>>It was great when Gary and I did this last year for the entire month of June in France. We took a month-long course with IFAlpes in Annecy ... the classes consisted mostly of college-age kids and there were a lot of Americans, but we had a sprinkling of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Swedish and Turkish students too.
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>>All day while in class, the teachers didn't let us speak anything but French. One of my teachers said that this was because she didn't speak any English (but I know she did <g>). Gary picked up the language much better than I did (but then, he spoke it much better than I did too ... before we even went there). We were not in the same class, because they tested you first and put you in group levels from 1 to 10. I was in group 3 and Gary was in group 9.
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>>Of course, after speaking French all day (or *trying* to in my case), after class in the evenings we reverted back to English between ourselves. Some of the kids were immersed more than we were ... being placed with a French family ... for them there would be even less opportunity to revert back to speaking their native language.
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>>~~Bonnie
>
>I really envy you that experience. Annecy is like Lake Tahoe. That would be a incredible place for that kind of language experience. Do you have a URL for the school ? Sounds like something I'd like to try someday. ( oh, never mind the URL - Google got it on the first try. Looks very cool )_

Hi Charles.

This is what I did to learn English, and it was a great experience. This was many, many years ago, and I stayed in an English home in the southeast London area. It was complete immersion to me, and until today they are like family. If you have the chance, don't think twice.

Cheers.