The French language

           Cultural immersion should be a pretty straight-forward concept. One is being immersed in a culture. Perfect. Makes sense. But there’s a very big difference between theoretically thinking about cultural immersion and actually being immersed in a culture.

            I’m not lie: it’s very difficult having to speak, being exposed to, and having to essentially live in another language every single day. It’s very difficult when I am tired and speaking to Denise, my wonderful host mom, and all I want to do is go to bed but she keeps (albeit very nicely) correcting my little grammatical and pronunciation errors. It’s very difficult to have all of one’s classes in another language and writing emails in another language and—and—and!

            Deep breath innnnnn and out.

            It’s difficult, but it’s amazing. Part of cultural immersion is being exposed to the language of the culture you’re in. As part of the Rennes program, you sign a contract in which you promise to speak as much French as possible—with your friends, with your classmates, with your host family—in order to improve the experience. The purpose of CIREFE at Université Rennes 2 is to improve students’ French skills so that they get to a level where they can hopefully be either integrated into the culture at the university proper or the outside world. The process is intense.

            But, so far, the process has been worth it. From a purely technical standpoint, I am better at speaking spontaneously in French than I was when I arrived. Obviously, I still make grammatical errors and struggle with pronunciation but so does everyone else in my classes. When I first arrived, Denise and I struggled to understand each other. There were a few deep conversations here and there, but they were scattered and often left me frustrated. Just last night though, we talked for over an hour about religion and what it means to each of us. She told me about her connection with Catholicism while I spoke from a more scholarly standpoint, talking about the evolution of Protestantism. It’s the kind of conversation I could imagine having over lunch with one of my more philosophical friends back at my home university, or even my own parents. It just happened to happen in French.

            Another pretty revolutionary experience for me was listening to music in French. Listening to music in another language is a great way to be exposed to that language—pronunciation, idiomatic expressions, not-so-nice words—and I have an entire playlist of French music that I play on shuffle all the time. There’s one song on the playlist that I could sing you every sound but up until a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea what the singer was saying, or what the song was about. A few mornings ago, as I was walking to class, I heard the singer use an idiomatic expression we learned in class just the day before. He said, “J’ai donné ma langue au chat, je ne peux pas te dire que tu est…” and then he makes like a tiger noise. But, I had no idea what this meant before learning that expression. It essentially means, “The cat’s got my tongue and now I can’t tell you how sexy you are.” I probably could have looked up the lyrics beforehand, but then I wouldn’t have had this amazing experience of walking to my metro stop and having an epiphany on one of my favorite songs.

            I’m not going to make any promises about how your language is going to improve, or how your life is going to change, or anything like that. I’m just going to say that the cultural immersion experience will give back what you put into it. It’s okay to take a break during the day and watch a few episodes on Netflix, text friends from back home, call your mom (you should do that, she’d love it), but if you’re planning to come to Rennes to improve your French skills, don’t you want to? Talk to your host family about the things that are important to you, or that you enjoy. Talk to the other CIREFE students in your classes, even if you just ask them, “Ça va?” But above all, give yourself the chance to improve. Don’t assume just because you aren’t at a higher level—or because you are at a higher level—that there’s nowhere to go. The French language is hard; it’s full of rules and exceptions and weird pronunciations and you don’t pronounce most of the letters. But the best way to improve your French is to use it. If you’re already on your way to Rennes or just starting to think “maybe” know that it’ll be hard. But, at least for me so far, it’s been worth the struggle. Ne donnez-vous pas votre langue au chat!

Margaret Hollister

Hobart William Smith College