CONSIDERING that many youngsters still struggle to master a language after six years of middle school instruction, French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently unveiled an “emergency plan” for teaching foreign languages in the nation’s schools, with the lofty idea that “all high school students must become bilingual, and some should be trilingual.” After the announcement, many 18-to-25-year-olds began considering improving their language proficiency, especially in English, before earning their baccalaureate degree and entering the job market, according to TIME magazine.
“A lot of things in France have changed under globalization to keep us competitive, but teaching English has remained old-fashioned and inefficient,” says Julien Petitpas, one of several young adults who meet for 12 hours a week to improve their English at the Berlitz language school near the Paris Opera. “In school it’s all structure, grammar and getting it right on paper and in your head before you ever speak — and even then, you don’t do much of that. It just doesn’t work.”
To turn the situation around, Sarkozy has proposed exposing students to more native-speaking English instructors, increasing contacts between French and foreign schools, and shifting the focus in schools from written foreign-language instruction to more practical oral drills.
Getting teachers in France’s rigid education system to change their ways and encourage students to speak more in foreign-language classes will be one challenge to overcome. Another is confronting the contradiction that comes with promoting foreign-language study among students and continuing France’s long-standing policies aimed at protecting and promoting the use of the French language at home. “I think a lot of French people are hesitant to speak another language at what could be considered the expense of French,” says Karin Hull, who has taught English at Berlitz language school for four years. “The legacy of cultural protectionism is one factor, and the way foreign languages are taught in school is another. Students pass language exams only to discover that they can’t really speak (the language).”
Shifting the focus of foreign-language study from written to oral instruction is the only way of making classes more practical. Berlitz’s First Jobs, a course where students are taught business and financial English vocabulary and are given help improving their resumes and job-interviewing skills in English, is becoming more popular with those who want to improve their English as part of many things they’ll need in their career. Although becoming an Anglophone isn’t cheap — students generally pay up to $6,000 annually to master a language — that’s not stopping them from signing up. Only time will tell if future French students will start getting this type of practical training for free at school or whether they’ll have to keep paying for it once they graduate.
