More than a thousand French teachers from around the world gathered this week in Besançon, eastern France, for the 16th World Congress of the International Federation of French Teachers. RFI spoke to a young professor from the University of Madras in India, Srunika Kannan, who is among them.
India now has more than 600,000 French speakers, according to the International Organisation of Francophonie (OIF) and French is the most widely studied foreign language in the country.
For Kannan, her love of the French language began at the Alliance Française of Madras in India, from the moment she had her first lesson at the age of 19.
"French is my love. It changed my life. It gave me my career," she told RFI.
She teaches masters students at the University of Madras who aspire to become French teachers or translators. like her.
"It’s often said in language learning that when you’re multilingual, with each language you speak you gain a new personality. And it’s true for me, in my mother tongue I’m not the same person. I’m more confident in French," she says.
"And sharing this language and the culture that comes with it with my students, that’s my greatest joy."
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Use of AI
Kannan teaches literature, translation and theory and tries to make her classes as interactive as possible.
"We use new technologies to create interactive exercises like crosswords or quizzes, or even an activity where you can match a word with its definition or with a sound."
She also deploys artificial intelligence (AI) in her classes, saying: "It’s kind of like my teaching assistant."
She uses it to create exercises, and also utilises AI-generated content – for example, a podcast that analyses the classic French novel The Red and the Black by Stendhal.
"The question is whether AI can create a teaching guide as well as I can. Will I even have a job in the future?" she wonders, but concludes: "The teacher won’t be replaced by AI, but by a teacher who knows how to use AI. I’m still the one leading the class."
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This report was adapted from the podcast Reportage France produced by Lucie Bouteloup.
