News

14 Oct 2009 - The French get bad results in English
News >>

While students are going back to University, results obtained by the French in the TOEFL exam, sesame to study at an Anglo Saxon university, are not encouraging. In 2008, French people came at 69th position on 109, the same level as the Bulgarians.

Although France is among the world’s top 10 economic powers and wants to play a leading role in Europe and in the world, how is it possible that the French get such poor results?

Already saddled with the reputation of the worst tourists in the world, do the French think that the best way to defend their beautiful language is to ignore the English language and act as in the eighteenth century when Voltaire spoke his native language to the Swedish and Polish court?

Another hypothesis is the archaism of the French educational system. Unlike the Scandinavian countries, where children are taught English from an early age, the French begin to learn Shakespeare’s language too late in their studying course.
The quality of teaching is also pointed out. According to the American author Laurel Zuckerman, the problem comes from the examination to be allowed to teach English in the French national Education System: the “agrégation d’anglais”. It is not necessary to speak good English to pass it. More than half of the tests are entirely in French, and those that are in English consist mostly in a translation from French.
Are the French bad students or do they have bad teachers?
Nevertheless, it is high time to react ... “Let's speak English”! And forgive our english mistakes in this article… !