Le Café des flamants roses has a small garden where people can talk English to ask questions about what is being said in French in the café

I spent part of my degree course in France-including time in schools. In the école maternelle they were already learning ‘eet eez a boll’ and some year 9s greeted me with, ‘Hallo, Madame. I spik ze Engleesh ver well. Ze sky ees blue, ze beesh is near ze sea.’
I was really motivated to teach French in Primary, but as Marydoll said, few primary schools have linguists in their ranks.
Some of our governors at the time, suggested that staff went to night school to acquire the skill. (At their own expense of course.)
MFL at ours is currently taught by me and a secondary languages teacher who retrained for primary. I like to teach Y6 songs like ‘Sous le pont, d’Avignon, on s’y cogne on s’y cogne’. or ‘Ne pleure pas fourchette’.
They enjoy the joke when they’ve been learning the proper versions lower down the school.

La plume was dans le bureau in my day. My U3A students tell me that the equivalent phrase they learnt in English was "my tailor is rich".
No idea why.

I have now found these.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_plume_de_ma_tante_(phrase)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_postillion_has_been_struck_by_lightning

Cabbie21

Although I had taught French for several years, it was not until GCSE came in that I taught useful communicative French.
Soon after, one summer I was on holiday in France when my purse was stolen. In September, back at school I told my GCSE classes how I needed to use all those important topics:
Asking the way( to the police station)
Reporting a loss, including a detailed description.
And on the train back to where I was staying, I recounted my story to some people in the compartment, and one lady kindly gave me the bus fare back. ( I had other money in my suitcase). At last some really useful French. Better than La plume de ma tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle.( My aunt’s pen is on my uncle’s desk).

I read somewhere sometime that La plume de ma tante was to demonstrate that the letter 'a' could have three different ways to be pronounced.

Although I had taught French for several years, it was not until GCSE came in that I taught useful communicative French.
Soon after, one summer I was on holiday in France when my purse was stolen. In September, back at school I told my GCSE classes how I needed to use all those important topics:
Asking the way( to the police station)
Reporting a loss, including a detailed description.
And on the train back to where I was staying, I recounted my story to some people in the compartment, and one lady kindly gave me the bus fare back. ( I had other money in my suitcase). At last some really useful French. Better than La plume de ma tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle.( My aunt’s pen is on my uncle’s desk).

ElderlyPerson

I would like to be able to do science in French.

It was always general stuff in French class.

Yet people in France learn science and mathematics in French.

I would like to be able to read and write about science as perhaps do twelve year olds in France as a start.

Yet the two cultures thing in England seems against that.

Our exchange partner school in Italy taught a lot of their science classes in English. Excellent idea.

EP, you could buy a book on Amazon.fr, meant for children. Something like this:

I would like to be able to do science in French.

It was always general stuff in French class.

Yet people in France learn science and mathematics in French.

I would like to be able to read and write about science as perhaps do twelve year olds in France as a start.

Yet the two cultures thing in England seems against that.

I'm loving the café. It means I can talk and read about 'normal' things. I do an online French class but the subject matter is often inappropriate. For instance, we did a whole two hours on the belfries in northern France, which is very unlikely to ever come up in normal conversation. I'd rather learn about what to do if my car breaks down, or if my hotel reservation is wrong.

There seems to be plenty of fluent speakers of French here , and so I'd prefer to learn correct vocabularly and grammar by example. most of the time. I like to be informed by someone who knows more than I. However the cafe's atmosphere is informal like a real cafe.

Thank you very much for the French cafe and its garden!

EP, I sent you a PM yesterday, just in case you haven't seen it. Nothing untoward, just some info. I'm not looking for a response.

Here is a link to a video that I have found today.

I have not watched all of it.

The link starts at 50 seconds in because the start is just bits and gives the impression that the video will just be bits.

I have posted the video here in the garden as the subtitles are in English.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_XzrxXnwMM&t=50s

Here is a link to an amazing sequence later on in the video.

It seems monotonous for just over the first minute but I have put the start where I have put it so as to set the scene for you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_XzrxXnwMM&t=3300s

You could scroll down to find out where the bike ride will lead, but it is such a wonderful surprise that you may like to just watch the video and enjoy the surprise before doing so.

Merci, Madame.

Elderly Person I am often copying and then pasting into Google translate to find the meaning of some words, such as l'orage
I wrote (mistakenly) 'une orage' but when I checked, it's actually 'un orage.' Sorry. I often confuse the gender of words beginning with a vowel.

Thank you.

I could not find a thread with that title, but I found a thread with a puzzle about five thieves.

Have you ever read Arthur C. Clarke's book "The view from Serendip"?

I bought a copy in hardback when it was published, late 1970s or early 1980s if I remember correctly.

I first learned of his work in the early 1960s when I bought a paperback "Profiles of the future". I was much inspired by that book.

He later wrote that he had underestimated something in it.

He had suggested (it was then the era of the early sputniks and around the time of the first man in space) that maybe the person who would be the first man on the moon was already alive and was a little boy. He pointed out that at that time Neil Armstrong was already a 30 year old man.

I find that I am understanding most of what is being written in the café.

I am often copying and then pasting into Google translate to find the meaning of some words, such as l'orage.

I would have loved that too Mary, I only narrowly missed it!
EP I was and am one of those girls who are no good at maths (but no giggles)
Teaching Year 6 maths used to terrify me.
I was good at teaching maths to younger children, and also SEN children.
I think that if you struggle with the a subject yourself, it makes you a good teacher, as you understand it in a different way to someone who is naturally gifted in it.
My dad, who is a mathematician, is a terrible teacher of the subject as he can’t understand why you don’t understand
(I was that eleven year old at the dining table tearfully attempting to do their maths homework with a very frustrated father!)

EP, my all time favourite word is, serendipity! We are indeed sympatico, as I find myself with a fair number on GN!

I will be back later, my DD is impatiently waiting to take me out. (I'm not to be trusted to go out on my own! ? )

P.S. I'm sure you would have enjoyed, Miss MaryDoll's daily Maths class. It was on the go last year on GN.

> Anyway, as usual, I digress! Sorry EP for derailing your thread!!!

Mais non!

I had just got to the end of your post, reading it with interest and delighted with its content and musing on how back in the 1990s [name redacted for diplomacy] had gone on television basically bragging about how the UK had secured an opt-out from an EU policy that all children should learn two foreign languages so that children in the UK would all learn one foreign language. It seemed yo me such a bad thing to have done.

When I watched that video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz64czn1JcQ

to which I linked in the

www.gransnet.com/forums/chat/1298883-Recommendations-to-learn-French

thread, and I saw the reference to mathematics, I immediately thought that that would not have been included if the BBC had made that video. Oh, get someone being silly seemingly bragging about being no good at maths giggle giggle. I seriously wonder how such attitudes play on girls and sort of cause them to be against doing mathematics even before starting to do it.

Your post was welcome, I find what you write fascinating and does not derail the thread in any way.

I like free-flowing discussions that serendipitously flow.

EP it’s English as an Additional Language, not Alternative

I can’t remember much about the MA - I was accepted on it but didn’t do it due to my disillusionment with school (totally unappreciated; I resigned soon after, as did a lot of the staff)
It was a distance course with the University of Manchester.

ElderlyPerson, we teachers are notorious for usingabbreviations. It's because we are so busy, we don't have time to write the full word.
Fanny, we used the term, ESL ( English as a second language ) rather than EAL

Just before I retired, the Scottish Government had proposed introducing a third language into Primary schools, albeit at a very basic level.

The third language taught in the feeder primaries was based on what languages the local high school taught. I was in the process of introducing Italian into our Cluster, other clusters in the LA were introducing, Spanish, German and Mandarin.

Very innovative thinking on the Government's part, but rather unrealistic. Few primary schools had had linguists in their ranks or teachers willing to develop their skills, so the burden fell on teachers like my self, who had a modern language degree.

Anyway, as usual, I digress! Sorry EP for derailing your thread!!!

Marydoll

Sorry about any spelling errors, I am very tired and have brain fog! Not a great advert for a linguist!

Your post was excellent, comprehensive and very useful.

Thank you.

FannyCornforth

Wow Mary! What a wonderful opportunity; I’ve previously read you mention how good your LA was regarding CPD.
Mine is more effluent than affluent.
A few years ago I was responsible for teaching EAL a huge cohort of Eastern European children, most of whom were Roma. (I loved it, and was good at it.)
I offered to write a scheme such as yours, and study for a MA in teaching EAL (paid for myself) and received no support or encouragement whatsoever.

And possibly regarded with some suspicion afterwards - was it "well, she has some funny ideas - ooh, difficult"?

EAL is, I have found, English as an Alternative Language.

CPD and MA I knew, and LA I worked out after reading a post made yesterday.

Was the MA a taught course, a taught course plus project, or totally project?

nanna8

A lot of missing posts ? Or is it me ? C’est ennuyeux.

There are two threads in parallel.

The Pink Flamingos Café where everything is in French and the garden of the café where English is used for discussions about what is being said in the café.

The idea is that everything in the café is in French, and is basically chat about the weather and so on. The bits about the decor of the café, the menu, and so on are just creative writing fiction, though with factual link out information, so for example, the paintings are fiction, but the pictures that inspired the artist can be viewed in Google street view, they are in one of the long galleries in the part of the château that is built on the bridge over the river. Yes, although Google street view has 'street view' in its name, one can in fact look around inside many places, including that château and, for example, the Uffizi art gallery in Florence, Italy. And the château also has a website and there are YouTube videos too.

www.chenonceau.com/en/

I have not watched all of this yet, but this looks good.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KujZuJ8syQ

This thread - listed as the garden of the café - is so that discussion can happen in English without such discussion disrupting the ambience of the café.

Wow Mary! What a wonderful opportunity; I’ve previously read you mention how good your LA was regarding CPD.
Mine is more effluent than affluent.
A few years ago I was responsible for teaching EAL a huge cohort of Eastern European children, most of whom were Roma. (I loved it, and was good at it.)
I offered to write a scheme such as yours, and study for a MA in teaching EAL (paid for myself) and received no support or encouragement whatsoever.

nanna8

A lot of missing posts ? Or is it me ? C’est ennuyeux.

There are two threads one for French and one for English but both start with Le cafe des flamants roses……