French universities are very different from American ones. Big lectures for classes meet once a week (or less often), sometimes with a smaller discussion section another time during the week. The big lectures are pretty crazy; they’re essentially a two hour long marathon of note taking. One of the things that shocked me the most was that in some lectures, there is essentially a constant stream of chatter from the students going on in the background. While I find this horribly distracting and disrespectful, I’ve seen professors just yell over the noise for the two hours. Of course, then there are other ones where everyone is dead silent, and if they talk the professors call them out on it. In fact, I watched one of my favorite professors separate a group of chatty students in the middle of a class yesterday. The grade is mostly based off of the final exam, though the foreign students sometimes get a break and get to just turn in a dossier. Oh, and by “discussion section”, I mean that the students have to sign up to give a 20-25 minute oral presentation on a subject related to the course material. Fortunately, the teachers seem to think that such a presentation from foreign students would be about as helpful to the French students as it would be enjoyable to us, so we get to turn in papers on similar subjects.
The biggest difference is probably my Japanese classes. I have three classes: grammar, theme, and version. “Theme” and “version” are translation classes; in one, you take a French text and translate it into Japanese, and it’s the reverse in the other. Surprisingly, my grammar class is not much different, in that she gives us Japanese texts and asks us to translate them into French, explaining grammar points on the way and asking for explanations about how Japanese grammar is different from French grammar. Shockingly, electronic dictionaries and allowed and in fact encouraged on the exam, because there doesn’t seem to be any vocab quizzes or anything; you’re expected to be able to look things up and still understand the text. Obviously, this approach to teaching a language is completely foreign to me. I was going to take a class called “practique orale” because I assumed it would be a class working on speaking in Japanese. PSYCH, it was actually listening to a conversation, transcribing it word for word, translating that into French, and then answering a couple questions. That’s definitely off the agenda for me, especially because there is this wonderful thing called the “Maison des Langues” where they have both educational tapes with exercises as well as commercial films in tons of different languages.
The good news about said Japanese class is that my fellow students are great. It’s a small bunch; besides me and a Taiwanese girl who is from a Japanese university but whose French isn’t so great, there’s probably about eight or nine French students (apparently, there are a LOT of students abroad right now; like, at least ten). About six of these make up the core group, and they’re remarkably friendly. As they’ve been taking pretty much all of their courses together for the last two and a half years, they obviously spotted the outsiders right away. One of them, Mehdi, immediately introduced himself to us foreigners and proceeded to invite us to have a between-class coffee break with the group. They’ve since continued this welcoming attitude, and I even went shopping with one of them on Thursday in a long break between our classes. This one, Sophie, is quite unusual because she’s 32 (though she definitely doesn’t look it). Then again, the better bulk of this group is fairly old, with another guy being 26 and many of the other ones in their mid-twenties as well. Apparently, most of them worked before going to college, though this is not typical in France. In any case, they’re very sweet and understanding of the fact that I’m a foreigner and don’t have the same base for all this translation that they have. They’ve offered to photocopy papers for me and explain nuances in translations to me. Also, these Japanese classes are very much about someone putting their translation up on the board and then the teacher and everyone else in the class fixing it. At first this really put me off; I’m one of those types who needs to have the right answer to everything before putting it in front of other people. The idea of putting up something that I know is mostly wrong (as my translations are sure to be) in front of a bunch of native French speakers was at first terrifying. However, I’ve come to realize that these students have essentially spent two and a half years of their lives having their work publicly ripped to shreds in front of their eyes, and they seem to get that I have issues with the nuances. Thus, I think these classes are going to be as much an exercise in French as they will be one in Japanese, and I think it’s really going to improve my grip of the French language. I’d have to say that I’m very much looking forward to the experience. That being said, when I start crying about how difficult everything is in two weeks, just go with it and please refrain from rubbing this in my face.
Current class schedule:
Tuesday: Japanese grammar, Psychosociology of communication, FLE (the French version of ESL, which stands for Français Langue Etrangère), and Cognitive Linguistics
Wednesday: French culture, History of Modern Art (and by “modern”, think Renaissance…I kid you not), discussion section for Art
Thursday: Japanese Theme, Japanese Version, and the discussion sections for my two literature classes
Friday: every other week alternates between French Literature of the Middle Ages and French Literature of the Seventeenth Century.
Shout out to Woodward Theater: in my Middle Ages lit class, we’re studying Aucassin and Nicolette. Yes, I only have the faintest clue what’s going on because I saw Festival, what, 8 years ago?
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