Bonjour à tous!

I decided to dedicate a post to something that I am happy to share about and also serve as a reminder to motivate in my learning. I have been taking up the Beginner A1 course with French Toast Language Centre at Upper Thomson for the past 2-3 weeks. Despite the incoming hectic schedule that comes from my full-time job, I decided to spend my SkillsFuture credit on the course with French Toast Language Centre because I wanted to be serious in learning a language that I had some familiarity with and wanted to be taught by a French native who can teach me properly on the basics from the pronounciations to les conjugaisons and the verbs.

I will break the post into sections and hope you would find this post interesting and useful in how I actually learn French.

What is a third language? Why French?

In Singapore, there is an option for some Singaporeans to take up an additional language other than the default languages (English and Mother Tongue) which are aligned with the bilingual policy.

There are some benefits in taking up third language:

• Opens up to new horizons to better understand and appreciate language
• Faciliates better interaction with the native speakers
• Enhances learning experiences and job opportunities
• Helps to open doors to studying tertiary education in the native tongue’s countries and even get scholarships
• Singapore’s strategic location in Southeast Asia means increasing job opportunities within the multi-national companies and expanding networks across the continents like Europe and the Americas. Learning additional language gives Singaporeans an edge other than being fluent in English and Mother Tongue (Chinese, Bahasa Melayu, Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, etc).
• Studying additional language has been said to delay onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. The greater effort in learning a foreign language means greater growth in learning how to navigate new material and understanding of our surroundings.

As mentioned, third language is only offered to some Singaporeans. The students have to do well in primary school leaving examination and achieve a score within the criteria set by Ministry of Education in order to be eligible to take the third language. In my case, I was not eligible to take up a third language but this did not hinder my interest in learning a third language.

So why French?

I discovered about third language in 2008. I was only ten years old when I learned about this idea of taking up an additional language through filpping my sister’s booklet of secondary school choices and the programmes offered in some secondary schools. There are languages that students can take up as a third language with the MOE Language Centre and here are the following:

• Asian Languages
  • Arabic
  • Bahasa Indonesia
  • Chinese (Special Programme)
  • Malay (Special Programme)
• Foreign Languages
  • French
  • German
  • Japanese
  • Spanish

At that time, Spanish was not available (only introduced in 2014). It is strange given that the number of Spanish language speakers in the world is as huge as the Mandarin Chinese language speakers. I was not interested in learning any Asian languages since I was already struggling to learn Chinese in primary school as a second language (praise God that I passed my Chinese and completed 10 years of learning it as a mandatory requirement to get my secondary school certificate). So between French or German, I found myself leaning towards French because of the exposure to French cuisine and the country. In fact, I think there is a large group of expats from France in Singapore, to the point that we have a obvious presence of the community here in the city-state and the annual French Film Festival organised by Voilah!.

Moreover, I was encouraged by my mother to learn French because she saw it as a language that can be used in Europe (French is one of the official languages in European Union and some organisations) conveniently.

Okay, we get that you decided to learn French at a young age. How is your progress with learning the French language?

To be frank, I feel embarassed that I have yet to reach the level of confidence or have courage to try speaking French in situations. This is because I was not learning in a formal setting nor was in an environment that required me to try speaking it when I was younger. I have yet to visit Europe unlike my peers in university who went there for exchange or my sister who had completed her Masters in the United Kingdom, and I do hope in future that I could explore Europe and see the culture for myself than just knowing about it through watching films or hearing from people’s account. However, there is some progress that I am proud of and I want to continue improving on my weakness.

Based on the chart above which is adapted from Cadre Européen Commun de Référence pour les Langues (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), the proficiency tests I took online (including the test I did at French Toast Language Centre before I signed up for the course) showed that I was between A1 and A2.

French Toast Language Centre recommended me to take the Beginner 2 course which means I could bypass Beginner 1 course. This means the language centre believes that I was able to recognise French words in written text or to have some basics as shown below in their course syllabus outline. Taking Beginner 2 course means that I could learn some survivalist tips and phrases which enable me to go about in France with ease as a tourist.

On the other hand, websites like TV5Monde (French equivalent to Singapore’s Channel NewsAsia, showcasing different French language programmes across the different French-speaking countries) indicated that I am at A2 and I did not need to bother about A1 since I scored well in the online quiz. In my opinion, I do not know enough vocabularies, words, verbs or the sentence structure to be qualified as an A2 speaker. With sufficient research and reflection, I decided to enrol into Beginner 1 and 2 courses using SkillsFuture credit. SkillsFuture credit is a scheme created by Singapore Government to encourage Singaporeans to enhance skills or deepen knowledge into new areas of study or work. This upskilling manner aligns with Singapore’s take on creating people as resources/assets to boost Singapore economy since we do not have natural resources or hinterland.

What took you so long to enrol into a French language course, Crissie? What resources did you use to learn on your own?

I was afraid of taking up a language course because I fear of being stupid and I did not want to embarass myself. I did not want to look like I was doing a language course just for the sake of showing or to impose on myself some imposter syndrome which I know I might at some point given that is something I am constantly mindful of.

Given that I was busy growing up in primary school, secondary school, polytechnic and university, I was in a circumstance where I did not have the time or money to invest into learning French language properly. This was especially so when I was still studying primary school and secondary school. There were subjects that I had to focus on in order to achieve a certain result to enter into the secondary school stream and subsequently the polytechnic foundation programme (PFP) to bypass the Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE O-Level) and enter polytechnic.

You can tell from the typical (not really accurate representation) framework of Singapore education below that we have myriad of options to go and all lead to the same stage which is to be prepared for the working world. The differences are (1) the number of years it takes to reach either the work or post-secondary stage and (2) the depth of the subjects/field of study in the secondary and post-secondary stage.

Likewise, I had to do this similar routine in polytechnic because it is notoriously difficult to gain admission to an autonomous university in Singapore (even for Singaporeans). You cannot just achieve a satisfactory or good polytechnic GPA/Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (GCE A-Level) score. You have to be outstanding in your subjects, co-curricular achievements or awards to ensure you stood out among the crowd to get shortlisted for interview and then the university offer. To get a university offer from one of the autonomous universities in Singapore (NUS, NTU, SMU, SUTD, SIT, SUSS) is a blessing.

While this life was tedious, I found that I had some time to go back to learning French because I was at that age where I could make my own decision without being held back by school. During this time, I started to force myself into listening to French songs (les chansons). I read, mimic and repeat the song lyrics like it was a ritual to boost my motivation. This early stage paid off. Subsequently, as a film critic myself, looking for French films or television series was not an issue for me. I personally love watching Jean-Luc Godard’s films despite the silliness and lack of logical sense. I found them enjoyable because the films depicted real-life and the rebelliousness was cool. The French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) films were my go-to films to learn French, given that the language is close to realistic scenarios that I could relate in everyday affairs from going to the shop, cafe, watching cinema and the relationships between people.

There are other French films that I enjoyed watching and I highly recommend not just because you can learn the language but the elements of the films are very inspirational and momental to the reason why some American or Asian films felt familar like you saw them before.

• Last Year at Marienbad
• The 400 Blows
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
• Belle de Jour
• Le Samouraï
• The Purple Noon (a loosely French adaptation of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”)
• Masculin Feminin

Here is my embedded playlist that I created to add French songs (some Italian songs too because I was lazy to create a playlist dedicated to Italian songs when I only know a few songs).

I do watch some YouTubers as well to learn French and to understand how the language works! Here are some YouTubers I recommend checking out if you are unsure how or where to start.

• DamonAndJo (the duo no longer do videos together, but their videos where they talk about some things about French still stand as memorable to me)
• Damon Dominique (I enjoyed his videos where he could just explain in English and French about things happening in his life and just stirring pots!)
• Eva Meloche (she’s a Québécoise YouTuber from Quebec, Canada where you can appreciate and understand about Quebec French)
• French Mornings with Elisa (I love her videos and they are easy to comprehend. You can even download PDF copy of each video she runs through)
• Konbini (this is not a YouTuber, but a French language online media that focuses on delivering entertainment shorts especially Their Vidéo Club content which I enjoyed because I get to see different people introducing their favourite films either in French or other language + with subtitles)
• Rad (a group of journalists from Radio-Canada whose aim is to deliver information from all over the world and making them accessible through different presentation/format)
• The Purple Palace (her name is Shayna and she is an American visual artist based in Paris where she posts vlogs about her life and her art)
• Vogue France (self-explanatory but you can learn French from there since it’s all about the fashion/la mode)
• SKAM France (it’s a guity pleasure honestly because I couldn’t get enough of Eliott and Lucas back in 2018-19, but I did learned slangs from this series like “un mec” and “le bac” + it was easy to follow and watch with the French subtitles on + you get a glimpse into the life of a typical high school student in Paris)

You mentioned going to French Toast Language Centre. Why this language centre over Alliance Française de Singapour?

It is about the quality of the course that matters to me.

I feel that going to Alliance Française de Singapour may be too “Singaporean-ish” to me. I wanted to immerse into the world of French language and to really put myself into the shoes of the language and French Toast Language Centre is the right fit for me in terms of how they operate their classes and the teaching methodology. Being too “Singaporean-ish” means that there is a chance of Singlish slipping into the lessons and that hinders how I wanted to learn how to pronounce the words or accents which are important in the French language. Likewise, the majority of the people in the class are Singaporean Chinese, so you would expect that there is a habit of some people who just prefer to speak Chinese over English and this too affects the quality of the class learning.

In my experience, having Singaporean accent (also known as flat monotone accent) does slightly hinder the pronounciation of the French words and accents. It is also a reason why I had trouble saying some Cantonese words when I attended the free elementary Cantonese class, especially when your Chinese dialect is not Cantonese or have no idea how the words supposed to sound like.

Conclusion

I hope this post is sufficient to see my thought process about learning a third language and why French language over other languages. This post not only exposes you to my reasonings, but also to educate on life as a Singaporean. I want to let this post be a reminder to motivate me in using the time and money wisely and not to give up on this long-term endeavour.

Until then, à bientôt!