Many take great pleasure in regularly reminding me that I am not a real teacher. I happily accept this term, even if it is less and less true. As proof, I recently passed my Certification Test in Written French for Teaching (TECFEE). And on the first try! Yes, there is a bit of bragging here. I didn’t even need Antidote to fulfill the requirements of this exam feared by all future teachers like the prince of darkness (a word studied in the famous TECFEE bible which is only used in the plural) and whose success rate at the first pass, already dismal, has been declining for three years.
Do you know what I did? I’ve studied. An idea that seems to be lost as laziness, ease and immediacy gain popularity. The path that leads to this essential test to become a teacher is not a magical journey, even if its acronym ends with FEE. On the other hand, it can make several people see stars. No offense to its creators, this test does not require that much knowledge. Above all, you need to know what to study.
Any future teacher, who wants to obtain the Holy Grail of teaching commonly known as a certificate, will have to pass this test capable of giving everyone nightmares. This test is divided into two parts. The first includes sixty multiple-choice questions covering syntax, punctuation, vocabulary and grammar. The second consists of writing a 350-word text on a given subject during the handover day.
Any student will easily find on the Internet (and not even on the dark web) a document entitled The TECFEE bible, which lists what must be studied, almost word for word. Several versions of this document are also circulating on social networks, where you can also find the vocabulary words to memorize, the expressions to know by heart as well as the exceptions which appear in this exam. It’s a weird way of working, isn’t it?
A sixty-question multiple-choice exam can hardly set the bar for grammatical skills. In addition, it is possible to find a guide in bookstores combining exercises and theoretical concepts to pass this exam. Inside, the procedure to follow to prepare for writing is detailed step by step. This work plan even specifies the almost exact place where a particular relationship marker should be used and how to begin and end each step.
This brainwashing is the opposite of what we try to do in our primary schools. Lead by example, they say! Obviously, here, this rule is for others!
Learning to write well, to cultivate the subtleties of our language and to master the grammatical code is not done by making a wish to the “tooth fairy”. I know, because I tried it.
Master the language
How can we explain so many failures, when the path to follow is so easily traced? Can we allow ourselves to question certain foundations of primary school teacher training? I see it every day and I repeat it constantly, we need French specialists in primary schools in Quebec, like secondary schools which have teachers who strictly teach French.
The incumbent cannot, or if he can it will be with difficulty, teach French correctly with his workload and the plethora of subjects he has to teach. Some will say that yes, it can, but the state of our language leaves us doubtful (another word under study in the TECFEE bible).
Everything starts from French, however! A student who masters his language well, who does well in reading and writing, will have greater ease in his other subjects. It’s the same thing for the teacher whose French training needs to be improved. How can we teach a subject that we do not master? Should we replace didactic courses with real French courses and thus repair the shortcomings inherited from our small schools?
French takes up a fifth of the training needed to become a primary school teacher. But future teachers are taught how to teach it, not how to master it. Why not level up by making mastering our language a goal that brings us closer to perfection? Because, for the moment, it is our intellectual laziness that dominates and, if we are not careful, it will end up leading our people to their downfall.
You have to “bite the bullet” (an expression being studied in the TECFEE bible) to think that the situation will resolve itself by lowering standards or by making the use of Antidote a panacea. (well, another word to study) to all these evils which leave us without words.