Market day meets French lesson

We held today’s beginners French class at the market in Barbotan, a little spa town half an hour’s drive from here; the idea was to get my students to put into practice what they’ve learnt over the last few months. If I’d hoped to be impressed by their skills in a “real” situation, I’d have been sadly disappointed, as they struggled either to understand or to make themselves understood. With the onset of summer proper (we hope), numbers have dwindled to a mere three elderly ladies, who can barely remember what I told them 5 minutes ago, never mind last week or 2 months ago! Bless them, they all take notes throughout the lessons and claim to practice during the week, but make almost no progress, with their stoically English accents and total incomprehension of tenses. They’re horrified when we do pronunciation practice and I suggest that they need to learn to spit to get the French “R”, or when I try to get them to make an “oo” shape with their mouths whilst saying “eee”. They’ve all lived here for years; it’s incomprehensible to me how they cope at all!

After half an hour in the heat they’d all had enough, so we adjourned to a cafĂ©; I tried to get them chatting in French, but I should have known better!

I left them looking for garlic, having reminded them for the third time this morning what it was called, and headed off to my next class with some flowers and a bar of home-made soap that they’d given me for my birthday. Frustrating they may be, but they have hearts of gold.