IAS 380R University Grammar Course

Cultural Proof
    
      In January, I took a placement exam and started a French grammar class at the university especially for foreign students. Not anyone can take the class, but as teaching assistants, we were allowed, so several of us took the test. We were all placed in different classes, which was good because it forced us to meet other people. My class met every week for 2.5 hours in a classroom on campus. There were about 8 to 10 students, depending on who showed up, nationalities ranging from Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and German. The professor, of course, was French. After a few weeks a middle aged man from Oregon joined, but before then, I was the only anglophone, which was a new experience for me in a classroom setting. I didn’t realize how much having a common native language influences a class. For example, often times the Chinese or Russian girls would ask a question about a word that to me was so obvious, because it was similar to the English word. When every student speaks English, there are plenty of grammar topics or vocabulary words that are easy for everyone, but in this class, everyone’s needs were more diverse, as we were more diverse. The teacher always spoke in French, obviously, and sometimes at the beginning I would ask questions about cultural things that were going on. We talked about galette de rois, other “foods of the month” (ex. crêpes in March). We read and discussed newspaper clips or excerpts from classic or modern works on subjects such as education, immigration, what it’s like to be a foreigner, idioms, and of course lots of grammar.
    We wrote a short composition each week, which I was surprised at the laxness of the students. The second week of the class, half of the students came in late or didn’t have their composition written. I thought, “This is a university class, is it not? Is it allowed to not do your homework?” However the professor, who I liked very much, just told everyone to email or give her the compositions before the end of the course. Obviously it didn’t take long for me to figure out that the University of Poitiers isn’t quite the same caliber as BYU. However I’d already heard that before; that anyone who decides they want to go to college can get in without too much effort. Equal opportunity, eh? That’s great and all, in theory, but then when you have a class who rarely shows up and doesn’t do their work, what happens then? Anyway, I thought it was all very interesting. I didn’t finish the course, as I knew I wouldn’t, because the class went until summertime and my contract ended in the spring. But the times that I did go the experience was well worth the effort.