Quote Originally Posted by Redrobes View Post
I am not aware of these cliches - are these taught as part of English lessons in France then ?
Glad you asked !

Yes : you know english teacher are in France like in an almost hostile area.
French people in general love foreign people... but as far as the language is concern...

So our school minister gave our braves english teachers a list of dumb descriptives sentences that actually nobody learned in his schools days. But one day, when a french goes in english speaking countries we can assist to THE DUMB SENTENCE EFFECT !
It's when somebody speak a true english to you for the first time and the only sentence you can remember is one of the dumb sentences... Sound really like a mistery to me.

Seriously, the fact is most specialists consider that to speak a foreign language well you have to accept to say non-senses sentences. We, the french are just socialy unable to pass this step. So here we are : the french weakness in foreign languages.