Learn French in France? Mais bien sûr! An intensive course abroad puts a language into context and achieves impressive results recognition. If you’re forming new friendships in French, and having fun – whether it be sitting outside by the swimming pool on a summer’s evening learning to play French songs on the guitar, paddling your canoe along a sleepy river through beautiful French countryside, or asking for the confiture aux framboises rather than aux fraises at breakfast – you’re going to find it easier to remember the vocabulary and sentence structures that you’re learning. A second language is a huge advantage in an increasingly-competitive job market With the decline on the emphasis on modern languages in so many of the UK’s schools, the value of a second language has never been clearer. Competition for graduate jobs is intense, and a language can give you an edge – regardless of whether or not the job actually requires that particular language. The ability to speak another language shows you’re bright, and can think in a certain way. It proves your interest in and sensitivity to other cultures, and that, in the face of the unstoppable march of globalization, is essential in today’s world. How and where we learn affects our uptake and retention of information The benefits of intensive courses are well-documented. Teenagers take driving tests after a week’s intensive course; our gym-junkie friends book intensive “boot camp” weekends; burnt-out City workers recuperate from horrendous hours with intensive yoga holidays. We’re comfortable in the knowledge that spending time, effort and concentration on one particular task or activity can pay dividends in terms of improvement. An intensive language course in the relevant country is a foolproof way to increase confidence, fluency and enjoyment of a language, as well as to improve grades. So… learn French in France? Absolument! Danièle Cook, BA, PGCE, is Principal of Learn French in France. For further information, please visit www.learnfrenchinfrance.com The situational benefits of a particular course or activity are also clear: we’d like that week’s yoga holiday to be at a beautiful Balinese hide-away where we can really enter into the spirit of relaxing and detoxing, as opposed to the local village hall. A week of great snow and dazzling sunshine skiing in the Alps is far preferable to a week’s course at the local dry ski-slope in the grey UK drizzle. Learning in context is usually more pleasurable, and therefore achieves more solid results. Learning a language intensively in the relevant country produces better results Send a Year 10 student struggling with French GCSE on an intensive course in France for a week, where everyday distractions are removed and she is immersed in French language and culture, and she will have a chance to catch up. An A-Level student juggling revision with sport, friends, and home life will be free to focus properly on the finer points of French grammar. Being taught intensively in a short time-frame builds confidence quickly and firmly, and physically being in France capitalizes on this confidence by contextualizing what is learnt. On good residential language courses abroad, students will continue to interact in French outside formal lesson time, while on outings or engaged in group activities – while they’re enjoying themselves. This means that the relationship of the student with the language is transformed, and so their fluency and enjoyment of the language quickly improves beyond all GCSE, A1, A2 and Bridging Intensive Revision Courses • Tutors are French nationals; Principal has UK teaching qualifications and 20 years’ UK teaching experience • Maximum of 8 students per course at Principal’s own country villa • Low-cost flights direct to Bordeaux • Consistently outstanding results learnfrenchinfrance.com • 0800 612 7082