General French

When I contacted Language International, I spent significant time explaining what I wanted: help improving my pronunciation.

Because I wanted custom classes, I asked whether it would be possible to get in touch with my assigned teacher ahead of time, just to provide some context and make sure we were on the same page.

I was told that was not possible. Fine. (Note that I'd have gladly paid extra for that opportunity, since then it meant I'd be able to discuss both the schedule and curriculum so we could be on the same page.)

Then after making the payment for a 5-class package, I was told to go to the school in order to schedule my classes. (Why not schedule them via email for convenience? My contact at Language International, Kristele, admitted that it was unusual, but I went with it.)

So I went there, and the coordinator said I'd have my first two classes scheduled together. I explained that I'd prefer 5 separate 45-min classes, as it can be tiring to remain attentive for 90 min in a row, but no deal. So we scheduled my first two classes and I was told to go to the Administration when I arrived to learn which room to go to.

When I arrived (for a 14:00 class) no one was in the Administration, so I had to wait. Then I got to the room and the teacher was not there. And after he arrived, I had to explain everything to him, and he then spent several minutes looking for material to use in the class. (It wasn't even necessary because I had come with a list of words and sentences to practice pronunciation with.) In the end, the 90 min slot worked best because otherwise I would have had only about 30 minutes of actual classes due to all the delays.

After the first (double) class, I was told to go again to the school to schedule the next classes. I wrote to Language International to complain about having to go in person to schedule, and Kristele was very responsive and got the additional 3 classes scheduled (one per day, as originally discussed).

But then on the second class, it was a different teacher to whom I had to explain everything again, and again wait for several minutes while he attempted to find materials. (I didn't need him to find class materials because I had brought more phrases to practice pronunciation with.) At the end, the teacher said that the next day he'd have material for a pronunciation practice.

On the third class, the teacher had to leave to print out the exercises, so again I had to wait before we could get started. The exercises the teacher proposed turned out to be about vocabulary and writing (e.g., "write the syllables missing"). Not at all what I had explicitly asked to focus on when I first engaged with Language International, so I asked to stop and we went back to doing the practice based on the list of phrases I had brought to improve upon.

I ended up not going to my last class because it just wasn't a good use of my time. I don't blame the teachers, but rather the lack of organization and the fact that custom classes couldn't be discussed in advance with the teacher or a local coordinator so everybody was on the same page.

It was a missed opportunity because if this experience had been successful, I'd be now purchasing additional packages as I'm now living in Nice and interested in continuing to study.