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My next school, which was also located in Sussex, stood in grounds which had witnessed the Battle of Hastings, nine hundred years before in 1066. Here Mr. Duck the French teacher took an entirely different approach.
The only rule was that for the duration of his class the only language that was used was French. If a pupil needed to speak English, he first had to ask in French for permission to speak in English. So knowing how to ask for this permission was the key to understanding everything that followed. During the last 15 minutes of each lesson, the class stood in a row. Mr. Duck would ask the first pupil in the row a question. If he didn’t know the answer or gave an incorrect response the question passed to the next pupil and so on. When eventually someone answered correctly, he was moved up the row, to stand one place higher, than the first pupil to have failed to answer that question.
By the end of each class it was pretty clear how one was performing against ones fellow pupils. If you found yourself near the bottom for more than two lessons in succession, you would be asked to get up early the next day and attend thirty minutes of private tuition before breakfast. No one stayed near the bottom of the class for long, and our spoken French capabilities improved in leaps and bounds. Mr. Duck was one of the few teachers from my school days who still stands out in my mind, for motivating me and greatly improving my skills, in the short spell of eighteen months, that I spent at the place where King Harold lost his eye, his kingdom and his life. page 13 Copyright Frasquenet.com |
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