Use of English in French universities is a cause célèbre
1 of 1Geneviève Fioraso stressed the importance of competition for overseas students Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty Images
Gallic traditionalists fear that the French language will be consigned to the scrapheap because the Government is seeking to ease a ban on the use of English in higher education.
“This is a veritable linguistic assassination,” said Courriel, a French language defence association, which predicts that the nation’s university students will have to sit through tutorials and lectures in English.
The row took the shine off International Francophonie Day this week, which was meant to underline the importance of French to the world.
Geneviève Fioraso, the Minister for Higher Education, said that the development of courses in English was necessary. “If we don’t authorise English, we won’t draw students from emerging nations like India or South Korea,” she said. And universities that refused English would find themselves with “five people sitting around a table discussing Proust”. She added that her critics were motivated by “resistance to change”.
At present French must be used in classrooms from nursery school to university. The only exception involves lessons given by a guest or associate teacher from another country.
The Conference of French University Chancellors denounced the ban as a “powerful brake” on their ability to compete with British and US counterparts in the global market for tertiary education. In practice, however, it is widely flouted in France, with the use of English already common in degree courses for law, economics, science and business.
The upshot is a permanent battle between university chancellors and government officials, who regularly refuse to validate courses in English.
Jean-Loup Salzmann, the chairman of the Conference of French University Chancellors, said: “In any French medical laboratory, more than half the people speak only English. The evaluation of our research is in English, our European projects are in English, and when professors from abroad are welcomed to our universities, we speak to them in English.”
Mrs Fioraso said that she wanted to end the “hypocrisy” by authorising English-language teaching on courses involving a partnership with a foreign institution or a European programme. “This is a positive signal in the direction of foreign Anglophone students,” she said.
Le Figaro newspaper said that her Bill, which is scheduled to be considered by the Socialist Cabinet this month, would have far-reaching consequences, yielding “entirely-in-English courses on a big scale”.
In an attempt to head off the row, Mrs Fioraso suggested that France needed to attract foreign students to promote its own culture. She said: “For Koreans to get into Proust, we have to go through English.”
She hopes that foreigners will account for 15 per cent of France’s 2,382,000 students by 2017, compared with 12 per now.
Defenders of French were appalled. “Our students will soon be forced to study in a foreign language in France itself,” Courriel said. It predicted that French lecturers would be replaced by Indians, Americans and Britons asserting their foreign values.
It called on the Government to scrap its Bill and resist the “Anglo-Saxon counter-model of the general privatisation of human activities, in particular culture, health and education”.
Shared language
Many technical English words have entered the French language, while their official translations have, needless to say, failed to catch on
Hashtag mot-dièse
E-mail courriel
Pad tablette
Webmaster administrateur de site
CD Rom cédérom autonome
Payload charge utile
Smartphone ordiphone
Webcam cybercaméra
“This is a veritable linguistic assassination,” said Courriel, a French language defence association, which predicts that the nation’s university students will have to sit through tutorials and lectures in English.
The row took the shine off International Francophonie Day this week, which was meant to underline the importance of French to the world.
Geneviève Fioraso, the Minister for Higher Education, said that the development of courses in English was necessary. “If we don’t authorise English, we won’t draw students from emerging nations like India or South Korea,” she said. And universities that refused English would find themselves with “five people sitting around a table discussing Proust”. She added that her critics were motivated by “resistance to change”.
At present French must be used in classrooms from nursery school to university. The only exception involves lessons given by a guest or associate teacher from another country.
The Conference of French University Chancellors denounced the ban as a “powerful brake” on their ability to compete with British and US counterparts in the global market for tertiary education. In practice, however, it is widely flouted in France, with the use of English already common in degree courses for law, economics, science and business.
The upshot is a permanent battle between university chancellors and government officials, who regularly refuse to validate courses in English.
Jean-Loup Salzmann, the chairman of the Conference of French University Chancellors, said: “In any French medical laboratory, more than half the people speak only English. The evaluation of our research is in English, our European projects are in English, and when professors from abroad are welcomed to our universities, we speak to them in English.”
Mrs Fioraso said that she wanted to end the “hypocrisy” by authorising English-language teaching on courses involving a partnership with a foreign institution or a European programme. “This is a positive signal in the direction of foreign Anglophone students,” she said.
Le Figaro newspaper said that her Bill, which is scheduled to be considered by the Socialist Cabinet this month, would have far-reaching consequences, yielding “entirely-in-English courses on a big scale”.
In an attempt to head off the row, Mrs Fioraso suggested that France needed to attract foreign students to promote its own culture. She said: “For Koreans to get into Proust, we have to go through English.”
She hopes that foreigners will account for 15 per cent of France’s 2,382,000 students by 2017, compared with 12 per now.
Defenders of French were appalled. “Our students will soon be forced to study in a foreign language in France itself,” Courriel said. It predicted that French lecturers would be replaced by Indians, Americans and Britons asserting their foreign values.
It called on the Government to scrap its Bill and resist the “Anglo-Saxon counter-model of the general privatisation of human activities, in particular culture, health and education”.
Shared language
Many technical English words have entered the French language, while their official translations have, needless to say, failed to catch on
Hashtag mot-dièse
E-mail courriel
Pad tablette
Webmaster administrateur de site
CD Rom cédérom autonome
Payload charge utile
Smartphone ordiphone
Webcam cybercaméra
No comments:
Post a Comment