French as a foreign language: virtual training for international students!

Despite the health crisis, the EPF has not given up on international students and has adapted in order to provide quality distance learning in FLE (French as a Foreign Language).

Every year, in partnership with the ESTP (for FLE), the EPF offers French language training for international students who want to enroll in an engineering school.

In 2019, the EPF welcomed 164 students to the ESTP Paris campus and offered 25 hours per week of French lessons to 12 groups of different levels.

Due to the Covid-19 situation, the participants followed the school’s online courses this year.

It was the EPF’s wish to maintain this course which is very popular with students. The school endeavored to set up the digital tools necessary for the production of an online version. The courses were provided entirely on the EPF Moodle and Teams platforms in order to promote exchanges with students and remote access to documents.

Students from all over the world!

The French as a Foreign Language course was attended by 78 students of 12 different nationalities (Germany, Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Uzbekistan, Russia, Singapore, Venezuela) from July 21st to August 28th.

All the students who enrolled in the course came from one of the participating engineering schools: ENSTA Paris, ENSTA, ENPC, IOGS, Chimie ParisTech, Agro ParisTech or EPF.

The digital version was highly popular amongst participants, who still had the opportunity to interact with teachers and explain their specific needs.

“I found the Mathematical and Scientific Language courses very interesting, they are very important subjects in the engineering field. "

“The teachers were patient and were able to answer all of our questions quickly. Thanks to them. "

“Excellent teachers, wide variety of activities, appropriate amount of homework. "

“Encouragement to participate in the course; dynamic course; small group discussions on difficult topics. "

“Enthusiastic teachers; efficient student support team; rich content. "

All in all, students attended 360 hours of classes, 15 hours per week for over a month.

The training included French as a Foreign Language courses, scientific language courses, methodology courses, mathematical language courses as well as practical workshops and tutorials.

In order to satisfy everyone and provide quality services, the students were assigned to 5 groups of different levels from A0 to B2.

To supervise the entire training, the EPF called on five FLE teachers, one second-year intern from the FLE Master as well as three administrators including one manager.

Despite the circumstances, the EPF is very happy to have maintained quality online training for international students.