Learning French in Provence—Part I

The first thing that I learned about language acquisition is that one should not dabble.  My high school French did not prepare me to have any sort of conversation in France.  College German was worse.  I suffered through two years of German at the University of Illinois (I passed), but I can't even put a single sentence together in German.

This all changed when I decided to study Japanese.  Immersion is the only way for me to learn a language.  I spent several years studying Japanese during the year in both Portland and Cambridge, but studying Japanese during the summers in Japan is what made the difference.  At one point, my Japanese was good enough to give a few talks (a very nerve wracking experience).  I even wrote an academic paper in Japanese (which would be quite difficult for me to read now).  I haven't really used the language in about 15 years, but I'm sure if I returned to Japan that I could be up to speed in a month or so (with some hard work).

Since Japanese was somewhat of a success, I thought that there was no reason not to add another language.  Which one?  I thought about Chinese but that only lasted one class.  Then I thought about trying French again.  So I enrolled in a one-year course in the Harvard Extension School.  To get better, I knew that I had to do some sort of language immersion in France.  A friend of my sister recommended Crea Langues (https://www.crealangues.com).  Armed with my single year of French, I enrolled in a two-week course in Provence.

Crea Langues is not for absolute beginners—you need a minimum of one year of French.  It's total immersion.  If you tell a joke in English, the professors will find out and make you retell the joke in French.  Two weeks at Crea Langues is worth a semester or two of college French.

The day that you arrive, you will take a placement exam consisting of a written multiple choice exam (very hard) and an interview with one of the professors (actually sort of fun).  Everyone is then separated into groups of 2-5 students depending on their level.  After a very French breakfast each morning (bread, coffee, fruit, and yogurt), we have class from 8:45 until 12:45 (with breaks).  Classes consist of reading, listening, speaking, studying grammar and pronunciation, etc.

There are two options for the afternoon—intensive and a la carte.  Intensive means more lessons and a la carte means activities.  As my brain can only hold so much each day, I go a la carte.  You still speak French but activities are substituted for the lessons.

The professors are some of the best that I have seen.  They rotate among the different classes, and we see someone new each day.  And the professors meet daily to coordinate their teaching.  If there was more coordination among teachers at U.S. institutions, we would have a much stronger educational system.

In my next post, I will include more photos as well as some descriptions of our daily life and outings.