In the week leading up to March 20th (International Francophonie Day) I taught lessons in French. China isn’t a member state of la Francophonie, but I thought the students would enjoy a French lesson. A lot express an interest in France and the French language; even out here it has the stereotype of romance and a certain je ne sais quoi…

Now, obviously, saying ‘I taught lessons in French’ sounds a lot more impressive than it was. Turns out that despite being nearly three years ago now (with no practice since), my GCSE French was more than enough for a taster lesson. And once I’d revised phrases like, ‘please close the door’ and ‘put your desks to the side, and your chairs in a circle’ the remaining techniques were just the same as any TESOL lesson, only using basic French, not English.

I started with a game of Last Man Standing: three poses they had to strike whenever I said the word – I was using Je, Tu and Il/Elle. If they paused or made a mistake, they had to sit down until there was only one student left (despite the name of the game, usually not a boy). Unfortunately for me, ‘Je’ sounds like a lewd or dirty word in Mandarin (apparently), so that set the lessons off on an interesting tone. Then when I taught them ‘Ça va?’, one student (usually in each class) would pipe up with ‘sawatdi-ka!’ (excuse my spelling), which is a polite way of saying hello to a woman in Thai, presumably because of the similar-sounding starts.

By the end of the lesson I’d shown them how to greet people in French, and the sessions were rounded off with a game of 11s (where you count to 11, each person can only say up to 3 numbers per turn, and the person who says ‘11’ is out) in French. As usual I was immensely impressed with my classes; obviously not everyone was interested, but the vast majority jumped at the opportunity to try something new and coped incredibly well understanding a teacher who couldn’t (ahem) speak a language they understood. It was amusing to hear a few students ask me, ‘teacher, can you speak English?’; if anything, it helped them appreciate just how well they do understand English!

That weekend our Internet went, and due to a few complications involving maintenance works it wasn’t fixed until Sunday afternoon. For this reason we spent Saturday evening entertaining ourselves with a throwback to the fifth Pokémon film and a game involving baijiu every time Pikachu spoke, or the word ‘Pokémon’ was uttered. Amazingly brutal, actually.

—TJC

Featured image: An example of my basic French lessons.