rant about French teaching

[cory]

Parents evening today. Have to say I have been wondering for a while why dd (a bright girl who has shown a definite gift for languages in the past) has not learnt enough French in two years to stick a sentence together and why she has such an appalling pronunciation.

Well, we spoke to the French teacher and I can certainly tell where the pronunciation is coming from. It was dire. Like a parody of an English person speaking French! According to dd, she (the teacher) did not have enough French to understand the guided tour of the bakery on their French day trip; she had to call for assistance.

Dd is in top set, and it seems they've been given the only incompetent French teacher in the school because they are supposed to muddle through anyway. Teacher told us that the pupils will be learning the imperfect tense next year "but not all of them will get it because it is very difficult, but I think corydd might". (Yes, you bet she will! She is getting it as soon as I can go out and buy her a French grammar!) I did mention that I had concerns about dd's pronunciation and she said to dd "well you have to listen to how I say it and say it like me: "chattow" "(I think she meant chateau). She was not joking. She was seriously not joking.

I can't really do anything about this, can I? I can't see myself going into the school and telling them that their teacher is incompetent. I just have to fume and rant in silence, don't I? Oh yes, and stock up on French films.

We're having to do sometihng similar (criticise the teacher) but in our case it is at primary school aand it is about the standard of teaching and in particular the (lack of) homework.

The difference is that we have a good and long stadning realtionship with the head and depute head (I was Chair of the Board, dh Chair of the PTA and then the parent council when it superceded the board). In fact the teacher was probably a bit intimidated about it.

We had raised the issue a number of times over the year before effectively giving up (partly becaseu it was rebounding on ds) but we are going to draft a constructuve letter to the school to act to help them assess this particular teacher's training and development needs for the future.

It is too late for ds this year - but we can help make a difference for other kids in future years.

We are going to preswent it from the prespcetive of ds' and our relationship with the school: the school sets great store by the tri-partite relationship - school, child and parents/carers. If we don't see any (or very little) homework, how can we support the school as we don't know what level he should be working at. He is uposed, by P5, to be getting 30 minutes homework a night. When it is consistently 10 minutes or less (when the reading book isn't replaced and we have to make up our own reading homework), how do we square teaching him to respect his teacher with his statement that "I am just doing my homework quickly" ("no - you are not getting homework that is sufficiently challenging").

Difficult: but if you keep it from the child's perspective and wanting to ensure that they are appropriately challenged, then you will be OK. Point out that you have a dilemma in wanting to teach your child to respect the teacher but are finding it diffiult at the moment.

I like amicissima's point: it does seem a bit off that your dd has had, it seems the same teacher for 2 years. If they are indeed giving the "poorest" teacher to the "best" class, then you have a valid complaint that such "skills" should be "shared about"

From the perspective of a teacher and I know you have alot of feedback on this already, I would approach the HoY first. I think it can be impressed on the HoY that you would like to raise the issue with the HoD but you are apprehensive due to valuing the great relationship you have with the school and that you are very happy with the way they are currently helping her integrate in the school. Impress on them why you feel that the issues of grammar and accent are highly concerning to you but still reluctant to speak directly to the HoD.

Depending on who you decide to approach first has an impact on how you present the dilemma I suppose. there is no right way of doing it as the other ideas sound completely feasible to me too.

Oh, I have another website, which I thought about posting earlier. Since you are a grammar buff, I have found the website languagesonline www.languageskills.co.uk to be quite good with the grammar exercise. It is not as slick and interactive as linguascope but deffo has an advantage over it wrt grammar. It follows the textbook published by Mary Glasgow, I believe so don't quote me on that. But I don't think you have to buy the text to find it useful.

I am another grammar pedant and before Easter, my sets 1 and 2 in Yr 7 knew how to conjugate verbs in the present tense using all 3 endings.

I started teaching 7 yrs ago and the school where I did my training was deeply discouraging about teaching languages from a grammar POV. They themselves were practically clueless and I think that shook them up. They just kept telling me that the kids will switch off so 'don't'.

When I got my first permanent post, thankfully, using grammar in language learning was coming back into vogue and I just stormed away with it feeling rather smug. Plus the school (head of languages and a scary deputy head who is a member of the department) was supportive with it.

By then I had honed a few more up to date teaching skills in transferring grammar knowledge to kids who had absolutely no exposure to it in primary but that is another story. They still get the conjugation worksheets though!

Foxy- thank you also from me for those links-I use a lot of the Mary Glasgow stuff with my (Italian) students and the sites look great...will prob splash out on the £20 one as well.

Cory- I think that's a plan- go and speak, diplomatically but firmly, to HoY if Form T is a bit "relaxed" re academic subjects! I also remember conjugating French verbs, and despite the whole new "communicative" approach to language learning, I make the Italians do it as well. I get on them all with their "I don't want/need to learn grammar, I want/need to speak" Yes, how exactly do you plan to do that with no grammar????

What really gets me is there is no evidence that the pupils are fighting against grammar. The teacher was talking about a very basic piece of grammar (the imperfect) that is not going to come up until next year, and she has already decided that most of her top set students are not going to "get it".

By contrast, dd's maths teacher said openly (and I think quite correctly) that he does not believe dd has a mathematical mind; but he clearly does not see that as a reason why a bright girl in top set should not master the national curriculum if made to do so. Which is clearly his intention. That is an attitude that will do me.

It just really really bugs me that science teachers and maths teachers and all the rest of them are not allowed to get away with this "oh, my subject is so difficult, I can't expect anyone to actually learn it" (and to do them justice very few seem to want to do so), but for some reason language teachers can.

Agree- sometimes the teachers are so blinkered that they won't get it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because they won't let them try.

I've just finished a course with 2nd yr middle school kids- their Italian teacher kept stopping me in my programming and saying "they haven't done that with me yet- you can't do that, they won't understand"
But they will, because I'm going to do it with them.....gah! (I did, and they did, and all just passed their spoken English exams 2 yrs earlier than the kids taught exclusively by her...

a point in fact with which to strengthen your grammar argument is to cite that the main reason grammar is now recognized as essential in language learning is so that they have transferable language learning skills when they reach the workplace.

It is a great answer to the old question: but will I ever need French Spanish ....

Anyone can learn the language actually needs in the workplace and quickly if he already understands that languages are made up of nouns, verbs, tenses, pronouns etc and has the tools to process the information.

Cory, I feel your pain.

On the other side of the coin, ds has had a native French teacher this year (Year 7). Ds breathed a sigh of relief when he left at half term and was replaced by an English French teacher. Ds has made little progress because no-one could understand a word the Frenchman said!

I'm sure ds and his classmates have a marvellous ear for accent now but as for anything else...

Bizarrely ds was asked for homework to write "What I did in my holidays" in French. Bizarre as they have not yet done the past tense.

I am pleased to report I received top marks for my 30-year-old French

I wish I'd found this thread last week.
My DS is in set 1 Y9 for French. He is not a linguist but is ambitious to go to a good university (to do maths) and so his language grade will be important.

He was struggling with his homework and I was shocked when I realised how little he knew about tenses and didn't seem able to conjugate verbs. He has a photograpic memory so can easily remember vocabulary but he has no sense of the structure of the language. My French O level was in 1974 and so I was having to dig very deep to help him.

I have now spoken to his French teacher who says his progress is on target. Apparently they don't conjugate verbs these days and they only need to know past present and future for GCSE, no need to worry about whether it's the imperfect or perfect version..
It seems that what I did way back in the olden days would now be considered A level stuff.

You will all be glad to know my DS1 passed his French GCSE a few years ago without really being able to speak/understand/write French at all . He got a C grade.

Whilst I have every sympathy with the OP and the dire teacher, I wouldn't worry about the actual passing of the GCSE, the standard isn't very high and IMO there is no comparison with the O level French I did years ago!!

Ok, I am a greedyguts . I don't just want dd to pass her French: I want her to be able to get some use out of it, to get some pleasure from it, not to feel that she has wasted hour after hour on something that gives her nothing. (and incidentally, I think she is university material, so I'd like her to have a chance of actually getting there)

Yes, I agree Cory. I am certainly not condoning the system, it is dreadful that my DS could actually pass a GCSE without any actual ability. I am no linguist (O level 1975!), but my grasp of French is far superior to his and my other DCs. But he did pass it and is now at a university that required a pass in an MFL at GCSE.

I was going to add, your DD will probably get an A* just by being diligent and with input from you.

However, that doesn't deal with the problem of the useless teacher.....

Have you actually seen the textbooks we have to use? They throw a tiny bit of grammar at the kids every now and then but don't give them any practice at it because that apparently would be boring!! Then expect them to use it. They are terrible. There is no repetition of grammar points at all, no exercises, very few conjugations actually set out properly. And they only ever really learn the 'I' form of the verb!! The others they are supposed to 'recognise'.

As a languages teacher, I do not want to use these books but there is no alternative within the NC textbooks. We have tried to move away from the books and work on topics but we still choose the topic and then see what grammar we can throw into it. My own view is that it is far more sensible to plot the logical grammatical progression needed to learn a language properly, then work out which topics would cover each bit best. Galore Park do this pretty well but they aren't NC books!

I can see how the whole system is against the French teacher.

But I still can't get over her awful accent! The other teachers sound...you know...French.

Anyway, much comforted to find that the teachers on this thread see what I mean about grammar. So I'm not a lonely pathetic dinosaur. This whole learning to recognise things without understanding them seems terribly 1970s to me: the natural method and all that.

I set dd to study the present tense yesterday. I was interested to find that after 2 years of studying the subject she has still not grasped the concept of silent syllables: she claims (possibly truthfully) that her teacher pronounces: je parlay, tu parlays, il parlay.

Cory, that does sound appalling.

From what I understand of ds's French, it seems that the language is taught along the lines of a "Holiday French" evening class.

There is masses of asking for a burger and chips in a cafe etc but no verb conjugation at all.

I do think a combination of both would be ideal. When I did O/A Levels in the 80s day-to-day conversation was Not Approved. I could write very good (probably incredibly stilted) essays incorporating every tense under the sun, but I couldn't apply the language practically at all.

Cory - this thread echoes my own feelings about language teaching in this country. Dd's school has one native French teacher - and she is never allocated the A-level French class! This is because her second language is Spanish and noone else in the school teaches it (it is only taught in the 6th form).

Dd's A-level French class was split between 2 teachers: one, outstanding, the other - not. Dd was the only student in her year to gain an A at As.

What I have done (and I know this is too early for your dd, and impractical if you are not in London) is to send dd to classes on a Saturday at the Institut Francais. The teacher is most formidable (in the English sense of that word! ) and has worked the class relentlessly in a very traditional way. Most fierce about grammar too, and not reluctant to let the students know if their efforts are not up to scratch! Lots of homework and good resources, and dd now has a lovely accent as well as excellent grammar.

Cory, I don't know if this is of any help, but just today I had a similar conversation with the deputy head at DS's school about his current English teacher.

I kept it completely impersonal (didn't even mention the English teacher by name), and politely but firmly suggested that both class and teacher might benefit from a different teacher approach next year.

Without quite putting it in those terms I did imply strongly that I felt that putting up with a poor teacher for one year is just one of those things evey child has to go through, but having the same teacher for 2 years isn't really on, and that if that did happen I might have to take my complaint to another level.

Je parlay, Tu parlays argh my ears, my ears, my ears.

Native French speaker! Quick!

I'm an English teacher who speaks (but doesn't teach) French and I am constantly appalled by what they're taught. I help my form all the time with their French homeworks and they don't know the simplest thing. For example, a very diligent Year 10 student was writing some French sentences on the whiteboard to revise from, and she wrote "je écoute". I rubbed the first e out and put an apostrophe and she had no idea why I'd done it. I could see the fear in her eyes that French was just, to her, a bunch of apparently random rules that didn't make sense, when really it was logical, if you knew what rule I was applying and why.

I have to admit that one of the reasons I didn't become a languages teacher was that I hate the way it is taught, I can't believe no-one conjugates verbs anymore, or that you don't need to imperfect for GCSE, I did it in Yr8 in a mixed ability class, and I only left school 12 years ago. I think talking endlessly about your pets and your holidays is a thousand times duller than learning grammar and getting to understand a language and how it works, which is actually fascinating.

Anyway, to get to your problem Cory,as a teacher I think you should definitely contact the the HOY or HOD, perhaps choose the one you know better. There is a very weak teacher in my department which everyone agrees about but nothing is ever done, I'd love it enough parents complained that the school had to do something about it.

I'm going to have to, aren't I?

In the meantime, home grammar lessons are up and running!

Yup -sounds like it

How else are they going to find out that the teacher needs retraining support if no-one poitns out that what she is teaching it just plain wrong?

I've got some good news: ds' teacher next year is going to be one of the best teachers in the school who will be making sure that he is apporpriately stretched and has homework. Not sure if our (and others'...) complaints influenced the allocations Only 7 days and counting of the "bad" teacher left

Now we just have to worry about who he is likely to get the year after - his crucial last year of primary school.

Cory, I don't know where you are, but is there an alliance francaise or institut francais near to you? They often have a club for children on saturday am or pm. Also there is a network of French clubs for children, but can't remember the name.

I too was in the top set and after the first year when we weren't in sets had the most rubbish teacher for the next 4 years - and at a direct grant school (shows white hairs emoticon). It was really funny that just before O levels we had the bottom set teacher when our's was ill and she was shocked at how little we knew.

How about films in French - would recommend any of the Louis de Funes films - L'aile ou la cuisse is my favourite.

Good luck for your dd

The standard of language teaching in Britain has always been poor. Many students are unable to string a sentence together despite years of studying. I have enrolled my dd's(8 and 6) in Le Jolie Ronde. Their teacher is a native speaker and as a result of this their pronunciation is good. I am concerned that when they eventually start senior school they may pick up some bad habits from the TEACHER.