I have a dream: to speak English

26 years old, years of long studies with Shakespeare’s language always on the curriculum between three and five hours a week, and yet this man is suffering. What illness has struck him? When he has to pronounce a few sentences in English, a horrible muteness overwhelms him. He is embarrassed, shameless. A real clash in his life.

Job seeker with a very honorable background (master’s degree in history and graduate of a Superior School) many doors inevitably close but not unjustly. Despite the love we have for the French language, it cannot be exclusive. The dream of a monolingual France brings more nauseating thoughts that would putrefy our freedoms, our values, our lives. Impossible to consider it. Dangerous to hope for it. Very Dangerous.

He asks himself an existential question: “Am I permanently useless at English?” He regrets never having been very serious during his secondary and high school years. Yet he doesn’t feel alone. He has always had a classmate in the same predicament as him, looking dazed when the teacher questions him in English… One recourse only, a sentence like a Pavlovian reflex: “I don’t Understand”. He hopes to avoid the treacherous executioner, postpone the interrogation to his neighbor or pray that an Anglophile raises his saving index to claim the right to speak. Thus goes the life of a bad student. Don’t worry, Don’t be happy…!

Once an adult, he regrets being denied a job “because” he doesn’t master the speech of Londoners. Too bad, cruel. But normal. The positions are tough and the criteria to obtain them refined. With his studies he could aspire to be an executive in companies. The hitch is that these only recruit English-speaking executives. “It’s a sine qua non condition. It’s an obvious plus especially here on the Côte d’Azur. We pay for training for the oldest employees. It costs money. So to save money we decided to recruit only perfectly bilingual executives, even trilingual with Italian,” confides Jean-François, Director of Human Resources in an Azure coast company. One can be moved by it, sympathize or even be scandalized but Jean-François is just doing his job.

So what to do? The ideal would of course be to spend a few months in England. You are forced to practice. The most effective method where courses followed throughout schooling generally resurface. Still, you need to have the means and when you are job hunting this solution becomes obsolete. Mission Impossible…

There are courses for adults. Our friend prospecs, receives documentation from Wall Street Institute: “Success guaranteed and we’ll refund you in case of failure. The courses are personalized according to your level and your needs and we adapt to your schedule”. Tempting offer, he lets himself be tempted (“free assessment of your level”).

He heads to Avenue Jean Médecin. After climbing a few floors of Nice Etoile in an ascensional fashion, he finds himself in high-end premises. He meets with the manager, quickly explains his concern which is understood: “The school method is not adapted. You have four hours of English a week with 30 per class and in the end you speak very little especially if you’re not comfortable. With our methods, in 30 hours you will speak more than in ten years of schooling.” Hard to deny the obvious: Wall Street Institute is the reference. Problem: the cost. You need to count 3000 € for complete training. Just do it…

Other adult courses exist. They are even multiplying in the face of increasingly important demand. ANPE has set up improvement and learning courses. But this remains insufficient or inadequate because needs vary depending on the person, job search or level. Students in English, lacking income, give courses but like Alexia, a graduate with a master’s degree in English, they acknowledge being incompetent: “I give courses for middle and high school students who can’t keep up with English classes. For adults, it’s different. It requires different, more specialized vocabulary. I could possibly come as support for a training program.” Alexia, for ten euros an hour, helps children aged 14 to 17. “I wasn’t good at English in middle school. I was even struggling and that’s why my parents gave me tutoring,” says Alexia. These courses were a turning point for her, a love at first sight. She falls for a young Manchester student: “he had come to learn French. To make money he was giving English courses. He was handsome, charming. Anyway, I was in love with him like a groupie. I wanted to learn, I was much more attentive and I learned to love communicating in English.” A so lovely story.

Alexia’s anecdotal experience highlights the magic recipe for becoming bilingual: loving to communicate in English. This is where the National Education system fails. In Europe, young French students are the worst English students. And consequently so are adults, often in an irremediable way, the gaps are so laborious to fill and catching up the delay too costly. So as not to see doors close once studies are finished, as a teenager you must become aware of the importance of being bilingual. And if teachers cannot provoke this “famous turning point”, you must seek it elsewhere: private lessons like Alexia, learn Robbie Williams songs and translate them, flirt with young English female tourists with tanned bodies and exquisite forms sunbathing under the Azure summer sun… A matter of will and feeling for a beautiful life.