They’ve ranged from wonderful to absentee, rude to overly touchy. Somehow I finished level A2.3 with their help, meaning I can order at a restaurant in French, and not much else.

Here’s a profile of my many French teachers over the years.

Fabrice

My first French teacher was a stylish and impeccably clean young man named Fabrice. He rented a room in a mansion in Los Feliz, a hip yet old money-feeling neighborhood of Los Angeles where vegan brunch places lived next to dive bars and where Chris Pine or RPatz might be seen at the Albertsons. You get the vibe. Fabrice held his lessons in a small room next to his bedroom that was actually a huge closet. I decided to think of it as a room since nearly three decades on earth had taught me it wasn’t a good idea to spend an extended amount of time with an unfamiliar man in his closet, impeccable though he and it may be. 

Fabrice’s room was so clean and free of possessions, it felt like a room in a staged model home. I should have known this dedication to sterile order was a ghost of French lessons yet to come. 

Having gotten A’s easily in Spanish from age 5 to 22, I assumed this French thing would be a breeze and that I’d be chewing the fat expertly en francais with my French boyfriend after my ten week intensive course. Just learn a few words, change some vowel noises et voila. What I didn’t know yet was that all those years of Spanish had set a dangerous precedent for my tongue, which wanted to roll every chance it got, and had muscle memory for the sounds of Spanish vowels, leaving no space for the funky french sounds my dating life now required.

“Why do you keep saying ‘lay’ for ‘luh’?” Fabrice demanded of me rhetorically, unkindly during our first lesson. “You can’t stop making that sound, why do you do that?” He asked this of me equal parts curiosity and disdain. He, a language teacher, could not conceive that French noises may be hard for English speakers to say. 

“Because in Spanish it’s ‘lay’ and I’m not used to the French vowels yet.” I explained. I couldn’t believe I had to explain. I would explain this to several French teachers over the years.

I also couldn’t believe the tone he was taking with me when he’d correct me. He was miffed, annoyed, borderline hostile despite the fact that I was going through the motions admirably. I was doing my homework, I was making progress, I was showing up for my lessons right on time, I was being pleasant despite my duress. I shot him smiles, exchanged banalities, was extremely friendly–efforts that pay dividends on the American market but are fools gold to the french who just find my smile creepy.   

It turns out I was the first of his students to ever have a tough time understanding what I heard in French. Because of the silent final letters, I couldn’t tell where one word ended and another began. I also couldn’t differentiate between words that sounded exactly the same. Fabrice didn’t treat this as an obstacle so much as a personal flaw.

“Est-ce que tu veux une verre d’eau?” he’d ask me as we walked through the model mansion every Wednesday at 7pm before our lesson. 

“Do I want a green what?” I’d respond with an idiotic earnestness that still managed to NOT charm him. 

“Green?” 

“You said, ‘vert’ didn’t you?” 

“No, ‘verre.’ “

“…” I paused with a dumb face

“It means glass.” He explained. 

“How can you tell the difference between vert and verre?” I asked. He said it was obvious. 

Google translate and I both beg to differ. I listened to the google robot say the two words over and over, completely unable to discern a difference if my life depended on it. Which it would someday, it turns out. 

Despite his cold nature and tiny room, I actually learned more from Fabrice in ten weeks than I did from many of my other teachers. But our misunderstanding of one another was too painful for me to continue the lessons. My skin crawled as I sat in his closet, feeling stupid as I tried to say “ninety eight” in French (“quatre vignt dix huit,” also known laughably as “four twenty ten eight”). So I quit and assumed I’d just pick up the French over the years from my boyfriend. It’s not like we were going to move to France tomorrow, we’d only been dating six months. 

Emmanuelle

Six years later–after my French boyfriend became my French husband in a ceremony in France, and we decided to skip out on America due to overwork, Trump’s existence, and a desire for affordable bread–I wished I’d toughed it through the lessons in Fabrice’s closet. After two months of being infantilized by my lack of language ability in Paris, I signed up for classes at L’Alliance Francaise, a reputable French school in the 6th arrondissement that wasn’t so expensive as to preclude me from attending, but not so cheap as to make it seem like I wasn’t taking my French studies seriously. 

They recommended taking an online placement test to determine which level to enter, and I was astonished to be placed in level A2.2. I was even more astonished when I arrived to my class and was in way over my head, not understanding a word anyone said, nor how any of these students were able to follow along. The other students were kind to me, and told me I’d be at their level in no time, but the A2.2 teacher, Emannuelle, was not so sure.

After class, I asked her which book I was supposed to buy because the front desk hadn’t told me. I asked her this because I wanted to give her an opening to give me some feedback: I could tell she was waiting for her opening so I thought I’d oblige. She jumped at her opportunity and humorlessly said it’s the same book the whole school uses, and that I needed to go to the testing office the next day so they could re-test me in person because I clearly didn’t know how to speak in the past tense. However you imagined her tone while saying this, make it twice as mean, and make her twice as pretty as well, for extra sting.

Her bluntness didn’t allow any space for my dumb ego to breathe, something we proud Americans need. I’ve since learned she was just being candid, which equates to batterment in the US.

The next day, the oral test confirmed the same: I couldn’t speak in the past tense, so they bumped me down to A2.1. The woman who delivered the test was a little bit sweet to me and said I’ll have a better time in the right level, giving my ego that little gold star it needed. I’ll always remember you, sweet French test lady. Goodbye, Emannuelle. There’s a porn series that has your same name.

Crutches Guy

The level lower was actually a floor higher in the beautiful old school building, and the teacher was the nicest French teacher I’ve ever had. He was funny, he was kind, he was patient. He wore the exact same pair of black skinny jeans every single class, which somehow made him more approachable. He also hobbled about on a single crutch after a skiing accident, which made him feel all the more humble and relatable.

Our class was happy to see him and he taught us a great deal with a smile on his face. For these reasons, they bumped him down to the beginner A1 class, which apparently needed the oxygen of his friendliness in order to thrive. 

I can’t for the life of me remember his name, so he’s forever stored in my head as Crutches Guy.

Laurence

In exchange we got a new teacher named Laurence, sent up from the beginner A1s who apparently were not having a good time of it under her reign. Laurence was an odd bird, but I didn’t have a problem with her oddness until it transmuted into rudeness.

First off, no matter the weather, she always wore tights and a dress with twee little mary jane flats that were at least 15 years out of style to my reckoning. She dressed like an american girl who liked Bright Eyes and patches with birds on them would have dressed in 2004, and this irked me because I’m judgmental and petty. She had flat mousy hair that she never styled, which bothered me as it signaled a lack of professionalism. How does one wake up, head to work, and lead a class of adults without adding heat and product to one’s hair? Worst of all, her tights always had holes and runs in them. I will forgive this once because it happens to the best of us. Five minutes after you leave the house, you knick your tights with your nail or your keys, and you’re stuck in them the rest of the day, but hey kids, that’s living in the patriarchy. But the second time? That means she saw the hole and said to herself “these still have life in them” and continued to wear them. You just can’t trust a person like that. 

But this all would have been quaint if she hadn’t been such a villain in the classroom. It would have been “That cuckoo Laurence, she has funny style and flat hair, but wow, can she teach!” But no such luck for us or her. The largest strike against her was that she was chaotic, which no one wants in a leader. Simple things like taking roll, managing the projector, assigning the homework were all extremely taxing for her, leaving us students from around the world to exchange knowing glances as she smacked the projector into compliance. She also would assume we always knew what she wanted of us without explaining it to us, which is one of the most chaotic things a teacher can do in a language class. She’d round us up into a circle at the center of the room and recite a phrase, then expect us to take turns conjugating the verb in the phrase into different tenses, then tap a fellow classmate on the shoulder to “popcorn” the next conjugation onto them, while simultaneously stomping our foot when we emphasized a syllable in the phrase. If you found that confusing to read, it was even more confusing to live.  

Like all good tyrants, Laurence did serve to unite the class against her, which is a great way to make friends in a foreign country. I caught the eye of an Armenian girl who gave a look of shock once when Laurence forcefully pushed me into place when I wasn’t enough in the center of her imaginary circle. After class in what little English she had, the Armenian girl said she couldn’t believe that Laurence had touched me and that if it had been her she’d have shoved her back. We watched as several of our classmates transferred to the morning course to try their luck with a different teacher, blaming work or children for the need for a schedule change. 

I think Laurence was sensing that I wasn’t digging her vibes, but that she didn’t know how to go about winning me over. Laurence decided to sit on the desk next to me while I worked on an in-class assignment and touch my earrings with her two human hands. “Oh, tres jolis ces earrings’ ‘ she said to me while I tried to write an essay about what I was like when I was a child. 

“Merci.” I said flatly, without giving her the customary “I acknowledge you” half smile that Americans can always be counted on providing to smooth out any sticky situation. She asked me another question about them and I just shrugged, hoping that despite our language gap she might understand the international symbol for “fuck off.” I glanced around the room to see my classmates staring at the spectacle with wide eyes. 

Looking back, I did learn a great deal from Laurence, but god at what cost? Each and every day was so cringeworthy and irksome, I began skipping class more and more, even though I was paying out of pocket for the classes. I didn’t even go to my last lesson with Laurence and happily never saw her and her snagged tights again.

Out Sick Teacher

After the January session ended, we finished A2.2 and would spend a month in level A2.3, the last level before the dreaded B1 series. We’d be leaving Laurence behind for a new teacher who was far more organized, and thank god, who sat at her desk the whole class and didn’t touch our ears. She assigned each person with a two-minute oral report–a daunting task but a good one with practical applications. I thought I was going to like this prof.

After two sessions with this organized individual, she disappeared for health reasons and left us with a series of substitutes, some more successful than others. I can’t remember her name either so she’s just “the teacher who was going to have me do a report on my favorite food but then she never came back to class.”

Sub Who Taught Me Verlan

For the following four weeks we had a series of substitute teachers who did not manage to teach us much of anything due to lack of continuity save for ONE sub who really god through to us.

We liked this guys because he taught us Verlan, the French slang where the kids rearrange the letters to make new words that mean the same thing. It’s almost like the cockney rhyming game but less clever because you just rearrange a few letters.

Verlan makes no sense. Like most French things, you have to know it to know it. And rightly so, this teacher thought that teaching us a few words in Verlan would be more useful to us than teaching us yet another conjugation.

And he was right. Saying something was “ouf” instead of “fou” in a sentence earned me the respect of French people all around Paris. Referring to the police as the “Flic” always gets a few laughs.

Sadly, this substitute was only with us for a week, then he too was gone forever.

I felt that all this inconsistency in instruction was really impeding my progress and annoying me into not coming to class. So I didn’t sign up for the next level at L’Alliance Francaise in March 2020, but it didn’t matter much as the school had to postpone in-person class soon after that for obvious reasons.