Are you someone who loves learning French? Do you love all things Français and dream about living and working in France one day? You’re right where you’re supposed to be, then!
Bonjour! I am Shambhavi and I’m here to tell you how I got to spend 7 beautiful months teaching and travelling in France while also polishing my French language skills. I graduated in 2016 with a bachelors degree in French Literature from Ruia College after which I was hired as an FLE instructor at the Alliance Française de Bombay. Even though I taught the language, I had never truly experienced the language in its element. That's I why I decided to apply to be an English Language Assistant as a part of a language teaching programme offered by the Embassy of France in collaboration with the Institut Français. Every year, this programme accepts applications from French language students all around the world and the ones who are chosen, get to go to France and teach English in French public schools.
I was elated when I learned that I had been selected to work as an assistante d’anglais in Bordeaux! Here was my chance that I had been dreaming of every since I heard of it!
Here’s how it helped me -
• I improved my French tremendously being surrounded by francophones and native french speakers at all times be it my students at school, my colleagues, my fellow assistants, the boulangère at the local bakery, my neighbours and anybody else that I bumped into!
• I got to eat all the croissants, chocolatines, canelés, raclettes that I had only seen pictures of in my french textbooks.
• So much of wine! Of the best quality without breaking the bank!
• After every 6 weeks of school, there’s 2 weeks of paid vacation that allowed me to backpack all over Europe! I visited Nice, Marseille, Monaco, Sevilla, Berlin, Amsterdam and loved every bit of it!
• I only worked 12 hours a week which gave me a lot of free time to go to museums. France has some amazing ones that are all free for us as langauge assistants since we’re technically hired by the French Ministry of Education (just make sure you’re carrying your language assistant ID!)
• Lastly, it gave me the opportunity to gain some international work experience which helped me get into a great masters programme! It’s always a plus, especially if you plan to study abroad.
If you were contemplating your decision before you got here, I hope reading about my experience has got you leaning more towards going. I promise you that you would come back a stronger, more cultured and well travelled version of yourself.
Here’s what you need to apply for this programme -
• At least a B1 level DELF certification
• 7.5+ IELTS band score
• Be a student either in an Alliance Française or in the 3rd year at any university
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