Over the summer, a number of trips have left the Knox Johnston turning circle to send a number of our pupils on adventures around the world. In Sweden, our Gold DofE hopefuls enjoyed a canoeing expedition through the rivers of Mora. Thespians in Sixth performed ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at the iconic Edinburgh Fringe. From an Art and Photography trip to Copenhagen, where pupils visited a number of contemporary galleries and distinctive architectural sites, to a Junior Music tour to Paris (complete with an obligatory Disney pitstop), a summer break has far from limited opportunities for enrichment across the schools.

One of these summer trips was the French language trip to Sète, an immersive study opportunity for GCSE and A Level students to get to grips with their French listening and speaking. Below, Year 11 Edward F writes on his trip experience.

Y10,11 and 12 French trip to Sète, Occitanie, France

As someone who loves food, you would expect me to say that the most valuable thing that I learnt was how to make biscuits. And although the Zézettes de Sète biscuits we made on the trip were fabulous, it was another, more delicate lesson that stayed with me.

French GCSE is a wonderful course that I would highly recommend, but the downfall is that it is so exam specific. With such a beautifully nuanced language as French, there are countless little corners of conversation that no classroom could ever hope to cover.

By day two, we had exhausted our repertoire of topics of discussion. It is at that point where all hope of trying to form perfect sentences goes out the window and you just start speaking. You use what general vocab you have and figure the rest out as you go; simplifying what you would normally say in a string of technical terms, spewing whole sentences to replace a single word you cannot translate, constructing increasingly elaborate explanations for things you would never normally have to explain.

Yet somewhere in the vulnerability of telling the truth about your life, rather than the safe fiction of a speaking exam, there is a certain kind of joy to be found. A joy no textbook can teach. The joy of knowing that you have overcome the challenge of describing why the piano is easier than the clarinet, yet harder at the same time. The joy of knowing that those many hours spent wrestling with French grammar has paid off. The joy of sharing real human connection with someone in their native tongue. That is what this trip has given me: the chance to realise that you do not need perfect French to open a door into someone else’s world.

This trip allowed me to discover that French is the means rather than the goal. A goal I had for life was simply to become fluent in French. Coming back however, I have realised that there is so much more to language than just fluency. I found that French is simply a means to opening doors into the lives of people so different from myself. I thought I was learning French so that I could speak French to people. I now realise I am learning French so that I could be shown a world that I could never have seen alone.

Edward F, Year 11