La France?

I'm tired of being dumb. I'm tired of belonging to a nation of half-wits who could barely find continential Europe on the map, let alone speak any of its languages.

I spent five years - five whole years - studying French. If I live to sixty that will hav been ... 6% of my life! and what did I learn? Nothing. Zit. Ziltch. Not a word or a phrase.

I want those five years back. I wasn't an overally keen high school student but I had the fortune to come from the correct side of town to ensure spectacularly average grades. Except in French. After three miserable and eventless years at the hands of a greasy and unsmiling French-Canadian the school authorities determined, in their infinite wisdom, to stick me in the 'Not a chance' group. This entitled me to a further two years at the hands of the same teacher. I think the purpose of this group wasn't so much to give us the extra support we required but more to contain us. It was a callous act of damage control. So long as they knew where we were they could safely divert resources and teachers to those that did stand a chance, safe in the knowledge out intelectual posion would not spred to the pretty young children of professionals.

Normally, as with most things, there is a 'right to good teaching' versus a 'responsibility to learn' argument that could be made. But I say normally, because this is an exception. At no point were we ever at fault. The system had it on for us from the start. Our language difficulties rest entirely with the failure of our teachers. I don't know if they were underpaid, overworked or just plain incompetent. But I'm inclined to opt for the latter.

No wonder British students are the worse in Europe. In my personal experience even (shock horro) the Americans are light years ahead of us when it comes to language skills. You could counter with some sort 'but we're the dominant culture' - 'English is an international language' arugment and would in part be right. We do have less of an incentive to learn a foreign language than other European nations, yet that doesn't excuse the dire state of our language departments.

If nothing else the Foreign Office should step in, considering it a matter of national importance that British citizens stop embarrasing themselves abroad. So I, in my own finitie wisdom, propose a mini manifesto to rectify things. These things occured to me at the time these crimes occured but it was my own failing that I refused to act.

Firstly, before you begin teaching us French - teach us English. You can't brandish uncomfortable notions like 'adverb' and 'reflexive pronoun' around if we couldn't even idenify these features in our own language.

Secondly don't just teach the French language. Teach French culture. Get us familiar with the countries geography and history. Get us eathing their food, watching their sports and celebrating their holidays. Hire cute French girls (and guys) to sit in on class. Do something to get our attention. Make us want to learn. Anything to give us an idea of what 'France' actually is and why we should bother with it.

Thirdly, and this might cause a few frowns, don't start by throwing us into the deep end with sentance structure and gender prefixes. Teach 'Tourist French' first. Give us the basic tool kit to survive first contact. Get us ordering beers and asking them to turn over to the Premiership. Once through the front door we will naturally want to know more.

This is what languages should be like, let's get back to basics. Give us a reason to learn. Does this not sound sensible? Or am I just still bitter at being lumped in with the 'learning difficulties' kids.

French students of the world unite!