Time magazine recently published an article about the challenge of learning English in France. Students pay high fees to private schools for English lessons after failing to learn the language despite years of studying in public schools.

But what’s really interesting is the reaction of many French readers to any discussion of how to improve English learning.

Articles in Le Monde and CafeBabel about France’s disastrous results in the international TOEFL  provoked a hail of abusive comments.

So passionate was the discussion that a mediator was assigned to analyze the remarks for Le Monde. The result? About half the respondents protested against having to learn English at all. 

The former president of the Association des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes (APLV) published a long and bitter letter denouncing, not France’s poor results in English, but the media for publicizing them.

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