That being said, I finally heard from Christie who got her results earlier this week. She got a B… I am sure she was very close to the C otherwise her results would have come in the day after her oral test. It took six days!… I guess someone listened to her tape more than once… before making their final decision. It is great that she got the required level for her job position, yet I know that she is a C… I often wonder if assessors are influenced by the actual level people are seeking. I have seen numerous candidates being assessed for a B level and then be taken in the fourth part of the test… on the other hand, none ever received a C… My question is: why?… If they were strong enough to be taken in the last part of the interview (which is for the C level), why do they always end up with a B?… In a way I think it is truly unfair to them… Some people will get a B while they are border line with the A and others will get a B rating as well while they are very close to the C (if not really a C!)… We can argue with the nonsense of both the written expression and the reading comprehension tests… yet they come with a score and people know if they are a weak B or a strong B… With the oral evaluation, no one has the means to know whether their performance was weak or strong. Perhaps it is time to introduce the B-, B and B+ notion!… Something that is in force in the school system! Oh well… anything that would make sense does not seem to be appreciated by the Public Service Commission of Canada. NEVERTHELESS…

Congratulations Christie!

Today I saw Marina for the last time before her oral interview in English next Monday. She was confident and calm… I am sure that, this time, she will go there and get her C…  I will certainly be thinking of her and sending her positive vibes…

Good Luck Marina!

Now that I gave you an update on the latest developments, I would like to address a topic that kind of heated up a forum this week. I think that the individual who, a few days ago, started this thread only wished to provoke an interesting discussion among teachers and education professionals. I actually read all of the comments, but I did not want to get involved by giving my opinion… at some point I felt that the author of the thread and another person were in an open war. I have no problems with people voicing their opinions yet I do believe that people must remain civilized by not attacking each other. Personally I do have strong opinions and I am not afraid of publishing them… but I am always careful not to attack people personally… of course I do question (and yes sometimes attack) systems that seem obsolete or crooked…  and I firmly believe that people like me are somewhat needed to uncover what is wrong with those systems. I am fully aware that I cannot change them… yet I like to picture myself as an eye opener. I consider that people need to know about systems flaws… if ever we want to see change happen, we first have to be informed.

De retour à mes moutons… je digresse ce soir!… Without getting too deep in the topic that was discussed, I will only say that it was about some language teaching method used in some organization in some foreign country. Apparently it would be a method that denies a couple of myths regarding the way adults learn a language… Adults cannot learn a language the way children do was among those myths (and the one that provoked quite a war). I am not an expert therefore I do not know whether adults can or cannot learn a language like children do… however I can state that adults do not learn the way children do… I do not think it is a matter of being able or unable, it is only a matter of how they learn. I do not care about researches and theories, I have seen enough adults (young and older) in my practice to see the differences. If adults and kids learned the same way, there would not be a distinction between pedagogy and andragogy…

This revolutionary method apparently works very well… once again I am not here to confirm or infirm that… I am no expert! BUT… I am incredibly skeptical… adults would learn a foreign language only by listening: for 800 hours, they would be compelled to silence… it would be similar to what infants go through before they can speak. Well… kids start speaking when they know how to make sounds other than cries and laughters… and even when they are only a few months old, they really want to form sounds (except that they cannot)… the minute they can articulate and produce sounds that are words, no one can stop them right? I can only imagine a group of adults not allowed to speak for almost seven months (assuming they are on full-time training)!… I am not here to argue about the results: apparently people learn how to speak the language this way!… It is probably some kind of brainwash… yet it is absolutely not the way children learn how to speak! Kids babble and talk all the time… surrounded by adults who correct them on a regular basis…

In a way I think it is kind of funny… although my students are reluctant to speak when they are beginners (it is more a matter of pride than anything else), if one day I would tell them that it is okay to not speak for the next 800 hours, I believe it would actually give them the little push they need to jump in the water and start talking… What adult would accept to keep silent for months?… maybe in some other cultures… but certainly not here! And… yes I do disagree with such method! Indeed I do disagree with much less drastic methods such as the ones used in the boot camps around here… Learning a language is about being allowed to express oneself, to make mistakes, to screw up tenses and having fun!

Règlements auxquels devront se soumettre ceux qui entreront céans:

6.

 Ils discuteront sans colère ni passion

10.

Toute dispute devra rester à l’abri  des indiscrets, et ce qui entrera dans une oreille devra sortir par l’autre avant de quitter les lieux

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

Before anything else, I want to let you know that Saul got his oral evaluation results this morning: he achieved his C level! He will start his new job with the government on April the 1st… I am so thrilled! I had pushed him to his limits and I had been tough… but it was well worth it!

Congratulations Saul!

Besides teaching public servants (or public servants to be), I started looking into offering online French courses (beginner, intermediate and advanced levels) to regular people in class format so that they can share the costs… I think I do need to teach people for other reasons than merely passing tests. I have been working with public servants for many years and I believe a change of scenery will be beneficial, although I have no intent to give up what I do with government’s employees and future employees. Yet I think I do need to bring some balance in my practice… before I really get fed up! Teaching to the tests can become very boring after a while… and I owe all of my trainees my best. And there is nothing like doing something totally different to stay fresh!…

Last Sunday I gave a free session to a group of six people during which I outlined an upcoming true beginner’s class series… Actually I wanted to test the water and the Adobe Acrobat Pro Connect platform at the same time. One-on-one teaching online is quite easy… it can be done via Skype in a very simple and efficient way. But when you want to teach groups (even small), you need more features such as whiteboards, file sharing function, slide show presentations, note emailing, etc.

Adobe provides a platform that can be used as a virtual classroom. I have to say that it is great! I had had a couple of tutorials over the preceeding weeks and I had also had the opportunity of getting some time on my own to test it, play with all the available functions and have a “feel” of this new environment. Therefore, when I got there on Sunday, I felt quite comfortable… but, in case I would experience some technical bugs, I had asked Marcus to be there as my backup. When I entered the virtual classroom, I was eager to start and use it with a “real” audience.

I had set Marcus as a host so he could have access to all the functions in case of bugs. Since we were alone for 20 minutes, he had turned on both his camera and microphone… we talked while waiting for people. The first to arrive was Susan (yes yes, my Susan from real life!)…  She could see and hear us, but we could neither see nor hear her because she was set as a participant… all she was able to do was “talking” to us through the chat function. When other people started to arrive, Marcus turned off both his camera and mic… suddenly I was left alone! I mean… I was not really alone since there were six other people in the classroom with me, BUT I could only see and hear myself!… Have you ever been sitting in front of your computer talking to it? Well… try it! You will then feel so weird!

And the most annoying thing was the chat function… since people do not have access to a mic, they write their questions… Imagine you are talking and suddenly a text line pops up before your very eyes! Useless to say that it is very distracting and all it does is that you lose your train of thoughts… At one point I had to tell everyone to keep their questions for the end…

Bottom line, I felt like a lecturer with no audience! Or even worse, like a comedian on stage with people who did not react to her jokes!… SILENCE everywhere!… Probably the longest 60 minutes of my life!!! Indeed I could not wait to get out of there! Susan, this morning, told me it did not show on their end how ackward I felt… yet she knows me and she thought I was not on my usual grounds. I really do need to interact with my students! I am not the type who speaks all the time and does not allow her trainees to speak, laugh and interrupt.

I had been told that the best way to teach on this platform was to keep everyone as participant… it means they do not see any buttons and they do not even have control on their cameras and microphones. Only the host can grant them such privileges… how? by setting them as presenters…  I can easily understand that, when there are 99 attendees, not setting them as participants would be risky! If someone ever clicks on a button, it affects layouts and stuff that everybody can see!… And apparently some people are not very disciplined and therefore it is tough to keep control on the class.

Well… I taught in penitentiaries where I had 78 inmates under my supervision… I do believe I can control an audience of 4 or 6 people quite easily! I can do it in real life, why would it be different in a virtual classroom? I have been teaching for 25 years… I think I can allow my students to have fun and enjoy their learning journey without losing control on the bonne marche of my classes.

On March 8, I will have a free assessment session to evaluate people who want to participate in a series of intermediate French classes… There will be six people and, this time, I will set them as presenters! After all, they are adults and I doubt anyone will start playing with buttons just for the fun of messing things up! Also with such a small group, I doubt we will experience widthband problems… All I want is a “real” virtual classroom! And I know I can achieve it… trust me, I will! Stay tuned because I will keep you posted…

“Les miroirs feraient bien de réfléchir un peu avant de renvoyer les images.”

Jean Cocteau

I have been flooded with last minute information and training requests from across Canada lately! People who appear to be anxious, if not panicking! It looks like they suddenly realized that their tests were coming up and they feel they are not prepared enough. Unless someone is fluent in the second language, no one can show up cold turkey for any of the PSC three SLE tests!… The ones who tried and failed came out of this experience kind of devastated. What is even worse is that they have no clue regarding the reasons why they did not obtain their required levels. Actually it could be because of anything: nervousness, lack of grammar knowledge, poor syntax, limited vocabulary… name it!

I will sound like someone who is prieching for her parish, yet it is only reality… no one can show up for those tests without prior professional help and guidance. Miracles, unfortunately, do not happen!… If pure luck can play in someone’s favour regarding the reading comprehension and written expression tests, it is non applicable when it comes to the oral interview. One would wish though!…

For instance, take Luna’s case… she did not pass her B the first time she took her written expression test… then she found me through her Google search, but only a couple of days before her second attempt. She was already in a state of panic when she contacted me… Having no other choice left, I basically dumped everything I was able to think of in her yard: grammar and syntax notions, strategies, government jargon, etc.

Of course, she did not have enough time to digest all this!… and on top, she was a boule de nerfs the day she wrote her exam. Therefore she missed her B by four answers… She is now scheduled to take it again in March. This time, we will work on a training plan that will target her weaknesses… and we will work with the aim of achieving a C so that she will obtain a B for sure! Sometimes my students complain about the fact I raise the bar too high… I keep reminding them that, if they can give me what I ask from them in class, they will perform at their tests because it will feel so much easier.

As for Saul in Winnipeg… he had obtained his required levels (he even scored higher on one) in both reading and writing quite easily. It is when he came across the content of the oral examination that he became nervous… he was not sure at all that he could pass this one without help! He contacted me at the end of January, I assessed him on January 27 and I started working with him on the 28…

We had planned to have 6 one hour sessions together… but last Friday, he asked for one more… He felt he needed that extra hour with me before his test. After our first interview simulation, he asked me if he was a C… although he could express himself naturally in French, because of annoying systematic mistakes and the use of English and slang words, I told him he was a B that evening… I remembered his face on the screen: it had just deflated like a balloon! On the other hand, I told him that his mistakes were not something we could not fix rapidly given he would really work hard.

During these seven sessions with me, Saul was amazing! He always made sure to correct anything I had pointed out the day before… it was such a delight to see him getting better and better: in such a short period of time, he managed to refine and polish his French without losing his natural flow… I did not even waste one minute on the mots-liens because, in my book, they are totally useless (I do believe students are provided with such words because they are not advanced enough to link their sentence clauses the way Francophones do! which was not Saul’s case!)… I rather focused on preposition correct use and verb tenses…

Last night I skyped him… I was so eager to hear about his interview (which had taken place at 10:00 am)!… I guess I was also quite nervous because I had accidently set my headset to mute!!! Finally, when I stopped and took a deep breath, I found out what the problem was and then we were able to chat!

Saul was shining! He said it had gone very well… his examiner was a young woman in Montreal (phone interview). He had not missed one question… he had had no problems at all to understand everything… he told me the tapes had been ridiculously easy compared to the ones I had prepared for our simulations… the three topics for his 2-3 minute presentation had not triggered any particular interest yet he had managed to talk and answer the related questions… and the last part (the thèse/anti-thèse long tape) had been a piece of cake for him! At the end of the interview he had asked his assessor (as a joke of course) if he had passed… the answer was “I can’t tell you even if I’d like to… but all I can tell is… don’t worry!”

Yet we will have to wait for his results since his contact, the person who will get the answer first and forward it to him, is vacationing in Mexico this week! Kind of a bummer, is it not? But… I am truly confident that he made it!

Hopefully all of my students (and former ones) will read this post carefully… especially Alice who is going through crisis right now! I do think they can learn from Saul’s experience… he did spoke naturally like native French speakers do… no complicated sentences… no mots-liens (those only make a speech kind of foggy!)… no systematic rewind the tape to correct insignificant mistakes…

I think I saved another one!… What a relief when it is over!… Yet, it does not last long because there is always someone else to help… and the waiting list is quite long!

Since I need to clear my mind sometimes… I am now working on a series of classes for true beginners that will be given online in a virtual classroom… classes for people who only want to learn French for their enjoyment and personal growth… I think it will be a nice break, away from the fake setting imposed by the PSC… I am sure these new classes will provide me with many good stories to write about. Stay tuned!…

“Je ne repars pas à zéro, je repars toujours plus outillé et plus sage que je ne l’étais…”

Thursday January 15, 2009 was one of those days that affected the whole Ottawa population… None of us was spared with a series of events that more or less ruined our entire day. Some went through more pain than others yet we all suffered from this chaotic day.

For the past 40 days, bus drivers at the Public Transit Commission (OC Transpo) have been on strike… consequently, there are many more drivers on the roads and I would say that the regular public transit users are not the best drivers! Since they do not drive every day, especially in the winter, their driving skills and reflexes are not acute enough to face a herd of well trained, hardened, impatient and aggressive drivers (like me for instance!). Top that with bad weather conditions and you have the perfect mix to eventually end up in a messy situation.

The day before, we had had mild temperatures and a dust of fluffy snow (about two centimetres, nothing to worry about). In the evening though, very strong North East winds had lowered the temperatures to -39° Celsius in a matter of minutes… Here we call this phenomenon «flash deep freeze»! Whatever had been left on the roads instantly froze and whatever the amount of salt they spreaded all over the city, this measure did not have any effect on black ice. What looked like dry asphalt was indeed sheer ice!… And although our cars are equipped with snow tires, those are useless on ice! The only way we can avoid sliding, ending up in a ditch or crashing into another vehicle is to slow down!!! Also with such low temperatures, people who do not have regular maintenance done on their cars usually see the engine die the minute they stop at a red light.

I think you now have a real good picture of what Ottawa Thursday was like: an unusual number of stuck cars all over the place and more than 250 accidents! Most of them having occurred on highway access or exit ramps! To give you a more accurate image, it took me almost 2.5 hours to cover an 8 km distance that morning. I actually was on the verge of getting out of my car and scream at the top of my lungs!… I did not though!

Guess what?… James had an appointment to be assessed on his oral skills in French at 10 a.m. (originally it had been scheduled at 9:30, this change created  some inconvenience but it was bearable) on that horrific day! Since his employer pays taxi fares only for departure from the office, he had to go there and then take a cab. Of course he was nervous and anxious… as anyone who is going to be tested. Therefore an ideal environment certainly contributes to relax a bit… But, Thursday morning, it was unthinkable!

To make sure he would get there on time, James took a cab at 8 o’clock (with the unusual number of cars on the roads, we never know how long a normal 10 minute ride will take). Of course, that particular chaotic morning, it took him one hour and 40 minutes! I can just imagine how he felt, sitting in the back of the car, wondering whether he would make it on time or not! Not a relaxing atmosphere indeed!…

This time he has been assessed by one of his own Department’s examiners… it was decided, some time in November 2008, that their employees would no longer go to the downtown central assessment location. When he finally got there and found the floor he had to go to, he had to ask around because it looked like any other  regular office floors with no front desk to welcome candidates… He was then led to a cubicule with a laser printer and parked there until 10:30… How can someone concentrate and relax when a printer is continuously running beside you? And… when you think everyone has forgotten about you?

When his examiner finally came to get him, James could see how cranky he was! He had been stuck in the traffic for hours and he was in a real bad mood: this delay had caused a backlog in his testing schedule and he had to rush the process… because he probably did not want to work overtime! I have no idea how many candidates an assessor sees in one day but my guess is that quite a few were jerked around and bullied that day! 

I was having a class with Seema when he finally returned to the office a little before noon… It did not take me long to realize he had done miserably during his interview… Who would not have?

Be objective at assessing someone’s oral skills is already a difficult task to achieve in an ideal environment… and impossible when you are upset or cranky! Consequently, under such extraordinary circumstances, all interviews should have been cancelled that day… I cannot imagine a neurosurgeon performing surgery under such stress (I do think the patient’s life would be seriously endangered!)…

As for the testing location… when decision was made to have all this Deparment’s employees tested in that building, a comfortable venue should have been arranged to accommodate the purpose and the candidates themselves…  Why do I have the feeling that any new change does only aggravate the whole process? Unfortunately, failing at the test will always be put on the candidates’ account… Neither the PSC, the PPC or the Departments will be at fault!… It is truly pathetic… «lamentable» quoi!

Since living in the past is not an option, on Friday, the Club français went to a Chinese restaurant to have a great time and forget about any predicament we had been in the day before… We wanted to say goodbye and wish good luck to Seema who will be in full-time training at a boot camp until the end of September 2009. Life goes on… with its ups and downs… No one can rewind the tape and change anything that happened on that dark Thusday morning in the NCR…

La Dame dragon, Frédéric, Susan et Jessica

Seema in an optimistic mood! and... Frédéric amusing the gallery!

Fortune cookie time! Frédéric goofing around!

Frédéric! Un peu de sérieux pour la photo!!!

Voilà... c'est beaucoup mieux! Merci Frédéric!!!

 Seema and James… I will miss you folks!!!

“En essayant continuellement on finit par réussir. Donc: plus ça rate, plus on a de chance que ça marche!”

Jacques Rouxel