What’s it like to teach English in France?

A teacher stood by a long wooden desk where her students are sat smiling at her
Okuma zamanı: 3 minutes

Kirsty Murray taught English for a year at a collège (the French equivalent of a secondary school) in Villers-Cotterêts: a town in the north of France known for being the birthplace of Alexandre Dumas. She taught mixed-ability groups of 11- to 16-year-olds, with classes ranging in size from 10 to 35 students. Here, she shares the five lessons she learned from the experience.

What is it like teaching English in France?
Gizlilik ve çerezler

İçeriği izleyerek, ɫèAV'ın bir yıl boyunca pazarlama ve analiz amacıyla izleyici verilerinizi paylaşabileceğini ve bunu çerezlerinizi silerek geri alabileceğinizi onaylamış olursunuz.

1. Go with the flow

“I spent hours preparing materials for some classes only to feel disappointed when the students didn’t enjoy it. You’ll have days that are good and others when you think you’ve failed. Sometimes you’ll spend an hour planning a lesson and at other times just two minutes – but keep trying.

“One of the best lessons I ever taught was on the theme of animals, with my SEN group. I’d thrown together some flash cards at the last minute and the students spent the whole lesson learning names and making animal noises. Afterwards, they said it was the best English lesson they had ever had.”

2. Appreciating English culture is a motivating factor

“I don’t mean afternoon tea and bowler hats (although it helps), but the important thing is to give students an idea of what it’s like to be English. I brought in English food and encouraged students to talk about their favourite English-language music (it was particularly enjoyable to see students singing along to The Beatles’ 'She’s Leaving Home'), sporting heroes and even the royal family. I wanted my students to get excited about learning English and the best way to do that was to give them a real idea of English culture.”

3. Learn from your students

“When I started teaching, I thought I had a good idea of how students would learn the language. How wrong I was. Listen to your students and you will learn how to create lessons that they will benefit from the most.”

4. Tailor to your audience

“I tried to make the lessons as relevant to the age group as possible. One of the most popular lessons I taught was on texting, as mobile phones were relatively new at the time, and students were really excited to learn that ‘C U L8R’ meant ‘see you later’.

“Some of the teachers suggested teaching weighty topics like politics, so I made it more fun by introducing debates so that the students could learn how to express themselves in English.”

5. It is truly a life-changing experience

“Teaching English can be extremely rewarding but it is also hard work. One of the biggest lessons I learned was confidence. If you can stand in front of groups of restless students every day and come through it unscathed, you can do anything! There were days when I wanted to give up, but I met many interesting people and the students taught me so much about France and French culture. I wouldn’t change the experience for the world.”

Read our posts 'What’s it like to teach English in Spain?' and 'Preparing your learners for university study abroad'.

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    Videos are no longer a novelty

    When I started teaching in the early 80s, video was a novelty in the classroom. We only had one video player for the whole school and had to book it a week in advance. There was very little published material available, but thanks to the rarity factor, the students lapped it up.

    There was no problem with getting them motivated, even if the lessons accompanying the videos were not particularly exciting and consisted mainly of comprehension questions. Lucky for me, our school had a very dynamic Director of Studies who gave great teacher training sessions and I was very taken with a presentation he did on active viewing tasks.

    I was, and still am, a big fan of the Communicative Approach and I embraced the more interactive video tasks enthusiastically: freeze frame and predict, watch with the sound down and guess what people are saying, listen with the screen hidden to guess the action, etc.

    When I’m preparing a video lesson, I still try to include at least one of these activities because the information gap provides an ideal motivation for students to watch the video and check their ideas.