I stood meekly in front of the massive wooden desk in the pit of the Sorbonne amphitheater, homework paper bleeding red ink onto my trembling fingers. The professor who wanted to see me stood up. “Let’s go outside,” he said. We climbed up past the semi-circle of wooden benches to the exit. In the hall, he lit a cigarette. “How long have you been in France?” he asked. “Twenty years.” His eyebrows rose in polite disbelief. “Well, you are my first real Anglophone student, and I’m afraid you will fail the exam because of a score of zero for French.” That thought had never crossed my mind. I had been communicating in French professionally for 15 years. My husband, kids, neighbors, colleagues and friends were French. Hell, even I was French! How could I be eliminated from a competitive exam that tested my ability to teach English because my French was not prime minister perfect? “The problem is,” the professor explained, “that any errors in French immediately identify you as an Anglophone. Judges are harder with…enfin” He lowered his voice. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but some judges will disqualify native speakers on the spot.” He stubbed out his cigarette, pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and scribbled something on it. “Study this,” he ordered. In clear blue ink I read the name of a French grammar book. “I’ll work hard.” I promised. And with that I vowed to perfect my French in order to gain the right to teach English.

The most prestigious competition to select English teachers, the agrégation d’anglais, remains largely unattainable for native English speakers.

The French government has declared learning English to be a national priority. 97% of French school children study English and 81% of French people surveyed considered English “important.” Despite this, it came as an unpleasant surprise that European experts found that French secondary school students ranked last in every category tested—oral comprehension, linguistic competence, reading comprehension, written production. Potential causes were identified: too few hours of English at school, insufficient encouragement to speak in the classroom, not enough English language content on TV, incompatible stress patterns in French and English, and so on. But one possible explanation received little attention: how English teachers are selected and trained in France.

Not since the Chinese Imperial exams have so many “scholars” invested such effort with such poor odds.

Older than the French and American republics, and longer than the California bar exam, the agrégation is France’s highest competitive exam for recruiting teachers. As an icon of cultural excellence, it has no transatlantic equivalent. Marie Curie aced the agrégration in physical sciences in 1896 before going on to win two Nobel Prizes. The famous existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, failed the agrégation once (too much originality) before sharing the top slots in philosophy with Simon de Beauvoir in 1929. It is easy to understand why, for most French people, the agrégation signifies world-class excellence.

King Louis XV (“Le Bien Aimé”) created the agrégation in 1766 to supply replacements for highly-skilled teachers hitherto provided by the Jesuits, whose order he had just banned. However, with the French Revolution in 1789, the agrégation, like nearly every other institution identified with the ancien régime, was abolished. Napoleon reinstated it, in 1808. It has been a pillar of the French meritocratic ideal ever since. By 1885 a statute defined its ‘modern’ form, which included four to seven hours of written compositions (dissertations) supplemented by orals in the form of lessons. Gradually new subjects were added and adjustments were made. (For example, in 1972 women began taking the same exam as men.) Basically, however, the agrégation has not changed in the past 120 years.

The exam is, without doubt, difficult. To compete, candidates must have French (or since 1993, European) nationality and, at minimum, a masters degree or a diploma from an elite grande école. The Minister of Education appoints the president of the jury, who in turn selects jury members who write the questions and judge the candidates in their respective disciplines. The jury is “sovereign,” which means that its verdict cannot be challenged.

Candidates are willing to endure the torture for the lure of job security, choice assignments, better pay and fewer work hours.

Last year, 43,461 candidates competed in 37 subjects (including art, physics, mathematics, economics, languages and sport) for only 2,890 positions. Most devoted at least one year of intensive study to prepare for the exam, either in a special agrégation program at a university or through correspondence courses. Winners gained a prestigious job for life with upper salary ranges of the Education Nationale, while the 40,571 losers were left with zilch. Not since the Chinese Imperial exams have so many “scholars” invested such effort with such poor odds.

The agrégation d’anglais is not the only competitive exam for recruiting teachers for French public schools. Most secondary school teachers pass the much easier CAPES. However, what the agrégation lacks in numbers, it makes up for in prestige. “It is an elite competition,” one jury member explained, “our last remaining guarantee of excellence. Its purpose is to select outstanding individuals to teach in France’s secondary schools and universities.”

Every year in April, for four grueling days of exams, candidates stream into the “Maison des Examens,” a six-story functional complex in a suburb south of Paris. To get through the ordeal they pack sandwiches, soft drinks, candy bars, apples, napkins, bottled water, and Kleenex. While waiting for the signal to begin, they nervously arrange their pens, pencils and erasers. Pens are crucial, as all exams must be hand-written. French children practice this from an early age, but for an American, writing longhand for seven hours can be the most daunting part of the entire experience. Tension is palpable. On each floor of the exam center, seven surveillants ensure that candidates have enough paper and, most crucially, that nobody cheats, even in the toilets.

The program for the English agrégation last year included Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, Richard II by Shakespeare, The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford, a study of King Henri VIII and the Schism, H. L. Mencken’s essays, stories by Flannery O’Connor and Sophie’s Choice by William Styron. Hordes of academics

Few English speakers can write French for hours by hand without making a mistake, and every error costs points.

mobilize to prepare candidates for the competition, teaching special classes and writing study guides. Subjects generally change every two years, so shelf-life is short—except for some topics, such as slavery and racial discrimination in America, which appear regularly. “It is very rare in France for someone to write a thesis on American colonial times,” explained Franck Lessay, President of the Jury for the English Agrégation. “Our Américanistes [scholars in American studies] prefer to work on American slavery and related topics.” Another jury member regretted that in recent years, antipathy towards Bush and the Iraq war have complicated efforts to expand the agenda.

In 2005, out of 1,626 candidates registered, 999 managed to complete all four days. Of these, 328 were admissible—that is, authorized to continue to the oral exams to compete for the 145 available places. Candidates are willing to endure the torture for the lure of job security, choice assignments, better pay and fewer work hours. “They keep sending me to a school to teach English to immigrant children who can’t speak French yet,” explained one British woman. “I want to teach English to children who can benefit from what I have to offer. With the agrégation, I’ll have more choice.”

For the agrégation in English, the written exam consists of the following:
• Dissertation in French (7 hours): 20 points
• Commentary in English (6 hours): 20 points
• Translations, including a version (English to French) and a thème (French to English) (6 hours): 40 points
• Linguistics (6 hours): 8 points for phonetics, written in English and 12 points for grammar, written in French

For candidates who did not attend high school or university in France, confusion about the dissertation creates a daunting obstacle. What is it? How does one write it? Many, many volumes have been written on this subject. Rule number one: forget

Theoretically, one could pass the written without writing any English whatsoever.

everything you ever learned about the Anglo-Saxon essay. Do not: entertain, take a position, recall personal events, use muscular, dynamic language as spoken in the world today. Do: define, analyze, organize in three parts, stay detached and objective, apply the dialectic. It’s a question of formatting. Theodore Zeldin once wrote that what makes a person French is not that he speaks the language, but how he speaks the language. The dissertation is all about how.

Few English speakers can write French for hours by hand without making a mistake, and every error costs points. Each missing accent, incorrect gender, erroneous verb form and mismatched adjective inexorably lowers one’s score. “I can’t believe I got less than three points on my dissertation on Henry VIII!” one disappointed English-speaker exclaimed, “I used to teach this topic!” Another admitted to receiving 1.5 out of 20. “”I’m so humiliated,” she said, “I’ve been writing French for years.”

At the other end of the spectrum from native English speakers (last year, in a room of several hundred, I spotted only one American and two British candidates) are the Normaliens—the Olympic athletes in the sport of the dissertation. Normaliens, that is, students from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (founded 1796) tend to sail through the agrégation as if it were their destiny.

On the last day of the written exams, candidates tend to be physically, intellectually and emotionally exhausted. Eyes water. Hands swell. Back pains are frequent. It is in this deteriorated condition that the candidates must tackle linguistics. Linguistics is a recent and, for some, puzzling addition to the exam. It contains two parts, a discussion (in French) of certain points of grammar, and transcriptions into phonetic code, which look like this:

“‘t∫α:lz wәz ‘weәrIη 'bIskI/әt 'kΛlәd ’lInI/әn’ slæks”
(Charles was wearing biscuit-coloured linen slacks)

Candidates are asked to choose between British or American English. “I chose British,” an American candidate who received a good grade explained, “American is too dangerous since regional variations are considered incorrect on the exam. British is much safer. And the accent’s not so hard to learn.”

The written exam is worth 100 points. If you accept that phonetics is not English but its own language, that leaves you with: French: 52 points; English 40 points; and phonetics: 8 points.

Last year, 35.5 points sufficed to pass the written portion of the exam. Theoretically, then, one could pass the written without writing any English whatsoever. (Actually this is not true: you would have to score at least 1 point out of 20 in English to avoid disqualification.)

For those who pass the written portion, the next hurdle is the orals, which take place in July. All candidates continue to attend classes in the interim since results for the written tests are not published until June. Last year, candidates from all over France, as well as jury members, organizers and spectators converged for several weeks on a requisitioned school in the center of Paris for the English orals which include four exams: a lesson in French which resembles an oral dissertation, an English textual analysis (explication), two oral translations, and a demanding intellectual exercise in English unknown outside of France called the hors programme. Candidates—neatly dressed French women in their twenties for the most part—wait quietly in the courtyard to be called before a panel of three jurors. The atmosphere is calm, serious, and professional.

However, there is an element of strangeness, too. Since only about 10% of the 68 jury members are native English speakers, a situation can arise in which a candidate speaks better English than a juror. The president of the jury assured me that a juror who mispronounces English is not incapable of judging. “Candidates are evaluated not just on the basis of phonetics but also of vocabulary, grammar, and fluency.” He pointed out that the agrégation d’anglais was designed to require excellence in both English and French. “When you teach a foreign language you are also teaching French. It would be unfair to give the advantage to Anglophones.”

The risk, for the moment, does not appear imminent as not one of the native English speakers that I met during the agrégation last year passed the exam.

Laurel Zuckerman's book on the agrégation, Sorbonne Confidential, has been published in February 2007 by Fayard (20 euros).