This is going to be the opposite of almost everything you hear in our industry, but we are not flexible.
And I think that is a good thing.
Curriculum-wise
If you hire an experienced professional tutor and then tell them what you want them to teach you, I feel slightly sorry for the tutor.
What is the point of hiring someone with years of experience and then telling them how to help you achieve something you have never done before?
At some point, someone in our industry said: I will build every lesson around your needs.
It sounded wonderful, so everybody copied it.
Now almost every tutor promises lessons “tailored to you”, “built around your interests”, “adapted to your goals” and “completely personalised”.
But your fundamental need, if you are learning French, is usually quite simple: to learn French.
Not to become exceptionally good at ordering in restaurants. Not to memorise a monologue for your next trip to Paris. Not to spend every lesson discussing subjects you already enjoy discussing in English.
You need to learn the language.
And that means, for the most part, learning the same French that millions of other people speak.
You will need to learn things you find interesting and things you don't. You will need grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, reading and writing. You will encounter difficult concepts that cannot simply be removed from the curriculum because you don't particularly enjoy them.
There is something reassuring about that.
A language does not belong to us. We don't customise it to our tastes. We learn it so that we can share it with others.
The same applies to the obsession with “authentic French”.
I have never completely understood what this means.
It is often described as “the French they don't teach you in textbooks”, as though textbooks were deliberately hiding the real language from you.
Perhaps there is occasionally a good reason something isn't in your beginner textbook.
You normally learn to walk before signing up for a marathon.
Take slang. It changes between regions, generations and social groups. Use the wrong expression and you can sound outdated, ridiculous or, occasionally, offensive.
There will be plenty of time to discover all of that.
First, learn French.
Not flexible French. Not authentic French. Not French customised around your personality.
Just French.
The language that allows you to speak to as many people as possible and, hopefully, find someone patient enough to listen while you learn.
I think there is something rather beautiful about that.
Planning-wise
This is the other kind of flexibility our industry has normalised.
I'm a busy professional.
I'm a busy mother.
I'm a busy father.
Of course you are busy.
I am a mother of five and I run this school. I understand perfectly well that life doesn't always follow the diary.
But being busy does not mean that the person you have an appointment with is less busy than you are.
And if something happens — even something beyond my control — and I cannot honour an appointment with someone who expected to make a living from that time, I pay for it gracefully.
For me, that does two useful things.
First, if cancelling is financially painful, I will probably organise myself more carefully next time. I will become more consistent, and consistency will ultimately improve my results.
Second, it tells my tutor, my hairdresser, my doctor or the restaurant where I made a reservation that I consider their time as valuable as mine.
The language-learning industry has normalised extraordinary levels of flexibility.
Move your lesson. Cancel your lesson. Reschedule it. Change your tutor. Change the curriculum. Change the frequency. Change everything around your life.
It sounds wonderfully customer-friendly.
I am not convinced it is particularly good for learning.
At Anais and Co, we have rules. We have a curriculum. We have fixed weekly appointments. We have cancellation policies. We expect commitment from our tutors, and we expect commitment from our clients.
Thankfully, today we work with clients who understand and respect this. That has not always been the case.
If you are a tutor reading this, don't be afraid to establish boundaries before you begin. Being professional does not mean making yourself endlessly available.
And if you are learning French, perhaps reconsider whether flexibility is really the benefit you have been told it is.
Sometimes, the best thing you can buy is not flexibility.
It is structure.
