Both our daughters would be considered bi-lingual and chatter away or read and write in either French or English with no difficulty – preferring French with each other and English with us old folks who struggle to keep up with their teenage blabberings in French.
Eldest daughter is even doing a literary BAC, which involves reading and reviewing advanced books in either language – Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais is the current French book being studied, for example.
Their English teachers have often had a strange desire to make sure they aren’t top of the class, with even the slightest spelling mistake getting enormous penalties, so ‘I got 12 out of 20 in English because I spelt one word wrong out of 40′ is a reasonably common story. When queried the teachers maintain that they should be marked harder because of their natural advantage.
Not quite sure if that’s fair or not – children who are naturally good at maths don’t get penalised because of it – but that’s just the way it is so we’ve given up complaining about it except when it counts towards an official exam like the brevet or BAC.
Another curious thing about their English teachers – some insist on being corrected when they say something wrong and enjoy the opportunity to improve their standard of English, while others go into a rage and insist that something like ‘seven persons big’ is a valid phrase whatever anyone tells them. You can get away with this if there is only one non-French student in the class, but you just make a fool of yourself when there is a sprinkling of Brits, Dutch and Americans who can all speak very good English.
But a curious oversight has come to light. Certain words that children learn when they are very young appear to be missing from their English vocabulary – and not advanced or clever words but some very simple ones. The other night we happened to be talking about baby animals and it turned out that words such as foal or gosling were completely missing from their English vocabulary.
One of them suggested ‘cup’ for a baby lion, which I suppose is close, but the word for a baby pig had them both completely stumped until one of them finally brightened up and announced it was a ‘piglie’. (Admittedly piglie is a much nicer word than piglet but sadly that doesn’t quite make it correct.)
I’m sure they knew these words eight years ago when we arrived, so I suppose they are just forgotten through lack of use.
I’m not quite clear what the solution is. They can’t go from reading Joseph Conrad to reading ‘The Three Litle Bears and other favourite bedtime stories’, and it is hard to come up with a list of ’100 words that every five year old should know perfectly well’ for them to learn.
So for Christmas, instead of the iphones and gadgetry that they really want I thought a box-set of children’s films might go down well – a few hours with Black Beauty, Lion King, and 101 Dalmations should set them on the right track in no time at all.
And by sheer coincidence it would also save me a great deal of money.
We are seeing this in England everything is baby this and baby that it the dumbing down of education. I think to take more marks off your children in their English is quite scandelous as good marks in English would make up for poorer marks they may get in French subjects.It is not easy to take a school to task as you feel your children may suffer for it
There is an interesting statue of Rabelais in Chinon, I am not sure if he was born there, lived there, died there or all three.
The sugar beet campagne has started in Norfolk with trucks loading all over the place and then heading for the sugar factories. At this time of the year its impossible to keep your car clean. So we refer to the colour of our mud splattered cars as Two Tone Norfolk.
Just found out Rab was probably born near Chinon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Rabelais
interesting chap.
Hello,
I just happened to come across your blog and this article is very interesting. I moved to France with my parents and younger brother when I was 12 years old (I’m now 33) and I can relate to your children’s experience.
When we first moved over to Normandie, there were no other British children in the French schools we attended. In the very first primary school there wasn’t even a teacher that spoke English so we were really thrown in at the deep end. Needless to say, we learnt French very quickly!
However, when we started ‘collège’ we started having English lessons and it is true, the level of English varied from English teacher to English teacher. And some did not like being put right. One memorable lesson comes to mind when the teacher was explaining about ’1 mice and 2 mouses’.
I also agree that the marking was extremely severe when it came to me and my brother. The slightest mistake would mean that we hardly ever got a 20/20. But what was very unfair, is that they did not make any allowances for us in the other subjects. We were marked as though we were French children. However, we have both had a wonderful experience of the French education system and have gained good qualifications.
One way of maintaining our written English was to read lots of English books and our parents encouraged us to write lots of letters to friends and relatives back in the UK which helped too.
We also had English television which was a vital link to Britain.
I look forward to reading more of your stories! Zoe
That’s an interesting story Zoe, thanks for sharing it.
Writing letters to people in the UK is a very good idea we never did – the girls speak in English on facebook a lot but I imagine the level of grammar (as with text messages and MSN messenger) is so poor as to be useless.
Also we have not had English TV until now but are now planning to get it, since younger daughter is definitely weaker than she should be in English.
If you have a moment, I’d love to know whether you ended up working in the UK or in France (or elsewhere), also whether your career benefits at all from your being bilingual?
Cheers
Well Boris, the summer straight after finishing my exams (a BTS in international tourism) I decided to go back and work in the UK.
Having lived all of my teenage years in France, I didn’t really know England anymore and strangely enough, I didn’t feel totally English, and definitely not French. It was a way to get to know England again and see which one I preferred.
At first I worked as receptionist in a big hotel in Bournemouth and then went to work in Reading for a software company where being bilingual really kicked in. I worked as PA to a French sales director.
After 5 years in England, having had a great time, but realising that France was the country for me I decided to return to Normandie where my parents and brother still lived. During those 5 years my Enid Blyton English (according to a few people) had an overhaul and I came back with a whole new vocabulary that my parents had been very happy to keep us sheltered from whilst growing up in France!
Since returning to France though I’ve definitely benefited from being bilingual. However, knowing what I know now, I would have benefited more from doing international business studies rather than tourism.
What are your children planning on studying?
Daughter 1 (16 years old) is better at languages and doing a BAC L with a view to doing ‘probably something in an office’ – she has her eye on a journalism degree at the moment but changes her mind quite often.
Daughter 2 (13 years old) is better at maths and sciences but I wouldn’t like to guess what she will end up doing – she likes talking about interior design as an option but there are a lot of years ahead of her before she needs to decide.
Neither has shown any interest in finance/business or computer related industries – the two industries I have always worked in – so they don’t take after me!
Our two daughters have also experienced being marked more strictly in English – specifically ‘oral’.
But each time we questioned their teachers about this it was explained as follows: our daughters do not participate enough in oral lessons. They do not put their hand up to answer the questions being posed and therefore the teachers cannot award them the marks for actively participating orally.
Which was all our fault! Because we had drilled it into them at the beginning to not ‘show off’ in their English classes, and to let the French children have a chance to answer!
My eldest, now 19 and at Uni, always complained about not being given any leeway in her other lessons because of being non-French, until this week.
She picked up her ‘diplome’ at her old lycée and with it came her complete dossier – including all her school records since she started in France. That first year she consistently got marked 16 and above in all her lessons – even though she had just arrived speaking not a word of French! So we now appreciate how good the teachers were by NOT penalising her hard for her lack of the language, and encouraging her by not marking her down harshly!
Jacqui
xxxx
That sounds familiar, our children are exactly the same – preferring not to always be the ones who put their hands up.
I’m very pleased it all works out in the end – for both your own children and for Zoe (comments above) so we aren’t doing them too much harm!
Thank you for your blog! I am about to move to Lyon with my husband, and 5 and 2 year old daughters. I am fretting about putting my 5 year old into French primary school (whe will be in CP in the fall) just because she is very social and is worried about communicating with other kids when she arrives. The alternative is an international school but since we plan to stay in France for the long term, I think French schools might be better. She has had a year of school in the UK and is reading really well in English but has no French. If you have any advice on how to help my daughters integrate, I would be grateful to hear it! And, I will keep reading…. Thanks.
Hi
A five year old who is very social should have no problems at all. Our own ‘more social’ daughter couldn’t bear to be excluded from playground games for more than 10 minutes so practiced the ‘moves’ to the game on her own and then went over and joined straight in. A bit of confidence and a happy smile, and language and friends will follow close behind.
Good luck!
Just read this thread,and thought you might be interested in my facebook page “Black Hen Education”. As an ex-teacher living France,I have just started tutoring English children,in reading & writing skills,and am in the process of getting my own website up and running,for English parents with children,living in France.
Hello, that’s interesting to hear. I think you mean you are helping them to learn or maintain their level of English? Please drop in and let us know the website address when it’s up and running. Getting our younger daughter to read books in English is quite a challenge – and I think we’re probably soon going to get English TV after 9 years without it…