How I Beat the French
How I Beat the French
Copyright 2006, Harris B. McKee
My dad was drafted in WWI into the U.S. Army. His unit went to France; although his mail went to France, he didn’t. Just before departure for France he was pulled aside for an OCS class where he became a First Lieutenant in the Field Artillery just in time to go home and serve in the Army Reserve because the war was over. My battle for France was of a different sort.
Dartmouth did not require matriculating students to present credentials in any language other than English. That was a good thing because I got to college without any high school language except for a little tutoring in Latin from Aunt Mabel.
Upon arrival I was plunged into my first semester of a scheduled four semesters of French. Professor Lawrence Harvey was our instructor, one of the most devious teachers whom I have ever encountered. In the first class, he advised us that we could test-out of French by scoring 600 or higher on the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) French Achievement Test and suggested that learning the verbs and the 2000 vocabulary cards in the set of Dartmouth vocabulary cards was an appropriate way to do that. That suggestion was helpful, not devious; we’ll get to devious.
One of our text books was a small blue book named appropriately, Spoken French. Our syllabus showed that we would have one lesson from Spoken French in each class. This didn’t seem too tough since the pages were small and one lesson consisted of only two pages. In about the second week, we had a quiz on the lesson for the day. In my 12 years of education before Dartmouth, a failing mark was designated with an F and I had never received one. I never got an F at Dartmouth either but only because Dartmouth used E instead of F. On that first French quiz, I got my first E because I couldn’t write out the lesson verbatim. As a quick learner, I determined to memorize all subsequent lessons for the necessary written regurgitation. Two weeks later we had another quiz; I got another E; devious Professor Harvey had asked a question that required understanding in detail one of the footnotes cited in the lesson. O.K. I could study footnotes and was I ready for the next quiz only to fail again; devious Professor Harvey had used a question that was taken from the glossary at the back of the book and cited in the footnote to the lesson.
About that time we had a mid-term exam and I got my first non-failing grade, a C+. Non-failing it was, but for someone used to A’s, it was tough to take. But the next quiz was better, I got my first A! Devious Professor Harvey had no more levels to invoke; fortunately, the internet hadn’t been invented. For the rest of the course, I Aced every quiz and the final which was enough to overcome the awful beginning for I got one of two A’s in a class of 30 students.
Those first few weeks had indeed set me on a course to avoid second year French by testing out. I had learned that Dartmouth as part of a shift from semesters to terms that was to begin with my sophomore year planned a major shift in foreign language instruction. There was to be a new emphasis on verbal and aural learning and that didn’t appear very desirable considering the devious nature of the language professors with whom I was becoming acquainted. Furthermore, as a Tuck-Thayer major, I had hardly any electives and this would give me some.
If vocabulary cards would get me out of French, I’d memorize the cards. I took little packs with me everywhere. As I stood in line at Thayer Hall where I took all my meals, I’d review cards. I set aside time in regular studying to study cards. I took them along on the athletic team trips and studied them on the bus. I was making progress but was it enough?
As the second semester came to an end, I stayed up late studying the vocabulary cards, the French Verb wheel, and my mother’s French text book from a college French course at Drake. I took the exam and then waited for the results to be posted. Finally, the score went up and I had bested 600, not by much as I remember, but enough to test-out. I had beaten the French!