Teaching French Phonetics

For the past several days, I've been taking a course in French phonetics. Unlike many of the other participants, I have never taken phonetics and for that reason, the material both interests me and makes me anxious. Having taught French for four years now, I am convinced that I need to make pronunciation and intonation a priority. There is little point in being able to formulate grammatically correct sentences if they sound so little like French that no other French speaker can understand them.

And equally important important, along with pronunciation, is requiring that students take the language seriously as a foreign language, and not just as a sort of word puzzle. In a different course in which I'm also enrolled, we have been examining all the material available on the internet for learning French, and it is disappointing to see how much of that material relies on mechanical fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice. Strangeness, irregularity, playfulness, and even confusion are mostly eliminated from such exercises in favor of a clearly isolated goal: the vocabulary of the kitchen or adjectives for describing appearance or relative pronouns or past participle agreement with antecedent objects. Of course we separate things or simplify in order to practice. But when the entire subject is dominated by this strategy, we offer a deformed image of the language. And it is no wonder that advanced students sometimes come to regard anything irregular -- different accents, comedy, incorrect ordinary speech, antiquated expressions -- not with curiousity, but with hostility. They have been prepared for neat, mathematical problems to solve, not for weird, spongy, unreliable reality.

As I look forward to my courses for the coming year, I am planning to include some of the material and practices I'm learning here. But while I usually think about how to make my classes well-organized and efficient, I also want to be sure to have some strangeness built in as well. Strange is good. Strange can even be fun. And ultimately, teaching a strange language is what I'm here for.

In the mean time, I've found that there are many beautifully organized sites for teaching phonetics, and some might even be useful.

For example, the phonetics site based at the Université de Lyon is comprehensive. It includes information on the physical aspects of the sounds, the phonetic symbols, as well as detailed descriptions not only of the sounds of French, but strategies for correcting vowel and consonant production. The same is true of the site at the University of Ottowa. Unfortunately, I have to add that I don't think I would have been able to use these strategies if I hadn't seen someone demonstrate them first.

Another site, simply title Phonétique has excellent exercises which I could imagine assigning to my students. The exercises model the different sounds of French, as well as the use of liaisons. The main disadvantage here is that there are many exercises which rely on listening and then clicking the right answer, so they would quickly become monotonous. And all of the instructions are in French. As a result, I'm not entirely sure how I would use them for a class. I would probably have to introduce them in class, show students how to use them, and then ask them to use them for practice at home.

This site is more promising, since the exercises are more varied, but it definitely requires teaching students the phonetic alphabet, which not everyone is willing to do. Now that I've just said that I want to keep the strangeness of foreign languages, I hesitate at the thought of baffling students with strange symbols, and maybe that's a mistake.

Learning practice

Beginning next week, for the first time in years, I'll be enrolled in classes. I decided to do this last fall, when I discovered some impressive work that had been created by a particular language institute. Knowing already that I wanted to spend some time in France, I decided that this would be the perfect place: a new region to discover, an organized program, and a month spent just thinking about how to be a better French teacher.

Of course, as soon as I saw how perfect it all was, I began to worry. I prefer traveling to destinations where I have no expectations and no one expects anything much of me. It's easier to learn when everything you do is learning. After one day in Senegal, for example, my knowledge of Senegal had already increased a hundred-fold. But France is a place where I am now supposed to be some sort of expert. How am I supposed to enjoy learning when I feel as if everything I learn is only proof of how little I knew before?

The fear of making a fool of myself, or worse, being exposed as a fool with pretenses of intelligence, may be one of the best lessons I can learn now. I have often felt, as many teachers do, that my success as a teacher depends on demonstrating what I know, on show confidence, on putting on a performance of mastery. But what does that communicate? What kind of class is it, when we know things only so that we can be in control, or seem worthy of our position of authority?

We may command the classroom, but it's all too easy to play the role of the wise teacher and to start to believe in one's own fictional persona. Worse, that persona can come between us -- and here I mean me -- and the students. A persona needs care, it has to be maintained. Do I have time to appear impressively learned and authoritative and to pay attention to what my students are telling me? Maybe others can manage that, but I can't.

I have asked for a chance to learn, and I think I'm getting it in the way I like the least. But maybe if I am sufficiently uncomfortable in this perfect situation, I will actually learn something. At the very least, I'll be a step closer to the feeling of being a student who's not sure of getting an A.