‘This is the Best Language School in France’

In July and August a new Summer School will take place in the French city of Tours, organized by the Institut de Touraine and the HSE Center for cooperation with France and French-speaking countries. HSE students, teachers and staff members all have the opportunity to take part. Irina Maltseva, Director of the Center, told us about the new project.

—Irina, why was it necessary to create such a Summer School?

— HSE's cooperation with France goes back over 15 years and involves over two dozen institutional partners, starting with the universities Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris-Nanterre and the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry and continuing with our most recent partners including the universities of Toulouse, Reims, Cannes, Strasbourg, Aix-Marseille 3 and Nice Sophia Antipolis, as well as the business schools of Rouen, Grenoble and Lyon. In addition, we are developing a very effective collaboration in the area of European law with the University of Luxembourg and in management and philosophy with the Laval University in Canada. We are also planning to develop contacts with Swiss universities.

So, we have a huge number of different-level educational programmes in French, and more and more of our students are learning French. For example, this year over 60 students applied for a scholarship from the French Embassy. And there are students who go to French universities without a scholoarship from the French government. Taking into account this demand, and also to stimulate even more demand, we made use of our long-term connections with our French partners and decided to create a joint Summer School for French language learning. And it is aimed not only at undergraduates, but also at postgraduate students, teachers and staff members of the HSE. It also involves programmes of continuous training for French language teachers.

— Who are your direct partners in this project on the French side?

- We visited the Office of the Mayor of Tours, and the Institute receives a certain of amount support from the city administration, but our direct partners are the administration of the Institut de Touraine. We are working with its director, Christophe Tissot and his deputy for international cooperation, Brita Vincent, and they are interested not in one-off events, but in establishing an institutional partnership with the Higher School of Economics. Our university has a good reputation within the French community.

— Why were you interested in the comparatively small city of Tours?

— Studying French in Russia is good and necessary for the basics of the language, but practice and communication with native speakers is essential. The citizens of Tours are considered to have a standard French pronunciation, and, while being in Tours, I had a chance to hear it for myself and even work on my own pronunciation. Apart from that, this is a student city with modern infrastructure but at the same time very picturesque and located only an hour's drive from Paris. The city is located on the Loire, and it is very suitable for excursions to Loire valley castles. And it is very close to the Atlantics, where the famous Mont Saint-Michel, La Rochelle and other landmarks are can be found.

—Are there any formal requirements in terms of French language ability for those who want to participate in this Summer School?

— No, everyone is invited to Tours:from elementary to advanced learners. The differentiated methodology of teaching implies that elementary French students do not need to include English in the educational process. And those who use French language professionally can choose advanced courses which are organized according to interest - legal, economic, business communication etc.

By the way, the Institut de Touraine, just like the HSE, has an agreement with the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry for carrying out official examinations, certifying the level of French language. So our students in Tours can try to get this qualification as well.

— But many students go to France to attend programmes and courses taught in English...

— That's true, French universities are switching to teaching in English. But if a student also knows French, his spectrum of programmes broadens, and he can choose the most interesting of them. And establishing contacts with teachers and solving everyday issues is still easier in French. Generally, I hope that studying in France will break down many students'fear of the spoken French language as well as of writing academic papers in French.

— What environment will the education take place in? What did you manage to see in the Institut de Touraine?

— The Institute is located in an old mansion, but is superbly equipped. There are digital whiteboards in classrooms;there are special media libraries where individual phonetic lessons can be carried out. By the way, my colleague, Sergey Efremov from the HSE French Center, and I visited a class for American students, many of whom have started learning the language from scratch just two years ago, and the progress they have made is amazing. We asked them various questions, including why they chose to learn French and why specifically at the Institut de Touraine. A typical answer looked like this:because modern people should know a minimum of two or three foreign languages, and the Institut de Touraine is the best language school in France.

—Will the Summer School become annual and is your Center planning to create other similar projects?

—The agreement we signed with the Institut de Touraine is long-term and, most probably, we shall discuss the opportunity to organize an additional Winter School in Tours or other specialized programmes depending on the demands of our teachers, staff members and students. And I think it will not be difficult to find a couple of weeks in January for a trip to France.

Oleg Seregin, HSE News Service