Juniors in France

Andrew Kinselle at Langues Sans Frontieres (LSF) in Montpellier on the south coast relates, "Montpellier and the region offers something for everyone and the fantastic weather and superb beaches enable the students to take advantage of a real south of France holiday."

Annie Trovero at Amalthee Lingua in Saint Raphaël on the French Riviera concurs. "As Saint Raphael borders the Mediterranean Sea, the beach is really appreciated," she says. "Students also really like Aqualand, sailing, adventure tree climbing and they can burn up energy." And in Biarritz on the west coast, close to Spain, Damien Renaux of BLS notes, "Juniors want to be by the sea."

Seaside locations are not the only options, however, for agencies trying to place junior clients on busy and fun-packed programmes. "Our course is popular because it is in a safe environment, but fun," says David Boydell of Les Cèdres school in the suburbs of Paris. He relates that afternoons and evenings are spent playing sports, on excursions and attending games evenings, talks or film nights. "Apart from the lessons, the fact that we all eat together is popular with clients."

At Le Gènie des Langues in Ducey, sporting activities on offer include canoeing, mountain biking, archery, sailing, horse riding and go-karting. "Our clients can choose any activity from our exhaustive list and we organise their free time for them," relates Veronique Maingot at the school. She says that their teaching methods are fun and unusual: "We have drama workshops in French as well as formal French tuition every morning."

As well as keeping juniors occupied, many schools also make efforts to encourage them to mix with local children. Eleri Maitland at French in Normandy in Rouen says, "We always place the youngsters with families with children themselves." And in Loches in the Loire Valley, Philippe Minereau at Elit-Groupe St Denis says that his team of activity coordinators ensure "the children practise their French with the local community".

At LSF, Kinselle says that the children in host families are encouraged to join in with the activities and social programme organised by the school, which includes beach parties, bowling and ice-skating. Ultimately, a good fun programme where efforts are made to ensure students learn and enjoy themselves, in a safe environment, is what ensures success and repeat bookings – and Minereau relates that some clients returned last year for their fourth year in a row.

Trovero at Amalthee Lingua sums up. "Our programmes are interesting because we have managed to link learning and pleasure. Most of the time, students improve their French without making efforts. It is progress made naturally." She says that most clients are from the UK, Ireland, Germany and the USA. Other schools report similar trends but also a wider range of typical nationalities, encompassing Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Mexican, Russian, Dutch, Czech, Japanese and Austrian children, for example.

François Pfeiffer of Accord in Paris relates that just mixing with the other nationalities on the junior programme is enough French practice for his clients. "They need to speak French together to arrange themselves and to understand restaurant staff, guided visits, and so on," he says. Almost all schools offer excursions to places of interest, and for non-beach locations, schools tend to include visits to places guaranteed to appeal to their young clients, such as EuroDisney, Futuroscope and the Astérix theme park.