FRANCE - LYON
As it might be obvious, French is the language spoken in Lyon. However, at my university I had to choose before coming if I wanted to be enrolled in the English or the French track. As both only include courses in one language and I wasn’t sure if my French would be sufficient to study in it, I enrolled in the English track. This means, all my courses are taught in English except French, which we have every other week for four hours. Unfortunately, the courses are made for international students in the first place, so there are only two classes where a few local French people participate. The French students mostly stick together, so it’s hard to get in touch with them. In all the other classes I am fully surrounded by internationals.
This results in my every-day-life happening pretty much in English instead of French. To be honest I was a little disappointed when I figured out that it wouldn’t be too easy to find possibilities to practise my French. Of course, I have to speak French if I go to a shop or a supermarket, or in restaurants and cafés, but as I took French as one of my main subjects in high school, I was already able to do that before. To improve it, I figured it wouldn’t be sufficient just living here, but I would need to make whole conversations in French to get my passive vocabulary active again.
To force myself in situations where people don’t speak English, I tried various things. I signed up for a buddy program through which I met a girl I go to lunch with every week since we met. However, she is learning German, so we mix languages quite a lot and I talk French to her while she responds in German. Still, this is already helpful, especially since she introduced me to her only French speaking friends and now, we go to lunch all together.
Yet, it’s not enough for me to progress the way I would have loved to. So, I signed up for the university climbing course which also takes place every week. I have been a couple of times now and it’s really fun to also learn specific vocabulary in another language. Unfortunately, it doesn't always take place, and I also had clashes with other activities so I can’t always go.
There was one activity I really appreciated, called “dinner with a French family”. The name is basically what it was, so always three internationals would be invited by one French family for dinner. In my case I met a lovely couple introducing us to local specialities. It was a great evening and I tried to speak as much French as I could, but the other internationals didn’t speak French, so most of the conversation was made in English.
From time to time, I still encountered situations where I was forced to speak French, for example when I had to go to a doctors’ appointment or at a bus ride sitting to a nice woman. Hearing French at the university also made me used to some familiar language patterns, for example some short versions that French people like to use. For example “je ne sais pas”, which means “I don’t know” becomes “Chais pas”.
Nevertheless, I don’t feel like I really improved my knowledge as much as I wanted to. It might have been a good idea to search for a local sports club or activities outside of university, however, it isn’t easy to balance activities and events, an international friends group, university assignments and another thing which potentially clashes with each other.
What I learned from this experience is, that in order to improve a language when you already know the basics, for me it is necessary to throw myself in the deep end and force myself to go into an environment where I have no other chance as to speak this language for at least a couple of hours daily.
I am still glad I made this experience, and I hope that by the end of the semester I might have gotten at least a bit better. Also, I am speaking English everyday and even if my English was already on a good level thanks to former stays abroad, I am sure I learned something new along the way and didn’t speak too much German.