MSI Press Blog

    University French   After my wonderful high school French program, which I had no idea was wonderful until I got to mix it up with students studying French at Penn State and learned how little they had learned or were expected to learn in their high school programs, I enrolled in a university French course the first quarter of my freshman year. Since I had had high school French, the question was whether I should be enrolled in French 2 (second semester beginning French) or French 3 (first semester advanced French). The rule of thumb was that two years of high school French equated to one semester of college French). Three years was an odd number, so I could have been enrolled in either French 2, if my high school program was weak, or French 3, if my high school program was strong, i.e. equivalent to four years of a weak program. But my high school program was neither. It was stellar. It was taken together with mostly native speakers. It had involved creative writing,...

  High School French My high school French courses were probably like no other. I started out in French 1 at Sanford High School (Maine), where French was pretty ubiquitous and most of the students—heck, all of the other students—in the class had already had eight years of French in elementary school and spoke it at home. The teacher that year was new. He did not know the background of his class because he had moved to Maine from Canada in order to take the job. He was young. He was handsome. He was cocky. And he did not know us! After we all sat down for the first class, he grinned, looked around, and found a pretty girl in the front seat in one of the rows. Thinking no one would understand, he jokingly asked, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” [Do you want to sleep with me?]—not something acceptable in this day and age but back then would be taken as a joke.) For him, the joke was that he had said something fresh, but immediately the joke was on him. Our classmate looked him up and ...