Language Immersion
"Vous tournez a droite," said Madame Olivier, "Vous tournez a droite," said Madame Olivier, and we turned right. "Continuez jusqu’a la pharmacie," and we went as far as the pharmacy.
I had yet to set foot in a classroom, but it was clear that my French immersion course began the moment my hostess met me at the train station. Now she was giving me a preview of the route from her house to the school, a path I would walk every weekday morning for the next two weeks. Enroute to visit friends in Avignon, I had scheduled a two-week sejour at CAVILAM (Centre Audio-Visuel de Langues Modernes), a French language school in Vichy. My motivation was simple: a desire to converse with my French friends at a level somewhere above that of a three-year-old.
The next morning at breakfast Madame Olivier lectured me about the importance of arriving at school on time. Eventually she made me understand that a previous guest had been made to sing a French song in front of the class as a punishment for showing up late. Lacking both singing talent and a repertoire of French songs, I transformed instantly into a model of ponctualite.
I arrived in time for a placement test, designed to sort new students into beginners, false beginners (you took a course once, but you don’t remember much), intermediate and advanced. Starting with textbook phrases like "Ou habitez-vous?", my interviewer progressed to more complicated "how" and "why" questions, then terminated the test by sending me to a classroom in another building. I never did learn which level I had attained.
"Asseyez vous ici," directed the instructor, indicating a chair between a beautiful young woman with flowing hair and a cherubic-faced teenager. Melania, the young woman, explained that the students were preparing to debate the merits of building a subway in Vichy. I noticed that when Melania looked up a word in her Italian-French dictionary, the teacher wordlessly pushed a thick volume her way. Testing my limits, I pulled out my English-French dictionary. Sure enough, the instructor waggled a finger at me and plopped the heavy French-French dictionary on the table in front of me. I was seriously immersed.
Collette, my morning instructor, offered un peu de tout: listening, speaking, grammar, reading and writing, presented through videotapes, recordings and print media. One morning she marched her students through the streets, like kindergartners on a field trip, to the language lab that place of torture for a whole generation of would-be language learners. But here the task was a pleasant one: we listened to a haunting French melody, "Puisque tu Pars," then filled in the missing words on a worksheet. Another time we watched with rapt attention a film by Claude Lelouch, in which strong images compensated for the lack of subtitles. Afterwards, instant film critics all, we analyzed characters and motivation.
Meanwhile, my petit dejeuner of bread and coffee seemed hardly sufficient to fuel all this intense concentration. At the mid-morning break, my classmate Franco introduced me to a nearby pattisserie, where pain au chocolate became a daily indulgence. Caroline and Claudia, two blond frauleins in my morning class, invited me to lunch with them. Their group of German high schoolers formed the largest contingent of students from any one country, a circumstance that led to occasional snatches of German infiltrating the school’s French defenses. For the rest of us, French, whether faltering or fluent, was the lingua franca.
Caroline, Claudia and I settled into chairs at La Creperie, a modest sidewalk cafe run by a plump, friendly woman. While we compared notes on our respective host families, the proprietress strode past us to the street and swung a metal basket in a wide arc, like a baseball pitcher winding up. Intrigued, I ordered a salade just to watch the woman‘s time-honored technique for shaking excess moisture from the greens.
After a leisurely two-hour lunch break (we were, after all, in France), we all headed for our elective courses. I eschewed Literature, Civilization, and Grammar in favor of Communication, my goal being to dazzle my French friends with my verbal agility. Sylvie, our instructor, honed our French conversation skills by means of skits, problem-solving activities, and discussions of current issues. In small groups, we filled in cartoon strips in which the speech "balloons" had been whited out, or created campaign slogans for a mock election.
In one eye-opening exercise, Sylvie asked us to characterize our own nationality. By this time another American had joined me in the class, but it didn‘t matter our classmates happily contributed their own observations. "Americans like things fast and easy," Franco declared. "But they‘re really friendly and nice," added Caroline.
In place of textbooks we used authentic materials: newspapers, magazines, posters, boxes of cookies. Yes, cookies. One inspired afternoon, Sylvie brought a different box of cookies for each group of four students. My group tasted our Delice Fruits, pronounced them barely edible, and set about designing a television commercial for this unlikely French product. Fifteen minutes of brainstorming produced a skit worthy of network T.V., complete with sappy slogan. ("Delices Fruits, notre favorites…").
Cultural and recreational activities offered by the school ranged from free French movies to excursions into the surrounding countryside. Most weeknights I chatted with my family, labored over my homework, then fell into bed. But on Saturday I joined a busload of students bound for the Massif Central in the heart of France. We stopped at pretty Lac d‘Aydat, visited a diminutive Twelfth-Century church at Saint Nectaire and a chateau at Cordes, then lunched in the village of Orcival, where a joyous wedding party paraded through the streets to the church.
Vichy itself, all but ignored in American guidebooks, attracts European vacationers to the giant sports complex lining the Allier River. In summer the population swells with elderly curistes come to take the waters at Vichy‘s famous springs.
Though my hostess spoke glowingly of the legacies of Napoleon III elegant mansions, flower-filled parks, the Grand Casino she never once mentioned the World War II skeletons rattling around in Vichy‘s closets. So one afternoon I followed a young historian on a walking tour called "Vichy: Capitale 1940-1944." Skirting the Parc du Source, he pointed out the buildings that housed the Gestapo and the foreign embassies when Vichy was the capital of occupied France.
My two weeks in Vichy flew by. At the end I headed south to show off my newly-won fluency to friends in Avignon. They wasted no time testing my understanding of French. As we gathered around the swimming pool, they called to one another playfully, "Jetez Joyce dans l‘eau!" At one time, I would have smiled uncomprehendingly. But no longer. "No! You‘re not throwing me in the water!"
Immersion has its limits.
