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Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5316
Author:  Cat C [ Thu Nov 27, 2008 4:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Much as I think the idea of alternating language days is wonderful - surely it would have been difficult to find staff not only qualified to teach the appropriate subject, but also able to teach it adequately in three languages (even if one of those languages was their own)?
Author:  Alison H [ Thu Nov 27, 2008 4:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I find that odd too. For example, Kathie Ferrars' subjects were maths and geography, and she'd only ever lived in England. Even if she'd done either French or German as her 3rd A-level, surely she wouldn't have been fluent enough to teach in it, and what about the other one (of the two languages)? Maybe that's why they recruited so many Old Girls! And were people like Matron and Nurse supposed to speak all three languages too?
Author:  Catriona [ Thu Nov 27, 2008 7:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
You would have to be pretty fluent in a language to be able to stand up in front of a class and teach in it, so I always thought it was rather optimistic of EBD to expect the staff to do so. (But perhaps all new members of staff had a crash course at the Josephine Bettany School of Languages before they started at the CS??)
Author:  Travellers Joy [ Thu Nov 27, 2008 8:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I didn't go to a tri-lingual school but I had a couple of teachers who were fluent in English, French and German. They both taught languages, but they were also trained to teach other subjects - history, for one, if I remember correctly - so I never saw the Chalet School scenario as being anything out of the ordinary.
Author:  Dreaming Marianne [ Thu Nov 27, 2008 8:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Poor old Miss Slater got - er - slated for struggling with German didn't she?
Author:  MJKB [ Fri Nov 28, 2008 6:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
She did indeed. Miss Slater always came across as someone who didn't suffer fools gladly. I reckon she wasn't prepared to sit round looking at old photographs of Joey and co. She's actually quite an interesting character and I often wonder for what pupose she was created in the series. She is not condemned outright by EBD for not conforming to the CS norm, nor is she pulled up too harshly for snubbing Biddy over the German.
I often wondered how Kathie Ferris was able to teach through French and German not having studied them at Oxford. There is no mention of her having holidayed on the continent every summer in order, for example, which would have explained her proficiency.
Author:  jennifer [ Mon Dec 01, 2008 3:48 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
And Miss Slater was hired during the period when there were the highest percentage of old girls/former Tyrol people on staff - Hilary Burn, Mary Burnett, Grizel, Rosalie, Joey and Simone as substitutes, plus Missses Edwards, Durrant, Lachenais, Berne, Annersley, Wilson, Phipps, Lloyd, Herr Laubach and the Dennys. So she would have been pretty out of place among all the old timers.
Author:  MJKB [ Tue Dec 02, 2008 7:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
In Challenges, Nancy Wilmot makes a point of not being willing to employ a substitute for Kathie, until Dr. Benson falls out of the proverbial sky. Can you imagine teachers now a days being prepared to give up all their free time in order to keep their school free of, basically, the wrong sort.
Author:  Kate [ Tue Dec 02, 2008 7:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
MJKB wrote:
Can you imagine teachers now a days being prepared to give up all their free time in order to keep their school free of, basically, the wrong sort.

I feel like I give up all my free time to do everything else, so it wouldn't be much extra to take on. In the new budget in Ireland, we no longer are allowed subs for uncertified sick leave or absences for 'school business' (i.e. trips, tours, training days), so we'll be doing extra work a lot, I imagine...
Author:  LizzieC [ Tue Dec 02, 2008 7:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
MJKB wrote:
Can you imagine teachers now a days being prepared to give up all their free time in order to keep their school free of, basically, the wrong sort.


I think it's more complicated than that at the CS. They would have had to have found a substitute who was a) in Switzerland (or could get there quickly) and willing to live in what was effectively a gated community and b) trilingual and very fluent in each of the three languages to teach in them. I think Nancy's problem in Challenge just serves as an example of what a rod the school have made for their own back by their location and trilingual teaching policy.
Author:  Tor [ Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
But saying that, if you had to be anywhere in the world, Switzerland is probably *the* best place to be to pick up a tri-lingual teacher. I'd expect most Swiss to be pretty darn good in French and German. It's only if you wanted to recruit from the UK you'd be stuck!

Actually - weird that they don't have more locals!!
Author:  Alison H [ Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I find it very odd - except maybe during the War years, and even then they could have employed a refugee - that they never have a native German speaker to teach German, except for Maria Marani whom we never even see "in action".
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:12 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
During the war, German really falls off the curriculum to a large extent, in that both French and German days seem to be retired (do we assume the school still has German classes in the war years?), but it is especially odd that the Swiss books don't feature at least one or two Swiss mistresses, even as very token figures, like some of the later mistresses we only really know by name. OK, it's a more uniformly British school after the war, but as people said, Switzerland is the obvious place to find the kind of fluently trilingual mistress the school needs, and presumably finds difficult to get.

To be honest, it suggests to me that the trilingual issue is more of a kind of shorthand for, as someone said, The Right Sort. Someone appropriately lady-like, trig and middle-class, not in it for the money or holidays, who is prepared to live entirely for the school, not insist contractually on her free periods and weekends should there be a need for her services etc, and not leave for any other reason than to marry an appropriate man, preferably a doctor. Basically, not Miss Bubb or, more interestingly, the less obviously unsuitable Miss Slater, who is an excellent teacher, but isn't that interested in school legends, not that interested in the girls outside of the classroom, and is focused on her own desire to live in England, and on promotion and her own professional advancement. Which adds up to an entirely normal attitude to one's job for most of us - we work to live - but makes her the Wrong Sort from the CS point of view. The trilingual thing is, I think, a 'reason' for continuing to mostly hire old girls.

Actually, thinking about recruitment - we hear about the CS using agencies (I think during the UK years?) and do we hear about them advertising in papers? If so, do we assume both agencies and papers were UK-only?
Author:  Cat C [ Wed Dec 03, 2008 12:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I think the tri-lingualism was dropped when they left Austria, and the re-adopted when they began to think about moving to Switzerland (forget which book, but I do remember reading about the decision) - the whole thing about German being worse than French is (I think) in Carola - which is where the episode with Miss Slater not liking German comes in.

In terms of not hiring native-speaking German staff, it is rather odd, given the number of French-native speakers teaching French. Almost seems as though the local natives are only ever employed as domestic staff, both in Austria and Switzerland.

And Herr Anserl's art classes are in English, unless the girls feel they can speak good enough German for him!
Author:  KB [ Wed Dec 03, 2008 10:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Sunglass wrote:
Actually, thinking about recruitment - we hear about the CS using agencies (I think during the UK years?) and do we hear about them advertising in papers? If so, do we assume both agencies and papers were UK-only?


Again, I think, only in the UK years. This from Gay:

Quote:
‘Very well,’ said Lady Russell decidedly. ‘I’ll wire the agents at once, and send an advertisement to all the local papers.
Author:  MaryR [ Thu Dec 04, 2008 4:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
But don't forget you're talking about 50+ years ago, when the idea of learning languages from native-born speakers was not in vogue.

Also, all teachers would probably have had free times and weekends, but the idea of teaching as a vocation still abounded then and one gave up one's time very willingly, for the most part. Even in the late Sixties, when I started teaching, I was TOLD I was teaching girls' games - I wasn't asked if I would, or indeed could, do it. It was a steep learning curve, believe me. :roll:

Just to add to the idea of free weekends, etc, EBD couldn't get everything in, so concentrated on what she wanted - and would young girls have wanted to read about the staff's weekends? Don't think so, somehow. Whereas, as adults, we do want to. :D
Author:  Alison H [ Thu Dec 04, 2008 5:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
There are a few mentions of free weekends in the Swiss books - someone offers to swap their weekend to cover for someone who isn't feeling well, and I think we're told somewhere that Kathie and Nancy went away for a weekend together :wink: .
Author:  Cat C [ Thu Dec 04, 2008 5:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Quote:
But don't forget you're talking about 50+ years ago, when the idea of learning languages from native-born speakers was not in vogue.


Which is what makes it even more strange that the French lanaguage teachers were almost invariably French!
Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Dec 04, 2008 6:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
MaryR wrote:
But don't forget you're talking about 50+ years ago, when the idea of learning languages from native-born speakers was not in vogue.


Yes, but it's not just taking, say German classes from a native/non-native speaker, but finding someone who is able to speak three languages well enough to teach their subject in them - that's why I find it odd the school doesn't find it easier to employ people who happen to be trilingual by virtue of their nationality (or to be closer to it than an untravelled young woman like, say, Kathie Ferrars is). I mean, I have fairly fluent French, but I'd find it desperately difficult to teach English literature (which is my subject) properly in it. I find the CS's attitude to trilingual staff recruitment a bit odd or misleading anyway. This is from Ruey:
Quote:
“Even the mistresses!” she said sadly.
Margot, who had been describing the joys of the Auberge, gaped at her. “What are you talking about? What about the mistresses? Why ‘even them’?”
“Talking like natives,” Ruey explained. “They all do it.”
“Well, what else do you expect? They wouldn’t be much use to us if they couldn’t. I do know that it’s one of the things that gets them a job with us. I once saw the slips that are sent to the agencies and it said at the bottom in large letters, ‘Conversational French and German essential.’


Maybe I have a very basic notion of what 'conversational' means - but to me, it suggests 'capable of holding a conversation', rather than 'capable of functioning professionally entirely in that language as needed.' I mean, I think I have conversational Spanish - I did it for a year at university, can read it well enough, and can hold an uncomplicated conversation and function in Spain on holiday - but no way could I do my job in it!
Author:  Cat C [ Thu Dec 04, 2008 7:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I've just re-read that bit from Ruey too!

EBD seemed to have massive faith in the idea that living in a language will do wonders for a speaker's ability in that language. Now, while it's true that immersion is a good language improvement method, I agree it's a bit much to expect people with conversational levels of any language to be able to teach their subjects in that language...
Author:  MJKB [ Thu Dec 04, 2008 10:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
"and would young girls have wanted to read about the staff's weekends? Don't think so, somehow. Whereas, as adults, we do want to. :D" (MaryR)

I think they would have. In fact the scenes in which you get an insight into the lives of the staff always appealed to me when I first started reading the CS. Relatively few GO books at the time were prepared to draw adults into the plot in a meaningful way and this is what made the CS different. Even though the matriarchal Joey irritates me I 'm still delighted that EBD retained her as the pivotal character throughout the series and it's through her that we get to know more about the other adults in the school. One of my favourite scenes is the one in Carola where Biddy pays a visit to Joey prior to her beginning her teaching career in the CS. It's so cosy and homey.
Author:  Alison H [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 12:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I like the scene with Biddy as well :D .

To get back to the trilingual issue, it's amazing that there were never any accidents in science or cookery lessons caused by either a mistress using the wrong word in a foreign language or a girl (given how many of them arrived knowing very little of any language but their own) misunderstanding instructions :lol: .
Author:  LizzieC [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 12:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Alison H wrote:
it's amazing that there were never any accidents in science or cookery lessons caused by either a mistress using the wrong word in a foreign language or a girl (given how many of them arrived knowing very little of any language but their own) misunderstanding instructions :lol: .


I would actually find that much more realistic than the mixing up of garlic cloves and clove cloves. :roll:
Author:  Kate [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 12:38 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Quote:
Maybe I have a very basic notion of what 'conversational' means - but to me, it suggests 'capable of holding a conversation', rather than 'capable of functioning professionally entirely in that language as needed.' I mean, I think I have conversational Spanish - I did it for a year at university, can read it well enough, and can hold an uncomplicated conversation and function in Spain on holiday - but no way could I do my job in it!


Once you get into though, it's reasonably easy. I have what I'd describe as 'conversational Irish' but I manage to teach in it quite well.
Author:  Sunglass [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 3:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
MaryR wrote:
Just to add to the idea of free weekends, etc, EBD couldn't get everything in, so concentrated on what she wanted - and would young girls have wanted to read about the staff's weekends? Don't think so, somehow. Whereas, as adults, we do want to. :D


It's not so much that she doesn't talk about staff leisure, for me - I agree that wasn't probably of much interest to her original target audience - it's that she so often shows staff having to give up free time for school activities - and not just the staff. Like in Ruey, the revival of lacrosse means that not only is the games mistress having to work extra hours, but also Nancy Wilmot and Kathie Ferrars give up their free time to coach, even staff who've never played get pressganged into a staff team, AND also Miss Wilson volunteers four of the Millies to come back and help in their own time, without even asking them!

(It's a slightly weird situation anyway, as we're told that the only reason lacrosse stopped being played was because of Mary-Lou's accident, a year or two earlier - and surely lacrosse must then have taken place in normal games lessons, without needing special timetables and new coaches?) But free time seems alarmingly liable to being given over to school things. (But then, I would have been a Marilyn Evans kind of prefect, and definitely not the right sort of mistress...)

And, on functioning as a teacher in a non-mothertongue:

Kate wrote:
Once you get into though, it's reasonably easy. I have what I'd describe as 'conversational Irish' but I manage to teach in it quite well.


Me too, actually, on the rare occasions I have had to demonstrate competence in Irish, but I'm assuming it's because a passive knowledge of the tuiseal ginideach lingers since pre-Famine days in some kind of race memory!
Author:  Kate [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Sunglass wrote:
Kate wrote:
Once you get into though, it's reasonably easy. I have what I'd describe as 'conversational Irish' but I manage to teach in it quite well.


Me too, actually, on the rare occasions I have had to demonstrate competence in Irish, but I'm assuming it's because a passive knowledge of the tuiseal ginideach lingers since pre-Famine days in some kind of race memory!

You know, I think there might be an element of race memory in Irish. I'm trying to teach it to an English friend of mine and she's finding it very difficult. My current class are all what we call "newcomer Irish" (basically *deep breath* Nigerian, Cameroonian, Romanian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech, English and Roma Gypsy) and they're certainly finding it more difficult than Irish children I've taught have. They've mastered "an bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas" (can I go to the toilet) but that's about it!
Author:  Alison H [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
In that case, I'm surprised Joey didn't speak fluent Cornish (although maybe that's because Taverton was only in Cornwall sometimes!)!

Or maybe she did and it was just never mentioned ...
Author:  Cat C [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 6:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
She wasn't reported as picking up a great deal of Welsh either...
Author:  Tor [ Fri Dec 05, 2008 6:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I don't buy race memory... but I hazard a guess that accent and cadence help enormously when learning a language. You know, the way a sentence just 'feels' right. even with a different grammatical structure, this might help.

Irish natives, even if not indigenous Celts, with an Irish accent inherited from previous generations of Irish Gaelic speakers, might find it easier to get their tongues around the sounds, and tune their ears in, perhaps? And hit the right rhythm??? Unsubstantiated wild guess.

Anyway... OT a bit!!! sorry!

I'm not sure that Cornish had been properly resurrected at the time Joey lived there. Didn't the last 'native' speaker die in the 18th C.? And then revival began in the early 20th C? Of course, that has nothing to do with race memory! Maybe she wasn't local enough!
Author:  MJKB [ Sat Dec 06, 2008 5:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I was brought up with the notion, erroneous or otherwise, that the English spoken by non native speaking Irish - pretty nearly all of us by now- is sometimes a direct translation from Irish. That might account for the fact that other nationalities would find Irish more difficult than we do. Mind you, I have heard of Germans living in West Cork taking time out to learn the language and making a success of it.
At the moment with the cut backs in education in Ireland, many of the newcomers are going to find themselves in a similar position to those CS pupils whose parents and guardians sent them to the school without informing them that they were expected to be fluent in three languages. Sadly, in the case of the newcomers, their chance at a secondary education could be seriously damaged by attempts to cut back on ESL in schools.
Author:  Pat [ Sat Dec 06, 2008 9:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Tor wrote:
I'm not sure that Cornish had been properly resurrected at the time Joey lived there. Didn't the last 'native' speaker die in the 18th C.? And then revival began in the early 20th C? Of course, that has nothing to do with race memory! Maybe she wasn't local enough!


It wasn't spoken by anyone but the Cornish Bards until recently. The person who died as the last Cornish speaker had Cornish as her first language and very little English. I believe that others still spoke it, even after she died, but not as their first language. Now it's being taught in schools.
Author:  MHE [ Sat Dec 06, 2008 9:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Cat C wrote
Quote:
She wasn't reported as picking up a great deal of Welsh either...
She wasn't reported as picking up a great deal of Welsh either...


Quite! In fact Welsh is barely mentioned and this made me :banghead: when reading the books - it seemed that only the servants spoke the language according to EDB.
Author:  Miriam [ Sat Dec 06, 2008 9:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Alison H wrote:
To get back to the trilingual issue, it's amazing that there were never any accidents in science or cookery lessons caused by either a mistress using the wrong word in a foreign language or a girl (given how many of them arrived knowing very little of any language but their own) misunderstanding instructions :lol: .


They were allowed to talk quietly, so long as it was about their work. That rule could well have been implemented precisely to avoid such a situation. Also when you are unsure about instrutions, it is quite easy during practical lessons to watch what everyone else is doing and follow them.
Author:  MJKB [ Sun Dec 07, 2008 12:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
mhe - Gwensi Howell speaks Welsh to Evan Evans in Chalet School at War.
Author:  Sunglass [ Sun Dec 07, 2008 1:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
MJKB wrote:
mhe - Gwensi Howell speaks Welsh to Evan Evans in Chalet School at War.


Yes, but that always suggests to me that for EBD Welsh has the same 'quaint' quasi-peasant status that the various local dialects in Tyrol and the Gornetz Platz have - largely incomprehensible local colour that Joey/the triplets can speak when picking up milk from picturesque peasants/when speaking to servants. Which assumption would make me rather cross if I were a Welsh speaker.

(There's also that scene in Carnbach when Michael sets his pram rolling off down the hill, and some local children help to pick up dropped shopping. As far as I can remember, the children are represented as Welsh-speaking, and Joey says, as she can't thank them, she has to give them her sweets ration. Though is it fairly unlikely that children in 1940s Wales were monolingual enough not to have understood even 'Thank you' in English?)

On the race memory thing, I was only joking. I don't think speaking Hiberno-English helps at all with speaking Irish. (I have a non-Irish speaking US friend in the west of Ireland with an adopted Chinese daughter who speaks fluent Irish, while she is bored and unimpressed by classes in her 'native' Mandarin. Also, my own French is considerably more fluent than my Irish.)

I realise Cornish has only started to be revived very recently, but given that EBD suggests Joey is able to pick up languages virtually magically (where is she supposed to have learned her phrases of Romany, for heaven's sake? From hanging out with the Tzigane bands round the back of the Kron Prinz Karl?), then clearly she should have absorbed Cornish (and Welsh) from the air...? To get back on topic slightly, I do think that the way in which EBD represents people in general as picking up languages remarkably fast - I don't even mean via immersion as CS new girls, but things like Joey having good French and German from foreign holidays aged 12 - explains quite a lot about her expectations for the recruitment of trilingual, largely British, staff, whose 'conversational' French and German are adequate for teaching.
Author:  Tor [ Sun Dec 07, 2008 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Wasn't Jo supposed to have picked up romany from the Gypsy's near to Pretty Maids? Or was that just Maynie?

I often think that EBDs criteria of fluency was somewhat different to mine. I suspect she felt herself to be fairly fluent, but judging by the comments of members on here, the French and German used left a lot to be desired.

In fact I have a lovely image now of kindly Tirolean/Gortnez Platz 'peasants' smiling to themselves as the strange English Girls insisted on talking to them in broken patois, and then replying to them nice and slowly so as not to hurt their feelings. And Jo continuing blissfully unaware that she isn't quite as good as she thought!
Author:  Jennie [ Sun Dec 07, 2008 4:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Snickering wildly at Tor's post.
Author:  MJKB [ Sun Dec 07, 2008 7:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Sunglass said:
"On the race memory thing, I was only joking. I don't think speaking Hiberno-English helps at all with speaking Irish."
I believed for years that you had to be of Irish descent in order to learn Irish dancing. I was taught this by my dance teacher when I was six and it's still there, somewhere, stubbornly adhering to the back of my mind!
Author:  jennifer [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I have friends who are non-native English speakers who did their university in English, and they've said that they would have difficulty giving a scientific talk in their *native* language. They speak it fluently, but there are so many technical terms and subject specific vocabulary. I suspect Math would have a similar problem.

However, I can read scientific papers in French moderately well, even though my spoken French is weak, as I can guess what a lot of the technical terms mean, as a lot come from Latin or Greek.
Author:  Luisa [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Quote:
In fact I have a lovely image now of kindly Tirolean/Gortnez Platz 'peasants' smiling to themselves as the strange English Girls insisted on talking to them in broken patois, and then replying to them nice and slowly so as not to hurt their feelings. And Jo continuing blissfully unaware that she isn't quite as good as she thought!


Remind me of a school cruise in the early 70s - we were in La Rochelle, and the natives couldn't understand our French teacher. It took me a couple of years to realise just how awful her accent was. Luckily I changed teachers in time for 'O' level .
:oops: that dates me.....
Author:  Catrin [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Tor wrote:
I don't buy race memory... but I hazard a guess that accent and cadence help enormously when learning a language. You know, the way a sentence just 'feels' right. even with a different grammatical structure, this might help.


I have a very vague theory about this, but the other way froun . . . for instance, you can learn a lot about the French and german languages from hearing French and Germans speaking English, even if they are really quite fluent, simply because many of them tend to chose words close to those in their own language - for instance a German colleague always used to accuse people of being "curt" rather than "short" with her if their manner was a bit abrupt, although her English was flawless and almost accentless.
Author:  Tor [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
That is true... many of my French and Italian colleagues overuse a lot of words that have fallen out of common usage in English, or in slightly odd ways. 'Actually' is a particularly common one. Sentences starting fairly randomly with "Actually...." Native English speakers tend to use actually as a way of adding emphasis to a rebuttal of something, whereas I get the feeling that the French equivalent (?actuellement?) does not have such a heavy handed meaning.
Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Tor wrote:
'Actually' is a particularly common one. Sentences starting fairly randomly with "Actually...." Native English speakers tend to use actually as a way of adding emphasis to a rebuttal of something, whereas I get the feeling that the French equivalent (?actuellement?) does not have such a heavy handed meaning.


'Actuellement' is one of those faux amis - it means 'now', or 'at the moment'. 'Actually' would be 'justement' or maybe 'effectivement'.

But this is small beer to EBD's decidedly pidgin French ,to go slightly back OT! There's some moment when the supposedly fluent Len tells someone on French day that Hilda wants to see her in the study, which she renders as something like 'Madame desire ta presence dans l'etudier'.

For non-French speakers, the first bit is slightly strange any way - Len is saying 'Madame desires your presence in...' rather as if she were a royal equerry on ultra-formal mode rather than a 1950s schoolgirl, but 'l'etudier' is a made-up word (EBD has tried to turn the verb 'to study' into a noun). I wouldn't think twice of assuming it's meant to be wrong if it wasn't that Len is supposed to speak fluent French and 'bureau' isn't difficult...

I also wouldn't be so inclined to giggle if EBD hadn't had such fun at Emerence's expense when she has her inventing French words to describe a farmyard and driving Mdlle nuts! Seriously, though, even though it's obvious her editors never did close checking on the CS books (otherwise we wouldn't have such fun with EBDisms!), but you'd think she'd get out a dictionary, or just write her fluently multilingual characters as if they're speaking English. Most of her original audience would probably have been glad!
Author:  Tor [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 4:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Thanks, Sunglass, as that explains it. My French colleagues definitely use the English 'actually' as interchangeable for the French 'actuellement', despite the different meanings. Makes much more sense now! Faux amis, on their part, indeed!

OT - following what you have just said, I am even more convinced that EBD may have had very different ideas of fluency to me. Poor CS girls... turned out en masse thinking they speak excellent French and German, but actually speaking their own CS-dialect! No wonder so returned to the CS to teach. It's the only place anyone speaks the same languages as them!!
Author:  Cat C [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 5:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Just as an aside on the cadence thing, if that was all it was about, English-speakers should find Dutch very easy to learn, since they're 'timed' the same - it's why Dutch can sound very English, if you're not listening to the actual sounds (if that makes sense).
Author:  Miriam [ Mon Dec 08, 2008 11:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Yes, my year old neice does not speak yet, but she does babble in 'baby talk'. When you actually listen to the sounds she is making it is clear that she is babling in Hebrew rather than English. (She hears English at home, but Hebrew in the park and at her daycare.) The sounds she uses and where she places the accent are very typical of Hebrew, and to my parents she actually sounds foreign.
Author:  Tor [ Tue Dec 09, 2008 12:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
If you relax your brain when listening (technical term :oops: ), and don't concentrate too much, Dutch is fairly easy to understand.

I spent a month in Dutch speaking Belgium, and had no probs understanding (speaking was a diff matter!). I learnt german at school, though, so I had both sets of vocab to draw on... even if the german was v limited.
Author:  Luisa [ Tue Dec 09, 2008 5:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
hear hear!(literally) As long as I listen to Dutch with German ears its fine. If only they would let me speak it, but as soon as I try, they reply in fluent English. We have a lot to answer for.
Author:  Katherine [ Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Kate wrote:
Quote:
Once you get into though, it's reasonably easy. I have what I'd describe as 'conversational Irish' but I manage to teach in it quite well.

Yes, I was pleasently surprised at how easy (relatively speaking) I found it to teach a fairly technical course in French. My French is decent but not 100% fluent. Mind you I wasn't trying to present an all knowing front to my adult students and they were happy to help with language if I did need it. Wouldn't like to have to make up the materials or write too much though.
Author:  MJKB [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 4:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Some subjects would be easier than others. (Stating the b******obvious!). The most difficult subjects would be history, geography, home ec - the Language based ones. English teachers would, I'm sure, teach through English. Maths would be difficult enough with all the complicated explanations, although tests could be given on the German and French days. Miss Slater resorted to this subterfuge. Science would present the same difficulties as maths.
One thing that intrigued me abit was that English was spoken on Wednesdays and half day Saturday, 'go as you please" from the afternoon until Monday morning. This meant that English was spken less frequently in lessons than French and German.
Author:  Kate [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 5:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
My foreign students find maths the easiest subject because it doesn't change. It's the same in any language and once you learn the numbers and a finite number of terms, you're fine. Science History and Geography would be the hardest, I think.
Author:  Catherine [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 5:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Luisa wrote:
Remind me of a school cruise in the early 70s - we were in La Rochelle, and the natives couldn't understand our French teacher. It took me a couple of years to realise just how awful her accent was. Luckily I changed teachers in time for 'O' level .
:oops: that dates me.....



I was on a school trip in Normandy in the early 90s and we got slightly lost. The Head of French (who taught up to A Level and taught the top set all the way up to GCSE) asked the way but the French couldn't understand her so another member of the French staff (who didn't teach A Level and taught the bottom set!) had to step in. She was understood straight away ... and the Head of Department made the excuse that her accent was Parisian and that's why it wasn't understood! None of us believed her - especially as we had always thought that the second teacher spoke French much better than she did! :lol: :lol:

I still remember having to give presentations in A Level French Classes and having her sit there with her head tilted on one side, going 'oui, oui?', when I couldn't think what was coming next!! Incredibly offputting!
Author:  judithR [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 5:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Miriam wrote:
Yes, my year old neice does not speak yet, but she does babble in 'baby talk'. When you actually listen to the sounds she is making it is clear that she is babling in Hebrew rather than English. (She hears English at home, but Hebrew in the park and at her daycare.) The sounds she uses and where she places the accent are very typical of Hebrew, and to my parents she actually sounds foreign.
Yes, my year old neice does not speak yet, but she does babble in 'baby talk'. When you actually listen to the sounds she is making it is clear that she is babling in Hebrew rather than English. (She hears English at home, but Hebrew in the park and at her daycare.) The sounds she uses and where she places the accent are very typical of Hebrew, and to my parents she actually sounds foreign.


My Polish colleague spoke Polish to her children while thier equally Polish father spoke English to them. Her son was three before he realised that Mummy spoke English.
Author:  MJKB [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 7:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Among our non-national students is a Romanian family whose members have been coming to our school since they arrived in Ireland in the early noughties. There are twelve of them altogether, one nicer than the other, fabulous kids. The fifth eldest, a girl, is in my tutor group. She spent just one year in an Irish Primary school and coped with having to learn English and Irish from the beginning. She could get an exemption from Irish but has chosen to continue with it and is doing higher level for Leaving Cert. She got one of the highest marks in her Junior Cert in both Irish and English. She is of good average academic ability, no genius, but is a fantastic worker. She could most definetly survive the tri-lingual
curriculum in the CS.
Author:  Miriam [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 9:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Kate wrote:
My foreign students find maths the easiest subject because it doesn't change. It's the same in any language and once you learn the numbers and a finite number of terms, you're fine.


I find doing maths in Hebrew harder than any other subject, and numbers seem very firmly fixed in my head in English. Most of my notes are in a mixture of Hebrew and English, and I'm often thinking in both languages pretty much at the same time. I've learnt Hebrew since I was four, and have no problem with the numbers or the terms, but I can only do the thinking in English.

Maths may have been realtively easy for the teachers to teach in any language, but for the girls it could have been very hard. On the other hand, once they had grasped the principal involved, no one is asking what language they are thinking in, so it might not make much difference.
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
I was just thinking about MJKB's admirable Romanian Irish student, and how many 'native' Irish students speak Irish very poorly after thirteen years of doing it at school, when I started thinking about the difference between having a trilingual school at the Tiernsee vs having it in the UK/Switzerland.

At the original Chalet, you had a real mix of Anglophones, German-speakers and French-speakers (and others, obviously), and the CS was an 'English' school in a German-speaking country, so there was a huge amount of motivation for everyone to learn all the languages. Quite apart from the fact that 'go as you please days' would probably have involved a mix of languages among your close friends, so you needed to learn to speak to keep up - you imagine Simone really trying with English to impress Jo - the majority of the girls were in a country whose language was not their native one. Learning other languages would have been a very real affair. If you were a German girl who wanted, say, to hang out with Evvy and Cornelia on the weekend, then you'd have had to manage in English, I imagine.

Whereas even when the trilingual days were re-introduced in the UK, and kept going in Switzerland, the vast majority of the school and staff were now British (and even the Gornetz Platz seems very much an Anglophone enclave abroad), and the whole trilingual set-up would have felt far more artificial, because by and large, British girls were now speaking French and German to other British girls and staff. It's only 'immersion' in a fairly technical sense, and you wouldn't, say, be able to be sure in copying other girls' grammar or pronunciation in the way you could with a native speaker. The default assumption is that people lapse into English when they can get away with it.

I know that the school was getting more non-Brits by the end of the series, but they were still a minority, and you have odd little moments like Margot in 'Leader' telling Emerence in a letter that a new girl is 'French, but quite nice' - which always strikes me as not very pleasant, especially given the school's international roots.
Author:  JayB [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Quote:
...and even the Gornetz Platz seems very much an Anglophone enclave abroad...


Yes - in the early books you have the girls going to the Kron Prinz Karl for coffee, visiting the families of local girls, travelling on the lake steamers, interacting with the local population, speaking German and hearing German spoken on a day to day basis in a way that they just don't in the Swiss books.
Author:  Lesley [ Wed Dec 10, 2008 11:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Also I don't think you hear of those pupils who are not English-speaking having the same difficulties with languages - did EBD think all French/Austrian/German etc girls spoke excellent English?
Author:  Alison H [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 12:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Poor Thyra and Ingeborg Eriksen only spoke Norwegian when their evidently sadistic parents sent them to a school where they didn't have a common language with anyone but each other :roll: . And when Bianca di Ferrara first arrived she only spoke Italian, which not that many other people would have spoken or understood. I don't know how on earth they managed.

The Eriksens were only juniors as well: it must have been really scary being in a place where they couldn't understand what anyone was saying or make themselves understood.

We don't hear of there being any problems as a result of it, though, as Lesley said. There's one mention in School At of Marie von Eschenau making "funny mistakes" with her English, and in Exploits Thekla says something about becoming an exercise book, but that's about it.
Author:  Miriam [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 1:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Recruitment of tri-lingual staff
Lesley wrote:
Also I don't think you hear of those pupils who are not English-speaking having the same difficulties with languages - did EBD think all French/Austrian/German etc girls spoke excellent English?


In 'School At' there are a lot of references to the girls speaking 'careful' english. When MAdge is giving them tests on the first day, to sort them into classes, it states that working in a foreign language was a handicap to most of the girls (Maria Marani was unable to do anythingm but she must have learnt pretty fast). The initial division into classes in based more on language fluency than anything else.

In 'Highland Twins' there are a couple of mentions of the Linders regaining their fluency in english, and having heavy accents (as opposed to 'pretty accents').
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