Sarkozy's emergency plan for English hits wall of emotion in France

France spends 5.8% of its GDP on education--far more than most countries--and ranks 69th out of 109 countries on the TOEFL.

(Bruce Crumley of Time Magazine )

Over the years, many studies have confirmed France's poor performance in English, so technically the international TOEFL results shouldn't really be news. (see previous post)

And yet, the publication of France's terrible scores on TOEFL set off a firestorm of emotion in France.

Le Monde's education journalist Maryline Baumard found out the hard way just how touchy the subject is. At the end of a factual analysis of the TOEFL results, she dared to joke that French people's inability to learn English might be genetic--unless perhaps the problem might be related to how the subject was taught.

173 comments flooded in, many ranging from sarcastic to outright abusive.  So much so that Le Monde brought in a mediator to analyse the responses. The conclusion: about half the people writing in objected to the fact that French people were obliged to learn English at all.  (See the former president of the APLV's remarkable response.)

Same problem for the author of an article for Cafebabel.com. Tim Mac An Airchinningh used an ironic tone in an article entitled "French citizens Balkan level skill in English" which sent many readers ballistic. The Observatoire européen du Plurilinguisme publicly called for the revocation of his journalist's credentials!

Why? Because you can't joke about the terrible state of English teaching in France. No matter how many studies confirm the disastrous results, any serious discussion of the causes and solutions remains taboo.

And yet, French parents want their kids to learn English and  will invest tremendous effort and expense to obtain private lessons and experience abroad.

Is the system so incapable of reforming itself that families have no hope for better? And why such emotion? What are we really talking about when we talk about English?

To be continued...

publications cited in this post:

Time

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932422,00.html

Le Monde

http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2009/08/25/les-etudiants-francais-toujours-aussi-nuls-en-anglais_1231684_3224.html

http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=1098783&clef=ARC-TRK-NC_01

L'Observatoire Européen du plurilinguisme

http://plurilinguisme.europe-avenir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2496&Itemid=26

Cafebabel.com

http://www.cafebabel.fr/article/31291/irish-teacher-france-english-language-paris.html

Association des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes

http://www.aplv-languesmodernes.org/spip.php?article2613