Studying languages at Oxford is a massive letdown

A long time ago, I could debate nuclear weaponry and the death penalty in French. Now I struggle to say what I did last weekend.

I study History and French and to get straight to the point – you don’t speak any of the foreign language.

Oral classes are a fucking joke – firstly, they only take place in first year, as though the most crucial part of learning a language suddenly becomes wholly unnecessary. We also only ever played that game where you stuck a post-it on your head and tried to guess who the famous person was. All this entailed were two answers- “oui” or “non”. The assistant who took this class would then tut and sigh if we didn’t know the imperfect subjunctive. (For those not in the loop – this is a complicated tense that no-one in the French-speaking world uses anymore). The whole thing was bloody ridiculous.

Your translations are also marked in the most arbitrary and ridiculous way. I got my collection back and quite frankly, I flopped. Why? Because I wrote “pink champagne” rather than “rosé champagne” and “this is not a hen night” according to my tutor. The phrase “she barely touched her food”, a perfectly coherent phrase in my opinion, was also wrong, in case the marker thought I meant that she was physically prodding her food. What?

The course guidelines say that it is 50% language, 50% literature. THIS IS A LIE. It’s essentially 90% literature, 10% language, if that. I basically do an English degree. Which would be fine if that’s what I signed up for…but I didn’t.

The fact that you don’t speak any French also means that the course breeds laziness. Gone are the days when I struggled, Sartre in one hand, dictionary in the other. The English translations are now my first port of call. You may say that this is entirely of my own making, but no, dear friend, it’s not. We could try and discuss the literature in French. We could try and explain grammatical errors in French. But we don’t. And the only reason given is “you’ll be fluent after your year abroad.”

I complained to my history tutor about this the other week, and the reaction was the same: “But that’s what your year abroad is for,” he said, peering at me confusedly over his horn-rimmed spectacles.

Wouldn’t it be better if I went abroad with an already high level of French? Wouldn’t that allow me to immerse myself more? What I’ll now be doing is turning up in Paris spluttering and embarrassed, whilst the locals take one look at me and sigh: “Can I help you madam?”

A friend of mine on my course said “I’ve ranted to my mum about this so many times,” whilst two unsuspecting first years at my college were overheard saying “why don’t we speak any French?” YES, WHY DON’T WE?!?!?!?!?!?!

 

Apparently your year abroad is shit too. So that’s something to look forward to.