Feb

12

A House Like Mine

February 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Doing a lesson of  ‘giving directions’  today:
“on the left / on the right / turn left / turn right” etc

Asked the student to give examples, “what’s on the left of you house?” I ask. “On the left of my house is a house like mine.”
“And on the right?”
“On the right is a house where Indians live.”

Ok, separate but equal, right?

Dec

3

Had a student who was talking about his job; describing his duties while he was working at a French telecom giant ["I worked at France Telecom for seven years...and I'm still alive," he says]
He mundanely lists his responsibilities: software management, networking…then, as if thinking about a  tobacco and wine drenched croque monsieur, he gets a dreamy faraway look while finishing off with “…and process.”

Nov

25

The Ugly Frenchman

November 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Was told that nobody in france judges my american accent, while no americans are tolerant enough to be patient enough with french people and their accents.
He told of a story when he was in Brooklyn and tried ordering something in a restaurant. The girl didn’t understand him, and got impatient. He yelled at her, he was proud of telling me this story, he yelled at her that he’s French, and she should try and make an effort to understand him, that she wouldn’t understand him at all if he spoke in French, so she should be nicer to him.

I told him that happens to me all the time in Paris, and he said, “no it doesn’t, not in Paris,” as if it were negotiable.
“Yes, it does,” I say, and I go on to give him several examples of cashiers saying, “quoi?!” very rudely to me, to which he admitted it could happen.
The noble Frenchman.

After telling that Brooklyn restaurant story, he says to me, “after all, how many French people go to that restaurant every year? One or two?” suggesting the girl should’ve been honored to have him.

Then they went to a pizza place under the Brooklyn bridge, and he said, “the pizza was OK, I mean for an American it was probably great, but I’ve had better pizza in the 19th arr in Paris.”
The guy, Mr. S (mackerel in Japanese) works mostly in Africa, in telecommunications. Same one as the “paradoxe” post.

He whines about how french people are too reliant on the welfare system and they don’t take enough risks, but then complains how in the US there’s not a social net to protect people.
We talked about using expressions, how he thinks they’re more valuable than grammar. I tried telling him how long it took me to learn the subtlies of “n’importe quoi.”
Now that I think about it, that expression applies to most of what spills out of his mouth.

Sep

23

Geography Lessons

September 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Had two women today who work for the International dept. of a French bank.
I asked them if they had any branches in Africa, and they laughed and said, “oh no!! well, not yet…..” I was confused, because I was sure another student from the same company had told me that they have banks in Morroco.
So I asked again, “you don’t have ANY banks in ALL of Africa?!” And the same reply, “Oh NO!!” followed by…..”Only in the Former French Colonies: the Islands and Morroco….”
I gave my now habitual look of the cocked head and borrowed brows, and asked, “so, Morocco isn’t in the continent of Africa?”
“NO! It’s in North Africa!”

I stand corrected.

Sep

22

I was told that….so imagine my surprise when….

The rocket scientist who likes to jump to conclusions.
Yesterday he decided Yves said Kansans were “puritanical” when Yves had actually said they were racists; today I complained about NOT having a student I liked on my planning, and he decided I had complained about having a student I DIDN’T like. I asked for confirmation if that’s what I had said, and he said yes. I then corrected him, and he tried: “he said he’d rather have another student.” I then reminded him that I had never said anything about what my schedule WAS, simply what it WASN’T. Then Yves told him I was just being “sensitive.” ARRRGGHHH!!!!
I wish I had thought of saying, “no, I just want ‘accuracy’! ” I tried to get him to want to know what exactly I was NOT happy about about my schedule, but he had no interest; it could be said that he’d rather his preconceived notions.

Then I realized Yves and I were bickering, so I tried that angle for the lesson:
“my in-laws bicker.” To which Yves took the bait. I talked about how my in-laws bicker in the car, at the dinner table, etc and the rocket scientist said, “he said he doesn’t like his mother-in-law.”

If I were Freud, I’d have a field day.
But instead I’m just a guy who worries about rocket scientists who make calculations like: if the rocket has enough fuel to go 2 miles, then it has enough fuel to go 20,000 miles.

Sep

14

LWLN!

September 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment

A while back, when we had a manager we all liked and we had those groups of unemployed people, I was trying to teach one of those groups some of the trendy internet acronyms; you know: WTF?! BTW, CUL8R…..
The trouble with teaching groups is that sometimes you’ll get a bossy Mr Know it all. One whose knowledge is often dubious, at best.
So, I was having fun, writing these things on the board, having them try and figure out what they meant based on the rest of the little messages I had inserted them into.

I get to one VERY common acronym, and Mme Know it all corrects me.
–No, in fact it doesn’t mean that, it means ‘Lots of Love.’
–Yes, it’s true that those letters also mean that lots of love, but nowadays we use it to mean Laughing Out Loud.
–I’ve never seen it used like that; I work and communicate with Anglophones, and we always use it like Lots of love.
–Well, when sending emails to clients, co-workers and peers, I would advise against signing off by using something so intimate as ‘Love.’ ‘Best Regards’ might be a safer bet.
–Best regards is old fashioned; and why would you say “laughing out loud” when the other person can’t hear you?
–Yes, well, it’s a figure of speech; and even though you may be alone in front of your computer, you could still, um, ‘Laugh out Loud,’ couldn’t you?

This was a group of 8-9 French adults, all supposedly trying to learn English from their teacher, but it just takes one bad apple to ruin the Tarte Tatin, n’est-ce pas?

We like to think the students might have some respect for and give credit to the Anglophone in the room, the one they paid to learn a foreign language from, but we often find a bit of mistrust coming them, some shreds of doubt. If you’re not French, and haven’t made it through the French academic system, then WTF do you know about English, right?

I tried to give a few more examples of Laughing out Loud, how it’s seen and used in forums and posts, online news comments, email replies….
In the end I may have convinced half of them.

In 2008, just last year, Sophie Marceau, France’s sweetheart, came out with a movie called LOL.
I smiled when I saw the posters all over the place then, and smiled again today when I saw the posters advertising its availability on DVD.

lol

Look Who’s Laughing Now!

Sep

6

I have two scoops about Roquefort. Here’s the low-down:

My source, who calls himself a “Cheese Ambassador,” has to go to the states in a few weeks, to promote his dairy company; the biggest dairy company in the world, by the way. A huge French outfit that goes around France, Europe, the World, and buys out smaller, struggling, mom and pop dairy farm.
The Walmart of dairy, if you will.
Did I mention it’s a French company?
So this Ambassador has to pitch his product to top East Coast chefs, and he needs to do it in English.

The format is suitable to both him and the chefs:
It’s a three day seminar in which the chefs stay in residence and eat cheese, and the Ambassador stays and eats cheese, and everybody’s happy. But he needs to practice telling stories about cheese and explaining how this and that cheese is made, blah blah blah.

So I had him do a role play, in which I’m a chef, and he’s him. He had to tell me the story of Roquefort. It was his choice; he told me he would have to tell stories about two dozen cheeses, and I told him to pick one.

So, Roquefort came about because one day, a long time ago, a shepard, who had brought his lunch to work with him, had to leave his grotto very suddenly. “Why?!” I asked, “was there a fire in the grotto?!” Non, because he had fallen in love with a girl; there’s always a girl, he mentioned. And so, after quickly putting his meager lunch of milk and bread in his grotto, he ran after this girl. He ran and ran, for a kilometers and kilo de kilometers. He looked high and wide for this girl, but he never found her. So after returning back to his grotto, months later, he found his milk had gone bad. Not only that, but his bread had gone moldy, and the mold spores had spread onto the rocks, and then had fallen into his milk. Well, that didn’t deter our shepard. After having run for so long, and fruitlessly at that, he was starving. So he tried his bowl of moldy, hard milk. “That’s not too bad,” he thought, “but maybe some salt…”
And voila, Roquefort was born!
-And when did all this happen? I ask.
-Oh, a long time ago!
-Yes, but how long ago? 50 years? 100?
-NON NON! Much longer! Maybe about two thousand years ago!
-Two thousand years ago?! But that’s when Jesus was born!
-Yes, that’s right!
-So, are you saying Jesus is Roquefort?!
-Or maybe Roquefort is Jesus? he slyly answered.

The second scoop is that the Sarkozies, in the Elysees, consume a whopping 5kg of Roquefort weekly!
My source is disappointed, however, that Nicolas eats his cheese without drinking any wine. I suggested that maybe he’s Born Again, like Bush, and he was reluctant to answer. I don’t think Jesus drank wine, either, I ventured. Again, no answer.
Which could only one of two things……

Aug

31

Last week we had two students taking lessons together in “intensive, all day/all week lesson.” One was, shall we say, “normal”? and the other was sadly, anorexic. She never admitted to such, but it was clear. In spite of her probably naturally tiny frame, she was barely standing. To top it off, literally, she had had breast augmentation, and she would wear transparent blouses and high heels.
The first couple days, when I’d see her walking down the halls, I’d think to myself in a judgmental way, “look at her! what a freak!”

But once I realized I was thinking that, it dawned on me: it’s a disease. She shouldn’t be judged, nor pitied. I hadn’t taught them by this point, day two of their five day course. When my day came, on Thursday, four days in, the masses had been well riled and wound up.

Aug

31

Mushroom Rocks

August 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Someone from ONF today told me how hard it is to educate “southern” (southern hemisphere, I learned, after a bit of prodding) people about the dangers of deforestation. He cited an example: In a place in Cameroon, the village elders taught the younger people how recently, “the stones are growing out of the ground, like mushrooms.” In fact, the stones are not moving at all; they’re being revealed as a result of erosion. But the elders nor the younger people will hear none of this. To them, it’s some sort of natural “miracle,” not erosion caused by deforestation: if that were the case, it would mean they were doing a bad thing by cutting the trees at a too rapid pace.

Aug

26

Had a student today who was a “sommelier.” Except she wasn’t. On her “ped card,” it said she was a Sommelier, but then another teacher took the liberty to correct it by writing  “Wine Waitress” on the next line. At the break, I asked some co-workers, one American, a German (or two) and some British, what they called “sommelier” in their countries. The teacher (a Brit) who had written the waitress thing was in the room, and she said, “Oh! You called me out!” This started a flurry of debate, and the overwhelming majority in the room decided that if it’s a man, you can say “sommelier,” but a woman would be called a “wine waitress.”
Separate but equal. George Orwell would be proud.
The only other American in the room had no idea what we were talking about, but that’s excusable. She’s not really from Chicago, but from Germany. I said, “well, I’ve never heard of nor seen ‘wine waitress’ in the states, and as far as I know, we say ‘Sommelier.’ ”

Which did not start any flurry of activity at all.


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