Of course, Krystal is a bit nervous thinking of her upcoming oral interaction interview… but she is focused for the time being and… rather calm. That might change next week though!

And my blog stats show that someone played my 105 flashcards on prepositions 11 times last night… I has to be Corey!… Who else?…

Today I found an interesting quizz for you to play… actually I had to think carefully before finding the correct answer… what we call in French «faux-amis» are all over the place and it is not always obvious to avoid using a word with its English meaning… I got the correct answers yet I have to admit I wasn’t sure about a couple of questions… I did what often my students do at the PSC written expression test: I guessed!

If, sometimes, I do have problems with some signs in French… there are some in English that are not the best either…

My Aussie friend Phil had a problem with this one… and I do agree with him… even if we know what it means, the wording is weird… what do you think?

While making up your mind on this one, click here to take the test!

Have fun!

Photo credit by Philip Lean, Canberra, Australia

Actually this story is almost unbelievable! Useless to say that it gives another dimension to the SLE testing process within the Public Service of Canada. Fasten your seat belts because you will be in shock after having read this!

At the very end of January, Luna had found my site when desperately looking for some help with her French. At the time, she had been scheduled to take both reading comprehension and written expression tests… and of course, she knew that eventually she would have to take the oral interaction exam as well. Although her French was rusty, she was not a beginner… all she needed was to refresh some grammar notions before writing.

Luna used to work for a Federal Department in Toronto but, when she moved to Montreal to follow her husband, she went on a year leave of absence until the end of August 2009. Of course no one working in Montreal has the luxury of not being able to communicate in French… and certainly not for her Department which is dealing with the public all the time. The fact that they did not send her on fulltime FSL training during that year is beyond me!… In Ottawa, as soon as the language requirements of a position change, the employee is forced to go in a boot camp for an extended period of time. I guess that, in Toronto, the mere idea of needing French seems more or less foolish… anyways… that option was not given to Luna when she moved. She was simply told that she would get back her position as soon as she would have her BBB and her deadline was the end of August 2009.

She applied for several positions in different departments this past year yet her ultimate goal was to get the same position she had in Toronto, but in Montreal. Or course, all the positions she ever applied for were either BBB (and higher) or French Essential. By the end of March, she had her level B in both reading comprehension and written expression. After two attempts at the oral test (one time cold turkey and another time after five hours of practice), she ended up with an A… although the second time, the assessor judged that she was good enough to be taken in the fourth part of the exam (which is for a level C). According to the SLE tests designed by the PPC so-called panel of experts, here is the description of what Luna can do in French:

Written comprehension in the second official language, proficiency level B

A person reading at this level can:

• grasp the main idea of most work-related texts
• identify specific details
• distinguish main from subsidiary ideas

A person at this level will have difficulty reading texts using complex grammar and less common vocabulary.

Written expression in the second official language, proficiency level B

A person writing at this level can:

• deal with explicit information on work-related topics since they have sufficient mastery of grammar and vocabulary

A person at this level will communicate the basic information, but the text will require some corrections in grammar and vocabulary as well as revision for style.

Oral proficiency in the second official language – level A

A person speaking at this level can:

• ask and answer simple questions
• give simple instructions
• give uncomplicated directions relating to routine work situations

People at this level make many errors and have deficiencies in grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary and fluency, which may interfere with the clarity of the message. Since they may have problems understanding speech spoken at a normal rate, repetitions by others may be required for them to understand what is being said. In other words, someone at this level can problably only exchange common courtesy formulas!

This is, roughly, Luna’ profile in French provided by the PSC…  Lately she has been offered several French essential positions (those are the equivalent of English essential positions where there are no language requirements regarding the second official language). Of course, she declined them all except for one… Since she had nothing to lose, why not give it a try?

Amazingly, all of those Departments had Luna’s language profile yet they did not hesitate to offer her French essential positions!… When she finally accepted to go for an interview, she was told she would have to take in-house exams to assess her French. I thought it was very interesting… apparently, in Montreal, they do not rely on any SLE testing results provided by the PSC when they need someone who will have to use French.

On Monday, courageous Luna went for those in-house tests where there were two people to evaluate her competencies in French… Afterwards she wrote me an email describing what she had gone through. The exam lasted about one hour and was divided in three parts. In the first part, she was given three questions and five minutes to prepare for one… she chose to talk about her last job as an acting manager and had to speak for five minutes. In the second part, she had to intepret a government document and speak about it (she thought this part was really tough!). In the third part, she was asked to write about a few topics… since she did not want to make too many mistakes, she decided to write only one paragraph.

Her overall impression was that this exam was hard for her. Yet she truly believes that it is probably easier for someone who is bilingual (like Alicia and Christie for instance) to get a French essential job than to get a C or an E rating via the official SLE process. Anyways… she ended her message saying that, according to what had happened during the exam, she knew that she could not do a French essential position. Of course, this impression was influenced by the outcome of her oral testing through the official channel.

Well… guess what?… Luna got the job!!!… Then… tell me… how come someone, with the language profile described above, has been selected to work in a French essential position in Montreal?… I do know the answer, do you?… It is because during this in-house interview, Luna has been evaluated upon her communication abilities in French rather than upon the number of «mots-liens» she used… or the number of subjunctive and conditional tenses she threw on the table… Quite a good performance for someone who was given an A three weeks ago!… She still wants her position back with her original Department, this is why she will move on trying and getting the B she needs before September. Nevertheless this experience was a real boost for her… now she knows that she is much better in French than what the letter on a sheet of paper says!

Therefore I want to reassure all of my students who went for the oral test and did not get the level they knew they should have received… As I wrote several times, the SLE tests do not reflect someone’s competencies in French. And… when the same Departments located in the province of Quebec judge necessary to have their own set of testing tools to evaluate candidates who will have to use French almost 100% of the time, it certainly proves the aberration of the current PSC SLE testing system.

“On se fait toujours des idées exagérées de ce qu’on ne connaît pas”

Albert Camus

That being said, I decided to do something quite unusual for me… I will let a student of French express her views on methods of learning French, although I’m “slightly” reluctant towards some sites claims… Yet I am open-minded and I think my readers have the right to voice their opinions. A couple of weeks ago, Emily e-mailed me asking me if I would let her write a guest post on my blog, based on her personal experience… at first, I was skeptical wondering why someone would want to share her views on my blog. Later on she sent me her text and I thought it would be a good idea to publish her article… In my book any personal learning experiences are good: what I do not tolerate is people claiming they can have you become “fluent” in a few weeks without training… yet if they advertise their products as complementary tools to language learning, I have no problems at all!

Learning French with No Classes and No Books

by Emily Jacobson

I have always wanted to learn to speak French, but the motivation to do the actual work was not forthcoming. I bought a few books, enrolled in a few classes, and bailed on both because they seemed so boring. Surely, I thought, there has to be a way to learn language in a relevant and interesting way. When my sister decided to get married in Paris, I finally had my motivation.

Not only did I have motivation, I had a deadline as well. In just four months, I would be standing in a French airport needing a taxi, and I didn’t want to be one of those obnoxious Americans screaming English in a country where English is a foreign language. I needed to learn French, ASAP.

The first step is to get a good French language program. If you are like me and just not into staring at a bunch of pages, get a computer program like Rosetta Stone. After about six weeks of very intensive studies, I had a basic grasp of French words, grammar, and syntax, as well as small mental lexicon of common phrases. Most people stop here, because they don’t realize the great resources that are available on the internet, but I was ready for a new challenge.

I am already an avid MySpace-r, so it made sense to look for a French version and start practicing my newfound skills. I made accounts on MySpace as well as on Facebook «en français». Before long, I was conversing with new French «amis» who had no problem helping me out with my language skills (and making fun of my grammar in the meantime).

I also searched for blogs to learn French and, with the aid of an online translator for terms I didn’t understand, began slogging through longer and more complicated passages of French writing. Before I left for Paris in May, I felt comfortable leaving comments on a few interesting blogs and having a short video chat with a cutie from a small town near Calais. When I finally stepped foot on French soil, I felt competent enough to stumble my way through everyday interactions, which is remarkable in just a few short months.

The moral of my story? If you want to learn French fluently and fast, look outside the book. In a world that connects by modems, you can learn a new language from native speakers while making friends in far flung places.

I chose to publish Emily’s post because of her true belief in the methods she used. She only wanted to talk about her own experience… Of course, trying and learning a language through arid grammars and textbooks can become boring quite fast… as for French classes, I know for a fact that many of them have the effect of dope on students… most of the time, they are not highly colourful! All depends on who is teaching and on the approach… Personally, I make sure that both my one-on-one and group classes are anything but boring! I make good use of my students’  life experience and I encourage creativity… I provide them with the essential exposure to the language and its culture so that they can apply their new knowledge in contexts… 

The way Emily learned the language basics worked for her because first, she was motivated and second, she spent lots of time on learning. Yet her purpose was to get by in daily simple situations and interactions… moreover, during a trip in France! Usually, people are very nice with their tourists and… very patient too! Here, in Canada, native French speakers are not very tolerant of Canadian Anglophones who can only get by in French… but unusually patient with Americans! Go figure why…

As I mentioned earlier, I have nothing against any tools that can be found on the net in order to help going through the tough process of learning a new language. And I am certainly in favour of getting on either Facebook or MySpace in French, make friends with native speakers and try to communicate with them (even better when there are a couple of cuties to chat with!). But it will never replace training! Language is much more than words and grammar… it is about the way messages are conveyed and processed… it is more cultural than anything else… Take athletes for instance: did you ever meet a gold medalist who never had a top notch trainer/coach?… Well… it is the same thing when it comes to learning a new language… without a trainer or a coach, it is almost impossible to achieve fluency… unless someone has a lifelong deadline to reach that level!

Back in September, I wrote a post on sites offering fluency in six or eight weeks… I would like to promise people who want to learn French that such a thing is attainable, unfortunately it would be a fraudulent statement… Even after having assessed my future students, although they are looking for specific answers, I cannot tell them how long it will take them to become fluent. Why? Because there are too many factors involved… learning a language is not a continuous ascending curve… there are regular periods of stagnation and even sometimes regression… a four week vacation can do noticeable damage! I can promise them one thing though: fluency and bilinguism will not happen overnight and… there will be no miracles either! It takes time… patience… motivation… willingness… effort… it is often painful yet, with the right trainer/coach, it can be the most enjoyable experience of a lifetime! As long as people who are using the tons of resources provided on the net are aware that they will not become fluent in French merely with those tools, I see no harm… maybe one day I will write a post with the real definition of the word fluency: it seems there are different interpretations out there… when, actually, there is only one!

 “Nos prêtres ne sont point ce qu’un vain peuple pense, notre crédulité fait toute leur science”

Voltaire

Special thanks to Emily Jacobson for her content submission application

A couple of months ago I joined Facebook after having received an invitation from my 11 year old niece… Over the years, I had been invited numerous times but  always had ignored those requests to sign up. Since I am a real sucker when anything involves my niece and cannot refuse her anything, I did join the wonderful world of FB… and I thought I could monitor who her friends were (being a real mother hen, I was kind of skeptical and truly believed she needed to be supervised… in a subtle way of course!)… It did not take long before her brother asked me to become his friend also… I was less concerned about him: he is going on 18 and, from what I see, Facebook is the new way for high schoolers (and mature adults!) to goof around… back in my days, we were doing it on the school grounds (which I think was much more fun since we were physically together!)… what makes me wonder… what do they do during recess in school now? Good question!…

Anyways, though I am not proud of being a Facebook member, I am… for better or worse! Besides my brother’s kids, I only have six friends… and I really do not intend to add more. I have to admit that I like FB for one thing: now that I am connected with my friends and family who live in Chicago, St.Maarten, Portland, Timmins and Senneterre ; we do not have to send each other pics… we only have to log in our FB account and we can see them all… But, other than that, I personally get no benefits from this social network.

Now that I tried to justify my move (did I convince any of you? )… I want to talk about Facebook French version…

A few days before Christmas, my FB account has been arbitrarily and automatically switched to the brand new French version (I am still searching for how to go back to English… and I think I can do it!)… Why? I only can assume that it was decided upon my name and country… I cannot fool anyone, my surname is really French! I guess that, without the Des, this change would have never occurred… because I would then have been Lyne Roberts… unless my first name would have still been questionable… Lynne or Lynn would have convinced the system I was genuinely anglophone! So… add up Canada to Lyne Des Roberts and you have a perfect match for your account to be translated!!!

I will have to ask my cousin Michelle Des Roberts who lives in Portland, Maine whether her account was turned into French or left alone… you see… Michelle does not speak French and barely understands it! At the beginning of the 20th Century, one of the Des Roberts‘ brothers emigrated to the States… there is now quite a large number of Des Roberts  mainly living in Boston, Portland and New Hampshire… and a few others can be found throughout the United States. If my generation and the ones before can still speak French, Michelle’s generation cannot! Yet, because she is located in the States, perhaps the system did not pick her name the way it did in my case.

Saturday, I logged in my account to have a closer look at Facebook French version… at first glance, it seemed okay!… well… only okay!!! Nothing to brag about, that is for sure! As for the IT terminology itself, it is what is used worldwide… not great, but not incorrect either! It is when I started to read the translated fucntions that I realized how bad it was!

I would not be surprised to hear that it went through Google Free Translator (my favourite!)… when a word (or expression) is not translated literaly, it stays in English!… Therefore you have things like these: envoyer un poke à… (send a poke to)… what, in the name of God, is un poke? Poke in French is une poussée, un coup de coude or un coup du bout du doigt… certainly not un poke!!!… marquer cette photo (tag this photo) and John Doe doit approuver ce marquage… What in the hell?

It is impossible for me to give you an exhaustive list of all the flaws because this post would become a book! Here are a few good ones though:

• Se souvenir de moi (remember me)… Only people se souviennent, not computers!
• Informations (information)… What about renseignements? Les informations, in French,  are the news!
• Plus de publicités (more ads)… Sorry but we cannot count publicité in French… and if we want to, we use annonces instead!
• Notifications (notifications)… This is not a word in French! What about using the word messages? Too simple perhaps…
• Est devenu(e) fan de (became a fan of)… I am now speechless!
• Lycée (high school)… My French version of FB is the Canadian one (so I was notified!)… Last time I checked, we still did not have lycées around here! We only have old plain écoles secondaires!

I will never say this often enough: translation is not the mere process of checking words in an English-French dictionary! There are nuances… cultural differences… different humor… what makes me laugh in English rarely makes me laugh once it is translated in French! And vice-versa… Comical movies in English are not funny at all in their French version!

Translating thoughts and ideas in another language takes lots of imagination… and, if poking someone in English does mean something, it does not in French… therefore, sit down and find something else that will ring a bell for Francophones! Of course, it will cost more $$$… because this type of translators do not bill by the word count!…

One would think that a huge corporation such as Facebook would pay more attention to the translation of its site… was it left to the users? If so, I am not surprised with the results… on the other hand, if professionals handled this task… well… they suck big time!

As for me, I will click on the button English US (hopefully it will work!) so I will return to a language I do understand: Plain English!!!

“I do not avoid confusion… I create it!”

Confucius 

What bugs me the most is that it is always a travail fait à moitié… I always end up starting from the beginning, ignoring messages letting me know that I can press 9 to get the service in French. Therefore I am always wasting my time… and probably losing my call priority!

Since I have been living in Ontario, there are only two places I am sure to get a real service in my mother tongue: Revenue Canada (of course most of their offices are located in Shawinigan, QC) and Bell Sympatico… other than that, I was never successful at getting the service they are indeed offering.

I remember, back in 1999, when I transferred my business in Ontario… At the time I did not know if the PST also applied on services, the way it did in Québec. I had called Revenue Ontario to get some information… of course, I had pressed 9 for the service in French. After having waited more than 30 minutes on the line, someone had finally picked up the phone… I can still picture myself telling my story! Actually I had been speaking to a wall… why? Because after a couple of minutes, the lady had cut me off saying she was not able to speak French!… Apparently, there was nobody around at that time to take calls in French… Duh! Okay… no big deal! I am able to speak English!… But… what about those who cannot?

Then, around the same time, I had had to get my Ontario driver license and plates… Only the central bureau on Wakley is connected to an inter-provincial network: useless to say that it is always very busy! If you do not get there before 8 am, chances are you will spend the day waiting (it is actually as bad as a hospital ER). When I had been offered the service in French, I had thought it would be rather quick… indeed, the guy had given me #4… Woo hoo! He had also aked me if I wanted the forms in English or French… “In French of course!”… “Sorry Ma’am, but we don’t carry them!”… “Oh!… so, why did you give me such an option?”… “Because, Ma’am, I have no other choices… it’s our policies!”… Great! Anyways… live with it or die!

I had taken a seat… 10 minutes… 20 minutes… 30 minutes… 40 minutes… 50 minutes… and not one single number for service in French had been called! To make a story short, after inquiries, I was told that the French-speaking employee had called in sick that morning!

Some ten years later, one would think that things somewhat improved… ne serait-ce qu’un peu! Unfortunately, my latest experience told me that Ontario and Ottawa still have a long way to go before they can serve their francophone residents!

Friday, at 3:10 pm, I was booked for a routine test at The Ottawa Hospital… Thursday morning, I decided to postpone it to the end of January. With the OC Transpo strike and the rush hour traffic, I thought I would probably be sitting in my car for hours. There was a number to call on the letter I had received (which was written both in perfect English and French) where it was possible to leave a message…

Of course, I had the option to hear the menu and leave my message in French by pressing 9. Why not?… I was given two choices : “Pour joindre le département de tomographie axiale, appuyez sur le 1… pour joindre le département d’imagerie à résonance magnétique, appuyez sur le 2…” Well… I was not booked either for a CAT SCAN or a MRI! I was expecting many more options on the menu… Nope! What was I supposed to do? Leave a message for a department where I had no appointment? Anyone hearing my name would delete my message because I was not on their appointment list…

I re-dialed the number and ignored the invitation to get the menu in French this time… Surprise! I was given more than eight options in English versus two in French! And, #5 was exactly the department I was looking for… a little annoyed I chose to leave my message in French. I admit it was not very nice of me… because I have to say that The Ottawa Hospital staff is great and they do whatever they can to accomodate you. Yet, I could not help it!… Ten minutes later, a woman struggling with French called me back… then I decided to take her out of her misery right away by switching to English (to her great relief), it was not her fault after all! She was very nice and she gave me the day and the time I asked for…

I certainly do not intend to attack these people… I know they do their best with what they have! The problem is that all those places do not have enough bilingual employees on the front line! Yet they insist on offering their clientele service in French when they actually cannot!… All it does is to waste my time and irritate me. I am bilingual and, although there are times I would prefer to express myself in French, I do not make a fuss if no one can speak my language… I live in an alledged bilingual country, but I know better!… Outside Québec, I cannot expect too much… It was my decision ten years ago to move to Ontario: nobody forced me… and even if I have the right to be served in French on paper, reality is quite different. Actually I do not mind…

But I do mind when I am told I can get such service and, then, I have to repeat the process in English because I hit a dead-end in French… After a while, it becomes very frustrating. In other words, DO NOT offer me a service you cannot deliver!… Or you do it properly all the way… or you do not! If I am given the choice between bad service in French or good service in English, I will not hesitate one second!… It is when being bilingual comes very handy!

“Sur le champ des principes, il n’y a pas de place pour la négociation.”

Lucien Bouchard

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