Shaké Manoukian is manager of Les Petits Bilingues in Grenoble, an English language  learning centre for children. Grenoble Life wanted to find out more about her background, the school, the methodology and their new centre opening in September.

Grenoble Life: What is your involvement at Les Petits Bilingues?

Shaké Manoukian: I’m the manager of Les Petits Bilingues – Grenoble. We are part of a national network. Les Petits Bilingues was founded in 1992 in Lille as a family oriented playgroup, and now is a big network with 30 centres in all of France (even in La Réunion!). We all profit from a strong pedagogical staff, with a deep knowledge of English teaching to children.

Personally I’m Italian and I learnt French and English in my childhood with no effort. I wanted to give the same opportunity to my children and that is the reason why we came to Grenoble four years ago. For the same reason last year I decided to set up les Petits Bilingues in town. I wanted to offer French children the chance to improve their English. I was tired of my French friends saying, “Ah nous les Français nous sommes nulls avec les langues….”. Learning other languages as children is much easier and more efficient.

Les Petits Bilingues is a periscolaire learning centre – we provide English lessons to children aged 3 to 11. We work mainly on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but also late afternoons after school. During the week our lessons are one hour long, on Saturday they are 1h30 and we share a snack with the children.

GL: Les Petits Bilingues is a franchise. Who brought the franchise to this region and why?

SM: In summer 2008, I brought Les Petits Bilingues to Grenoble, and their mascot Lolly, a real Black Cab from London. I was looking for some experience in English for my daughter and I realized that what was on offer in Grenoble was weak and unstructured. I discovered the national network and built it up in our region.

GL: What is the methodology at Les Petits Bilingues?

SM: At LPB we want to have fun. Children and teachers come here to share a fun experience in English. In French there is the word ludique which is a mix of pleasure and education, and that is exactly what we do.

Our approach is by immersion, we never use translation, we talk non-stop, we repeat continuously and we indicate with pictures, actions, and gestures.

We have a yearly program, with a specific theme each week and a defined phonetic subject we practice with children. Our tools are games, songs, rhymes, arts and craft…

We really try to make the children speak spontaneously in English.

GL: What is the typical profile of the parents of children at Les Petits Bilingues?

SM: I would say that 70% of our families are French. They want that their children to become comfortable with foreign languages from the very young age. They are aware of the advantages that represents.

The other 30% are either  “mixed families” with two or more languages spoken at home, or families who have lived abroad, where children already have good English and wish to keep it fluent.

GL: What is the typical profile of a teacher at Les Petits Bilingues?

SM: All my teachers are required to be  native speakers, and this is part of our pedagogical project. Our kids are in direct contact with a person coming from an other culture, they can discover traditions, tricks, and accents. Our teachers spent their childhood in an English environment and therefore are the only ones who can transfer this atmosphere to our students.

They are all child-teaching professionals with at least two years of full time experience.

GL: Why do you think parents want their children to come to Les Petits Bilingues?

 

SM: There are different reasons related to the age of children. For the very young ones, under six, parents with a bilingual project for their children don’t have in Grenoble the choice of a bilingual  école maternelle, they are then very happy to find a place where their children can approach English with a specific program for this age group.

For the children at this age it is very important to identify language with a place, when they come to LPB it is as if they were doing a trip to an “English speaking country”. Our classes are always decorated with posters and pictures related to English Countries and that helps them understand why they learn English.

For the primary school parents, reasons are similar: they want a professional approach and even if most of schools have some English lessons it is never enough, and it is rarely taught by native speakers.

GL: What is the ideal age for children to start learning English as a second language?

SM: It is never too early, before the age of six children are developing their phonetic system. Even babies can tell the difference between mother tongue and a second language;  they can tell the difference and parents shouldn’t be concerned over confusion. Learning a second language very early makes it very easy to learn other languages in the future because the brain is already organized to learn them.

We accept children from three years old for practical reasons, we offer group activities and without parents.  We are evaluating a new project “mums, dads and babies” groups, starting next year to answer the need for under-threes.

GL: Why do you think learning English has become so important in France?

 

SM: It is not just in France: despite the efforts of a few English has become the international language, and it is not only in the business world, it is also necessary for travelling (and French people love to travel around the world!). If you want to check something on internet, watch a movie, listen a song, English has become a fundamental need. As I said before, English can be the first language learnt but children will often add more foreign languages, and if you start as a child it is so much easier!

GL: Have you faced any resistance from parents to the methodology used at Les Petits Bilingues?

SM: I guess that our main problem was to “educate” parents, since often in France people want concrete results. In the process of learning languages everybody needs time, and everybody has their own rhythm. If you think that a toddler needs at least two years to speak fluently in his or her mother tongue, you can’t expect with one hour per week to have a bilingual child after one year. Some children love to repeat everything, others prefer to be really sure about their knowledge and they may surprise you with a full sentence from one day to another.

GL: I understand that you are opening a new centre soon – tell us about that.

 

SM: From September 2009 we will have a second centre in the Grésivaudan area, in Montbonnot, on the Route Nationale. We know that in this area there are a lot of international families planning to relocate to English speaking countries, and we want to offer them a centre closer to their homes.

GL: What recruitment opportunities do you have? What are the advantages of working at Les Petits Bilingues?

SM: We search for native English speaking teachers with a lot of energy and consistent professional experience working with children. We are a group and we work a lot together, sharing ideas and teaching approach. We work in a specific atmosphere where we enjoy our work; we can be very creative but at the same time we are very vigilant of our pedagogy.

GL: What kind of feedback have you had from parents of students at the school?

SM: They are all very happy, we provide also extra activities such as a puppet show with an English company, a LPB Day, a visit to Natural History Museum, and for next year we have many other projects … parents also like to join us in these activities and practice their English too!

GL: Give us some contact info

SM: Starting September we will have two centres in Grenoble : one in town (9 place de Metz) and one in Grésivaudan (508 rue Général de Gaulle in Montbonnot). For further details please contact us at 04 38 92 01 01 or grenoble@lespetitsbilingues.com or visit our websites for 3 to 12 years and 12 to 18 years.

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