Dog Abuse

I have a little secret that I have kept from you: a few weeks ago I advanced from the B1 level to the B2 level at French school. Okay, okay, maybe you think that such a progression is to be expected from someone who has spent many months in French school, but understand that it was a traumatic and devastating transition for me. Needless to say, it was with much reluctance and insecurity on my part that I made this move. I believe the claw marks from my fingernails scraping across the walls and chalkboard as I clung desperately to B1 will forever be visible in the B1 classroom.

I was happy in B1; it suited me. It was in B1 that I more or less successfully sorted through the direct complementary pronouns, the indirect complementary pronouns and, my personal favorite, the pronouns tonique. I tackled the auxiliary verbs in the passé composé and most of the time could even correctly identify the past participles. I developed a command of the imperative, and I could definitely deftly apply the indefinite adjectives and indefinite pronouns. It was far from all fun and games, however. B1 introduced the unforgiving relative pronouns into my life, and it was in B1 that I drowned in the imperfect, conditional, future and subjunctive tenses. Alas, I have still yet to make peace with the pronouns “en” and “y.”

Given the limited successes and much more expansive challenges that B1 brought , it was not clear to me that I needed anything more to make my life complete. I told my French teachers that I was happy to spend the rest of my life in B1, as I was sure it would take me a lifetime to master the bulk of the B1 material. Marina, my then-B1 teacher, called me the “doyenne” of B1.

My professors, disguised as seemingly kind French women, were discontent with my contentment. Their greedy sadism hungered for satiation. They wanted a different future for me; a future racked by even greater insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. They unanimously agreed it was time for me to move on.

I begged for more time. I had just returned from the Gambia, and my brain cells were awash in a slurry of Mandinka and French. I could no longer distinguish the two languages, forget conjugate an irregular verb in the present subjunctive tense. My first day back at school, I blurted out “ha,” the Mandinka word for yes, instead of “oui.” I knew when I saw Marina’s shocked look that this little transgression had bought me at least a couple more weeks in B1.

Eventually even I came to see that it was time for me to move on. I started getting excited about the idea of advancement. I felt proud that they believed I was ready for B2. I was starting to feel confident. Naturally at that point Marina told me that she didn’t think it was a good idea for me to go on to B2.

Why didn’t she just punch me in the stomach – it would have been easier to recover. The teachers had been on my case for weeks to move on to B2, and when I finally thought I was ready, I was told I couldn’t. More shockingly, they told me to take two weeks off because they were temporarily cancelling the B1 class since there were only two of us left (think Survivor Episode: French School).

I was stunned. They’d rather have me leave then let me into B2? My French teachers should star in the next psychological thriller. Hannibal Lecter has nothing on them.

Not wanting to be accused of blatant psychological cruelty, Marina explained to me in her sweet, but direct, way that B2 was currently in the advanced stages, so it would be a bad time for me to begin the course. Okay that made sense; I wanted to believe that she was protecting me from a pitiful start. I didn’t have to see it as an indication of my inadequacy. Until, of course, she added that I had screwed up my adverbs that morning, so obviously I wasn’t ready for B2.

Despite making up adverbs that were completely unrelated to the French language, flaunting a remarkable lack of understanding of the subjunctive and exhibiting a pathetic inability to correctly express hypotheses, I eventually moved into B2. After untold weeks in B1, you would think I would naturally transition into B2, like going from second grade to third. Wrong. There is a deep and dangerous chasm between B1 and B2.

B1 was filled with poor sods like me, who came to France with a little high school French behind them and maybe a course or two at the university level. A few of the more courageous among them had come to France with nothing and clawed their way from A1 through A2 and into B1. Many of them were taking French classes as an entertaining sideline while they were having a whopping good time in France. In B1, I was an exemplary student simply because I consistently showed up within 2 hours of the official start time of the class and completed my homework assignments, rare qualities among the B1 riffraff.

B2, however, is a different planet, an entirely different cultural experience. I have left the hedonistic Romans to find myself among the Spartans. Needless to say, the leap from party-hardy to Puritan is bewildering. Not only do they do their homework thoroughly, they type it. They write lengthy essays, not just a few paragraphs. They look up grammar points in their extensive French reference libraries. Most offensively, they use idioms. In B2 we find the French majors, the people who just love French, the people who want to be French teachers, the longtime residents of France. I am unworthy to be among them.

To give you a taste of the B2 elite, let me introduce you to Karen, a Philippina who immigrated to California at the age of 8. She has a degree in French and Linguistics from UCLA, spent a year working in France and just got accepted to a Masters program in French at Stanford. Bettina and Georgina have fewer French credentials, but they have both lived in France for three years now. Christie is currently a French major at a university in Scotland, plans to be a French teacher and will soon be completing a 2-week teaching internship in Luxembourg. And then there‘s me. I know, I know, it’s good for my French to be a peon among the elite. It’s just devastating to my ego.

I had a brief hiatus from being the sole loser in the class. Much to my delight, Jan, a German engineer who used to work for Airbus, joined our class a week after me. Although fluent in German, English and Spanish, his French is, let’s just say, imperfect. Jan fortuitously sat beside me, creating an impromptu caucus of the incompetent. After a particularly grueling grammar lesson, our B2 teacher, also Marina, looked at the two of us and said we looked like “two beaten dogs.” Woof.

Unfortunately for me, Jan has returned to Germany, leaving me as the lone, flea-bitten stray among the mighty and considerably more glorious wolves. Like any good master, Marina keeps me on a short leash and regularly checks to see if I have any idea of what is going on. “Ça va, Nancy?” (Translation: Do you have the slightest clue as to what is going on, Nancy?)

Normally I would have gained a great deal of confidence from achieving B2 status. After all, I’ve made it to the highest level currently offered at my school (until summer comes, and they’ll offer C1); I rub shoulders daily with the elite. I must be able to speak French fairly well, right? Well, I’d be able to enjoy that delusion if it hadn’t been for Shuzo. Shuzo single-handedly ruined my B1 graduation.

Shuzo was my B1 friend who was forced out of B1 several weeks before me. (He was showing signs of not being sufficiently demoralized.) Shuzo, an older Japanese man, was a grammar master; he could conjugate any verb in any tense as well as the best of them. He could properly use just about any kind of pronoun you can think of in a written sentence. He even seemed to know when to use “en” and “y.” Regrettably, he could barely speak a word of French. And Shuzo went on to B2.

I believe Shuzo suffered from grammar paralysis, a syndrome that I temporarily experienced in B1 in which you cannot speak because your mind, like a microprocessor caught in an infinite loop, is overwhelmed by grammar decisions. After Shuzo, I knew achieving B2 status was meaningless as an indicator of oral proficiency. Call it a social promotion if you will, but they won’t let you take the same grammar lessons indefinitely just because a little thing like an inability to speak intelligibly gets in your way.

What do B1 and B2 mean? Frankly, I had no idea until Ron, my former housemate, recently sent me the descriptions for the levels of proficiency for the “Common European Framework of Reference.” (Does that title mean anything to you? Me neither.) According to this “framework of reference,” as a B1 graduate I can understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters, and I can deal with situations likely to arise while traveling in an area where the language is spoken. In theory, I can also enter unprepared into conversation on topics that are familiar. Not bad eh? It’s only when you look at the B2 abilities that you realize what the B1 description so conveniently omits: B1 achievers cause pain to native speakers. B2 proficiencies include the critical nugget “that there is no tension in a conversation with a native speaker.” In other words, B1-ers cause pain to native speakers, and B2-ers don’t.

You may wonder why I hesitated to tell you about my new status of learning how not to cause pain to native speakers. For one, I suspected that there was a risk of being sent back to B1. More disturbingly, I had to recover from my rather painful transition. And finally, who cares? Just because my life has been irreparably damaged, I’m still in France, and there is a great deal of consolation to be found in cheese and chocolate. Woof.