“For the first time I wasn’t just speaking French for a grade. I was using it to do something real.”
- HLE Network
- May 27
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
May 27, 2025
This article has been re-posted from the FOHLC Europe Blog.
At our most recent FOHLC Café, we had a lovely meetup of fourteen professionals in heritage language education, who gathered online from Iceland, Netherlands, France, Spain, the U.S., England, and Ireland. They grabbed a cup of coffee and met up to get inspiration for how to motivate teenager language learners.
One solution? Journalism works!
“When teens see a connection between French language and professional opportunities, their motivation increases significantly.”
- Stéphanie Adelaide
Our first guest speaker was Danielle Capron in Germany. She teaches French heritage language learners in Frankfurt and was having trouble keeping the older students engaged. There were students quitting when they reached secondary education.
Having had experience working at a radio station, Danielle had the idea to start a radio show project with her students. For 6 hours per month they created a program with content, interviews, and music – and once a month the students meet at the radio studio in Germany to record the 30-minute program in French. The attendees of the FOHLC Café were fascinated by this idea!
Why not a podcast? According to Danielle, a podcast is also a possible meaningful project. What is nice about a radio program is that the students must honor their obligations: to show up to the studio on time, to abide by the studio rules, to interact with the staff. It is a real life experience that prepares them for life and future careers.
And the students love it. They choose interesting topics, such as debris in Space, and they do the real journalism necessary to cover the topic. It is something that belongs to them, that they are proud of. They see the real world value in what they do.
“Youngsters don’t want to digest the culture anymore, they want to co-create it.”
- Renata Emilsson Peskova, FOHLC Café co-organizer
Likewise, Stéphanie Adelaide, based in Madrid, brought her French students to France for a trip that they worked hard themselves to fund. In France, they interviewed senators and their work appeared in recognized publications. According to Stéphanie, “The students gained so much from the experience and they felt immense pride. The excitement was contagious throughout our school community.”
The take-home message of the FOHLC Café was: if you have projects that are relevant, connect students to their own future, and have real impact, you will see a greater student retention rate. Stéphanie points out “The Teenagers don’t just learn French, they live it.”
Many thanks to the presenters and attendees of the online café!
