French conversation group brings opportunity, sparks memory
By Julia Boyle
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
At a time when more Americans than ever are choosing to learn another language, linguistics experts also say the number of older adults who want to learn or maintain a second tongue is increasing as well.
Paulette Lindholm, who came to the United States from France as a teenager, noticed this trend when she moved to Seabrook almost two years ago.
Social drive
“We have made many good friends, and a lot of people would stop and try to speak French with me. That’s what gave me the idea for the French Conversation Society,” she says. “So I started the group in October, and we meet every other week.”
Lindholm says she was also inspired by an Italian conversation group she attended at Brookdale College. Groups like these are popping up across the nation, even online at sites like Meetup.com because, as Lindholm says, “Il faut parler,”—it is necessary to speak; otherwise it is easier to forget.
Opportunity to speak
Lindholm says the French Conversation Society gives people who learned the language in adolescence l’occasion—the opportunity—to refresh their skill, become more fluent, and feel more comfortable with speaking.
“Just like playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language is a skill,” says Richard Shryock, professor and chair of Virginia Tech’s Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.
The problem is that people often lose the opportunity to use their skill.
“I spoke French when I was little, but since I graduated from school and left my house I haven’t spoken it. This is an opportunity to refresh it,” says Prudence Lord, one of the group’s members.
Most of the people in the group, almost all of whom had learned the language in childhood, shared the same story. “French was my first language, but I’ve forgotten because I never had the opportunity to speak it,” says Jacqueline Mitnick.