I was only moderate at French in my first year, and in my second year copped for a particularly lousy teacher. Lovely bloke in many respects, but a shite teacher. Suffice to say I scored poorly in the end of year tests (I was normally a prolific exam taker, but this time I flunked it to use an Americanism). This lead to me being put on a course for rejects called 'Destination France', we were affectionately known as the "DF's", a badge of backwardness if ever there was one. The course was essentially about situation language rather than the complexity of verbs etc; how to order a beer in a camp site (strange thing to be teaching 14 years olds, but thinking about the composition of my DF group, probably not). We were hopelessly equipped to take the CSE even as about 50% involved stuff we'd never even seen before. In short we'd be written off. Anyway the same personnel tended to populate the bottom set in every subject, and suddenly I'd been propelled into this group as something of an interloper. The first test we had I top scored by a country mile, achieving something just short of 100%. It was tantamount to 1st year regression therapy. I realise now that I should have confronted the teacher and demanded to be moved out of this group, or get someone to do it for me. I also feel the school should have acted and realised that they'd stuck me in the wrong group and moved to re-allocate me, they didn't. What eventually happened of course is that I reverted to the DF level, as it became necessary to adapt in order to survive. There was no will or incentive to learn amongst the group, and the teacher had no chance either. In short it was an unnecessary ordeal every week for all. Top scoring test after test was not exactly endearing me to my jolly DF comrades, so it became necessary in the name of survival, and to gain acceptance to become one of them. I duly drifted into what you would call a trouble maker, and actually became a quite prolific one, given that I could combine intelligence with the dark art, which was something that was beyond most of the thugs and sloths.
And that I fear, has been my only exposure to foreign language study, other than an ill fated module in Swedish as part of a General Studies course that was a cheap way of adding to your A level count. I was prevented from taking the exam at the 11th hour, when it was discovered that I'd only attened half a dozen classes in two years. I even earned the comment from the teacher "I look forward to meeting Alun one day" on my report, but even this didn't seem to alert anyone to my continual absence. There were 3 of us who never attended, and myself and one other got caught. We came within a whisker of being seriously sanctioned for it, and my partner in crime didn't exactly help when gobbing off at the Headmaster. I'd slaughtered the Head of year when asking some pointed questions about the futility of the course, and generally humiliated her. She ran off to the Head and the whole shooting match started, that came very close to us getting expelled.(this was in the mid 80's - I'm sure no one would bat an eyelid today, and although it was a comprehensive school it was a very reluctant one that still hung on the vestiages of its yesteryear). The third individual who didn't get caught, took the exam and passed it, as if to prove the very point I was making. I was very confident that we would have too, and suspect the school knew it, but couldn't risk us making a mockery of the futility of their timetable and teaching etc
h34r: 
It's potentially quite dangerous if flying to South Africa for instance, where you have to cross so many different land borders!!! 
