The gradual disappearance of wine from France's dinner table. Sacré bleu!

Recent figures have confirmed what has been observed for years, that the number of regular drinkers of wine in France is declining.  In 1980 more than half of adults were consuming wine on a near-daily basis. Today that figure has fallen to 17%.

“Wine has gone from being popular to elitist”

In 1965, the amount of wine consumed per head of population was a hearty 160 litres a year. In 2010 that had fallen to merely 57 litres, and will most likely dip to no more than 30 litres in the years ahead.

Changes in French drinking habits are displayed through the attitudes of successive generations.  People in their 60s and 70s grew up with wine on the table at every meal. For them, wine remains an essential part of their cultural heritage.  Whilst the middle generation - now in their 40s and 50s - see wine as a more occasional indulgence.   They like to think they drink less but better.  Members of the third generation do not even start taking an interest in wine until their mid-to-late 20s. 

What concerns people are the effects of the change on life inside France, on French civilisation.  They fear that time-honoured French values - conviviality, tradition and appreciation of the good things in life - are on the way out.  Food writer Perico Legasse argues that,

"Wine is an element in the meal. But what has happened is that it's gone from being popular to elitist. It is totally ridiculous. It should be perfectly possible to drink moderately of good quality wine on a daily basis."

Other main factors that have contributed to the decline in the French wine glugging is that fewer people work outdoors, so the fortifying qualities of wine are less in demand. Offices require people to stay awake, so lunchtimes are, by and large, sans wine.  As well as the rise of the car, changing demographics, with France's large Muslim minority, and the growing popularity of beers and mixers.

C'est la vie!

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21929287

Let's analyse who you are and how we can help you!

This blog has now been up and running for approximately one month and we have had a total of 3,200 views. What we, the staff at OISE Oxford, find particularly interesting is not the quantity of views the blog gets, but where you, the people viewing the blog, come from. Blogger (ran by Google) very kindly provide the owners of their blogs with the nationality breakdown. Excluding the English fan base we seem to have acquired (mainly from Burton-on-Trent and Leicester FYI), please see below a list of the top 8 nationalities to view this blog:

Russia - 24%
France - 21%
Spain - 14%
Italy - 13%
Japan - 10.5%
Turkey - 7%
Germany - 6.5%
Czech - 4%

You might be asking yourselves what is the point in us telling you this information. The answer is simple. Every so often we are going to pick one of the top viewing nationalities of our blog and briefly discuss one of two specific difficulties that this particular nationality has when learning English. We figured that this would be an effective way to interact and provide relevant information to our readership.

We will start with France. I asked two of our highly experienced tutors to pick one difficulty each:

1) The Present Perfect
The French sometimes struggle to comprehend the unique nature of bringing past and present actions together in one present perfect continuous tense. For example the French would say 'I am studying English since two years' instead of 'I have been studying English for two years'. In English, the logic is this; I started to study English two years ago. I am studying now = I have been studying for two years.

2) False Friends (Les faux amis)
There are many words in English that resemble French words and vice versa, but that have completely different meanings. Here is a list of some of the most common French false friends:

to control = diriger, maîtriser * contrôler = to check
deception = tromperie * délais = time, time-limit
to demand = exiger * demander = to ask
deputy = adjoint * député = Member of Parliament
eventually = finalement * éventuellement = perhaps, possibly
to resume = recommencer * résumer = to summarise, to sum up
sensible = sensé, raisonnable * sensible = sensitive
to support = soutenir * supporter = to stand, bear, put up with

If you are a teacher or a French student and can think of any other specific difficulties that the French have when learning English, please feel free to comment below!

Next time we will focus on the Russians! If you are a Russian learning English, or have experience in teaching Russian students English, please let us know the difficulties you think Russian students have while learning English.

Are the French hopeless at languages?

Till Gins, director of Oxford Intensive School of English, is adamant that this is not the case. He claims they are no worse than anyone else, rather they are victims of an education system which will not accept its failings. The French-Brit has been director of the first language school in Oxford for 40 years and has seen millions of students come and go, attracted by his intensive, ‘one to one’ teaching method. He explores what lies behind the cliche…

Born to a French father and an English mother, Till grew up with dual heritage. After graduation, he came to Oxford to write a memoir on John Locke and it was then that he began to give individual lessons. The more he taught, the more he realised the effectiveness of tutorials, a teaching method specific to the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin. He concluded that the best way to master a language was to have ‘one to one’ classes which enable the teacher to tailor their teaching to the student.

The school’s programmes are first and foremost aimed at executives and business managers. But we also welcome students and prépa students (students preparing for entrance examinations to the Grandes Écoles).  Whatever the age of the pupil, it is difficult to undo the damage done by their education and culture.

Of all the students OISE receives, Till believes that the French have the most inhibitions. They are not bad at languages, as we often hear, but they are afraid of making fools of themselves and this psychological block is so deeply rooted in their national mentality that they have real difficulty taking risks. They would prefer to calculate what they are going to say beforehand or just remain quiet rather than make a mistake, the result being that they cannot communicate spontaneously in a foreign language.

Till traces this mental block back to the way many French children are brought up. For example, if a child is given a sweet and does not say thank you, their mother would often say to them ‘What do you say? What do you say?’, giving them the sense that they have done something wrong. According to Till, the French education system only reinforces this idea, meaning that many French children are afraid to try for fear of making a mistake.

Consequently Till felt that his role was not so much to teach English but eloquence. That is what makes the difference, whether you have mastered the basics of a language or not. Many French students have spent years learning English grammar and vocabulary in school but still do not know how to use it spontaneously. Till considers risk taking and engaging in debate to be a much more effective way to learn.

Summarised by OISE Oxford's in-house French linguist, Joanna Shaw

Click here to read the full article in French.