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French Language 2025 seminar: spreading and promoting French among young people
Published on 30 October 2025
From October 22 to 24, 2025, the Institut français brought together over 50 members of the cultural network in Paris and Villers-Cotterêts for a new edition of the Langue française seminar. Three days of workshops, professional meetings and visits dedicated to a major challenge: better disseminating and promoting French among younger generations.
An annual event for those involved in promoting the French language
The French language seminar, organized every year since 2012 by the Institut français, is the meeting place for cultural network agents in charge of promoting French in schools, colleges, universities, Alliances Françaises and Institut français abroad. For three days, 50 educational cooperation attachés, cooperation attachés for French, course directors and directors of Instituts français and Alliances Françaises discussed the following theme: disseminating and promoting French among young people.
What communication strategies can attract young people to learning French? How can we encourage student and teacher mobility through European Erasmus+ programs? How can we develop French in vocational education? How can we position French as an attractive language, a language of the future and of opportunities?
The seminar also enabled some 30 of the Institut français's educational and academic partners to take part in professional express meetings, with the aim of connecting participants and giving rise to new projects.
Understanding young people's expectations
The first morning of the seminar provided essential insights thanks to:
- the lecture on young people's cultural horizons, by Sylvie Octobre, a sociologist specializing in youth and research officer at the French Ministry of Culture's Department of Studies, Prospective and Statistics.
- the presentation, by Fédérico Vacas, Director of the IPSOS Opinion Department, of a survey commissioned by the French Institute on the perception of the French language by young Europeans aged 16 to 25.
"For many years now, I've been interested in young people's and children's relationship to culture, digital transformations, social and gender inequalities, but also the effects of the globalization of culture.
What's really close to my heart is trying to lift the veil on the preconceived ideas we generally have about young people's culture. We see them as beings devoid of culture, or at any rate devoid of high culture, and indiscriminately handed over to market forces and technological tools.
For my part, I try to show that things are a little different and that young people are above all the product of an education. To understand them, we therefore also need to look back at what previous generations have done and propose to them.
They also have to invent a new relationship with the world, since the world is changing and we have to take note of it."
Building concrete responses
The seminar then looked at concrete ways to better disseminate and promote French among young people. The plenary sessions and workshops offered time for exchanges on:
- promoting French courses to young audiences;
- exploiting Erasmus+ schemes to boost mobility for students and teachers;
- developing French in vocational high schools;
- the integration of digital formats and resources for the network, such as IFprofs, IFCinéma or Culturethèque as a support for learning French;
- cultural actions around books, cinema or even the debate of ideas to promote French.
Two participants testify
With Sarah Delbois, cooperation attaché for French at the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in Rwanda (Kigali) and Romain Descroix, course director at Institut français de Bulgarie (Sofia).
- What obstacles or challenges do you encounter in attracting young people to learning French?
Romain Descroix: In Bulgaria, there's a high demand for French courses for children. I find that many parents want to supplement their children's school learning.
However, the families who enroll their children at the Institute are often already French-speaking or Francophile, which the IPSOS survey confirmed. What's more, the utilitarian dimension of French, particularly from an employability perspective, is little perceived in Bulgaria.
Sarah Delbois: In Rwanda, I'm in very fertile ground: French is enjoying a renaissance, with very strong growth.
The country is very young, with 40% of the population under the age of 15, and French is perceived as an elite language. Parents are increasingly keen for their children to learn it.
- Which sequence of the seminar did you find particularly more or more interesting?
Sarah Delbois: Although it wasn't the most directly professionally applicable sequence, I really enjoyed the visit to the Cité internationale de la langue française. It fueled my desire to continue transmitting French as a poetic language that conveys values.
Romain Descroix: For my part, I was very interested in the talk given by sociologist Sylvie Octobre. She put into words situations that I experience on a daily basis, and enabled me to take a step back.
More generally, I was able to share observations and precious moments of exchange with colleagues from neighboring countries, such as Serbia. We face similar challenges and were therefore able to exchange on our respective experiences.
- Did the seminar give rise to any ideas that you could implement?
Sarah Delbois: We're a young center, opening in 2021, so everything is still under construction. The idea is to attract young people with activities that appeal to them: "fun French", less academic, less focused on grammar. To achieve this, our approach could incorporate more cultural activities using cinema, books or even debating ideas.
Romain Descroix: Yes, several avenues. In Bulgaria, French still has the image of a difficult, elitist language. So we need to continue the work we've already done on our communication.
The seminar also gave me food for thought on how to strengthen the utilitarian vision of French. The challenge is to succeed in reinforcing, or even restoring, a dynamic and useful image of the French language.
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