Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

That’s what we have to do for the oral part of the exam in, worryingly, about two weeks time. In fact, it’ll all be over this time two weeks from now which is even more worrying!

It’s far from easy coming to something like that even in English but we’ve to do it in Spanish which you’d think would make it even harder to do. In some ways, it does, of course. We obviously don’t have the range of grammar or vocabulary in Spanish that we do in English naturally. However, it’s the sort of thing that we’ve been doing off and on throughout the language courses and from that perspective it makes it that little bit easier.

Not easy, though!

We’ll be given a photo of the painting in the exam and then have 10 minutes to prepare a 3 minute presentation on it and how it fits into the context of the society of the time. As with most things on the Spanish course, it’s designed to make sure that you can’t prepare the whole presentation in advance so that 10 minutes will really need to be used. Any old presentation won’t do either as it needs to be reasonably well structured.

Try doing that in English sometime to see how difficult it can be!

In fact they’ll take anyone from age 21 on upwards.

The impact on this policy is quite interesting as you get an amazing spread of ages in many courses. Now, to be fair, for the majority of courses the lower age range is generally around 25 or so but that’s only because most people younger than that will have chosen to go to a normal university.

The effort that many of those over 65 put in is quite staggering. One guy in the French course was 80 if he was a day and put everyone else completely in the shade in terms of his ability to use the language.

We’ve a guest tonight who is plugging away with a history degree “just to keep his mind active”. The OU doesn’t work like that though and many who start courses just to potter along end up much further on than they would ever have expected. After all, I just started the French with a view to being able to speak it properly and find myself six years down the line on the home run (fingers well crossed!) to a Modern Languages degree!

I still remember one member of our little Saturday morning group sitting on the settee and announcing that he only started French so that he could order a cup of coffee and no way was he doing any more French courses. Just over two years later he picked up his French Diploma and is currently working on the Spanish one.

It used to be pretty handy living here and learning Spanish. After all, we’re just 30 miles or so from Spain and we get a lot of guests from Barcelona so it’s obviously easy to get a lot of practice in, isn’t it?

Well, no actually, it isn’t. Up until about 18 months ago it certainly used to be but the Catalans have become a whole lot more militant about their language since then. The immediately obvious impact of that was that since around then brochures in shops are only available in Catalan instead of being in Spanish too as they were previously. Similarly all signs are only in Catalan these days.

In the last 12 months we’ve found that the Catalans quite simply refuse to serve us in shops if we speak Spanish. I think that’s because we come across as residents of the area and therefore they expect us to speak Catalan. However, that’s not possible for us because even though we live in French Catalonia the French have all but stamped out that language.

Recently we even had a Catalan guest who insisted on speaking in very bad English rather than Spanish so we expect that it will get worse in the coming years.

It’s getting quite difficult for us because although we get a lot of guests from Barcelona, not all of them are Catalan and neither do all of them speak or read English yet all of them speak and read Spanish (or Castillian as the Catalans call it). Therefore we acknowledge reservations from Spain in Spanish.

Will they eventually become as militant as the Basques? Who knows, but it certainly seems to be heading that way.

It’s still hard for me to believe but somehow or other I find myself on the final course of the Open University Spanish course and even harder to believe that one course after that should give me a BA (Hons) Modern Language degree.

My original plan was that I’d do enough French to be able to live here but once we’d reached that point I figured that I might as well carry on and pick up the diploma so two years ago I added Dip French after my name. With that completed and us receiving growing numbers of Spanish guests, the logical step was to do the first of the Spanish courses but once you start these things it seems hard to stop so here I am doing the final year.

Coming here just after the final year of the French segment started worked out very well. It wasn’t easy as we were very busy that year but the daily practice in spoken and written French helped the final mark no end I’m sure. With the Spanish it’s a completely different story. The two languages are similar enough that in the past I always had to “forget” my French when learning Spanish but, of course, that isn’t really an option this time around which makes it quite an uphill struggle at times. Still, the next coiurse should be easy as it’s in English, shouldn’t it? Unfortunately, it turns out that the last course I need to do to get that modern languages degree is supposedly the hardest one in the university so I’m half-thinking of doing a humanities course prior to it to get into the subject a little better.

This is a question that many would like to ask but few are brave enough to actually ask it. The answer is different depending on where in France you choose to live.

If you are aiming for a brit-enclave such as Brittany or the Dordogne, the answer is probably “no” as in those areas it’s quite possible to live within the English-speaking community and to rely on those that make their livelihood supporting it. The only potential difficulty is the mayor’s office (“mairie”) but in the majority of cases they will be able to deal with you in English too. There’s no problem with the likes of tax, electricity and the phone company as all three plus similar outfits have at least one office set up to deal with English speakers (and if there is only one office, that office can deal with you where-ever you are).

Outside the brit-enclaves, it’s a different story and, for the most part, you will need to speak French quite well although it is still possible to deal with tax, electricity, etc. via their English speaking branches. Where you will encounter difficulties is in dealing with the plumber, electrician, school and mayor’s office. Even though we speak degree level French we have found that, for example, some electricians refuse to understand us because they simply don’t want to be bothered working for non-French.

If you aren’t English, then you’ll also find that the French are a good deal more willing to speak English to you. One of the shop local assistants claimed not to speak English for almost three years until they found out that we were from Northern Ireland and Australia when they suddenly became quite fluent English speakers.

So, yes, you could move to France and live here without speaking any French. However, in most cases, you’ll find live that little bit easier as your level of French improves.