Saint Laurent, France: French Study and Homestay Immersion

Our 15 year old son attended the Abbey Road St Laurent program last summer and we highly recommend it. He stayed with a French host who was warm and welcoming, and made him feel at home. Every day she provided a home cooked dinner and conversation, which helped him to improve his French. The morning classes were well planned and engaging. Our son especially enjoyed the cultural activities that Carla organized. On top of exploring Nice, they went to Monaco, San Remo and Cannes, discovering many charming places in the area. He had a wonderful time, made fantastic friends, his French improved and made lasting memories. This program offers a great balance between learning French, being immerse in the culture of the country, having a lot of fun, and growing as a person. Again, we highly recommend it!

My son and his group bumped into Boris Johnson during a trip to the museum activity. What are the chances? They even had a conversation with him. Great opportunity to broaden the horizons through education and cultural immersion.

Did the full four weeks at Saint Laurent, and it was a decent program with solid French immersion, although there is a lot of room for improvement. CLASSES: The daily French classes were average, at best. While our teacher was a native French speaker, which was a big plus, he was not very good at designing engaging exercises, and many lessons became repetitive. Towards the end of the program, he essentially ran out of ideas on what to do for class and would ask us what we would want to do. HOMESTAY: The homestay experience was great, stayed with a very kind family in a beautiful home, great French practice, generously provided amazing food. However, I went into the program expecting to be the only student with the family, or have one roommate, and it turned out there were four of us total staying with one family. This was a great way for the four of us to get bonded, but took away some one-on-one time with the French family, which would have been nice. FRENCH CONVERSATIONELECTIVE: You have the choice between two electives, French Conversation and Photography. I did the French Conversation elective and was pretty disappointed. We learned very little French as the activities hardly involved us conversing with native French speakers, and the lessons were not quite organized. One of my friends from the Photography elective appeared to have more conversation with natives than us. Additionally, the teachers for this elective were not great. So, do not have high expectations for this. EXCURSIONS: The excursions were amazing! We went to Monaco, Cannes, San Remo, Antibes, and other very nice towns in southeast France. It was amazing to get to see all these places, which helped enrich our understanding of French culture and history. Also a great way to bond with our campmates. 10/10! WHATSAPP COMMUNCATION: WhatsApp communication is very poor for the Saint Laurent group specifically. The majority of students in Abbey Road's French program do the Nice program, and while both groups do the same daily activities, we have separate WhatsApp group chats. Information about electives, excursions, and other group events are always communicated to the Nice groupchat, but the counselors often overlook sending it to the Saint Laurent group chat. As a result, we missed a lot of important info, such as meet up times, weekly plans, and historical background on places we visited. This should not be an issue the students have to deal with. Overall, while I had a fun time on this program, I would highly recommend you do SYA France instead. They are much better organized and you will have more French progression.