French class....
While school may be a few years past now, there are still a few memories that I like to trundle out when I am feeling nostalgic.

I was lucky enough to go to Boarding School (private school down in NZ, I think it's termed a public school in the UK) and received a small scholarship from the Govt, on account of the fact that I was taking subjects I couldn't back in my back-country hicksville school.

One of the subjects I was taking was French (I was luckier than my sister, who had 5 years of learning Latin....) and we were lucky enough to have a cool teacher - Mr Fraser - think beard, flares and a sense of humour.

In my third year at college (age 15 or so) French had ceased being compulsary, and as a result the class was small - a dozen of us, made up of those upper class twats whose parents forced them to learn French to give them some culture, a few of us being forced to do it, and one or two people who were genuinely interested.

So we are sitting in class one day, in the midst of a lesson about verbs or what-not, and suddently one of the afore-mentioned twats puts up his hand to ask a question.

"Sir.. what's French for c**t?"

Cue burst of laughter from the rest of us, and (thankfully) a ry smile on the face of the teacher.

"Don't worry about that, just get back to your verbs" was his response (in hindsight, rather well contained).

Next thing all you could hear was a rythmic light thumping on desks.. "c**t... c**t... c**t..." slowly getting louder as we all joined in..

After about 20 seconds of this, and sensing that if we continued it would be audible outside the classroom, Mr Fraser (to his eternal credit) then proceeded to give us a 15 minute lesson on French swear-words, and phrases /insults.

To this day, and nearly 30 years after, I can still remember the french for "go and f**k yourself" while "Janet and John go the bakery to buy a croissant" has long since faded into the past.

PS. As I recall, the utilisation of choice phrases in the end-of-year exam did not assist greatly...

PPS. My mother, herself a French teacher and shocked when I failed my mid-term exams, took advantage of my convelescing from a minor foot operation in the school holidays to force me to spend 5 hours a day improving my French skills. I should thank her for the solid 54% I achieved for the year!!
(alnhelzz, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 22:09, 2 replies)

Wish I'd done German...
...instead of French.
One of the Year 8 German classes got taught how to swear, and they were allowed to swear in German class as long as it was grammatically correct, properly pronounced German! If they got it wrong, they got the same punishment they'd have gotten for swearing in any other class.
The teacher got told off for doing that, and banned from doing it again in later years. Nonetheless, several of his students went on to get straight A's in German for years.
(ShowPony, Sun 1 Feb 2009, 12:48, closed)

A variation on this
is being allowed to swear so long as it's grammatically correct etc, but also original- so you've got to keep learning new phrases.

It encourages creative thinking & promotes an increase in vocabulary.
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Mon 2 Feb 2009, 14:46, closed)