Bilan de l'Institut de Touraine

“Bilan” is an excellent word in French. It’s meaning approximates “bottom line” or “account.”

Like all schools, the Institute of Touraine measured and compared me, and sent me my grades: its overall judgment of my abilities, reduced to numbers and letters, in addition to a few comments. For those of you who don’t know, in France, grades are fractions with a denominator of twenty; according to Madame Abowd at IHS, nobody ever receives twenty out of twenty, because only G-d is perfect.

I’ve spent four weeks at the Institute, and I think that it’s only fair that I write my own evaluation of it. At least one reader of this blog is interested in attending the Institute, and some others (Mr. Moss, perhaps?) might have become curious in the course of reading my blog. This is a public assessment of the Institute’s pedagogy, for any future attendees.

Writing Practice: Projects included writing friendly letters, formal letters of request, and letters to request a job. Most were formulaic, but formulas are important to learn. Projects and vocabulary largely pertained to the business sphere, but there was something for students like me, too: I learned several terms to describe artwork (foreground, background, still-life etc.), and cinema and photography (blurry, movie camera, failure, etc.). We also covered a fair amount of grammar, including the subjunctive, participle, and gerund (all review for me). Although the pace was quicker and the hours longer than in a high school French class, this was not an intensive course, as was my six-week class in Ancient Greek last summer. I had an excellent instructor, but not all teachers were excellent.

Oral Practice: Oral exercises ranged from the unimaginative to the extremely creative. On the whole, however, they were excellent. The instructor had us strolling Tours, conducting short interviews; listening to radio and television clips; playing “Pictionary” and “Time’s Up” (Misaki told me that “Taboo” and “Telephone” also appear, sometimes); and visiting lab. The lab courses were excellent: we were trained to distinguish similar-sounding sounds, to listen to and understand song lyrics, and to recognize various inflections. In lab, students wore headphones, in order to highlight the fine differences between vous and vue, or pente and peint. Some exercises, especially the lyric-recognition, had clearly been painstakingly prepared. Oral instruction included more information than one could learn from a book, even a book with an audio CD.

Electives: I had one excellent elective in literature; one very good course in French civilization, and a rather bad one in French business. In all cases, though, I benefitted just by being in the room, and listening and interacting with the instructors and other students.

Excursions: The professor of civilization deserves a gold star for his enthusiasm, energy, knowledge, and, above all, patience and endurance. In case you had not understood so from my blog updates on chateaux, I was accompanied by a guide who not only knows a great deal of art history, but also explained everything in lucid, understandable, conversationally convivial French. He is truly passionate about his job, and I do not think I will ever look at a chateau or cathedral in the same way, now! The excursions were pricey, however, and other students spoke almost entirely in their native languages.

Other Resources: The library and mediatheque offered great opportunities to practice French after class, if one choose to do so. The mediatheque contained computers, with subtitled French movies; I watched several, and not only learned vocabulary, but also improved my listening skills. The library is not free, but I think that it was worth the cost, especially because the public library was closed for the first two weeks of my stay (and requires applicants to jump through many hoops to bypass the 21-Euro inscription fee).

Student life: I had no friends at the Institute. I am being perfectly frank when I say this. Misaki, my housemate, absolutely counts as a friend: she is a wonderful person, and I will never forget her. I had a good acquaintance, named Marco, who I think liked me in return; but because I did not speak Spanish, there was a certain barrier between us that I could never surmount. On the way to an activity, I encountered him visiting a real friend; we stopped and chatted, and were friendly enough, but the idea of setting aside time to spend with me had never occurred to him. I have become very attached to my blog, because I know that through it, I am communicating to my friends back home. Victor, I can sit on your bed at the CJL, and we can talk about Sherlock Holmes, or bizarre Talmudic verses, or members of the KOACH board; I can relax around every Sam who reads this blog, and have a friendly conversation; Talia, I can take a walk with you, with nothing between us.

Host Family: I was unusually blessed with a host family with constant children and grandchildren visiting. The Avertins were very friendly, and did everything to make me feel welcome. They have been welcoming students to their home for many years, and are therefore old hands at the game: not all of my friends were so lucky: some had single adults as host “families,” whereas others chose to stay at the Youth Hostel (where I’m staying now). There might be a little bit of an element of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” to the choice between a host family and the hostel, because while a family is a wonderful thing to have waiting for you to come home every day (and waiting to speak French to you!), it is very costly. I only feel that I made the right decision because I was randomly assigned to a host family that knew how to play its part very well. But as much as I enjoyed staying with the Avertins, I’m not so certain that I would visit them, as friends: they are a semi-retired couple, and typically have two or three students staying with them: being a good host family is almost their vocation. This is far from a criticism; but I am not certain how much I would share in common with them outside of our special host-student relationship.

Other: There was absolutely no way to compel students to speak French out of class, and most didn’t (the Koreans didn’t even bother to wait until after class).

Sum Total: The Institute teaches many skills difficult or impossible for an autodidact to acquire. Notwithstanding, the courses are far from intensive, and one has the choice to either go without friends, or spend most of one’s day speaking one’s native language. Perhaps I just have the wrong sort of personality for the Institute; but although my French improved greatly, I think I owe it more to my particular instructors and host families than to the general establishment of the Institute of Touraine.

~JD

“La faiblesse du regime faisait le success durable des brigands qui ranconnaient ou tuaient preque impunement” [The weakness of the regime led to the sustained success of the brigands who robbed or killed with near impunity] (Denis Woronoff, La Republique bourgeoise, p. 129).