We did The Little Prince in eleventh-grade *English*. Not that we weren't also doing more complicated English prose, but we certainly were not in a position to read that in French.
*blinks* Well, I'm glad you appended that note about doing more complicated English prose, because... what?? But still.
We were still just doing textbook exercises consisting of individual sentences, Duolingo-style.
Yeah, that's not right. My first high school had surprisingly good French, which meant that the second year when we walked in the teacher started talking to us in French and expecting us to respond in same, which we were all very upset by :) (But it turns out that this kind of on-the-fly practice is a really great way to force language learning!) My second high school had great everything except my history teacher, who was terrible (although there is evidence she used to be less bad and was going through some personal problems that year), and the French teacher wasn't nearly as good as my old one. We didn't read books in my third-year class (which first!French teacher would have made us do) but we did read paragraphs!
Now, what your class reminds me of is my Spanish class (at first high school). I don't think I have mentioned before that I took a year of Spanish, which is because I learned and retain next to zero from that class. My parents really wanted me to take Spanish, as it's such a useful language to know in the US, and as an adult living in SoCal I don't disagree with their assessment -- it would certainly be a practical language to know. (Though French was definitely the right choice in terms of life happiness -- useful in a wide range of literary, historical, and musical contexts! :D )
We spent every class, every day, doing the exercises from the book (which are much more repetitive than Duolingo) -- you know, I have this vague memory that we didn't even do them ourselves; I think the teacher told us the answer and we wrote it down -- and then we would be tested on exactly those exercises. This meant that it was much easier to memorize the exercises that one would be tested on than it was to actually learn the language. So I'd dutifully memorize the exercises, and then promptly forget them, and so I know no Spanish. (Well, I mean, living in SoCal, and having done French and Italian, I know enough to pick out words and such, but I can't understand or read as much as I could after even a semester of, say, Italian.)
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Language classes
*blinks* Well, I'm glad you appended that note about doing more complicated English prose, because... what?? But still.
We were still just doing textbook exercises consisting of individual sentences, Duolingo-style.
Yeah, that's not right. My first high school had surprisingly good French, which meant that the second year when we walked in the teacher started talking to us in French and expecting us to respond in same, which we were all very upset by :) (But it turns out that this kind of on-the-fly practice is a really great way to force language learning!) My second high school had great everything except my history teacher, who was terrible (although there is evidence she used to be less bad and was going through some personal problems that year), and the French teacher wasn't nearly as good as my old one. We didn't read books in my third-year class (which first!French teacher would have made us do) but we did read paragraphs!
Now, what your class reminds me of is my Spanish class (at first high school). I don't think I have mentioned before that I took a year of Spanish, which is because I learned and retain next to zero from that class. My parents really wanted me to take Spanish, as it's such a useful language to know in the US, and as an adult living in SoCal I don't disagree with their assessment -- it would certainly be a practical language to know. (Though French was definitely the right choice in terms of life happiness -- useful in a wide range of literary, historical, and musical contexts! :D )
We spent every class, every day, doing the exercises from the book (which are much more repetitive than Duolingo) -- you know, I have this vague memory that we didn't even do them ourselves; I think the teacher told us the answer and we wrote it down -- and then we would be tested on exactly those exercises. This meant that it was much easier to memorize the exercises that one would be tested on than it was to actually learn the language. So I'd dutifully memorize the exercises, and then promptly forget them, and so I know no Spanish. (Well, I mean, living in SoCal, and having done French and Italian, I know enough to pick out words and such, but I can't understand or read as much as I could after even a semester of, say, Italian.)