Alice in Wonderland!…

I lost Alice for good this week… to the hands of one of those language schools that populate Ottawa! Do not worry, it has nothing to do with my teaching… because she will be tested for her oral skills the second week of October, her employer decided to send her on full time training starting today. I will certainly miss her!… But she promised she would keep me posted on how things are going for her.  I would love to be a bird and watch!… Although I do not worry about her “speaking” abilities: Alice loves talking!!!

Last week, she was quite down after having received her evaluation report (she had visited the school on the week before in order to be assessed)… although the report stated she was a strong B, it pointed out her weaknesses regarding syntax and verb conjugation (no surprise there! it takes years of practice to master French conjugation!) and proposed an elaborate customized program in order to optimize her chance of succeeding at the upcoming test. I could feel she was kind of anxious… something unusual for her! I did my best to comfort her… according to me, she is a very strong B and yes! she does need to polish her speech! Yet it can be fixed… there is no use for causing her trauma here!

I always wondered why both the Public Service Commission and the language schools made everything sound so dramatic! As if learning French was something deadly painful… Such approaches can only be deterrents to proper learning. Is it because civil servants on full time training, pulled away from their jobs and most of the time replaced, have to realize they will not be on vacations? Well… it is something they can figure out on their own pretty fast! It is useless to describe training as their worse nightmare come true! Trainees can be serious about learning and still have fun doing French…

Apparently, Alice would still have to learn a great deal about the PSC’s evaluation standards… why should she know about those theoretical standards (expressed in some jargon that nobody understands anyways) to begin with? All she has to learn is how to correct her more obvious mistakes so that she can pass her oral test! Also, she would lack the required rigor of a C level French speaker… A C level is still considered as functional as far as I know since the E level (bilingual) is still around. And I do not know any Francophones speaking with rigor!!! If such people exist, well… I am pretty sure no one gets their message clearly! Communication is about clarity, not about style… I spent quite a few hours with Alice, discussing various topics and she is a great communicator in spite of her mistakes!

I also learned that the mastering of communications strategies is a pre-requisite for the C level in oral interaction… Gee! I wonder what is left to learn to get an E then! Should I mention that many people do not master such strategies in their mother tongue? If some people are articulate, many more are not! And this will not change by simply switching language… Duh!… Since Alice is an articulate speaker in English, I am sure she will show the same skills in French… and if she ever cannot argue on several different views before supporting a specific opinion with as many nuances as possible, it will only be due to the fact that she is functional and not bilingual… Point à la ligne!

This morning, I had a 4 hour session with James… he had read on my References and Tools‘ page that there were three good French bookstores in Ottawa… he then said he had to buy a good pocket French dictionary for his daughter who is in French immersion. I recommended the Micro Robert Poche since it is the one used by students in French schools… He said he would call this afternoon to see if it were available in any of those bookstores… Then, I took this opportunity to improvise a short role play… I had to stop him because he was using complicated stylish sentences like “Veuillez m’en commander un…” I told him he needed to be direct otherwise the salesperson would automatically switch to English… what about “Pouvez-vous m’en commander un?”… Unfortunately, civil servants in French training are used to obsolete polite formulas that are not used in real life situations… I truly believe they should learn more about stuff they will need to maintain their language level and spend less time on florid stuff that nobody uses…

“Et Alice… on se calme le pompon, on respire par le nez et tout ira bien! J’ai confiance en toi et, grâce à ta personnalité et à ta spontanéité, tu sauras très bien te tirer d’affaires lors de ton test d’interaction orale!”