When the language is in tense

YOU see them all the time when you're on holiday abroad, the Brits whose approach to communicating with foreigners is to speak in English very loudly and very slowly, all accompanied by not necessarily helpful hand gestures.

If you're anything like me, you've probably shuddered at the Basil Fawltyness of it - and then wondered whether you'd be any better.

Taking into consideration the five years I spent studying French, my ability to speak it is shockingly weak.

Five years of describing objects in a room - the dog was in the basket, the cat on the chair, the mouse under the table, as I recall - are of little help when you need to know whether the cassoulet is vegetarian-friendly or not.

Perhaps it's just me. My years of French study were somewhat scarred by a very minor detail in the textbook we were required to use.

It featured a family whose pets included "un chat et un chien" - and a monkey. Yes, a monkey; every French home should have one, apparently.

This particular simian, if I recall correctly, wore a hat and a scarf and rode a bicyclette. But it was also named Nikki.

And, let me tell you, years of "Oui, Nikki le singe?" from the witty teacher every time I answered a question soon wore awfully thin.

I simply stopped putting up my hand.

These same textbooks had been handed down through successive generations of students since at least the 1950s.

Now, you might assume, as we did, that French in 1984 was pretty much the same as French 30 years earlier.

How wrong we were. As we began our O-level studies, a new teacher came to the school.

Appalled by the state of the books we were using, he was rendered nearly apoplectic when he discovered that, thanks to the directions of Cours Illustres, we were all in danger of habitually insulting every French waiter we encountered by calling him "garcon".

Apparently, the appropriate word was 'monsieur'. And it had been thus for a couple of decades or so.

Instead, the teacher created his own lessons, which, much to our amusement, generally featured the singer Michael Jackson.

I can only assume it was an attempt to "connect" with the youth. Regardless, I for one was only too pleased to leave the days of Nikki le singe behind me.

By the luck of the draw, on the day of my French O-level oral examination I was required, in French, of course, to pretend to arrange a date with the examiner.

Even at 16, I suspected this was a pointless task. Not, you understand, that I'm especially opposed to the idea of arranging dates with Frenchmen, especially if he is of the David Ginola variety, but I knew that if I ever were to go on holiday to Paris, I'd surely be far more likely to need directions to the Eiffel Tower or a nice little bistro on the Champs Elysee. And besides, I mused to myself, if Frenchmen are so romantic, shouldn't he be asking me?

Make-believe romantic assignations aside, much of our lesson time was spent learning about past participles, future progressives and past perfect tenses.

All of which would surely prove very useful for those of us planning to move to France, write a novel in the French language, or seek a job at the UN. Since few of my classmates have done any of these things, I suspect that our time might have been better employed. The point, surely, is to be understood in a foreign language, not to pass off one's self as a local?

When you think about it, when was the last time you used a perfectly conjugated sentence in a food shop? You're in the chippy. You don't say: "Good evening, madam. I would like four pieces of deep-fried haddock and four portions of chipped potatoes please." You say: "Haddock n' chips four times, please."

Call me revolutionary here, but I think all most of us really need is a few basic sentences and as many nouns as possible. While it would be rewarding to pass the time of day with the locals discussing the state of the French economy or the philosophies of Descartes, when we're on holiday, our needs are basic: to eat, drink, relax, find our way, keep safe and call for help in an emergency.

For some bizarre reason, just about the only French word I can instantly recall is chaussettes, or socks, but, until I looked it up, I had no idea what they called a fire extinguisher (it's extincteur, by the way). You tell me: in a pinch, which is likely to be the most urgent?

There's nothing wrong with an "old fashioned" education

I WAS talking to a woman at the bus stop last week. She was concerned about the amount of homework her eight-year-old granddaughter had been given. “Homework? She’s eight – surely she doesn’t have homework?” I queried. And after a bewildering five minutes of key stage this, and Ofsted that, I discovered just how far primary schooling has moved on since I left Dale School, Derby, in 1980.
I was fortunate to have benefited from what even people of my age would consider an old-fashioned education. Our school in Normanton was run under the auspices of the always immaculately turned-out Miss Clarke. She was petite and ladylike and ruled the school with an iron, if perfectly manicured, hand.
While other school heads were embracing modernity, Miss Clarke made sure her boys and girls were brought up the classical way. No trendy educational ideas for her. From the moment the old school handbell was rung on the playground outside, and the chattering crocodiles of more than 500 children filed inside, we were taught on traditional, if occasionally quirky, lines.
Each morning the school, divided into infants and juniors, attended assembly. We entered the halls to the strains of classical music. The composer of the day was clearly displayed at the front, and woe betide anyone who could not read or pronounce his name. From Tchaikovsky and Brahms to Schubert and Liszt, we learned to recognise a huge range of music. Among Miss Clarke’s favourites were loud or stirring pieces, like Grieg’s Morning or Delibes’ Coppelia. It was all about instilling in us enthusiasm, energy and get-up-and-go. And it worked.
And each day there would be a poem to listen to – like Keats’ To Autumn – and always read with an almost fevered relish by Miss Clarke’s ever-jolly colleague, Mrs Smith, her foot tapping out the rhythm of the words. She read all manner of poems from writers as diverse as John Masefield, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. We started each morning with a hymn and a prayer, of course, and to my shame my primary school self never questioned what my non-Christian schoolmates thought of that. But I loved it, and I’ve always valued hymns and prayers for their use of language and poetry, as much as for their spiritual content. There was also the element of everyone doing something together, which just seemed to set us up right for the day.
PE lessons at Dale also had an interesting twist. Confined for most of the year to the concrete playgrounds on either side of the school, or in the assembly halls, our sports curriculum relied upon the equipment we had inherited from earlier generations. Indoors there was the usual gym apparatus with poles to twizzle on and rope frames to climb up, monkey bars to swing on and a range of aged benches on which to balance, all of which bore the marks of 75 years of children’s feet bashing and rubbing on them.
When it came to fresh air fun, there was a more exotic choice. Nestled among the skittles and canes, beanbags and hula-hoops were a set of ancient shinty clubs. Now, unless you went to Dale, or lived in the Scottish Highlands, you’re unlikely ever to have encountered that particular sport. It was a forceful and violent Gaelic forerunner to hockey and quite what this set of clubs, which resembled upturned and flattened out walking sticks, were doing in the PE cupboard of a Derbyshire primary school, no-one seemed to know, but under our teachers’ guidance we would, gently of course, tap a plastic ball up and down the playground around the obstacles laid out before us. It probably owed very little to the archaic sport, but it was utterly engrossing nonetheless.
But I think the most valuable lesson that Dale School taught us was the how to mark the passing seasons and seize the moment to appreciate the world around us. No matter how important the lesson we were having, there was always time to abandon it for a morning spent outside studying a frost-encrusted spider’s web, or a bird’s nest. Then it was back inside to write stories and poems inspired by them. It was fun, but it was learning too, and it never seemed like hard work.
I wonder, with all the emphasis, in today’s schools, on homework and breakfast clubs; with lessons in citizenship and technology; with ICT rooms and interactive white boards in most school; with websites, newsletters and class councils to keep pace with - all the undoubtedly wonderful and essential components of modern education – is there still time for our youngsters to experience the more esoteric aspects of life? It would be an awful pity if, amid all that technology and financial investment, they were literally missing out on smelling the roses.