publié le 22.08.2010 04h00

Paris trop cher, Nice et Montpellier saturées : Lyon, qui abrite la cinquième plus grosse Alliance française d’Europe de l’Ouest, est de plus en plus prisée par les étrangers qui veulent apprendre le français. Tour d’horizon et témoignages.

« En été, Lyon garde un côté authentique », explique une directrice d'établissement concernant l'attractivité lyonnaise. L'Aderly recense 17 structures publiques et privées de cours de français pour étrangers à Lyon

By Matthew Moore. Published: 8:00PM BST 15 Jun 2010

Chris Bryant, who served as minister for Europe under Gordon Brown, used a speech in the Commons to highlight the waning value of the French tongue, which has traditionally been the first foreign language taught to British schoolchildren.

Mr Bryant, now a shadow Foreign Office minister, said that young people should be pointed towards languages that were more useful for business.

He told MPs: “Unless we have sufficient numbers of people who speak modern foreign languages – and not just the useless modern foreign languages like French …”

Amid Tory protests that this was “insulting” to our near neighbours, Mr Bryant said: “I’ve said this to the French. I think they realise there are problems.”

He defended his remark, insisting that while French had been the “most useful language to use because it was the diplomatic language”, things had changed over the last 30 to 40 years and now “it certainly isn’t”.

He said the most significant languages to speak now, aside from English, were Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
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By Jim Motter. Monday, July 06, 2009

Georgia is blessed to have a number of exceptional institutions of higher education, most notably the University of Georgia and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Residents of Johns Creek are similarly blessed with superb public schools.

My son will enroll in Johns Creek High School in August, the inaugural year for this impressive new facility. Although just a high school freshman, my son is beginning to think about career options and selection of an ideal college to prepare him.

At this point, he’s interested in the University of Georgia Honors Program, which offers a splendid curriculum for the state’s brightest young residents, and in the college of engineering at Georgia Tech, one of the world’s marquee engineering schools.

Since the academy is a few years off, I’ve advised my son to keep both options open. That means not only achieving stellar academic performance but taking the right courses. Recently, my son and I visited the Tech Web site to learn about the International Plan where undergraduates study abroad for a year in a country of their choosing. For my son, that would be Germany.

Understandably, proficiency in German — ideally four years during high school — is a requirement for admission. Consequently, my son’s course curriculum over the next four years must include study of German.
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By STACY VOGEL ( Contact ) Monday, Jan. 26, 2009

MILTON — Michele La Pean-Usher studied French for years before her first visit to France.

But when she had a medical emergency there, she wasn’t sure what to do, she said.

“I knew how to say, ‘I broke my leg,’ but I didn’t know stuff about insurance papers because I’d never had a unit on that in school,” she said.

Anyone who has studied a foreign language knows the frustration of learning how to conjugate verbs or say “The book is blue” without really learning how to use the language.

La Pean-Usher and her fellow French teacher, Alissa Bratz, are trying to ease that frustration for Milton students with a new program based on real-life simulations, technology and cultural immersion.

“The emphasis is the student being able to function in France,” Bratz said. “So if they woke up in France tomorrow, they’d know what to do.”

Before, students’ grades depended on written tests, worksheets and memorized speeches. Now, the teachers put more emphasis on how well students carry on conversations and think on their feet.

The high school has partnered with a middle school in Marseilles, France. La Pean-Usher set up an online chat room where students from both schools can post messages. She hopes students can exchange video postcards this semester, she said.
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By Jake Rupert , The Ottawa CitizenJanuary 20, 2009 12:04 PM

OTTAWA • Elected officials on the city’s corporate affairs committee adopted recommendations in a report aimed at bolstering the municipality’s bilingualism policy Tuesday.

The report found the city is making progress in some areas, like making sure services are provided in both languages where needed, but is lagging in other areas, and it made recommendations designed to more effectively implement the city’s official-languages policy.

The report found one area that is lacking is the number of senior managers who are able to function in both French and English, and suggests future hires be more bilingual and current senior managers get serious about learning both languages.

“We want the policy to be more integrated in the corporate culture,” said Steve Clay, co-chair of the city’s French-language services committee.

The other co-chair, Louis-Gabriel Bordeleau, said the corporate culture on official languages starts at the top of the organization, and things look like they are going in the wrong direction. Under the policy, senior managers are given a time period to reach an appropriate level of efffectiveness in both languages, but the goals are often missed.
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