KEDGE Business School

Emarassingly enough I had been studying French for about seven years before I came, and I still felt like if I was mute and deaf (and dumb!) for the first month. It got better after a while but I think that the most annoying thing for me was not to understand jokes and not being able to say anything funny myself. You walk around feeling like a moron for a long time which, naturally, is bad for you overall self esteem. But, on the other hand, as long as there were Germans and Spanish people around that spoke even worse, it was OK. Overall experience is still good, since the learning curve was pretty steep.

I practised my french a lot, because I lived together with a french girl. French students in general try to encourage foreign students to speak french, but switch to english, if they realise that your english is better than your french. I practised my english a lot as well, because several of the other exchange students could not speak french, as it is possible as well to take all your courses at school in english.

although we communicated mostly in english i improved my french. i am able to understand pretty well what someone is talking about and answer in a proper way. french people are proud of their language and it's important for them that you can speak at least a few words in french

Teachers sometimes do't keep in mind that also foreign students follow the class. They talk very fast and sometimes it is hard to follow the class. Classes in English are sometimes given by people with limited knowledge of the language.

I have chosen classes in English and French, I did not have problems with understanding, although I did not improve that much in local language because many international students did not know it so we spoke mostly English.

unfortunately, most exchange students took their classes in English and didn't speak French; however, through my involvement in student associations at the university, I managed to improve both my academic and social French