[etni] Why France is Pushing Its Students to Master English

Why France is Pushing Its Students to Master English
Time.com - Oct. 31, 2009

The faces look a little nervous and the words are spoken a bit timidly —all 
rather normal for a group of French students learning to speak English. But 
the hesitant responses aren't coming in a classroom where foreign language 
instruction is another obligatory grind in a long day of courses. Instead, 
these 18-to-25-year-olds are paying up to $6,000 annually to master a 
language they all took for six years in high school before earning their 
Baccalaureate degrees and entering the job market.

"A lot of things in France have changed under globalization in order to keep 
us competitive, but teaching people English here has remained old-fashioned 
and inefficient," says Julien Petitpas, one of the 10 young adults who 
gather for 12 hours a week to improve their English at the Berlitz language 
school near the Paris Opera. "In school it's all structure, grammar and 
getting it right on paper and in your head before you ever speak — and even 
then, you don't do much of that. It just doesn't work."

(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932422,00.html  )


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