#67382 - French fluency

[Katya]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/67382/

I don't have much to say about this beyond what I said in my comment, but I did have to laugh at this guy (?) assuming he would be a superior French student at BYU just because he'd served a French-speaking mission.

[NerdGirl]

I took French 202 my last semester at BYU when I was trying to fill up 12 credits worth of classes to keep myself legal as an international student. 202 was where the placement test put me after the typical 8 or whatever years of French I did in school as a Canadian. It was a fun time, but those French majors were definitely a lot better at the language than I was. Anyway, I'm saying all of this to say that our prof was always very disdainful of RMs who come back from French speaking missions thinking they're fluent and he said that they do know a lot of vocabulary but their grammar is usually pretty bad.

[Genuine Article]

When I took the French placement test it told me I should be in 201, which I knew after three minutes of class was a huge mistake. In my case my reading comprehension and writing skills were good, but I was terrible at actually speaking and understanding French, which the test didn't take into account at all.

[Fredjikrang]

I'm going to chime in on a remotely related note. Going foreign speaking can help a lot. In my Spanish class the people who had returned from missions typically did much better. I mean, even I did pretty well, and I basically didn't study at all! But I think that the biggest difference was in terms of speaking ability and speed in sentence construction. In grammar, the difference typically wasn't too big, with a couple exceptions.

[Portia]

Thank you for saying this! As an 18-year-old in 321 who had taken AP French Literature, I was sometimes surprised by basic writing errors (et vs est, subject/verb agreement, imperfect versus composed past) exhibited by my fellows, overwhelmingly RRMs. Credit where credit is due: their oral skills were superior and it took a few semesters for my spoken French to match their level. But the praxis of research, editing, appreciating French literature, dotting every i and accenting every e, is simply not something that a proselyting person had the inclination or time to worry about. Academic study of French is just as legitimate a backgrouond for someone in this program (and it's not like French is some ueber-obscure langauge, like Faroese or Cambodian, that no US high school or other universities offer). Pre-reqs are there for a reason, and I think it would have behooved me to take all the core first before delving into the electives. If he takes the course from Mme Thompson, I would be interested to hear an update (of the unexpected difficulty of atttaining his A!)

[Digit]

I'm reminded of something I heard before about a new guy meaning to say "bendicez les aliments" saying instead "blessez les Alemans"

[Katya]

I'm going to chime in on a remotely related note. Going foreign speaking can help a lot. In my Spanish class the people who had returned from missions typically did much better. I mean, even I did pretty well, and I basically didn't study at all! But I think that the biggest difference was in terms of speaking ability and speed in sentence construction. In grammar, the difference typically wasn't too big, with a couple exceptions.

If you take the two people with the same language background and give one two years of immersion experience, that person will obviously have an advantage. However, immersion experience doesn't substitute for years spend studying the grammar, which may be where some of the other students are coming from. (Also, I wonder if it makes a difference that Spanish orthography is much more phonetic than French is. In a language where "ai," "aie," "aies," "ait," "es," "est," and "et" are all basically homophones, anyone who has only learned the language orally is going to have a hard time learning to spell correctly.)

[Katya]

I'm reminded of something I heard before about a new guy meaning to say "bendicez les aliments" saying instead "blessez les Alemans"

Oh, I heard a story along those lines from Mme. Thompson, although I'm sure it's a mistake that's been made multiple times. (Non-French speakers: It's the difference between "bless the food" and "hurt the Germans.")

[Fredjikrang]

(Also, I wonder if it makes a difference that Spanish orthography is much more phonetic than French is. In a language where "ai," "aie," "aies," "ait," "es," "est," and "et" are all basically homophones, anyone who has only learned the language orally is going to have a hard time learning to spell correctly.)

True. That is something that I hated in my brief stint with French.

[Katya]

(Also, I wonder if it makes a difference that Spanish orthography is much more phonetic than French is. In a language where "ai," "aie," "aies," "ait," "es," "est," and "et" are all basically homophones, anyone who has only learned the language orally is going to have a hard time learning to spell correctly.)

True. That is something that I hated in my brief stint with French.

This is why I'm glad I know French best, because I can fake my way through the pronunciation of languages like Italian (i.e., so I can pronounce music terms), but it's nearly impossible to fake your way through French pronunciation.

[bobtheenchantedone]

My mother was scared away from higher-level Japanese classes because they were filled with RMs who could speak it much better than she could. If only she'd been able to read this thread, she might have stuck with it.

[Marduk]

Fred, in higher level Spanish classes that I've taken, that hasn't been my experience. However, I'll concede that I'm not exactly a typical example that you'd find at BYU, since I've been surrounded by native speakers (including several Spanish teachers) all my life.

Also, most missionaries don't have nearly as good of an accent as they think they do. (Not a comment on you Fred!) Just sayin'.

[Fredjikrang]

Well, this wasn't a terribly high level Spanish class, just the "RM" class.

[Portia]

Katya, Mme Thompson question, she always used to say les problèmes sont masculins, but what were feminine?

[Portia]

La vertu! That was it.

[Craig Jessop]

Also, most missionaries don't have nearly as good of an accent as they think they do.

Not just that, but they all think they have better Spanish than anybody else in the mission. I include myself in that, by the way, but I KNOW that I had better Spanish than a lot of the kids who thought theirs was awesome. (Nos bendigas con exito hoy... really? Really Elder Wahl? And there was no telling him that was incorrect either.) For non-Spanish speakers, he was using the basic subjunctive tense as a command -- every morning during prayer I would mentally reconstruct his sentence so it made sense.

[Whistler]

awww... but if you don't correct him how will he learn?

[Katya]

For non-Spanish speakers, he was using the basic subjunctive tense as a command . . .

Huh. That's correct, in French.

[Fredjikrang]

It sometimes is in Spanish too, but not as used there.

[Katya]

It sometimes is in Spanish too, but not as used there.

See, you always think Spanish is going to be simple, but then it's not. (I mean, two verbs for "to be"? Amirite, folks?)