Since Lausanne belongs in the french-speaking part of Switzerland, it’s a good opportunity to learn some french or improve your knowledge while living here. If you don’t know any french, don’t be stressed. During the everyday life at EPFL or UNIL you won’t really need them if you’re working or following an english-speaking program of studies. For the life in the city you can still survive only with english. However, a few basic words in french wil help you a lot when dealing with banks, post, the authoritis (community) etc.
You can find below the most common choices you have for learning french.
French courses at EPFL
The Centre de Langues EPFL offers quite a few choices for learning french, as well as other languages (German, Italian, English). The choices are:
- Intensive Courses of 2 weeks before the start of each academic semester.
- Courses during the semester. (Beginners until level C2).
- French Courses – Spesific Skills (most of these programs are for level B1 and above).
- Independent learning using the resources of Centre de Langues (Multimedia Centre for Personalised Learning) with or without tutorial.
For the first 3 and for the independent learning with tutorials, you need to register, while in the case of independed learning without tutorial you don’t need to. If you want to follow the courses during the semester, it’s a good idea to apply early since the seats are limited.
All of the above courses are for free for Bachelor, Master, Exchange students of EPFL and for the PhD candidates. For the people working at EPFL there are some fees. For more information about the fees look here.
French Courses at UNIL
UNIL has it’s own Centre de Langues but it doesn’t offer French Courses. On the contrary, it offers courses of German, Swiss-German, Italian, Spanish, English, Mandarin and Russian. For the French there are the following choices at UNIL:
- Courses of french language, literature and culture from the School of French as a Foreign Language during the academic year. (these courses are not for beginners).
- Cours de vacances (Vacation Courses): intensive french courses for all levels during the university holidays (summer and winter). However, these courses are not for free for students.
- Independed learning using the resources of the Centre de Langues (Espace multimédia pour l’apprentissage personnalisé) (no registration needed).
TANDEM
UNIL and EPFL together offer the so called TANDEM courses for the independed learning of foreign languages. The idea of TANDEM is the following: two people with different native languages decide to meet in a regular basis in order to teach each other their language for free. The frequency and duration of the meeting, as well as the way of teaching, depends only on the two persons involved. So, if you find a native French speaker that wishes to learn Greek, it’s a very convenient and free solution!
Courses with Private Tutor
If none of the above choices works for you and you want to find someone to tutor you privately but not have the time to search, you can contact us to get you in touch with people that offer courses.
If on the other side you offer french courses, you can also contact us to forward your contact information in case some of our members ask for a french instructor.