On December 7, Neha Pandya (’27) competed in the final round of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) National Francophone Trivia Contest and became the first student in the Saint Francis French program’s history to win. Competing at the Intermediate/Advanced level, she and 41 other contestants answered single elimination questions that covered historical and cultural aspects of the Francophone world until she was the only one left.
What makes this AATF contest so unique is that it needs more than just an understanding of French culture, but rather requires a general knowledge of both the past and present culture of the francophone world. Because not all the information can come from inside a French classroom, Ms. Safier explained, even a “kid who doesn’t really like French, but travels a lot” can have an equal opportunity to end up in the final round and possibly win. In Pandya’s case, she acknowledged that not all the French knowledge she has came from inside a classroom; instead, it was a combination of participation in class and her involvement in Saint Francis’s Quiz Bowl team that allowed her to succeed. Being in her third year of Quiz Bowl, Pandya explained that the club allowed her to have “general knowledge on…different subjects” to succeed in random trivia and, ultimately, the AATF National Francophone Trivia Contest.
Neha’s journey started in her first period French 5 class taught by the head of the language department, Ms. Rachel Safier. During the class, Ms. Safier had all her students do the first round Francophone trivia, a 25 question Kahoot. Whoever had the high score out of all her students—including the French 5, AP French Language, French 3 and 3H students—would move on to the next round. Neha answered almost all the questions quickly and correctly, moving her onto the national round.
The final happened on Zoom, with each student needing to follow specific protocols to ensure fairness. Pandya explained that each student would “privately share [their] answer [to the moderator] in five seconds… through the chat” and between rounds, students had to “keep [their] hands up” to ensure fairness. The five seconds were intentionally set in place to avoid students having the chance to look up the answer, but with very little time to think, students needed to either know the answer in the moment or be eliminated.
Pandya estimates she answered around twenty questions in the entire 45-minute competition, each round moving quickly with many eliminations at each question. At the end, she explains that it was just her and another girl battling it out for about “four or five questions that we both got right” until the final question that she answered correctly and her opponent didn’t. With her win, Pandya was given prize money and a certificate and her French teacher was given free membership to ATF for a year.
Looking towards the future, Ms. Safier expects to continue to give students the opportunity to participate in this competition and others as a part of the French program expansion. She hopes that Pandya’s win will help “grow the program” by bringing in interest from other students and increasing opportunities for them to learn about other cultural aspects of the francophone world. In addition to the National Trivia Contest, the French program will also offer the national French exam (also known as Le Grand Concours) later this year so students have another opportunity to succeed!
