French Language exchanges - anyone know of a company who would organise

[fimac1]

My dd is going into Year 10 in September and has taken French as one of her options - the school do not run any language trips or exchanges, much to our disappointment.

I have thought that maybe we could organise something for her and probably a friend to go over next summer, does anyone know of a company that does this?

Many thanks!

FiMac

[walkthedinosaur]

You could try the association Bringing People Together in Brittany. Email: [email protected].

It's a fairly new organisation and currently arranges for French students to be accommodated in English speaking households in France, but I'm pretty sure that there are lots of French families willing to reciprocate.

The French families normally pay about 450 euros a week for the child to stay with the family and I use this to take everybody out to aquariums, zoos etc, so to be honest by the time you've dragged a family of 5 out to these places 4 times a week it comes in very handy. The French students have total immersion in English no French allowed, so I presume the same would work for English children in France.

If you contact them the lady that organises speaks perfect English and she's lovely. She's coming to see me on Monday as I'm getting a new student coming to stay next week so I could mention it to her if you're interested.

[fimac1]

WalktheDinosaur

Could you mention it? That would be great thanks, you can send me a pm if you like or let me know on this post, I will email them also

Many thanks

FiMac

[walkthedinosaur]

Hi, sorry I don't have the CAT facility so I'll just let you know what she said here.

You are not the first English family to express an interest in sending their child to spend time with a French family, I think she is already arranging for English children to come and spend a couple of weeks with French families before they move to France permanently.

She knows of French families wishing to join the Association she also has English families who speak perfect French already in the association itself.

Drop her an email, her name is Christine and she's really lovely and as I said before her English is perfect.

What I would say from the point of view of a hosting family is definitely go through an Association, there is a legal contract and all the hosting families have been thoroughly checked out; and even if your daughter isn't too confident with her language skills encourage her to try, or even ask questions if she doesn't understand. My last student barely said more than yes or no, always said yes if I asked her if she understood and just didn't really try to chat to the family, even with my DC's who speak great French. She was hard work, I much prefer a student who may not have such great English but at least gives it a go, at least that way you've got something to work on.

Best of luck.