Many years ago, I remember we used to have a fantastic french teacher at school who was married to a french woman and spent every holiday over there. Every time he came back, he arrived with armfulls of newspapers, magazines and comic books for us to read. Sometimes the double french lessons just involved us picking up anything we wanted and reading for 2 hours, asking him to explain anything we didn''t get. I usually chose L'Equipe, the daily sports paper, and avidly read all about french football, rugby and cycling, picking up new words, phrases and grammar along the way.
Occasionally I would read an Asterix comic .... I can still remember reading a very amusing one called "Asterix chez les Bretons" (Asterix in Britain), which poked fun gently at the romans, and at us brits.The fact that, nearly 40 years later, I can still remember phrases from it, such as "sauve qui peut!" (every man for himself); "la cervoise tiede" (lukewarm ale); and the fact that asterix's food-mad dog was called "Idefix" (a play on words for idee fixe - meaning one track mind), plays testament to this innovative yet laid back approach to teaching. Because everyone read about what they were interested in and enthusiastic about, everyone just soaked up new vocabulary and grammar at a fantastic rate. As a result the school did brilliantly in french exams. I got a grade A at O level, and was planning to do french at uni. Only the fact that I came to hate french literature, and only read about half the books we were supposed to, (as well as being a bit of a slacker) made me slip to a D at A level and a change of direction.
I still love the french language to this day, and like spending my lunch breaks reading the "International" section of Le Monde online to see the french perspective of the big news stories, as there isn't enough editorial variety in our own papers. If only some of my other teachers had been able to inspire me the same way as my french teacher.