Educating Repeaters

After investing 4 weeks in language school in Aix back in May, we weren’t sure whether we wanted to do any further study on the trip. We left the question open to see how we felt after a few more months, and what we found was that our opportunities for practicing French were limited as a tourist. In fact even in Aix most of the French we spoke was to other foreign students. So we decided to enrol for 2 more weeks in an affiliated school in Tours in the Loire valley. To make the experience even more beneficial, we decided to do a home-stay with a French family to up the speaking quotient with native French speakers.

Having wanted to visit the Loire for years, we chose Tours because the school seemed much bigger than the one we attended in Aix. We were hoping that the size of the school would guarantee that we were put in different classes more suited to our relative levels (as David had felt too stretched at times in Aix). However in actuality although the school was large, this was due to a big population of Erasmus students (university language students per the film “Spanish Apartment”) who had a different course structure. The quantity of private students like us was much smaller to the extent that there were only 3 classes being run vs. 6 in Aix. So no surprises that we ended up in the same class!

In fact the school was the polar opposite of that in Aix. It was disorganised, had no clear pedagogy and a mixed bag of teachers. The teacher in the second week was superb.

But the school building looked so nice!

The first week we had a small class with an amusing mixture of students: 2 other Australians (from Newcastle); a Scot, an Italian, a Syrian and a Jamaican. The accents were diverse to say the least, and it was torturous to watch the teacher try and get the Scottish girl to make a throaty French “r” (culturally impossible it seems). Unfortunately our teacher was an unqualified uni student, so we didn’t think much of lessons she prepared. However in the afternoons we had an hour of discussion class and several times we played French word games which were quite fun (and a very soft option for the teacher!).

The second week was much better, with a new teacher (Francoise) who was very experienced. Most of our class mates from week 1 left and we found ourselves merged in with a group of 18-22 year old Italian students on scholarships (included a Brazilian and a Chilean who were living in Italy). It was hilarious. Italian and French are very close in grammar and vocab, but the pronunciation is very different. For example – Anthony and Dennis will be amused:
(Provided by the new Ed – who has superior Italian knowledge)
- Most common – “ma” instead of “mais” (means ‘’but’’ in the respective languages)
- Second most common - ‘’allora” instead of “alors” (means so)
- Third most common - “perche” instead of “parce-que” (means because)

(Ed. I was also guilty of Italianising. Francoise gave us a written test on the first day and I wrote ‘’cinque’’ (number 5) instead of ‘’cinq’’ and the following day she started accusing the 7 Italians of this heinous error and I had to put my hand up and admit that despite their being 7 Italians in the class that I was actually guilty.)

Ed. We Australians also spent all week pronouncing the last letter on words – particularly Ss. On the last day I pronounced yet another S that I shouldn’t have and Francoise said that she was clearly a failure because I was still making the same mistake over and over again. So the very next time that an S came along I made sure that I didn’t – except that it was an exception and this time I was told off for not pronouncing the S!!!

The youngsters were ill disciplined and often arrived late after a big night out at the guinguette (an open air bar/performance venue down on the Loire River). They chatted constantly in class and often broke into Italian to help each other (a cardinal rule in class was French-only). However, we definitely profited from this second week, and David finally got his first comprehensive lesson in pronouns (in Aix he had to suffer through a lesson on an obtuse aspect of pronouns).

Francoise very kindly made chocolate truffles for our last day, and insightfully commented that the Italians might be disruptive, but the classes are never dull.

Class week 2, with Francoise and the Italians

Mmm...truffles

The town of Tours is about double the size of Aix at close to 300,000 people and certainly felt more spread out. It is yet another beautiful French town with lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants and lovely architecture

Lovely gardens and no prizes for guessing, a cathedral!

And boulevards of lush plane trees

Interesting skyline from the school

Place Plumereau – the epicentre of cafe culture in Tours

It was very easy to hang around town, and from Aix we learned that we should quickly find a cafe and then continue to go back to the same one in the hope of getting conversation out of the owner and other regulars. “Le P’tit Chose” was our choice, and we went there for an evening aperitif many times. The owner was obliging with chit chat and we had a few successes with random conversations with other customers.

Our chosen haunt – “La P’tit chose”

The second aspect of the visit was the family stay. We went to great lengths with the school to try to make sure we got an appropriate family who would be comfortable with us and vice versa (some of the students in Aix had had problematic family stays). The narrative from the school on our family went like this:

Madame (Sylvie) is an independent distributor (of aloe vera)
- 1 son 17 and one daughter 16
- 1 girl 26 also at the house (singer)
- 1 cat and 1 rabbit
- Madame smokes occasionally outside
- Interests: music, festivals, theatre, cooking

So all seemed quite positive.

However some of it was factually inaccurate or incomplete. Here is what a more accurate overview would have been like:

- Madame (Sylvie) is an independent distributor (of aloe vera, vitamin supplements, and does hairdressing from home and boards foreign students (turfing out her children to make room))
- 1 boyfriend who sleeps over often but whom you will not be introduced to and whose name you will never learn
- 1 son 17 (whose room you have stolen, but who doesn’t know you are coming and so will burst through your bedroom door at 3am on your first night) and one daughter 16 (who never says boo and will close the lounge room door depriving you of use of the TV to watch the French news or other useful programmes to help improve your French)
- 1 girl 26 (singer), actually another daughter, but she won’t be there when you arrive because her room is being used by another boarder, but she will arrive later along with her boyfriend (base player and champion snorer)
- 1 cat who has been banished to who knows where for shedding too much fur and 1 rabbit that will die the week before you arrive, thus causing you an awkward moment when you ask after it.

- Madame smokes occasionally outside, but has lots of friends over who smoke inside whenever they feel like it.
- Interests: music (including terrible reggae), festivals, theatre (that she hasn’t been to for 10 years because the subscribers take all the seats), cooking (when she feels like it, not usually before 10pm)

Now this might all sound terribly negative, but there were some upsides, like having your laundry done. In fact we were so into the routine that we extended our stay at Sylvie’s into the week following classes in spite of the somewhat incompatible living habits (eg mum coming home from the nightclub at 3am with children and proceeding to continue socialising outside the bedroom door for an hour, which does not make for a good night’s sleep).

We judged the home stay a mixed result, mostly because the amount of interaction/speaking time we got with the mostly absent family was less than we’d hoped for. They were lovely when they were here. Still it was much more than if we’d self catered our accommodation and has given us numerous amusing anecdotes, not all of which have been recounted here.

A room of someone else’s own for 3 weeks

The third aspect of our time in Tours was the visits to the Chateau. This was marvellous and is worthy of its own entry, so until next time...