Why You Can’t Learn The French Language At School

A lot of us did French lessons in school, sometimes for a number of years (I did 5 years) and yet we still couldn’t order a coffee if we were in France.

The truth is that you will never learn French in school. You can certainly pass French exams, but you will never learn how to actually speak French.

The good news is that you can learn French, to an extremely high level; just not a school and I will be going through why you can’t below.

(If you are wanting to learn French you can check out my unofficial French Course and get a grasp of the basic structure of the language)

French Is Forced Upon You

When I started secondary school I was told I was learning French and would be for the whole 5 years I was there. I had no choice in the matter and it was basically forced upon me.

Of course you can argue that about all the subjects in school, but French in particular is seen as a skill.

At the time I had no reason for this skill and I had no interest in it. I didn’t see the point of it (I wish I could go back now and tell myself why it’s good).

I know I was not the only one who felt this way and if you are in this state of mind, learning anything is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

A lot of this comes down to me and my mind set, but I also feel that the school system did nothing to encourage my interest. The attitude was “you need to listen to this, or you will fail the test”.

Being motivated to pass a test is not how you learn a language.   

Schools Don’t Make Learning French Fun

Further to forcing the language on you, they make no effort to make it fun or interesting.

All the content is very dry and just so boring. I learnt French when I was 11- 16 years old, so I was a young man and there were plenty of things that would be of interest to me, but none of these where brought up in French class.

For example, I went to an all boys school and football was the most popular sport by miles. In 1998 (yes I’m old) France was hosting the World Cup and they went on to win. I’m sure this would have been mentioned in French class, but we certainly didn’t go into it.

The teachers missed a huge opportunity here. If they had worked this world cup into our classes we might have been very engaged and seen the French language in a very different way. We would have found it fun.

Instead of learning about where the world cup was being hosted, we had to learn some boring vocab lists such as the contents of the bathroom.

There Is Too Much Focus On French Grammar

Grammar is important. That can’t be denied, but language is more than grammar.

Schools focus way too heavily on this area and it’s just confusing. When you are first learning French you have zero reference to anything. You don’t know any of the language to fit these grammar rules into.

All the grammar you do learn is compared to your native language and you are just sort of told how it’s different, but you don’t know any of the French language to see this clearly.

Also focusing very heavily on grammar is like focusing on the mechanics of how something works, rather the thing itself.

If we take swimming for example, you learn to swim …by swimming. Knowing the mechanics behind it can help you, but not by much.

Learning the optimum angle your arm should hit the water and the correct amount of downward force and pressure to apply with your arm is great to know, but it is pointless to you when you get into the pool.

This is the same as grammar, it’s great to know, but it isn’t going to help you when someone asks you a question in French.

As you progress it makes sense to go through grammar, so you can hone your skills and become more efficient, much in the same way that when you want to get better at swimming you might look at how it is best to move your arms through the water.  

French Lessons Are Not Regular

One of the biggest problems with French classes in school is that they are not that regular. I maybe had French twice a week, maybe, for like 40 minutes at a time.

That is nowhere near enough. Even if we round that up to 2 hours a week, really that is still pathetic.

Then remember that schools have a lot of holidays. A quick google search tells me that the average school year is 39 weeks long.

So, 2 hours for 39 weeks is 78 hours of French lessons in a school year. Then we look at that for 5 years, its 390 hours total.

It is estimated that you should be doing 600-800 hours to get proficient in French and your whole time studying at school barely even getting you half way there.

This is why you walk out of school knowing nothing.

French Class Is All Taught In English

As I’ve just said, we do not get enough French in school, only around 390 hours …but how much of that is French?

Probably a quarter? Maybe half if you were are lucky. Most of my French classes where taught in English. I’ve already said there was too much grammar, and all that was all explained in English.

French in school is not learning French, it is an English class that examines how the French language works. It is basically like maths class, but instead of being numbers, its French words. 

There is very small amount of French listening and probably even less output (speaking French) in school classes. I guess you do a lot of writing, which is a form of output, but I don’t think doing verb tables is exactly useful output.

You need exposure to the language and a mixture of not enough regular lessons, mixed with those lessons being mostly in English is not a great combination. You just do not get enough exposure to French at school.

This framework is exactly why you leave school with no ability to speak French.

One Size Fits All

To make this frame work even worse it is just rolled out to a mass audience. In my class there were 29 other boys.  Not all of us where at an equal understanding, which is fine, some people take longer to understand a concept than others.

The problem is that if you lagged behind, you where left behind. The next lesson was already planned and the teacher couldn’t spend time with you individually to get you to the same level as everyone else.

This certainly happened to me and a few others. Once you fall behind in a class like this, there really is no way back, you just get lost and its game over for you.

Of course schools are not set up for 1 on 1 teaching and they are not exactly going to let you go at your own pace, so the whole system that they do use is set up for failure.

Only the top few students are going to get anything from most of the lessons and the rest of us are just going to be sat their confused.

(If you are interested in 1 to 1 teaching you can read – Should You Hire A French language Teacher To Help You Learn French?)

French Is Taught For Exams, Not For Language Skills

The whole point of the school system is to test you at the end, so you can either pass or fail.

This is not how a language works. You could argue that you can either speak it or not, but what does speaking mean?

Are you talking about getting by in daily life or are you talking about being totally fluent in all aspects of life.

Languages are fluid and are for communication. The school system doesn’t care about this. All they care about is that they can test you on certain things, which means can you explain how an aspect of grammar works, or show you can recall something.

If you can do this, you get the grade. It doesn’t matter if you can’t order a coffee when you go to France. They don’t care if you can’t communicate. They are not testing you on that

The goal is to get you to pass the test, not actually speak French.

If this is the goal, then we can’t really be surprised when we leave school not being able to say anything.

Conclusion

As you can see every aspect of your school French class is set up for a total failure. No matter how hard you try, you are never going to leave school speaking French.

You do not get enough time with French. The little time you spend in French class isn’t even mostly in French, then the exercises you do are all basically grammar drills that can be helpful, but they are also not going to get you talking.

I think it’s important to know this. You didn’t struggle in school because you are bad at learning languages; you struggled in school because they didn’t teach you the language properly.

If you struggled in school, do not worry, you can still learn a language as an adult and you will have far more success on your own!

(You can read more about – Advice For Anyone Learning The French Language)