Precerpt from My 20th Language: L4, French - Later Opportunities

 

Later Opportunities for Refreshing Skills

From time to time over the years, I have had opportunities to refresh my French, sometimes just a little and casually and other times more formally. French remains a strong language, but reading and writing have emerged as the greater strengths, mainly because of lack of opportunity for communication.

When my daughter was taking French in high school (she took 4-5 years of French), I would be able to communicate with her and to help her. She did not consider it helping, however, when I would send notes in French about any absences or other issues to her homeroom teacher, who was also her French teacher. Once, I wrote an excuse in French poetry. Her teacher read it to all the French classes, immensely embarrassing my daughter—but it was fun to have some interaction with French again.

Another opportunity arose when I was working on my PhD in Moscow. The university required proficiency in a foreign language. No, Russian did not count; it was not a foreign language in Moscow. No, English did not count; it was my native language. The university decided I would demonstrate proficiency in French. That required translating a book chapter on the nature-nurture IQ argument from French into Russian (a first, and I had to get used to kicking English out of my head completely in order to do that) and then, under test conditions do the same for a short article on language acquisition (translation from French to Russian), followed by reading a short passage in a book (in this case, the passage was on Skinnerism) and discussing it in French—after a short interpersonal conversation about background and those kinds of things. In fact, the French examiner did not speak to me in anything other than French, using that as the lingua franca. A good experience.

Some of my general travels for work and consultations involved French by coincidence. In Morocco, when my Arabic did not sustain communication, most folks could slip into French. In fact, they did that anyway. Conversations would wander among French, Arabic, and Berber at lightning speed. Somehow, I could usually hang on to the caboose of that train and stay on track.

Although I never went to Paris, several times I flew Charles de Gaulle airport, where French came in quite handy. Once, even, French became necessary when a ticket for a member of the group I was shepherding did not show up in the computer. Problem-solving in the language—at least, Level 2, right? Then, there had to be persuasion to get us the ticket anyway. Now, up to Level 3, right?

And then, a trip to Quebec with the kids (not planned, we were actually traveling from childhood home in Maine to current home in Pennsylvania and, long story, ended up going by way of Quebec. Right, not the most direct route. We ended up spending the night in a hotel we grabbed at the last minute since the detour was unplanned; the hotel was in the French quarter. Good chance to refresh the French, but my poor son fell asleep in his spaghetti because I could not remember the word for fork and gestures were not working. It was late, the restaurant was closing, and everyone just wanted to finish up. Shawn finished up quickly. His head dropped into his plate!

Then, I ran into a French speaker in Houston when I was working at NASA. I had a meeting in NYC where I thought French was going to be the lingua franca so wanted to refresh the language. That was at the end of my time at NASA, and when I moved back to California, the NYC meeting was about three weeks off. I spent most of that time with a French teacher at the Defense Language Institute who quickly brought me back to a Level 3. And, uh, that NYC meeting? It was in English!

Ironically, when I became an associate provost at the DLI, that French teacher was among the 500 teachers at that time who worked for me. So, he always communicated with me in French, and my oral refresher experience became stronger than the other skills, which, I suppose, in a way is odd. At one point, the testers used me as a preparatory activity before testing the commandant. They did not want to mess up the test with such an important person. They figured she was likely a 3 in all tested skills (listening, reading, speaking), so a 3/3/3. Because my communication was on a 3-level, they assumed I would be a good practice subject. But I had not used French other than for speaking in a long time, and skills become rusty with lack of use. I could have easily pushed them back to 3/3/3 since at one point, when I left DLI as a student, I had tested at 4/4 in the other skills. But time did not allow, and they simply grabbed me one fine day and hauled me into the testing room. The listening activity was current Parisian French; not conversational, but radio. C’mon. The only radio I had listened to at any length was québécois—as a child. I did not fare well on that portion of the test. Then came reading. Piece of cake, I thought. Nope! The reading was from a political journal, and without knowing the current political situation in France, I could only get a general understanding; the details were just words that I understood but could not put into context. Oops! And finally, the speaking test. Yes. Finally, a piece of cake! While it was not a recorded test, I—and the testers—believe that I may have the only score of 1/2/3 ever achieved!

Later Opportunities for Refreshing Skills

From time to time over the years, I have had opportunities to refresh my French, sometimes just a little and casually and other times more formally. French remains a strong language, but reading and writing have emerged as the greater strengths, mainly because of lack of opportunity for communication.

When my daughter was taking French in high school (she took 4-5 years of French), I would be able to communicate with her and to help her. She did not consider it helping, however, when I would send notes in French about any absences or other issues to her homeroom teacher, who was also her French teacher. Once, I wrote an excuse in French poetry. Her teacher read it to all the French classes, immensely embarrassing my daughter—but it was fun to have some interaction with French again.

Another opportunity arose when I was working on my PhD in Moscow. The university required proficiency in a foreign language. No, Russian did not count; it was not a foreign language in Moscow. No, English did not count; it was my native language. The university decided I would demonstrate proficiency in French. That required translating a book chapter on the nature-nurture IQ argument from French into Russian (a first, and I had to get used to kicking English out of my head completely in order to do that) and then, under test conditions do the same for a short article on language acquisition (translation from French to Russian), followed by reading a short passage in a book (in this case, the passage was on Skinnerism) and discussing it in French—after a short interpersonal conversation about background and those kinds of things. In fact, the French examiner did not speak to me in anything other than French, using that as the lingua franca. A good experience.

Some of my general travels for work and consultations involved French by coincidence. In Morocco, when my Arabic did not sustain communication, most folks could slip into French. In fact, they did that anyway. Conversations would wander among French, Arabic, and Berber at lightning speed. Somehow, I could usually hang on to the caboose of that train and stay on track.

Although I never went to Paris, several times I flew Charles de Gaulle airport, where French came in quite handy. Once, even, French became necessary when a ticket for a member of the group I was shepherding did not show up in the computer. Problem-solving in the language—at least, Level 2, right? Then, there had to be persuasion to get us the ticket anyway. Now, up to Level 3, right?

And then, a trip to Quebec with the kids (not planned, we were actually traveling from childhood home in Maine to current home in Pennsylvania and, long story, ended up going by way of Quebec. Right, not the most direct route. We ended up spending the night in a hotel we grabbed at the last minute since the detour was unplanned; the hotel was in the French quarter. Good chance to refresh the French, but my poor son fell asleep in his spaghetti because I could not remember the word for fork and gestures were not working. It was late, the restaurant was closing, and everyone just wanted to finish up. Shawn finished up quickly. His head dropped into his plate!

Then, I ran into a French speaker in Houston when I was working at NASA. I had a meeting in NYC where I thought French was going to be the lingua franca so wanted to refresh the language. That was at the end of my time at NASA, and when I moved back to California, the NYC meeting was about three weeks off. I spent most of that time with a French teacher at the Defense Language Institute who quickly brought me back to a Level 3. And, uh, that NYC meeting? It was in English!

Ironically, when I became an associate provost at the DLI, that French teacher was among the 500 teachers at that time who worked for me. So, he always communicated with me in French, and my oral refresher experience became stronger than the other skills, which, I suppose, in a way is odd. At one point, the testers used me as a preparatory activity before testing the commandant. They did not want to mess up the test with such an important person. They figured she was likely a 3 in all tested skills (listening, reading, speaking), so a 3/3/3. Because my communication was on a 3-level, they assumed I would be a good practice subject. But I had not used French other than for speaking in a long time, and skills become rusty with lack of use. I could have easily pushed them back to 3/3/3 since at one point, when I left DLI as a student, I had tested at 4/4 in the other skills. But time did not allow, and they simply grabbed me one fine day and hauled me into the testing room. The listening activity was current Parisian French; not conversational, but radio. C’mon. The only radio I had listened to at any length was québécois—as a child. I did not fare well on that portion of the test. Then came reading. Piece of cake, I thought. Nope! The reading was from a political journal, and without knowing the current political situation in France, I could only get a general understanding; the details were just words that I understood but could not put into context. Oops! And finally, the speaking test. Yes. Finally, a piece of cake! While it was not a recorded test, I—and the testers—believe that I may have the only score of 1/2/3 ever achieved!

For more precerpts from My 20th Language, click HERE.

For more posts about language learning, click HERE.

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