ENGLISH IN 15 HOURS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 365, 28 May 1928, Page 2

ENGLISH IN 15 HOURS

PARIS POLICE LEARN TO HELP TOURISTS In the central part of Paris, lying between tbe boulevards and the Rue de Rivoli, one often sees a pol-ceman wearing an arm-band on which are the words, “Speaks English. That does not mean that Ids grammar or his pronunciation is anything like perfect. It means merely that he knows enough English to direct an English-speaking visitor, or even to help him make a purchase—if there is a shop clerk in that section who does not know as much English as the policeman. It means also that, since most of the hundreds of thousands of Englishspeaking visitors who come to Paris annually will not take the trouble to learn French, the municipality of Paris encourages its policemen to ■ take the trouble to learn English. Hundreds of policemen attend classes in foreign languages, chiefly English, organised by the Prefecture. This is not such an ordeal as one might imagine, since M. Ccnfida, the official professor of languages for the police, guarantees to teach a language in 15 hours. That is, he claims to be able to teach the pupil in that time a vocabulary sufficient for the ordinary needs of a traveller. He will supply in 15 hours that much of almost any language his pupils want to leqrn. The degree of his success may be measured by anyone who wants to hold a conversation with a Paris policeman who “Speaks English.” M. Confida has made notable progress toward what is the professed goal of many private schools nowadays—painless learning. “My great principle,” he said recently, “is to instruct while amusing. It’s a method all to rarely followed. I am ready to take a lot of trouble to save trouble for my pupils. I try to enliven the lessons in a way to capture the attention and the interest of my hearers.”

Impersonating the visitor going about the streets of Paris, the policeman whom he encounters and the shopkeeper whom he visits, M. Confida keeps a rapid conversation going. He conducts a dialogue with one of his pupils in an animated fashion and puts questions to the class such as they may have to answer wnen they gain the honour of wearing the “Speaks English” armband. The lessons certainly are not dull.

“I ask of my pupils only that they attend class 15 hours, that they possess a good sense of hearing and that they keep a notebook to help them remember the words they learn,” said M. Confida. “During that time I endeavour to teach them the vocabulary that is indispensable to a traveller in getting about in a strange land —in the sreet, in hotels, in restaurants and in shops. “I contend that anybody who will take a little trouble can learn a foreign language. In each of the five principal languages—French, English, German, Italian and Spanish—the ordinary vocabulary scarcely exceeds 1,000 words. A peasant uses only 300 or 400 words, a city dweller 500 or 600, plus the technical terms of his trade. Viviani, one of our greatest orators, used no more than 1,500 words in all of his speeches. “Obviously it does not require a superhuman effort to acquire the few words in current usage which form the basis of a practical knowledge of any tongue. But one must not be bashful. One must speak from the first, even when one knows only a few words. I guarantee that, by use of the vocabulary I mention, three days of study will suffice to prepare a person to get along in a foreign country.”

M. Confida evidently pays little attention to questions of grammar that arise the moment one attempts to use a few of one’s thousand words together. But, after all, grammar is something of a luxury; it certainly is not indispensable in making oneself understood in the simplest of encounters. And that is all he guarantees to teach in 15 hours.