I'm very familiar with the city and have enrolled in other immersion courses and stayed with host families in the past. For the past two years, I've rented an apartment, so I did not need housing through BLI. I'm an older retiree and have already taken basic courses in grammar. I I came to Québec this year with a goal of simply trying to assimilate in daily conversation the mass of information I'd already received in previous courses, so I enrolled in a course of private instruction. Hence, I cannot comment on BLI's classes, in general, nor can I comment on the faculty as a whole. The building is well-located, well maintained and very comfortable, as was my individual classroom. The administrators are uniformly polite, helpful and very nice.
My tutor was very experienced and very professional. She is an extrovert, eager fo talk about a variety of subjects and I found it easy to hit upon topics of conversation that I found interesting. This facilitated long conversations every day, which I found to be very helpful. I still struggle with comprehension when someone speaks rapidly, but my tutor was very patient and always repeated phrases that I missed or she found another way to explain an idea when I was confused. I felt like she was invested in my learning and that this wasn't simply a job for her. When the school was closed for Thanksgiving, we made a field trip to Wendake. On another occasion we met at a cafe when there was work going on at BLI that caused classes to be postponed.. Even after my course had ended, we continued to exchange emails and she continued to suggest activities and things for me to explore notwithstanding the fact that I have already done and seen most of the things recommend by guide books.
In hindsight, the only thing I would change is to focus on one or two things for improvement, rather than trying to swallow the French language in huge gulps. For example: "express an idea in the present tense: now do it in l'imparfait; now again in futur proche; now again in futur antérieur, etc." For me, it is more important to learn the SOUND of various phrases, as opposed to studying the rules of grammar over and over again.
Although I enjoyed my stay in Quebec, and I liked some of the classes, I was often very frustrated. The students are from all over the world, and thus they have an accent that is often hard to understand. The sentence the student said was never corrected so that the other students could understand what was said. Some teachers did not care when students were late, but I cared as I was professor at a university. It is very disrupting when students come late. The other frustrating issue I had was that the cell phones were used to translate all the time. There was not enough speaking opportunity as one sometimes two students would try to speak most of the time although their French was not very good. But the teacher never stopped them. Frustrating!!!
I probably would come back if some changes were made.
The classes were really good, I practiced my french a lot. I like that the teachers are really prepared and they concern a lot about the students learning. Apart of only french gramatical classes, the teachers teach you french by interactive games as teaching you about the Quebecois culture. The school activities were really good, it makes you get more involved with other students and make new friends without mentioning getting to know Quebec City better and its culture. I really enjoyed my stay. My only observation is that the option of airport pick up is not very organised as they didn't show up in the airport for me when I arrived and for taking me to the airport in my last day the person that was supposed to do never replayed messages or call.
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