In response to If This Is French, Then What Did I Learn in School?

I feel that Duràn hit the nail on the head in his questioning why we learn something already obsolete in foreign language classrooms. He tells it like it is, and gives examples comparing and contrasting what one learns in a French classroom and what one should learn in a French Classroom.

I feel that Duràn hit the nail on the head in his questioning why we learn something already obsolete in foreign language classrooms. He tells it like it is, and gives examples comparing and contrasting what one learns in a French classroom and what one should learn in a French Classroom.

I agree that the bases have not changed nor has the need for the proper syntax for writing academically in the new target language. I am not petitioning that we stop teaching the proper way to write or speak, but merely incorporate the changes in the language into the class as well.

Step out into the real world and you will quickly find that you are unprepared to get anywhere other than la sale de bain or somewhere elementary like that, and you would most likely find that you couldn’t comprehend the answer because of unfamiliar responses. When learning a foreign language you have to understand that “ça va” is not the only way to say “How is it going?”

Step out into the real world and you will quickly find that you are unprepared to get anywhere other than la sale de bain or somewhere elementary like that, and you would most likely find that you couldn’t comprehend the answer because of unfamiliar responses. When learning a foreign language you have to understand that “ça va” is not the only way to say “How is it going?”

Est-ce que:

Est-ce que je vais aller au cinéma ce soir?

NOTE : Never taught in a classroom that I have seen is the fact that in common use Est-ce que, is only used with “I” as a question or “Je.”
Inversion:

Sais-tu le professer de biologie?

NOTE : This is the most common used but what is not taught is how the inversion can be used multiple places in the sentence.

Intonation:

Tu veux aller avec moi chez mi-mi?
NOTE : You just use voice inflection to ask the question as it is syntactically like a statement.

There are just so much more and so many exceptions in everyday use. When you hear a native speaker and they use the inversion somewhere else in the sentence it is easily confused. Also they do not follow the script of questions and answers laid out nicely for you in the text book.

Basically, I want to set up my own curriculum teaching the basics and all the major rules but incorporate the new French into it. Also using multimedia would allow me to keep up with the times teaching commonly used slang and words that wouldn’t find themselves past the old gray haired man editing the French books.