If you are thinking about an English language homestay for your child but you are not sure if they are ready to go all the way to the UK, you might be pleasantly surprised to hear that an equally authentic homestay experience could be much closer to home. Meet the Jones family, a welcoming and experienced host family of four, who are English, but living in the South West of France. We met up with Rebecca, Mark, Milly (13) and Lola (10), to find out more.
Rebecca... tell us, how does an English family end up living in France?
We took the opportunity to move to France 12 years ago for Mark’s work – he works in the technology sector. We were lucky to find a great community, settled our family in easily and decided to stay! Our children have now spent all of their lives here and are therefore 100% bilingual.
When did you start hosting Lingoo guests and why?
I’m a qualified teacher so I started to teach English to local children and adults when we settled here. It was satisfying to see how quickly they made progress in English so we thought it would be fun to also offer language homestays to children whilst supplementing my income at the same time. Lingoo seemed to be the easiest way to do it and it has been working well for us ever since.
Tell us a little about your hosting experience
Over the last four years, we have had about 10 Lingoo guests staying with us, both boys and girls. They are mostly French children (but some Spanish too – our home is only 3 to 4 hours from Spain), all wanting to learn or improve their English in an authentically English environment that’s not too far from home. Our location is both practical and reassuring for the parents, as they can bring the child to us in person and meet us properly before they leave their child; that can be especially important for a first timer or a younger child. Sometimes, both parents bring the child to us and then go and enjoy a holiday themselves somewhere in the area.
… and what can you tell us about your home?
We love our home! We’re in the countryside, in a small and friendly village called Puysserampion. The house is modern with plenty of space and we have a big garden with a small swimming pool and a barbecue for the summer months. And there’s always a lot going on as our girls like spending their free-time dancing, cooking, playing the piano, horse-riding and looking after our animals (a cat, seven chickens and five rabbits!). When we have a Lingoo guest, he or she has a private bedroom and shares a bathroom with Milly and Lola.
What kinds of activities can the guests enjoy during their language homestay?
We plan a lot of activities and will try to find out in advance what our young guest likes to do.
We often go to the two local towns - Marmande and Miramont-de-Guyenne – for the shops, open-air swimming pools, market etc. and we sometimes take our guests to the chocolate factory in Duras (there’s a guided tour in English!). We may make a daytrip to beautiful Bordeaux or Bergerac or some of the nearby historic caves.
Do you notice – and do your guests notice – an improvement in language ability by the end of the stay?
As a family, we only talk in English so everything we do with our guest is a language-learning experience! And yes, there’s definitely a before-and-after effect. Most of the guests we host are motivated and confident - and want to make as much progress in English as possible - so that helps. We notice in particular that the guest starts to use naturally conversational words - ones that wouldn’t be taught in a classroom – it’s amazing how quickly that happens.
How do your own children feel about having language guests at home?
They love the opportunity to make new friends (we have a lot of smiley selfies to prove it!) and as the guests are here during our girls’ school holidays - summer, Easter, mid-trimester holidays etc. - it always adds a certain fun factor to the girls’ time off school. Hosting is great for boosting their confidence and we think it’s good to expose them to people from different places and all walks of life. It would be great if they wanted to go and enjoy some Lingoo homestay adventures of their own – maybe they could become trilingual!
Any difficulties?
I don’t think we’ve had any problems, probably because everything is discussed with the parent before the visit. Our young guests always seem to settle in well and it probably helps that on day one, we do lots of activities (‘Uno’ is good!) to make the guest feel at home and relaxed with our girls. They always end up having a sociable and active week. As far as food is concerned, the guests have always enjoyed our home-cooked dishes (including fish and chips of course) and we always eat together. If they like, they can show us how to cook one of their own local dishes (we once had a Spanish guest who made some wonderful tapas) – it’s the sharing culture after all!
Jones family fact-file
- Puysserampion is in France’s Lot-et-Garonne département (Nouvelle Aquitaine region), 80 minutes’ drive from Bordeaux and 40 minutes from Bergerac.
- Most of the children hosted are aged between 10 and 15 but the Jones family can host younger and older too. Both boys and girls are hosted.
- Guests usually stay for one to two weeks.
For further information on the family, click here or search to see all Lingoo families in the Bordeaux region.
