About us

The Leader

An ex-English as a Foreign Language teacher whose French is reasonably fluent but I’m not an expert on French grammar and will not be your teacher. There are members of the group whose French is better than mine so we can share knowledge and look things up when necessary.

My role is to organise meetings, facilitate decision making on how the group should progress and using my language teaching and workshop leader experience, devise activities to practice French.

When and where do we meet?

The Group meets three times a month in Tetbury for 1.5-2 hour sessions:

-First Monday at 3pm at the Priory Inn for a Conversation session on a topic chosen by the group

-Second Friday of the month at 2:30pm at a members house for a French Film Matinee

-and Third Thursday 10am at the Royal Oak for Songs and Games.

What do we do?

We are a friendly, welcoming group. We imagine we’re in France for an hour or two in the company of French speakers who will forgive any mistakes. This allows us to try out our French in a friendly, supportive atmosphere.

The larger part of each session is in French only, with no English spoken. There is feedback and discussion at the end of each session, in English, to talk about how it went and how the group wants to continue.

All levels of French are welcome. You might like, or be asked, to do some preparation before the meetings, for example for the conversation sessions, but the aim is to communicate - even if it’s franglais or using sign language at first - it’s what you would have to do if you were in France.  Eventually, with bit of preparation each time, you’ll increase your communication skills and get more confident, which may be all you need. In the Thursday sessions, we sing a French song, great for building vocabulary and working on pronunciation and fluency, and we play games to make the repetition needed to imbed a language entertaining and less daunting.

What does it cost?

The venues allow us to meet there for the price of a drink. Occasionally you will be asked to contribute towards the costs of new game materials.