Avoid learning French with a conversation partner
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In this article, we'll see why it's often preferable to avoid French conversation partners.
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Avoid learning French with a conversation partner
The following lines are written from experience by taking into account 3 things: my understanding of language as a university-qualified linguist, my insider’s knowledge of the Franco-French culture and my experience as a former user of conversation partner websites. We’ll start with the easiest: my own experience.
When I was at university as a freshman, I was put in a position of having to learn German fast. At the time I was studying for a Master’s degree in Linguistics & Literature and German was my major. The problem was, there weren’t any classes to teach us German. But they did expect us to speak it at the exam. And rather well.
I hadn’t yet completed my degree and was only starting to learn about languages and the different aspects of linguistics. For all intents and purposes I was inexperienced in that field. My guess was as good as the guess of the man off the street so I did what seemed logical to me: I found some conversation partners to practice my German with. From memory I had at least 6 different partners, both online and face to face.
The reaction of wanting to speak in order to learn is one that everyone has. I recently wanted to help my mother in law revive the German she had when she was 3 years old as an immigrant to the USA but she flatly answered: “Yes but I have no one to speak to”. As grounded as this remark might seem, it does contain two implicit conditions: the first is that speaking is the tool by which we learn. The second is that speaking is the inevitable condition in order to learn. In other words, no speak = no learn. It’s both the tool and the crucial condition for the learning to even happen.
When I started my conversation exchanges, I thought like this also. I went with what made the most sense. We met in a public place (usually a cafe), sat face to face and started to talk.
I remember that I was quite amazed at myself for speaking German. The language had become “real” to me and in my mind at least I was achieving the highest level: speaking like a real German. But despite this, I always left my conversations with a feeling of uncertainty. I had spoken, but not quite sure what I had accomplished. What exactly did I know versus what there was left to know? How much had I moved forward?
I now understand that this self-doubt was completely justified. In my conversations, I was navigating in the dark as a non-linguist. I didn’t have this structured and scientific view on languages and didn’t understand the building block s that held the language together. To me it was a collection of words and sentences.
The problem was that my interpretation of language was shared by my conversation partners. To them too, a language was a collection of words. They didn’t know how German functioned on a technical level and certainly couldn’t explain anything grammatical. They could just point out better suggestions for my mistakes, speak slower and encourage me. We were both paddling in pitch black, but utterly convinced we were achieving something.
My conversation appointments always fizzled out by themselves. We both lost interest precisely because we were not achieving anything.
What was the problem?
Any language is held together by principles. Call them the foundational blocks or mechanical parts on which all the other parts depend. It’s a bit like looking at human society and seeing a person walk outside on the street. To an alien who doesn’t understand human society, they might think that walking outside is a major principle. But to insiders to our society, we know that this is just a consequence of another principle which is free choice. And if we look even further back, we get to the voting system and the notion of democracy. Then we get to the philosophical idea of personal freedom. We get to the core of the matter. Walking outside is just a byproduct of the core principle. Me and my conversation partners were just practicing walking outside in a sense.
Neither me nor my partner had a sufficient understanding of language as a science. We didn’t know which problem we were trying to solve. We believed in “speaking” as the final result. But we didn’t even start to understand the many parts that make up a language and their importance in regards to one another. We thought that we were going somewhere but we had no measuring tool to tell us how far we had gone and where the destination was. Speaking was not a destination, it was just a manifestation of sound.
I remember the first time a German used the term “rumbasteln”. This means to tinker around, or casually mess around without doing anything. Cool verb. But where does it sit within German and how important is it? Should I know this verb? Does it belong to a category of similar verbs? Is it used by a certain age group? Can it apply to different circumstances? What exactly can I do with this new word?
We didn’t even think about tenses. We didn’t know if one was more important than the other. We couldn’t have given a well thought-out opinion on the importance of pronunciation. We didn’t know if our conversations were benefiting our understand of the language. We were acting instinctively, and utterly not knowing if we were majoring in minor things.
We figured that if we spoke enough, something was bound to happen – but we didn’t know what. “Keep going and I suppose something will happen”, we thought. Keep walking and you’ll get somewhere.
We focused on details of the language, not knowing if it was time put to good use. A point of detail had as much importance to our eyes as a major structural part.
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The necessity of being a linguist
As a qualified linguist and language teacher, these qualifications and this experience brought me much more than being able to name things with brainy words. It’s not about being able to explain the different theories on language acquisition with complicated diagrams.
The true value in being a university linguist is to not see a language as a noise. It’s not just a random collection of sounds and words. There are dynamics within a language. There is a structure. There is a hierarchy between words and there are building blocks. It’s a filtered interpretation of language. You cut away the noise and you see what’s important. It’s as if you and I took a handful of sand at the beach and just saw sand. A specialist in geology will see the components of the sand: the rocks, the sea shells and the glass.
There are many teachers, tutors who are not linguists and don’t have that scientific view on languages. These are the people who cost you money in the long run but also confuse you with their own muddle view on the language they teach. Typically these are the teachers who will propose “how to say things like a real native” or they will speak about “expressions” without even understanding what it means. They believe in things like “real world French” versus textbook French. They think that the local thing they say in French becomes a major principle to pass on to you. They have not being through the rigorous training that university provides. They are witch doctors. They are charlatans.
Because of their incapacity to think as linguists, their lesson plans will contain a lot of trivia. They will typically look at what they do as native speakers of French and assume that it’s all useful to you.
Some of these witch doctors have reached international fame and have become household names. None of their businesses ever achieve to teach you a language but learners keep buying, probably because the don’t realize that there is such a thing as the science of language that goes by the name of Linguistics. At the moment, it’s as if any person with a pair of plyers could set up as a dentist. Though this comparison seems forced, it is true to those of us who know. They are nothing but village sorcerers who will teach you French based on a concoction of albino frogs and newts’ tails.
A true linguist has an in-built ability to hear a message in any language and analyze it according to a scientific understanding. When I was doing my conversation exchange I didn’t have this ability. I was stuck without a compass in the middle of an ocean of language and I didn’t know where I was going.
Conversation partners and teachers who are not university-qualified will confuse you for the simple reason that they themselves are confused. They don’t know this because no one has ever told them and they assume that because they are native speakers they are at the highest level. My ability to see clearly now shows me what a monstrous waste of time it all was. It didn’t bring me any knowledge.
The effect of Franco-French culture
To those who are not insiders of the French culture (by which I means the country and the culture that comes with being francophone), you must understand that the way French is taught in schools is very academic. It’s not like English, which comparatively is not taken seriously.
There is also the fact that French is a matter of cultural pride in the francophone countries because a period of international glory in the 19th and 20th centuries. The king of France Louis 14 wanted to make French a tool with which to advertise the glory and superiority of France in foreign countries. It wasn’t just a language but rather seen as a form of art that was actively supported by the government. It was meant to be the most beautiful and perfect language. Historically there has always been a lot of legislation around the French language. Through the centuries this had the effect of creating a sort of subconscious matter of pride in the minds of speakers of French and especially of France.
We could say that in every French citizen there sleeps a French teacher. They have less hesitation to step into the role of corrector even towards other native speakers.
For the longest time up to the 2000’s, French people had “les blagues Belges” or “les blagues Suisses” which often depicted the less able neighbouring countries who were using “their” language. The jokers would immitate imaginary Belgian or Swiss accents as if to say that they could not hope to match the French perfection. Have you ever an equivalent joke in English? Me neither.
Learners of french should be very aware and extremely cautious of the fact that francophones will see no problem to them stepping into the role of teacher, even without the slightest notion of linguistics. What they see as true will become your truth. What they see as correct will be come you notion of correct. At their own unqualified level, they are self-appointed ambassadors of the French language.
To conclude
Whether it’s with a teacher or a conversation partner, there are some very real risks involved, that come from the absence of an understanding of language through the science of linguistics. The risks are a waste of time, a waste of money and picking up bad habits.
Far from wanting to create an elitist circle of university-qualified language specialists to protect the profession, it’s rather an alarm bell that I’m ringing because of the damage unqualified teachers will do through their lack of knowledge. It is hard to know the extent of the problem across the internet of the physical world, but suffice to say – even the best-known online language-learning business fail to offer anything even remotely linguistic. In easy terms, they they are selling you nonsense. What the little guy or independent tutor is doing beneath the radar in the shadows is anyone’s guess.
Their heart might be in a good place, but their interpretation of language cannot and will not replace or hope to compete with that of a trained linguist. Where there should be science they will bring emotion and trivia. They will insist on points of the language that have no importance, miss those that are important and be utterly lost as a guide, apart from the fact that they know the language as a native speakers.
Conversation partners seem to present a logical solution to a logical problem but often act as imprints of your interpretation of language. We could ask ourselves whose language germs we are picking up.
Being a native speaker is not a skill in itself. Everyone is a native speaker of at least one language. The help you need stretches far beyond being told what is right pr wrong according to someones’ personal appreciation. What you need is professional guidance.
