Looking for a French Immersion summer program abroad for my 9th grader. Any recommendations? Has anyone had experience with Middlebury Summer Program in Nantes or Oxbridge in Paris?
1 Like
We have no experience with anything in France.
However, a daughter did a French immersion summer program in Canada. In particular she did a five week program at Université de Moncton in New Brunswick. It was a great experience. The first day they test your ability and then in English explain the rules. It is the last extended string of English that you hear for five weeks. After that in the morning you have French lessons which are tailored to your level – they have students from straight beginner to experienced nearly fluent French speaker. Then in the afternoon you have activities that are conducted in French. For example one day you might play le soccer and if you are open then “ici” might get them to pass you “le ballon”. This is of course an example of something where you do not need very much French to get by. They also have trips to various interesting locations. Since New Brunswick is an officially bilingual province, when they had trips to touristy locations such as the Hopewell Rocks there are separate tours in both English and French and they took the French tour in each case. They also went shopping to a food store that was run by people who are fully bilingual but who are “in on the game” and spoke French to the group from the university. After 2 1/2 weeks they retest your ability and adjust which morning class you are in. I do not know whether the sessions for high school students are also for five weeks.
Someone that I talked to a while ago had a daughter take a similar immersion program at Université Sainte-Anne in Nova Scotia. They also liked it quite a bit.
There are also programs in Quebec City and in Montreal.
Each of these have programs for high school students, and separately have programs for university age and older students.
The price was very reasonable. At least for us the drive to get there was not all that far since we live in the Northeast.
1 Like