Help please with finding an immersion course or private tutor in Vendee

[Andrew]

 

Hello !!Please can you help me!!  –I have spent months and months of fruitless searches  on the internet and through contacts and local adverts in France  trying to locate  a competitively priced course or tutor for learning the French language  .I am due to relocate to the Aizenay / Palluau  area of the Vendee ( 85670 postal code )  in early 2009  and  I am a beginner / lower intermediate level at French .  I am trying to locate some language learning at an intensive level over several months of say 20 hours + plus hours per week to enable me to get up to speed with the language as quickly as possible . I come from a professional background in the UK having worked for several Blue Chip companies over the last 15 + years .  I have a budget of around  3000 euros to spend - I have located  a few language schools and tutors in the Vendee through adverts on the internet  but their  pricing is high only giving me around 3-4 weeks worth of tuition which is of little use for my requirements --I have had quotes for courses in Brest , Bordeaux and other areas of France that offered much more competitive rates giving me around 4 months worth of tuition for around  3000 euros ---I was hoping to find similar courses /tutors  in the  Aizenay area of the Vendee  , France  that had similar pricing but after 4 months of searching I have all but given up . I would be very grateful if you know of any schools in the area or private tutors /individuals that could meet my requirements if you could  PM or email me. I am due to relocate early March 09 . Thankyou . Andy

Post edited by a moderator to remove personal contact details

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

Andy,

What do you expect the course to be like? Are you looking for 1:1 bespoke teaching or spending most of the time in a group of students.

For serious intensive teaching I'd expect 1:1 with a teacher who spends a fair bit of time preparing for the lessons. That means that your 20 hours contact time each week would come pretty close to full time commitment. With tax and cotisations (NI equivalent) it would be difficult for a freelance to charge less than 20€ per hour and I'd expect a qualified & experienced teacher to charge more. Allowing 30 minutes preparation for each contact hour you're already up to 600€ a week. 3,000€ for about a month sounds eminently sensible.

For comparison, when my other half was teaching in England her clients included a number of blue chip executives and senior local government officers. She would have charged a lot more than 20€ an hour for a serious intensive.

If you hope to find group courses to fit your needs you will almost certainly need to look in sizeable cities because there is not the demand in low population areas.

[YCCMB]

Unfortunately, Andrew, I think your budget might be on the optimistic side. Just doing a "back of an envelope" calculation, you want 20+ hours a week, which would involve a tutor in easily another 10 hours a week of preparation of lessons (possibly more, possibly a bit less, depending on the tutor and their way of working, but let's settle on that as a ball-park figure for the sake of argument).

Firstly, 20 hours a week of language lessons equates to about 4 hous a day, which is, IMO, almost unsustainable for a single individual tutor. Normally a total immersion course would use a number of tutors, maybe two each day, maybe several over the weeks of a course. It's a draining experience for both tutor and student, and usually total immersion courses will last only a week or so, with lessons ongoing on a regular basis thereafter to maintain and further improve the skills being gained.

If you're expecting an individual tutor to work for 4 months for 3000 Euros, and they're operating legally and paying their taxes and cotisations, then you need to bear in mind that you're only paying them 750€ a month gross, and a tutor working with one student for 4 hours a day is unlikely to be able to do that AND take on other students as well, once preparation etc. is factored in.

It may be better to consider a shorter intensive course, say 1-2 weeks max, followed by lessons once or twice a week, and maybe another immersion course at the end. If you can sustain 20 hours a week of language tuition for 4 months, I take my hat off to you, but I'd bet you won't. It's far more likely that a language school or established institution will be able to help you than an individual tutor, because a school will have access to a number of tutors and this will be more beneficial to both the tutor and to you. However, of course, their rates will be higher because they charge you a rate which covers their overheads and pass on only a fraction of that rate to the tutor.

Edit: Sorry, Albert, you posted while I was typing, but we seem to have said very similar things! Like your wife, I teach primarily business clients and also get considerably more than €20 (or even £20) per hour.

[odile]

what a shame you are not a plumber! Bonne chance

[Andrew]

Sorry    Dont understand you ----I want to learn French not plumbing