It’s difficult to say which was my worst subject at school. There was so much competition.
In a previous post, I told you how my artistic skills never developed at all beyond the infant school, and woodwork was another area where I excelled for all the wrong reasons.
Somewhere in our office, is a coffee table that I made for my CSE woodwork project. It’s not the best coffee table you’ve ever seen, but at least you can tell that it’s supposed to be a table. Except it isn’t.
You’re probably too young to remember this, but in the 1970s, room dividers constructed from wood and doubling as shelves, were quite fashionable. Well that’s what I designed and set out to make. But it kept going wrong, and I kept having to throw bits away, cut bits off, and re-plane edges that for some reason, refused to go square. The end result was that my room divider became a coffee table. I didn’t have enough wood left to make anything else, and no money to buy any more.
I seem to remember that the examiner was reasonably happy with the table, but totally bemused when he tried to relate it to the original plans. Even ‘thickies’ usually pass woodwork. I failed.
The sad thing is that I was only doing woodwork at all because of French. Now that was something I really couldn’t get to grips with. Not sure whether I didn’t have an aptitude, or whether I couldn’t see the point (because I didn’t know any French people) but I was just hopeless. I still have the scathing school report from Miss Bentley (written after I’d scored 21% in the end of term exam) recommending that I: “try something else instead next year ~ like woodwork”. Shows what she knew.
Anyway, I was thinking about French and other languages this morning. My daughter is learning French at the moment, and I was surprised how much I remember (despite being so crap at it). I can tell you the words for most foods and household objects. I can tell you my name, how old I am, what time it is, and even that there’s a cabbage on the table.
And it’s all totally useless.
You see, the moment a French person starts talking, they might just as well be speaking Swahili for all the sense I can make of it. I’m sure I’m not the only one. In fact, I know several people with an A level in a language, who can’t hold a conversation in that language.
What’s going on here?
Well it’s all to do with the difference between theory and practice. When you’re learning a language, everything is done slowly and correctly. You get to work at your own pace and in perfect conditions. But when you do it for real, it’s completely different. You don’t control the pace – it’s much faster than you’re used to. And they don’t do it by the book either. They use slang, dialect, and verbal shorthand in their communications. The end result is that it has little in common with what you’ve learned.
And of course, this isn’t confined to languages…
When I started in business, I had a degree in the subject. I thought I spoke the ‘language’. But like an A level student marooned in Toulouse, I quickly found that what I knew was of little use in a world where everything was faster paced and rarely followed the textbook. I had to learn the slang, dialect and shorthand, and to develop an ‘ear’ for what was really happening. The formal training helped a little – but in my experience, a week ‘on the ground’ is worth a year in the classroom.
Whatever, you want to achieve, my advice would be to get exposure at the coal face rather than the book face. There seems to be a growing trend for employees to be pressured into studying for degrees. In the corporate environment this may be a necessary precursor to getting promotion, but I would question the practical value for most people.
If your goals are entrepreneurial rather than employment focussed, forget trying to get a few letters after your name, and get stuck into something ‘real’ instead. That way, you’ll start picking up practical ‘language skills’ straight away. Others may be better qualified and look better on paper, but you’ll be the one getting things done and reaping the rewards.
John Harrison
PUBLISHERS NOTICE
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Streetwise Publications
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