Finding your level at L'Institut de française, Villefranche-sur-mère

In this series of 5 blog pages (this is the third of 5) I try to describe objectively what the school offers and some things that perhaps only previous students can share with prospective students. 

I’m neither endorsing nor discouraging anyone from attending the Institut. This is not a site for the school. If interested, please search for their current website address on the Internet. (It’s easy to find). 

How does the school determine what level you’ll be in?

Whatever your background in speaking French, whatever level you have previously attained, this school uses its own methods to assign students to an appropriate class level.

The first day of class (and only the first instruction day of each month) all élèves (students) are given a series of short tests. These tests assess your ear for the language, your comprehension both orally and written, and your ability to speak French and express yourself in it. The last day of class you are given the same test (to evaluate your progress).

I’ll use myself as an example. Having taken this test six times, I can tell you that each time I’ve figured out some of the errors I made the last time (and made new ones unwittingly). Despite that, each time I’ve taken the test I’ve improved on all dimensions (as quantified on a graph). I have improved each time on all parameters. Frankly, I’m never aware that I’ve improved at all and have always been quite nervous about the oral test.

No Previous French?

If you enter the school as a débutante, a plus for you will be that you aren’t already embedded with grammar and vocabulary that’s out of date. On the other hand, you will need to acquire a useful vocabulary quickly.

Acquiring vocabulary is the easiest part of learning the language (assuming one works at it). My guess is that it may be a slow start but advancement to higher levels is probably easier and faster than for those who begin their French studies elsewhere.

At the end of the month there is a short school ceremony complete with champagne. Those completing the month receive certificates of attendance. There are also those who are given special acknowledgement for their exceptional progress in a short time—these are usually people who progress from debutante to intermediate or higher quickly.

Advanced Level

Since I wasn't an advanced student in this program, I may be less qualified in writing about it. It seems the bulk of the students are at intermediate levels. The school has many fewer advanced students and usually fewer débutantes than intermediates. However, during the course of a day there is the opportunity to speak with everyone in French.

Oral French doesn’t use that many tenses (as compared to the written French) so that’s not the challenge at this school. Usually, advanced students speak consistently with a decent accent (not perfect) and have mastered enough French to express themselves easily. Most advanced students have lived in France or another French speaking country at some point in their lives. 

(Go to next page)

My French Immersion Experience at L'Institut de française, Villefranche-sur-mère

In this series of 5 blog pages (this is the second of 5) I try to describe objectively what the school offers and some things that perhaps only previous students can share with prospective students. 

I’m neither endorsing nor discouraging anyone from attending the Institut. This is not a site for the school. If interested, please search for their current website address on the Internet. (It’s easy to find). 

No Previous French?

If you enter the school as a débutante, a plus for you will be that you aren’t already embedded with grammar and vocabulary that’s out of date. On the other hand, you will need to acquire a useful vocabulary quickly.

Acquiring vocabulary is the easiest part of learning the language (assuming one works at it). My guess is that it may be a slow start but advancement to higher levels is probably easier and faster than for those who begin their French studies elsewhere.

At the end of the month there is a short school ceremony complete with champagne. Those completing the month receive certificates of attendance. There are also those who are given special acknowledgement for their exceptional progress in a short time—these are usually people who progress from debutante to intermediate or higher quickly.

How does the school determine what level you’ll be in?

The first day of class (and only the first instruction day of each month) all élèves (students) are given a series of short tests. These tests assess your ear for the language, your comprehension both orally and written, and your ability to speak French and express yourself in it. The last day of class you are given the same test (to evaluate your progress).

I’ll use myself as an example. Having taken this test six times, I can tell you that each time I’ve figured out some of the errors I made the last time (and made new ones unwittingly). Despite that, each time I’ve taken the test I’ve improved on all dimensions (as quantified on a graph). I have improved each time on all parameters. Frankly, I’m never aware that I’ve improved at all and have always been quite nervous about the oral test.

Advanced Level

Since I’m not an advanced student in this program, I may be less qualified in writing about it. It seems the bulk of the students are at intermediate levels. The school has many fewer advanced students and usually fewer débutantes than intermediates. However, during the course of a day there is the opportunity to speak with everyone in French.

Oral French doesn’t use that many tenses (as compared to the written French) so that’s not the challenge at this school. Usually, advanced students speak consistently with a decent accent (not perfect) and have mastered enough French to express themselves easily. Most advanced students have lived in France or another French speaking country at some point in their lives. 

(Go to next page)

I was a student at L'Institut de français at Villefranche-sur-mère, France

General Information

L’Institut de français (Villefranche-sur-mère, France) deservedly has an excellent reputation for teaching French using immersion techniques. Teaching its students (élèves) to speak French fluidly and quickly is the school’s primary objective. I chose to attend this French program because of its emphasis on spoken French.

I studied at the Institut  for a total of 12 weeks (4 weeks at a time in 3 separate months) within a year (November 2014, February 2015 and October 2015). A number of people have asked me about what the Institut is like and whether it would be a good place for them to learn French. 

In this series of 5 blog pages, I try to describe objectively what the school offers and some things that perhaps only previous students can share with prospective students. 

I’m neither endorsing nor discouraging anyone from attending the Institut. This is not a site for the school. If interested, please search for their current website address on the Internet. (It’s easy to find). 

Introduction

Briefly, the school teaches Standard French in a French language immersion environment. It’s a solid, professional organization that requires speaking French a minimum of eight hours a day for five days a week and encourages élèves to continue to speak French outside of school time, nights and weekends. 

What’s so different about L’Institut as compared to other French language schools?

Much has changed in the French language since World War II. The French, as other languages, modernize their language over time.

• For example, there are three different ways of forming a question in French—do you know what is considered the most common by today’s French standards?
• “On a” (meaning "we have") now frequently means the same thing as “nous avons” in everyday communication. French people tend to avoid “difficult” conjugations. There is speculation by certain authors that the French, who do not like making language mistakes, are simplifying to avoid making errors.
• Do you know how to express yourself in the “French” manner about daily preferences and activities? This school teaches students to speak in a French manner.
• Are your assumptions about French culture up to date? Older textbooks as well as non-native-speaking French teachers can be problematic. 

During my time at the school, the program addressed these types of issues through

• classes,
• cultural instruction,
• mid-day meals together with teachers at each table,
• social events outside of class,
• once a week, French language movies are shown and moderated by a French instructor who discusses context and language,
• and, watching selected daily news clips in French followed by discussion.

Who attends L’Institut de français?

• Adults (my classes have included those from their twenties to their eighties)
• People sent by their governments or NGOs to learn the French language for work and career
• People like me who are learning French later in life out of personal interest
• People who need to learn French to find work in a French speaking country
• People learning French as a condition of current employment
• The list of the national origins of the participating élèves is extensive. I remember classmates from Japan, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Australia, America, Canada, Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland, Venezuela, South Africa, and non-native speakers living in Monaco and France.
• There are married couples who attend. My husband took classes with me twice and I was there as a single once. Also, quite a few people bring spouses or significant others with them that do not attend the French classes.

Go to next page.

Ça marche? Oui, ça marche! Oh là là! C'est ne marche pas... maintenant.

www.illustrations-bd.com

(Revised 4/18/2016)
I first noticed the expression "Ça march?" in French class at L'Alliance Française de Paris  three years ago.

My French has advanced greatly since then as I continue to keep up my almost daily study of French and live my other side life as well. It's one of those expressions, that once you are aware of it, you wonder why no one made a point of teaching it to you.

My teacher, Lucie, would use a word that sounded like "maa-ch" to me and I would become totally confused. Being a word-for-word "literalist" (a disease that seems to be incurable), I got hung up on the tiniest things people say in French. (Still do.) I was a real "newbie" having only begun to learn French just 6 months before I was in that class and it was overwhelming as to what I didn't know... yet.

For instance, there was a vending machine outside our A.F. classroom door that didn't work. A sign had been hung on it with the words "en panne". Since the machine didn't work, I deduced that "en panne" meant the machine was out of order. Later on, I realized I’d been introduced to that expression before in an earlier class. From early on in my French studies French cars seemed always to be "en panne" in every lesson!

During classes, "C'est ne marche pas!" was said when something didn’t go well. One time, the Smartboard kept losing connection with the Internet and our teacher had to call in the mec who provided computer support. Thank goodness for computer systems support! Or, sometimes the door or furniture would be arranged in an undesirable configuration. “C’est ne marche pas!”

cheezburger.com

Marcher doesn’t always just mean to walk or step. Marcher in this context is the word we’d use for “work”. As in, “That doesn’t work!” Why couldn’t I guess that on my own?  I am too literal.


Notez, s'il vous plait: Un mec qui est un type qui est un homme.

Learning and Remembering the Gender of French Words

Is this why ships are "shes"?

ivornodailyphoto.blogspot.com

Since I began studying French seriously, I worried about ever memorizing the gender of French nouns. For anyone whose first language is English, this is quite a task. In general, we don’t have to remember what seems like an arbitrary assignment of gender to gender-free items such as telephones and barbeques. (Ships and boats were considered feminine, it's thought to be a left-over in English from borrowed language; most of us ignore this distinction and call a ship, “it”.) I mean, “Who cares?”

Unfortunately for us, lots of languages throw this stumbling block into their grammar. My personal experience with this includes Latin, Spanish, German and now French. And of course, these languages independently label the same words different genders than the other languages.

In French and Spanish, everything is masculine or feminine while in English, Latin and German there are 3 genders including “neuter”. Off the top of my head I remember that the Latin word for river is masculine and the word for island is feminine. The word for maiden, girl or maid in German is mädchen and is neuter! Pour quoi? (I’m half-German ancestrally, so I will not comment on why that might be.)

Now, I have recently found that there is a method to this madness in French. Although there are always the maddening exceptions which one just does have to memorize, consider the following very useful "rules of thumb" or guidelines:

How does a language have no gender at all?**

List of masculine endings on French words:

-age

-eau

-isme

-ment

-phone

-scope

List of feminine endings on French words:

-ance

-ence

-ette

-ode/-ade/ude

-sion

-té

-tion

-ure

My very first French teacher offered that a lot of feminine words end in –e, but you can see from the lists above that that advice really wasn’t all that useful. This list, which I discovered in the workbook, Grammaire Progressive du Française, Nouvelle Édition*, has really made determining the genders of unknown words so much easier for me. Once you can recall the differences between the lists, you will be very much better at reading, writing, and speaking a more-accurately complete French

*The workbook goes on to a very brief list of some common exceptions, but it’s not that valuable because there are many more exceptions than the 12 they list.

 ** Map from  languagesoftheworld.info