Les Petits Bilingues is a language school serving individual learners across France. Their approach is personalized and adapted to each learner’s needs. Les Petits Bilingues and Gymglish have been partners since 2019.
Adrien Rennesson, Chief Administrative Officer at Les Petits Bilingues, presents his school and shares his thoughts on the importance of digitizing on-site training.
Hello Adrien! Could you tell us about Les Petits Bilingues?
We are the leading English language-learning network in France, with 54 centers across the country. We’ve been around since the 1990s; at the time, our main goal was to teach English to children, the most difficult and demanding audience out there.
From 2010 onwards, we experienced rapid growth following rising demands from our young learners’ parents to learn English themselves. It turns out adults, too, feel the need to improve their English language skills! That’s when we decided to offer our services to a wider audience, namely adults, teenagers and students.
There are many language schools offering English training across France. What makes Les Petits Bilingues stand out?
Our main strength lies in our branding – we have several brands that certify the specialized services provided in our centers, in schools and at home – and in the location of our centers. We are established in a great number of cities across France and we’ve become a presence in local communities. Building strong ties with our community is key, and we are convinced that this leads to a positive and dynamic work environment.
Our teaching method mainly takes its inspiration from Anglo-Saxon culture. We choose to focus on our learners’ strengths rather than their weaknesses. The most important aspect of teaching French people English is self-esteem. They aren’t that as bad in English as they think, even though there is still room for improvement.
We are aware that French people are often embarrassed by their level of English, their accent, and that they are frustrated at the slightest grammatical error they make. From our experience, human interaction is what really matters. Our goal is to make them love English, to help them speak with confidence, to broaden their horizons and to help them communicate efficiently.
To create this quality learning environment, you offer on-site courses?
Indeed, we offer individual training courses and on-site training (except for children and teenagers, who work in small groups). We are also interested in creating teacher-learner duos for vocational training purposes.
In order to build a complete, quality learning ecosystem, digital solutions such as Gymglish are more than welcome. Learners seeking vocational training attend our on-site courses twice a week, meaning that, thanks to Gymglish, they can work on their English on a daily basis. We believe the app is a very useful and a handy reminder to progress in the long run. We particularly like Gymglish’s online courses because they are fun, well-thought-out and personalized. Not everybody has the patience or the determination to sit in front of a screen and complete grammar exercises for hours on end.
The Gymglish method fits in perfectly with our on-site training. Our teachers encourage learners to work on their English every day which, in time, will make a real difference in their learning process. In our view, intensive training and determination are the keys to progress. This type of training helps both the teacher and the learner optimize training hours. That way, they get right to the important stuff.
Do you plan to launch new language training courses at Les Petits Bilingues?
No, we don’t. I must say we are still quite busy with English, and we believe a lot remains to be done when it comes to English training in France. Our courses for children center around innovative activities that we update every year. Students can learn to code in English, and create electronics, among other things. We also work with schools during workshops and children’s day camps.
We are very proud of our pedagogy and our success – we were even selected as the “Best French language school” following a French poll conducted by Statista on a sample group of 2,000 consumers.
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