7 minute read
The Interview
from The Linguist
THE INTERVIEW with Monsieur Davies
“So I taught English as a foreign language to the French students The first 4 days before school started, I was homesick. I cried most days and most nights because I was homesick. And this was before Skype, before zoom - this was back in 1990. The first few days it was like ‘fight or flight’. Either I stay here, or I go back. I was the only person from my University who was in Bordeaux. I was on my own. So one day I decided to go to a little bar near the bus station. It was like the Western films with the Saloon doors, and when I walked in, the bar stopped. I felt like a complete stranger. When I started talking, people knew who I was because my French at the time wasn’t Fantastic. It was good, but it was no way near fluent. “You must be the new teacher…” “Oui, oui, je suis le nouveau professeur d’Anglais, ici au collège”
I sat down with a bunch of guys my age and started talking about Football. And this was when Marseilles had Chris Waddle - a very famous English player who played in the World Cup. So it was a really really good time to be an English football fan in France since one of the best players was playing there for 3 years. And then that was it. Within a matter of 2-3 hours I had made several friends, all my age. Within 4-5 days I went from being really homesick to having friends that are still friends - even 30 years later. I spent my entire University life in France with French friends. I would go and see my English friends in Paris occasionally - but I didn’t see many of them. And I felt leaving Bordeaux as I felt when I first got there - almost like a reversal of homesickness. I became fluent in French within 9 months. I also became quite fluent with slang. When I started speaking to my tutor, who was a lovely guy, he started to laugh. And when I asked what was wrong he said it was my accent. “What do you mean by my accent?” “It’s beautiful, it’s authentic, it’s like I’m talking to a Bordelais - who has lived in Bordeaux all his life”. I really embraced the French culture and that’s what helped me improve my French. So, I really acquired a very deep cultural sense of France since the time I’ve been a Francophile. But you only get that from totally immersing yourself within that culture. You can’t get that from being a student spending your entire time going out and partying.”
So do you think you will give a lot of credit to living in Bordeaux to acquiring French as a language? Like, do you think living there has helped you become as fluent as you are today as opposed to just being a student studying French?
“Yeah. Parents ask me about Sixth Form A-Level French, “Will I be fluent in it?” and I say no. I don’t think you can be fluent in French or a language from only having 12 hours a week of French tuition. Unless you have a tutor at home and you totally live in a French speaking environment, you cannot be fluent. As in, I don’t have some of the nuances as a Native would.
THE INTERVIEW
I can go to France and speak to anybody at any level and read or write because I’ve had exposure. So you only get that by diving really deeply into that kind of French culture; you can’t get it by just doing it part-time. So it goes back to my first point, you’ve got to fight or flight in these situations. I am a pretty confident guy, I don’t normally get phased by things but I get a bit shy sometimes and I was very brave to go in there - I did it and I felt better for it. I spent my mornings with my landlady and her family, I spent my weekends with my mentor, I went skiing to the Pyrenees with the school rather than going home for a week, I spent my evenings ratner at home watching French TV, or, with my neighbours or newfound friends playing football, running or training.”
So you walk into that Saloon, doors fly open, you’re the fastest draw in the west, ready to immerse yourself in this culture as you say. Your language isn’t great, your accent isn’t fluent - is that a gradual process you could feel of picking bits up here and there or was it just a moment where it clicked? Like, I’ve got it now!
“Yeah, I was holding conversations, I had done my
A-Levels of course, at the end of 1987, I had a gap year after school where I did some traveling around and work.
Like A-Level, we had French lessons of course,
University is all about seminars and lectures so you learn a few words from those guys. If you go and hang out with people outside the University premises, you end up acquiring the language but not necessarily fluency. You might pick up a few slang words here and there. I went to France at 20,
I could hold a conversation, don't get me wrong but it was always limited. I didn’t have that finesse, didn’t have that ‘je ne sais quoi’.
I went into that bar asking for a beer and a bit of food and stuff and I was still rusty. What happened was over the period of the next few weeks and months I would go training, I would play football with these guys and I would pick up a few football instructions and learn some things. 13
And then you go home to a friend’s house, and you learn a few more things and you find that you are speaking all the time. And so when you spoke all the time, my friends would correct me - rather than using classic french, you would take some shortcuts. For example, ‘je ne sais pas’ becomes ‘je pas’. I picked up those fillers. I would buy ‘Le monde’. I would watch films and read books and I embraced the cuisine as well; from oysters and mussels to sea snails and sea urchin. I acquired a real thirst in French and that’s still with me now. So what I am saying is that you have to have that total immersion. But when did it become fluency? I guess it just came. I really bought into it. I guess I was probably aurally fluent quicker than I was verbally since I listened to so much French. I can’t pinpoint a moment when the fluency came but after being there for about one term I certainly felt as though I got this now.“
As you mentioned earlier, it’s very important to submerge yourself in the culture as much as possible, what advice would you give for a GCSE or A-Level student with the constraints of traveling abroad right now to actually have that immersion to help them get really connected to the culture.
“You can do what I couldn’t do 35 years ago. You have the exposure. I keep saying to people that you have social media now so why don't you just change your phone to French, you have got netflix films, you can change your language to French. You have French films, you can listen to music - I couldn’t do that. I had to go to a record shop and buy a Vinyl or buy a Cassette whereas you can do it now. We study music in French as part of our A-Level course now, so you can discover musicians beyond Stromae. So, listen to an artist, break that down, watch a film, go to Carrefour, anywhere they have magazines in French. On social media, you could just change those FaceBook settings, or on TikTok, to French. Change your PC or your MacBook or ChromeBook to French. So all you’re doing in the morning is that you wake up and you look at your chromebook screen which is all in French - and that’s your exposure. You won’t be able to go overseas for a weekend in Cannes but
THE INTERVIEW
you still have the way to immerse yourself in the culture. Things like duolingo and languagenut are great. Any exposure is good exposure. Use the FRANCE 24 website or live TV. Whereas, in my days, there was nothing around like this. In my opinion, there are no longer any excuses for not being exposed to the French or Spanish or Arabic language. In order to acquire fluency, in my opinion, you need that total immersion.”
