Like getting blood from a stone

I gave up on the French last night. I read the front of the booklet we were given at the start of term and it said we just had to prepare notes ready to do the synthesis in class. There were 10 of us today. The lecture starts at 9 am which is never a good time for a lecture as everyone's tired. Nonetheless, yet again we had the majority of the class sitting in silence will I and 3 or 4 others made all the input. I can't say my points were particularly good but it got to the point where the teacher had waited so long for someone to say something that I just made any comment about the texts, no matter how poor it was, just in the hope of encouraging some dialogue. I could kind of understand if we were all in the 1st year and a bit shy about talking French BUT WE'VE ALL BEEN ON OUR YEAR ABROAD! We've lived in French speaking countries and spoken the language with natives. Surely it shouldn't be difficult to speak to each other. If she doesn't know it already (she's French), I'm going to teach the teacher the expression "Like getting blood from a stone" so she use it when she describes our class to the other lecturers.