What the Press has to say about
Ecole des Trois Ponts
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LOS ANGELES TIMES
SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 1998
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Tours for the Thinking- Person-: France.-
In France an immersion language study course leads to Fluency. Non ?
By GREGORY CURTIS
ROANNE, France-"When we get to Paris," I told my wife, Tracy, one evening not long before we left on our trip, "we might think about going to the Comédie-Française. It's supposed to be fabulous, and by then," I concluded casually, "we'Il speak French."
That moment haunted me during the two weeks we spent at l'Ecole des Trois Ponts (Three Bridges School) on the outskirts of Roanne, southeast of Paris. We went there to take an intensive course in French: 25 hours of instruction each week and breakfast, lunch and dinner where only French is spoken.
We arrived at the train station in Roanne the first Sunday aftemoon in June, fully expecting that when we returned to the station two weeks later to catch the train to Paris, we would be chattering away in French as easily and comfortably as we did in our dreams. Long ago we had been indifferent language students in school. But several summers ago, on a horseback riding trip through the Loire valley in south central France, we were a little embarrassed to find ourselves able to speak only English and a bit of pidgin French in a group of Europeans who all spoke French, English and German with equal ease. We returned home determined to learn French. Tracy took an introductory course at the local community college white I used instructional tapes in my car and painfully plodded through some of Georges Simenon's inspecter Maigret mysteries, with the help of an English translation. We made progress, but it was difficult and slow. And when we tried to speak-once in particular when we ran into a group of French exchange students in an airport-we were given friendly smiles but not understood. Nor could we understand what they were saying to us. We realized the limitations of our haphazard study techniques. If only we could take some time and concentrate on nothing but French. Which is why we enrolled at l'Ecole des Trois Ponts.
We couldn't have chosen a prettier setting, The school is in a 17th century château recently renovated by its present owners who also run the school: René Dorel and his wife, Margaret O'Loan. The château is isolated on 32 acres of land on the outskirts of Roanne. Everything is simple, neat and attractive. Our room on the second floor had a ceiling at least 20 feet high, a gray carpet and prints of French paintings hung here and there on peach walls. Outside our window was a broad walk leading down to a pond and a wide expanse of grass and trees. All we could hear were songbirds and the pleasant, almost musical croaking of frogs at the pond.
Nor, in this pretty setting, did we have to worry about anything but learning French. Each morning while we were in class, a maid cleaned our room. Claude, the chef, a huge man with thick silver hair and a silver mustache and tattoos on each forearm, cooked all of our meals. (The traditional French fare was superb.) He was very fond of Americans. Each morning he would bend the French-only rule and say to me, "Hello, my friend Greg," in what he believed was an American accent. 1 would answer, "Hello, my friend Claude," in what I believed was a French accent. With our daily schedule all expertly arranged, the only decision we had to make for two weeks was where to go sightseeing on the weekend.
Dinner the first Sunday night was a bit stilted. Tracy and I gamely tried to speak French as we assumed we should, but we were peeved to find that several of the other five students blithely spoke English. Only S., an elderly German woman, spoke solely in French, but she either could not or would not understand my French. When 1 told her 1 lived in Texas, she shook her head emphatically, as if refusing to believe that anyone who lived there could have anything to say in either French or English. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that she must have a hearing problem.
We had a short test the next morning and Tracy and I were assigned to different classes. 1 walked into mine-in a nicely furnished room with a fireplace and a large window on the first floor - only to discover that it consisted of myself, a teacher and S. I was filied with dread. Was all my time in the car with my tapes going to be wasted on a German woman who couldn't hear ?
I took solace in our teacher, Gabby. He was a short, dark, handsome man who appeared to be in his late 30s. I learned that he had been born near Roanne and lived there still. At one point in his life he had spent several years in the United States and spoke impeccable English, although he rarely used it in class. He immediately gave us our first assignment: S. and I were to talk to each other for a few moments, then we would tell him what we had learned about each other. Gabby left the room. In a kind of gloomy darkness, sitting at a small oval table, S. looked at me and I looked at her. 1 asked her questions and she asked me questions. She held her hand behind her car as if she couldn't hear and shook her head. I repeated myself often. She answlered my questions at great length. 1 couldn't follow her in every detail, which 1 assumed was because of her poor French.
I did understand that she lived alone in a small town near the Dutch border, just a short distance south of the North Sea. When Gabby returned, she talked on and on about me, even though I had been able to answer her only in short sentences. I then told him about her, proud that I had been able to understand her at all. I expected Gabby to criticize S., but instead he turned to me. I had always thought I imitated quite closely the sounds on the tapes I studied in my car. But my car was evidently made of lead. The reason S. had trouble with my French was not poor hearing, as I had suspected, but my poor prononciation.
Gabby gently but directly informed me that I pronounced each and every vowel wrong, and that French was a language of vowels. "You must change, Greg," he said in French ' "When you pronounce vowels wrong, it's not just a bad accent. You are saying a completely different word." "I" was not " eye," as 1 had been saying but the pinched sharp sound "ee," uttered as if you had suddenly seen a rattlesnake. I pronounced "de" as "day" when it should be "duh " le" as "lay" when it should be "luh," and I was well into the second week at the school before I was able to shake this habit.
S. sat complacently listening as Gabby went on. I had another problem that was just as important as my mispronouncing vowels. I mispronounced consonants. B, P and T, for example, are explosive sounds in English. In French they are softer, aspirated. L is entirely different, requiring a kind of nimbleness of the tongue that is missing in English.
And, as if bad vowels and consonants weren't enough, 1 also didn't understand the rhythms of spoken French. Gabby wrote, "Yes, it is." Then he pronounced it in English, sounding a bit like the late actor Peter Lawford. Then he pronounced the sentence as a French person would: "Ye si tis."
We broke for lunch after three hours of class. We resumed at 3:30 for two more hours. We read aloud short articles from a local newspaper about tour packages to Mediterranean islands. I could understand them well enough, but reading them aloud was another trial. There were lots of numbers, and I often misread them. The numeral 954 came out as the French equivalent of ninetyfive four. Gabby kept telling me 1 was speaking too fast. 1 was sliding over syllables when 1 had to give each one its proper weight. "SIVI-LI-ZA-SION" he said, tapping a finger on the table with each syllable.
I tried to imitate him but kept transposing syllables. My longue and brain would not work together. At the end of the class, after five hours, 1 couldn't say the words in either French or English. It crossed my mind that at the end of two weeks I might not be speaking two languages.
After the first day of language school, I felt as if I had dived to the bottom of a deep pool, and I spent the rest of my stay swimming back to the top. Fach day followed a similar pattern.. class for three hours in the morning, then three or four more hours after lunch, with one afternoon off a week. In class we were drilled on various verb tenses and other points of grammar. I was hungry for that, but there was less of it than I'd expected. Instead, we talked and we talked.
Our homework each evening was to prepare a brief talk for the next day. We chose ads from magazines and explained them, discussed articles from the newspaper and described where we might like to go on vacation. In class we often had to assume roles - a mayor and a city council member, for example-and with budgets and other information, discuss whether our imaginary town should build a new sports center.
On Wednesday, after two days of class, Gabby asked us to pick out a short article in a magazine to read into a tape recorder, after class. I practiced mine several times, then read it into the recorder. The next morning I waited in anticipation as Gabby put on my recording and listened. He kept looking at with a puzzled expression. He still couldn't understand me.
By the third day, 1 did not believe that I could say a single word in the language that would be understood. I looked forward to 10 more days of frustration, a classroom dunce, while S. prattled on. At meals I spoke less and less, although there were several other students I knew understood less than I did. By that first Thursday, conversation around the table virtually ceased. Margaret and René said it was part of the natural cycle. We were just tired.
By Friday, despite a week's work, I was unaware of any progresse. That afternoon I had, a three-hour session with René, one on one. We worked on verb tenses for a while, then he played a recording of a young woman recalling what happened during the student demonstrations in Paris in 1968. When René played it the first time, I missed most of it.
Suddenly 1 realized my problem: I was trying to translate the words into English as I listened, which made me fall behind. 1 would translate a sentence in my mind but lose the next two or three. Instead, I told myself to just listen; don't translate. I asked René to play the tape again. I listened. And I understood. After a week, I suddenly understood French.
Later that evening 1 picked up a story by Balzac and read it as French without translating. Except for some difficult vocabulary here and there, I understood it too. Reading Balzac in French ! Me ? By which I mean moi! And there was still a week to go. I would leave here speaking French after all.
My exuberance did not last. Our assignment that weekend was to watch one of the French movies the school had on tape and report on it. 1 chose "Trois Hommes et un Couffin," the film that was remade by Hollywood as "Three Men and a Baby." The actors spoke, ran about, waved their arms. 1 understood hardly a word. In class on Monday 1 threw up my hands: "I can't say anything about the movie because I didn't understand a thing." Gabby, patient as he was, did not let me get away with this. "You must try harder."
That night's assignment was to tell Gabby and S. about my house. I worked late. I organized my thoughts, 1 went over my presentation until I could speak with ease. I enunciated my vowels. I spoke slowly. The next morning my talk went well, and I answered the questions with some facility.
That was when I felt I had broken the surface of the deep pool and was breathing again. With just two days of classes left, 1 found myself able to do what 1 thought I could do when I arrived: speak simple French and be. understood. After 50 hours of class in 14 days, Tracy and I were weary and ready to move on. We admitted to each other that we were not sure how much we had learned. But we were being too hard on ourselves, If we could not prattle on in French as we had hoped, that was only because learning a language la an exercise in perseverance. What we had really learned was the immensity of the task.
After leaving the school, waiting on the railroad platforrn for the train to Paris, I could understand the announcements over the loudspeaker. 1 could understand simple things that were said to me in French: the price of a croissant or a newspaper.
Back home, Tracy and 1 keep studying. We are committed to the dogged practice that produces the small accretions of knowledge that finally result in knowing a second language. During the slow times I keep myself going by a vision I have of a night someday in the future: Tracy and 1 are strolling along the streets of Paris after an pleasant evening at the Comédie Française. We stop at a cafe for a glass of wine and affectionately recall those two weeks of work.
Curtis is editor of Texas Monthly.
Getting there: Air France and AOM French Airlines offer nonstop flights between LAX and Paris. Advance-purchase, roundtrip fares start at $535.
Take the TGV train from Gare de Lyon in Paris to Lyons and change trains for Roanne. Round-trip fares are $260 for first class and $212 for second class. The Paris-to-Roanne trip takes about 3 hours, one way.
For more Information: Ecole des Trois Ponts, Château de Mâtel, 42300 Roanne, France; telephone 011-33-477-71-5300; fax 011-33-477-70-8001; e-mail address lnfo@ 3ponts.odu; Web site http://3ponts.edu. French language classes in 1998: Feb. 14 to Nov. 14, closed in April. Prices range from $820 to $2,100 per week (depending upon courses studied and accommodations) for up to 12 weeks. Price includes six nights of accommodations and most meals. (Saturday lunch and dinner and Sunday lunch not included.) Combination cooking and French classes are also available.
-G.C.
Australian Gourmet Traveller
Learning French at school was never like this. L' Ecole des Trois Ponts in Roanne offers students the chance to perfect their language skills in style.
The quickest and most effective way to leam French is to go to France and speak nothing else. The most pleasant way to do this would be to stay at a château in beautiful surroundings with people who know how to help you. This is exactly what you can find at the Château de Mâtel near Roanne in the Lyons area. Australian born Margaret 0'Loan and her French husband René Dorel run L'Ecole des Trois Ponts in the château, where they live with their son Marc. Living and studying there, speaking French within the household as well as at classes, and with time to visit the attractions of the region and try their French on the locals, students advance quickly.
The château is a 17th-century mansion set in 13ha of forest and park, so that staying there one feels in the depths of the country. However, the charming small city of Roanne is five minutes' drive or 15 minutes' bicycle ride away (the school bas bicycles for students to use) and has among its attractions the world-famous restaurant Troisgros, holder of three Michelin stars. The entire Roanne area is noted for its gastronomie riches and bas any number of good restaurants as well as medieval villages, castles, churches and abbeys, fine craftwork and pretty mountain and river scenery. The Côtes Roannaises vineyards and wine cellars are on the outskirts of the town and, as the area borders the Beaujolais and Burgundy wine regions, guests at the château can take one - or two.day car trips to explore these. In winter, the Dorels take their guests to the nearby ski area on Saturdays, and the rest of the year, guests can swim in the château's heated outdoor pool, play tennis on courts five minutes' bicycle ride away, ride from a nearby equestrian centre, or golf on the local course.
Classes in beginner, intermediate and advanced level French are available at Château de Mâtel, and there is also an intensive course in business French. The school takes about 20 people, and classes are small - no more than six people in the ordirary language courses, no more than two for business French, in order to maximise speaking time for each student. The emphasis is on conversational skills, but reading and writing are not forgotten. Ordinary students take morming classes and have afternoons free for sightseing or sporting activities and, an important part of the leaming process, talking with local French people in shops, cafes and so on. Business-French students take five hours' lessons a day and, in addition to language, learn about French business practice, commercial documents, etc, pay visits to factories, banks or other businesses related to their field and meet French professionals in the same line of business.
Two evenings a week, there are informal classes, often taking the form of games in French. Local families invite intermediate and advanced students to come to aftemoon tea and dinner - an excellent way to polish ones conversation. Weekends are free for sport, sightseeing and excursions farther afield.
Courses of one, two or four weeks, or of three months, are offered at the Ecole. It takes three months for an absolute beginner to become a fluent French speaker, but shorter courses are an excellent way to start holidays off.- the school aims to help guests get their French to a level that will allow them to go off and travel around France on their own. Margaret O'Loan and René Dorel are seasoned professional language teachers, and the business-French course is taught by Gabriel Coquard, who has taught business practice in France and French at US universities and business schools. Students staying for longterm courses can be prepared for the Alliance Français examinations, and guests are given a certificats at the end of their courses, stating the content and duration of the course (which is useful for tax-declaration purposes).
In addition to the language classes, L'Ecole des Trois Ponts organises participation, for interested students, in evening cooking classes at a prestigious professional school in the neighbourhood, or in evening interior décoration classes, also nearby.
Most students are aged between 20 and 50, although the school has also had teenagers and retirement-age people studying there. The classrooms are comfortable sitting rooms and guest rooms are pretty and homey. Guests and staff eat together; meals are family-style cooking typical of provincial France. 0nly French is spoken at the table, and staff always speak to guests in French - although, as all fluent in English as well, any problems can dealt with. Students who stay longer th three weeks are requested to speak to each other in French only from the 21 st day.
Text by Meg Thomason
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Faking French
March 17 - 23, 1999 |
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Ecole des Trois Ponts offers language class with savoir faire
By Sue Buchholz
A miracle happened at Roanne,France. I looked people in the eye. I didn't cower when they spoke to me. I opened my mouth and French came out.
Six months earlier I had been passing through, traveling with no itinerary, on my way to Spain. Then I discovered the south of France and refused to go farther. I didn't speak a word of French, but somehow managed to get along, using sign language, Spanish, and avoiding eye contact. A short visit turned into a 1 month, then three months, then six. Finally, I had to admit it: I was living in France. I had survived in France for six months, avoiding French. It was time to take the plunge. I checked myself into a French school for two days and three nights.
Nestled along the Roanne-Digoin canal, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Lyon, the 18th-century Château de Matel with its sprawling 32-hectare (79-acre) park is home to École des Trois Ponts, where learning French is almost as relaxed and easy as being on vaca-tion. And it's abordable. For just a little more than you would pay to stay in a nice hotel, you can have a great vacation and go home speaking French. Students can take the gencral or intensive course in a classroom situation, or sign up for private lessons. École des Trois Ponts also offers a cooking school, taught by accomplished French chefs, in either English or French. French courses are ongoing throughout the year ; the cooking class schedule is more limited.
When I arrived at École des Trois Ponts for the Sunday evening induction and introductory dinner, I was immediately intimidated. Why, 1 wondered, were these other people here ? They all spoke French so well. As they casually chatted, mingled and drank wine around the fireplace belore dinner, I mentally ran through my arsenal of surefire, all-occasion expressions and single-word answers that had taken me through the toughest situations.
Luckily, I didn't need them until the meal, when it appeared that everyone else understood perfectly all the conversations around the table. I shamelessly reverted to my well-rehearsed défensive maneuvers. But I was outmaneuvered. The teachers and staff were strategically seated among the students, and everyone conversed. Everyone. Even I. The staff was so adept at putting everyone at ease that I found myself chatting away, despite my limitations. A little assistance here, a pointer on prononciation there, the prompting was so subtle it seemed like a perfectly normal part of any conversation. And peer pressure, I must admit, was at work on me. By the time dinner was over, my confidence level had been raised several notches. I was ready to tackle the classroom.
The moming dawned bright and beautiful. I looked out over the grounds from my room on the second floor to see that the fields and trees were golden in the early morning sun. I decided to take a long jog on the trail that runs along the canal. The grass was wet and the air heavy with the smells of moist dirt and wildflowers. The château looked gorgeons in the morning light as I looped around and ran the last steps of the footpath through the field and up the stairs. People were congregating around the terrace and dining room, drinking coffee and helping themselves to the casual self-service breakfast.
After a healthy dose of caffeine, and only a brief bout of butterflies, I started class at the very civilized hour of 9:15 and continued straight through until lunch time. My class had only four students (the maximum class size is six), and out teacher used every minute of the session to full advantage. Speaking only in French, we honed out conversation skills while painlessly incorporating grammar and practical information. Our teacher easily switched into minilessons to answer out burning questions about mysterious words or French culture.
Lunch was, in proper French tradition, an unhurried affair, and an ample meal. Advanced students and teachers talked about current events and politics. The beginners listened, in awe, and attempted to make simple conversation among themselves. In addition to turning out great food, even the chef and kitchen staff seemed to have a knack for getting us to speak to them in French.
In the afternoons, after classes, students in the regular course are free to wander into town or lounge around the château. The beautiful path along the canal offers miles of quiet exploration away from traffic for runners and cyclists. And in the summer, for those who just want to soak up the sun while the French soaks ni, there is a lovely swimming pool in the garden. More ambitions students who choose private lessons or intensive courses work through the aftemoons. The French-only rule for conversation applies just to those in the intermediate and advanced levels, but nearly everyone adheres to it all day long, taking advantage of the opportunity to practice their morning's lessons on each other.
Founded by René Dorel, a Frenchman, and his wife Margaret O'Loan, an Australian, École des Trois Ponts is now in its seventh year. The couple bas lived in England, France, Australia and Japan; both speak English, French and Japanese. Although the château and its surroundings are lovely, for my money, the school's half-dozen teachers are its biggest assets. According to Margaret and René, instructors are trained in the school's methods and philosophies, but are encouraged to put their own special spin on the delivery. They all seem to love sharing their knowledge of language, history and culture, and they have endless patience listening to the rnost excruciatingly painful mutilation of the loveliest language on the planet.
In the evenings, dinnertime stretched until bedtime, with a substantiel meal of excellent Provençal cuisine and plenty of wine served family style and shared by students, teachers, René, Margaret and their son. The atmosphère felt more like a dinner party with friends who spoke a common language, rather than a session for learning. I suspect we learned as much French at the dinner table as in the classroom. For this reason, most students don't skip evenings at the château, but do take an extra day or two after completing the course to spend time exploring the area, which include : Troisgros, a Michelin three star restaurant in Roanne, the nearby medieval villages and the adjacent Beaujolais and Burgundy regions.
There was a noticeable leap in the confidence level and the amount of conversation that took place over meals with each successive day. And at the end of their stay, no matter how short, departing students seemed to have an immense feeling of accomplishment. I left École des Trois Ponts, after just two days and three nights, confident I could carry on a real, albeit simple, conversation in French, without my small arsenal of survival weapons. Imagine the miracles they could work if I stayed for two weeks. They would probably have me believinig I’m ready to tackle Japanese.
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