Let it go

Welcome to the fourth article in our new series: How to Learn French. Not just les rouages*, but tips on the attitudes and practices you can adopt to ensure your success.

The verb tenir in French means ‘to hold’ and as a way of remembering it, I often suggest students think of the English word tenacious. A tenacious person holds fast that which they wish to retain. They don’t let it go, and this is generally considered a positive quality.

Tenacity, though, can sometimes lead to obstinacy and stubbornness, and now we’re sensing there might be a flip side to this coin. In the thesaurus, a couple of adjacent meanings are ‘intransigent’ and ‘mulish’ and suddenly I find I’m not so keen to call myself tenace* after all.

For yourself and for the sake of your French, sometimes you’ve just got to let it go.

There’s definitely a place for rigour and precision in language learning, and we’ll certainly cover that in a future article, but in some instances, greater strides can be made by adopting an attitude of benign neglect.

Laissez-moi expliquer*.

Many of our students love French so much that they want to understand every single word they hear. This I understand, of course, and I place myself firmly dans leur camp*. However, after years of observing students tackle listening exercises, in particular, it’s become clear to me that attempting to decipher every single syllable can be detrimental to comprehension.

More successful are the students who are able to sit back, relax, and concentrate on trying to gain une compréhension globale*. These days, I can usually pick these students by their body language. They tend to recline slightly in their chairs, some even close their eyes, and they often emanate a slightly amused air. It’s almost as if they’re giggling to themselves saying “Okay, this is going to be interesting, but let’s just wait and see how bad it is, and I’ll see what I can salvage from the wreckage once it’s over.”

The tenacious students, by contrast, are usually hunched over their notepads, pencils at the ready (freshly sharpened, naturellement*), brow furrowed and shoulders rising to lobe-level. I’m not mocking these students, je vous assure*, as I am one myself, or at least I was one. I’m trying to reform.

What tends to happen to the hyper-alert, tenacious students is that things go well until they encounter the first word they don’t understand. At this point, they become fixated on that one word, and that is where their comprehension stalls. They’re obsessing over that one word, meanwhile the audio track is continuing apace, and if they do manage to unstick themselves from where they got stuck, they then realise they’ve missed the last ten seconds of the track and la panique* really sets in.

Conversely, the more laidback listener has accepted they’ve missed the word, but they’ve maintained their gentle focus and are often able to get the general gist out of the rest of the track. In an exam, you’re usually granted a second if not third listen, and this is where these students fill in some of the details. Moreover, by maintaining their slightly detached approach, they’re often able ascertain where the action is taking place (in the street, in a shop, over a meal), and are more keenly aware of the attitude of the speakers (excited, frustrated, angry). This allows them to make educated guesses at to what the content of the track is, and increases the chance of a broader comprehension and, therefore, success.

I remember sitting a French exam many years ago where I fell straight into the piège* of the tenacious listener. Hunched over, pencil poised, straining to get as close as possible as I could to the cassette player (as I said, many years ago…), the examiner hit the play button and we were off. I was okay for the first few seconds, I was pretty sure I heard the word Bretagne, so had placed myself in Brittany (or was it Britain? Oh god…ne panique pas*!).

A couple of seconds later I heard the word ‘far’, and started to smile. I couldn’t believe my luck (or was it cunning?). In the course of my preparation for the exam, I’d become friendly with my teacher, who happened to be from Bretagne and who had, only a few nights before, made me a Far Breton, a traditional cake from Brittany. A self-satisfied smirk divoted my face as I continued to listen to the fast-moving track, quietly confident that I was streets ahead of the others in the room.

That is, until I heard the words ‘bord de la mer’ (seaside), ‘danser’ (to dance), ‘autour’ (around), ‘le vent’ (the wind). My smirk faded, my brow contracted and a light sweat broke out on my hands and face as I struggled to work out what on earth was going on. I had images of dark-haired Bretons in traditional dress doing the French version of ring-a-ring-a-rosie around a dense cake in a high wind on a treacherous cliff. What the hell was going on?

Mercifully, the audio track eventually stopped, I made some chicken scratchings in lieu of actual answers and before I knew it, the deuxième écoute* had started up, way before I was ready. Still focused on my beloved ‘far’, I picked up very little new information, made some rather minable* amendments to my scribble, and red-faced, handed in my exam.

Outside, and partaking in the usual post-exam outpouring of anxiety, I was loudly lamenting that I couldn’t make the connection between the dancing and the cake, when someone next to me said “Oh, I thought ‘phare’ meant lighthouse.” A couple of others chimed in that they’d thought the same and then it all made sense. Well, relative sense. I still maintain dancing around a lighthouse once a year as part of a Breton festival abuts on the absurd, but it makes a whole lot more sense than a stupid cake-dance.

Lesson learned? Well, no, not really. I still found myself stopping in my tracks at the first mystery word, whether in a listening exam, a casual conversation with a colleague, or when reading. In fact, for many years, I somewhat ruined the joy of reading in French by swapping novel for dictionary at every new word, assiduously making notes in the margins, and then picking up where I left off. It’s true, my vocabulary improved somewhat, but really only if the word recurred multiple times in rapid succession. And I found the exercise so laborieux* that I rarely made it past the first few pages before giving it away, anyway. Students I know who took a more laissez-faire* approach to reading convinced me that they eventually came to understand the story without cracking a dictionnaire* because they were (sagement*) more focused on the context and mood, rather than every petit détail*.

This approach is valuable in situ, as well. Imagine you’re in France and you ask someone for directions. They launch into a detailed explanation of the best route and you can feel your anxiety start to rise as you realise you didn’t understand the fifth word they said. This has happened to me on countless occasions and it is only recently that I’ve stopped falling into the trap of remaining fixated on that elusive word. I’ve learned that in many instances the reason you’ve not understood is that it’s the name of a street or a shop you’ve never heard of. Better to try to keep your focus, be on the lookout for key words, stay attuned to the person’s gestures and facial expressions and then, once they’ve wrapped up, go back and politely ask them to repeat the very first bit. If you’re able to garder le sang froid*, you’ll get a general sense if it’s miles away or just around the corner, and if it’s a complicated or simple route. Nearby and easy to get to? Say ‘Merci, c’est gentil.*’ and off you go on your merry way. Miles away and complicated to get to? Bonjour Uber.

Finally, remember that learning French is a long and lovely road. Ultimately it’s yours to navigate in the way that suits you best. Just bear in mind that it’s also a winding road, even circuitous at times. Words have a way of circling back to you, over and over it seems, so you’ll always have another opportunity to catch up to that slippery word around the next corner.

Relax your shoulders, loosen your grip and enjoy.

*the nuts and bolts | *tenacious | *Let me explain | *in their camp | *an overall understanding | *naturally | *I assure you | *the panic | *trap | *don’t panic | *second listen | *pathetic | *hands off | *laborious | *dictionary | *wisely | *little detail | *keep your cool | *Thank you, that’s kind of you