French Language Schools in France - How to Find the Best, Award Winning French Schools

By Steve Sutherland

With hundreds of French language schools in France, choosing a reliable school can be complicated when you start looking around online.

So many schools are well established, accredited, have glowing student testimonials on their websites or are part of large language school chains but how much does that really tell you about them. What if you really want to guarantee that you are going to one of the best language schools in France?

Did you know that every year there is an award for the best French language school? The winners are voted not by students but by language travel agents around the world. These agents each enroll hundreds or even thousands of students into language school programs every year and they are constantly in touch with the schools and are constantly hearing feedback from students. Language travel agents have to ensure that their students are highly satisfied so that they refer their friends so that their agency gets even more business in the future. So these agents are looking to work with the best language schools.

The Language Travel Magazine 'Star Awards' are held every year in London. Before the event language travel agents vote for their favorite schools in a number of categories, the votes are then tallied and announced at an awards dinner in London every September.

Agents use the results to help them find new schools to represent, but there is no reason why students should not also be interested in the results as enrolling with a 'Star Award' winning French language school would be one of the best ways to ensure that they have found a school with the highest level of service and student satisfaction.

The four nominated French schools for 2008 were French in Normandy, Accord Ecole Des Langues in Paris, Institute Linguistique Adenet and France Langues. The winner was French in Normandy.

Please note that if you are reading this article it is likely that you can speak English reasonably well so you can easily enroll directly with a school (they all have English speaking staff) and you won't need an agent to book for you.

Click here to visit the website of Accord Ecole Des Langues in Paris, the school that I recommend out of the four nominees. Steve Sutherland is an education agent in Taipei, Taiwan who has placed Taiwanese students into language courses around the world.