It’s 11:57 a.m., and I’m hurrying to class with my backpack on. A colleague stops me in front of the Chemistry-Physics Building and says, “You look like a student!” Actually, I am.
At 46, I’m an associate professor of geology and one of 25 students in an elementary French class here at the university. I’m nearly twice the age of my oldest classmate and 20 years older than my instructor, an M.A. student. Many of my classmates are freshmen (as is my older son, whose girlfriend is in another section of my class).
I took five years of Latin, from fifth to 10th grade, but I stopped my foreign-language studies in 1979. As I’d been assured, Latin helped my English immeasurably, but I always felt a twinge of regret about not having taken another, modern language, one in which I could converse and write as well as read.
As an undergraduate, I considered myself fortunate when, thanks to Advanced Placement, I didn’t have to take a foreign language, nor was I required to demonstrate foreign-language competency for my doctorate. I suspect I’m not alone in still having the occasional nightmare about failing a course.
So why am I putting myself through this?
While pursuing my Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, I was technically a foreign student, but Alberta is culturally perhaps the most American of the Canadian provinces, so language was never an issue (apart from my occasional Southern expressions, like “ma’am”). My English-Canadian wife, whom I met in Edmonton, ruefully recounted how her years of public-school French hadn’t helped her avoid a remedial course in the subject while pursuing her doctorate in political science. Still, I was slightly envious of my Canadian classmates who were bilingual, and I always read the French on consumer packaging (“farine de blé" sounds much more interesting than “wheat flour”). After I’d finished a first draft of my dissertation, we moved to Texas, where Spanish would have been more useful than French.
Fast-forward 10 years, to the spring of 2002. Having managed to survive the tenure track, I’d decided that my experience in hydrogeology might be usefully applied to the myriad water-resource problems in developing countries. Coincidentally, I received an e-mail from Lahcen Benaabidate, a professor of hydrogeology in Morocco, asking if I’d be interested in working with him on a project in North Africa.
And so a long-distance collaboration began. Like many Moroccan academics, Lahcen learned English as his third language, after Arabic and French (the language of higher education in the sciences in Morocco). I dug out my wife’s old Larousse and sight-read my way through his doctoral thesis. I was gratified by how much content I could puzzle out with only a dictionary and intuitions from English and Latin. Over all, though, the exercise reminded me of Steve Martin’s joke about writing books without verbs.
During the summer of 2003, I ventured outside North America for the first time. After attending a scientific conference in Madrid, I traveled by train and ferry to meet Lahcen and spent a memorable weekend with his family in Fez. Since then, I’ve returned twice to Morocco for conferences (helpfully held in both French and English), and I’ve hosted Lahcen and another Moroccan colleague, Nour-Eddine Laftouhi, as Fulbright scholars in the summers. Their families and mine have become intertwined.
As our families grew closer, I became increasingly self-conscious about being functionally unilingual, apologetically saying things like “Mon français est faible” to Lahcen’s dean (who amiably replied, “So is my English”). I often relied on my Moroccan colleagues to translate for me in conversations. They were happy to practice their English and never teased me about my ignorance, though they would occasionally start speaking to me in French, forgetting that I didn’t really know it.
The final incentive was when I learned that to apply for a Fulbright scholarship to Morocco, I’d have to submit a two-page synopsis of my proposal in Arabic or French. I chose French.
Rosetta Stone was an option, but the discipline of a regular course suits my learning style better, and the university pays for up to eight credit hours per semester. Taking French pass-fail keeps me motivated without stressing me out too much over my grades.
Mon professeur et mes camarades de classe sont très sympathiques. Daniel, our instructor, taught English in Japan last year. He’s knowledgeable, funny, and not intimidated by having a professor in his class (and it gives him the opportunity to use vous instead of tu).
My classmates and I circulate around our desks, asking one another questions—not always accurately—from the textbook about our activities. Abby, one of several students who spent time in France, has enviable pronunciation. When I ask, “Tu vas au bar?” she pauses, looks at me quizzically, and says, “I’m underage.” Siobhain’s parents moved from Australia to Kentucky while she was finishing high school, then relocated to Montréal. She asks haltingly, “Est-ce que ton meilleur ami sait surfer sur Internet?” and adds, “I’m not a creeper.” I reply “Oui” to her question and mention in passing that I don’t do Facebook, to maintain boundaries with my students. (I don’t add that I’m easily distracted and a Luddite.) She encourages me to reconsider.
Robert’s a graduate student who’s auditing the class but doing the work. He protests jokingly that a question on our last quiz, “Qui est ta personne préferée dans ta famille?,” is unfair to everyone except me (“He’s got a wife”). I ask Emma, who sits in front of me, if we had any homework last night (I don’t remember any). She assures me we didn’t.
What am I learning, besides vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar? I have much greater empathy and respect for:
Our undergraduate students. Even with my 10-percent faculty discount and buying my textbook used at the university bookstore, I had to pay $199.05 for the text, the online workbook, a new pocket dictionary, and a grammar handbook. That’s pretty steep. I’m fortunate to have a permanent job I like, with a decent salary, benefits, and flexible hours, and to be able to focus on just two classes this semester (French and the course I’m teaching on hydrology and water resources). But most students don’t have my luxuries of time and money.
Our teaching assistants. I come from a family of teachers, but I was at best an average lab instructor as a graduate student. It took me several years to become a capable classroom teacher. I observe TA’s once or twice per semester in my role as departmental director of graduate studies, but I hadn’t fully appreciated how a committed TA can build a rapport with students that is comparable to (or greater than) that of an experienced faculty member.
Non-native speakers of English. I was a journal co-editor for four years, and I’m a meticulous (OK, obsessive) reviewer of manuscripts, theses, proposals, and term papers. I’ve had little patience for awkward phrasing and seemingly sloppy grammar and punctuation errors. Wrestling with subject-verb agreement, not to mention number and gender, in French is giving me more understanding of my foreign students and colleagues (and an overdue dose of humility).
So far I’m doing pretty well in class, though not as well as my son’s girlfriend. I count to myself in French as I bike up the hill to campus. I seem to remember some things about conjugation from my long-dormant Latin, and I can understand more of the jokes Lahcen forwards to me. Peut-être je vais savoir une nouvelle langue.
