Quality of French among young people | “We have to stop telling them that they are bad”

The Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, arrived on TikTok a few days ago, but for years, in Rivière-du-Loup, a CEGEP professor has bet that it is necessary to go where are young people to make them love French

To increase your chances of Frenching, you need to know your language well. This is what Benoît Dumais suggests, who believes that all you need is a “how are you?” sent by text message to curb a surge of the heart.

“If I were single, I signed up on a dating platform and someone wrote to me like that, sorry, but my interest would stop,” says the teacher in the French, language and literature department. from Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup.

Thus, its most recent campaign, which aims to make young people aware of the importance of writing French well, is entitled “And if we decided to French? “.

“It’s to make people smile and show that, in everyday life, [une bonne connaissance du français] can lead us to have opportunities that we wouldn’t have otherwise”, explains in an interview the one who has been teaching for 20 years.

It is by creating memes to make fun of the most common faults that the teacher decided to attract the attention of the young people he teaches. It started right before the pandemic started, and then kind of… got carried away!

Since then, Mr. Dumais has multiplied the publication of humorous images on Instagram, where they are more than 6000 to follow him.

The teacher hopes that one or other of these 300 images will remain imprinted in the minds of young people. Everyone works, or everyone works? Do we write “bare” of meaning? Will it be “a big winter”?

As for the anglicisms (“I am down “, ” It is nice “), Benoît Dumais wishes “to make it understood that there are equivalents in French which are more beautiful and can bring many nuances”.

Make French “a pride”

The poor quality of French among students has been at the center of all the debates in recent weeks. Spelling, syntax, grammar, conjugation: was it “better before”, as some like to repeat?

“Weak students, there are, there always will be, but I consider that my strong students today are more so than those I had when I started 20 years ago,” replies M . Corn. Some, he says, do academic-caliber writing.

Yes, some students “pass through the cracks of the system and arrive at CEGEP without the skills, but when we prevent students from repeating a year, I’m not sure we’re doing them a favor,” says Benoît Dumais.

Still, when they arrive at college, a certain “skimming” has been done. “These are people who have an interest in studies,” explains Mr. Dumais.

To give young people a taste for French, we must stop telling them “that they are bad”, “that they write badly”, a speech that has been repeated ad nauseam for decades, says the prof.

“The pride” of writing and speaking the language well, that’s where Benoît Dumais thinks we have to act. In interviews, the word often comes up in his mouth.

“It’s my leitmotif,” he admits.

Benoît Dumais wrote to ministers Jean-François Roberge, Danielle McCann and, more recently, Bernard Drainville to try to let them know what he is doing and perhaps help them as well.

“They would benefit from going to see those who are in the bath rather than listening to deputy ministers or consultants who have been doing the same thing for several years,” he believes.

“Advertising campaigns on television will affect my mother,” says the teacher, laughing.

In short, “we must adopt more modern ways” of reaching young people, believes Benoît Dumais, who notes, like many parents, that they are “always on social networks”.

What would he do, if he were Minister of Education, to improve the French of young people?

“I would stop scaring people and I would do promotion campaigns that affect students,” says Mr. Dumais.

Maybe it’s just a matter of showing them that “I’m fine?” well placed can go a long way.