Why are the French so bad at English ?

[sabine]

You’ve all come to realise that it’s quite difficult to hold a conversation in English with French people.
Most of you must first have thought that people don’t want to bother themselves speaking English and, after a while realised that in fact, they can’t. How is it that after 8, 9 sometimes 10 years of learning the language they are unable to utter a single simple sentence? … Blame it on the teachers!!!! (joking….don’t!!)

Being daily confronted to the problem, I’ve come upon several explanations

1. That good old jingoism; the “if those foreigners want to live in France, they have to learn the language” attitude. It’s universal

2. The ‘Joan of Arc’ syndrome; after all we’ve been at war with the English for more than a century and the b……. burnt our Joan!!!! I’m only half joking, take an English car to any repairman and you’ll see what I mean.

3. The language is not taught properly in schools. They start very young but the language is treated as a game, so when they reach Grammar School an have to actually ‘learn’, they go on playing. For years we’ve heard that learning by heart was idiotic and that one must understand before learning….very well, except that when it comes to foreign languages 80% of the learning process is learning by heart, there’s nothing to understand, just learn and practice. We end up with students in Class 12 hiding behind the “I don’t understand so I don’t learn” attitude. What’s more teaching is based on ‘writing’ because they are evaluated in a written examination, though it is a language.

4. Kids don’t master their own language. Due to several “brilliant” reforms among which the highly acclaimed ‘global method’ to learn reading, we end up with students for whom French is a foreign language. They learnt to read in a very playful way, drawing syllables from a hat and putting them together to make words, with no idea of word construction, they’re unable to differentiate a noun from a verb or adjective. Their brain is absolutely not structured so obviously they are in a situation where learning is quite difficult. After 20 years of global method the ‘powers that be’ realized it led to illiteracy and dyslexia, so now we’re going backwards but several generations have been sacrificed

5. Finally, sorry to say that, but…..the French are not good at learning foreign languages!! Spanish and Italian they can manage because it’s quite close to French, but English, German, Russian or more….exotic languages (no I didn’t think…Hindi!!) wouldn’t even cross their minds

Hope this will help you understand better and....bear with us!
Fortunately, you'll also come accross people who are able to hold a conversation and quite willing to

[Sourav]

Nice post Sabine ...

However, I may want to add one thing here. If the french are bad in english that may be due to the same reason why Indians are bad in French. The NEED factor.

Actually what they did with Joan d'arc is a historical fact, but look at what they did to us !!! I've a thread on this, named "the impact of colonization in India" that I've updated once and will be doing that time to time. But still, we are licking the language like anything.

What I see here, is that in the french educational system, everything we do in french. Means, we rewrite every english book, or translate them, or have our original works in french, but never present a book on english to pupils. Or, should I say, that the french are developed enough that they don't need to learn any other language.

Add the fact that France is a country where everyone speaks French. Other languages / dialects like bretagne, etc. are slowly dying since no one practices those, or there's no infrastructure where these can be practiced. (I know that now a day they are trying to regenerate the other languages here in France). So, while in France, you don't need the help of a second language to keep communicating among yourselves.

Look at the americans or english. How good they are in french, those who never go out of their country?

The reason why french are bad at learning other languages is also that, as I see it, they start learning languages very late. It's told that the best time to learn multiple language / adapt our brain to a multi lingual environement is before a child reaches 6 years of his / her age.

In India, for example, we are good in learning languages (most are bi - tri lingual there, at least, and even you will find many speaking 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 languages - for example, in our family, both me and my sister speaks 5, my father speaks 6, my mother speaks 3) because we are introduced to many languages (at least 2) from as early as we reach 3 years of age. The brain thus, adapts to a state where we can pick difference between languages very easily.

And lastly, your english is better than most non-native speakers. So, who said that the french doesn't speak english

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[Anju]

Very interesting post Sabine, and I appreciate your rational evaluation of the situation. Though I cannot comment on the French people, having never met any; in the Indian context, I absolutely agree with Sourav's observations.

We really do get exposed to quite different languages within India at an early stage. Also, since we are aware of the existence of so many languages (and religions and ways of worship) since childhood, we rather grow up with an open mind towards all these- we may be proud of the particular language we speak at home, but we understand that others are OK too. We all must coexist, so learning a new language (Indian or foreign) is not a shocking proposition to any of us.

And I have personally observed in scientific and medical fields, that since we have very few good Indian textbooks, and have to study so much literature and so many textbooks in English, that one cannot do with being zero in English. I see that the French, Japanese and Russian people do not depend on English books, and can study up to a very advanced level using books written in their own languages, so they do not NEED English as much as we do.

Although Hindi is our common national language, but English is also a common language that allows many Indians from different areas to communicate.
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[sabine]

Sure, both of you are right a French person can spend his entire life without having to refer to a foreign language, everything is translated. But that's only valid for someone who isn't in contact with the outside world, because whether we like it or not English is the international language.
As for starting early, it's obvious, the earlier you start the easier it is, and the more languages you speak, the easier it is to learn. Yet I've noticed that some of my students, from Portuguese origins for example, who have 2 native languages are doing quite well at Spanish but not at English, that's why i said we're not very good at languages, there must be something with the 'latin' gene

[Anju]

Interesting!!!

But here too some people do have a knack for learning new languages, and some people have lived all their lives in a state not really learning passably the local language. There must be a genetic factor of course - new language learning capability thing
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[sabine]

interesting article, thx Anju; it seems we're predestined to be quick learners or not.......

[Sourav]

interesting article Anju ... Hmmm ... I had a perception that it's relatively easier for us to be multilingual since our mother tongue is closer to sanskrit ...

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[Medusa]

Hello all,

well I decided to put my two peneth into this thread too. So here goes!
I'm afraid i have to disagree with you to a certain extent Sabine, regarding the whole 'learning by heart' method.
The education nationale needs a big shake up in its' teaching of foreign languages. The main problem is that students are taught words or phrases 'by heart' but the worrying point is that they are not taught HOW to use the language.
The amount of people, well established business men through to young students who I work with (i work in language instruction) have all had to learn parts of English by heart. It's great on one hand, they can all say "go, went, gone" or "fall, fell, fallen". However, how many of them can actually use these words in the right context? surprisingly few.
In 5ieme (school year) they have to learn their irregular preterits. Great, but after their test they never use them, and have often never spoken the word!
A language is a means to communicate, and in the same way a baby learns to speak, we as adults or children can learn a language by communicating and NOT by translation.

While in India (I was working on a pedagogical project) I trained teachers. Part of the process was to show them that you can teach a language to people soley by using the target language. They found it hard to believe, so I incorporated a 1h class of Spanish.

During this class, I didn't utter a single word of English or Hindi, ONLY spanish. And low and behold, everyone was able to introduce themselves, say where they came from, give their age etc. They had so much fun and realised that learning can be fun and not a chore.

I think you all mentioned above that there has been no need for the french to learn English. India has two national languages, Hindi and English, France only has one. In the same way that the British colonised India and left their imprint of the language, so did the French in Algeria and countless other countries. Those countries now share a similar link with India in such that they have two national languages, and thanks to their former coloniser, they have a language which is internationally recognised (see UN French and English) as being a key language.

Wow, I think I went off on a rant all by myself, but I think you'll get my point!
looking forward to reading your thoughts
Medusa

[sabine]

[Medusa]

Interesting cross reference Sabine!

Regarding the whole 'by heart' part, perhaps I didn't express myself well (and it's not a first!) but learning a word by heart only to be able to regurgitate it in a test isn't very useful, I think you'll agree with me here, it will only ever be passive knowledge, but if the student not only hears it but is able to use it in context themsleves it's surely going to stay in the memory, by usage rather than staring blankly at their work books repeating the word over and over again.

" though it is obvious the best way to learn a language is to be immersed in it, hence go to the country... "

Yes! Or failing that, BRIng the country to them, meaning immerse them in the language, imagining that once they step into the classroom they are in England or the USA or wherever, try to make the best of a classroom situation ofcourse!

"sure, but would you be able to go much further without asking them, "now you have to remember some rules"? "

Yes rules have to come into play of course, but the key difference here is that the rule is taught in the target language and not translated. Once the learner has the first building blocks of the language you can use these to build higher and explain.
I've had classes of immigrants none of whom shared the same native language, so impossible to translate or refer to another language for support, thus, when explaining rules such as third person "s" or whatever, it was done with examples andrepetition à l'oral.

I know that teaching a class of 30 kids who couldn't care less about English isn't easy. I found myself in ZEPs and SEGPAs which was challenging to say th eleast! I must admit I prefer working with business people or those who CHOOSE to study the language. It changes everything!

I'm passionate about language acquisition and pedagogy so sorry if I waffle on!


by the way... nice to "meet" you Sabine

[sabine]

[srgudd]

Late as this post may be, I agree with the need thing; the French don't need to use English (they communicate in French) outside of their educational system as much as we (Indians) do outside of ours.

I think the French have woken up to the fact that English is the world's Lingua Franca and are making the effort to learn partly evident from all the English language schools that are popping up in Paris.