond the course materials themselves a good thing when you’re choosing a course to do?

The problem is that there’s no easy answer to that. For instance, if I want to do the psychology degree then I have to do a course on biological psychology which has the reputation of being pretty much impossible to do. Should I go on that reputation and therefore not bother with that course? Probably yes, but then I’m just too stubborn to do that so instead I’m looking into doing a course on the biology side first which apparently makes the other course a lot more doable.

At first thought, it probably seems to make a lot of sense to start speaking French to your children if you’re planning on moving to France and to keep doing that after you’ve moved. However, that first thought is very definitely wrong!

Unless you are a native French speaker, your accent, vocabulary and grammar just aren’t going to be perfect. Of these the accent is most noticeably a problem with many children from english speaking families still saying BON JUR rather than BOZHUR even many years after they have settled into a French school. However, both the vocabulary and the grammar are a problem too in that the French which children speak isn’t quite the same as that which adults speak so that you’ll often find it easy enough to chat in French to adults but really struggle in talking to their children.

Perhaps the greatest aspect of the problem is that if you stick to not-quite-perfect French with your children and they’re fairly young when you start down that path (say, under 5) then they may well grow up without any solid “native” language at all. This effect takes some years to be really noticeable but eventually you’ll find that you can’t explain how some aspect of grammar is supposed to work to them, not because your language ability isn’t up to it, but because they just don’t have a solid understanding of how any language works.

However, even if you get past those problems and are blissfully assuming that your children will grow up bilingual just naturally: you’re wrong, because they won’t unless you work at it. One of the most difficult people to speak to that I’ve ever met was an “English” estate agent who’d been born 20-odd years ago in France to English parents. He’d never been to England and never had the opportunity to even see British TV nor read English books or magazines so the only English he’d heard was from his parents. Net effect was that he had a perfect English accent when he spoke but was neither fluent not could he understand English spoken to him by anyone other than his parents. However, even these days few parents put any effort into building the English of their children and just assume that they’ll pick it up from them: this doesn’t work because the majority of English that you learn is at school therefore unless your children are going to a bilingual or english speaking school, they simply won’t learn it.

So, no, don’t speak French to your kids but do make a point of developing their english speaking, listening, reading and writing abilities.

If you’re learning Spanish one of the worries that you’ll have is with the wide variety of accents that you’ll come across whilst you’re learning the language. Yet, native speakers can cope with them all so you should aim to do so as well.Fortunately you’ve an equally large range of Spanish schools around the world. For example, Spanish immersion Costa Rica offers a range of courses starting from one week up to six months which will naturally give you a chance to hear the Costa Rican accent.Won’t it be impossible to follow? Well, as it happens I ended up having a south American teacher for the intensive course that I did last year and settled into his accent in under a day so you don’t need to worry about it.

The other big plus point is that you get to pick up some of the local culture too. That’s an important part of learning any language and Spanish is very much an amalgam of cultures from everywhere.

A long time ago, I was brave enough to ask the question which many are afraid to ask: do you need to speak French if you want to live in France?

It’s not such a simple question to answer as it might appear. For one thing, there are many expat enclaves throughout France where, by and large, English is the only language used. Within these enclaves, the shopkeepers and so on can be expected to speak English and indeed even if you speak French to them, they’ll reply in English. So, yes, you could live in France without speaking French.

However, in many other areas (most of France in fact) you couldn’t do that. The locals either cannot or will not speak English. After all, why should they be expected to? It is France after all. Except that everywhere else in the world the locals DO speak English: that’s why people expect to be able to move to France without speaking French.

Funnily enough, just a few miles south in Spain the locals won’t speak Spanish and actually insist on using English. Well, to be fair that’s Catalonia and few people outside it ever have the opportunity to learn Catalán which tends to dictate the use of English with foreigners.

It’s taken over a year but, at last, James has finally come out with a spontaneous word in French!

‘Twas a really ordinary event in that we asked him where we’d parked the car and he said “la”. Still, it’s a start.

So, if you’re moving to France, don’t rely on the TV families moving and assume that yours will be completely fluent in three months. Some might be, but it can take a lot longer than that as we’re finging out.