Tasha Dhanraj wishes she could take French leave

This has been one of the most stressful weeks of my life. About a month ago I did my French oral exam. Two weeks ago, my teacher realised almost everyone’s had been deleted from her computer. This Tuesday, she told us. I had to relearn and redo the whole thing by Friday. Well, I had a choice between doing it on Friday or coming in during the Easter break to do it and that was certainly not happening. No matter what time I chose to do it during the holiday, I would certainly be missing at least one episode of Friends or Come Dine With Me.

My IB French Oral caused me so much grief the first time round. The exam consists of a 3-4 minute presentation on an issue regarding francophone culture, followed by questions about the topic, followed by random general discussion. Every part of this was horrific.

We all spent two months in class researching and trying to choose a topic for the presentation part. My problems started here. I neither know nor care about anything to do with France. My interest in French things is limited to ‘Candy Up’ and strange shaped crisps from The Champion and the musical Les Miserables. I kept suggesting things that I liked, but could faintly link to France – no matter how tenuous. “Err… I could do it about Edgar Allan Poe. His books were translated into French” was about as deep as my suggestions went. Eventually I settled on writing it about foie gras.

“I neither know nor care about anything to do with France”

This then meant I had to actually learn facts about it as opposed to my preferred method of writing presentations which is ‘someone told my sister who told me that foie gras is actually really bad for the goose.’ On top of this, I had to then prepare for any bizarre questions she might ask about foie gras that I had never ever considered as well as read French newspapers to learn how to say ‘the dangers of genetically modified crops are widely contested’. It really is pointless. If I am ever in France and needing to speak to people, it will probably be because my car has broken down and not because I want to know their opinions of genetically superior broccoli.

I’ve done it now to my trademark mediocre standard, so at least it is gone forever. I wish I could just spend the next two weeks just watching E4, but unfortunately now I have all of my other exams to start revising for.