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A SUPERFICIAL examination of the sixteen regional French graduate business schools, called Ecoles Supérieures de Commerce et d'Administration des Entreprises (ESCAE) reveals little common ground between them and the American undergraduate college or university. Indeed, the ESCAE seem to resemble our graduate and professional schools more than our standard four-year undergraduate colleges and universities because they are three-year institutions with especially rigorous and highly competitive entrance examinations. Considered as latter-day extensions of les grandes écoles , university-level professional schools established by Napoleon I early in the nineteenth century, French business schools are somewhat parallel to the French university system, but they provide students with a more narrowly focused and practically oriented educational experience. Admission to an ESCAE is very competitive, and possession of the French academic high school degree ( le baccalauréat ) alone is not sufficient for entry. Holders of le baccalauréat must complete at least a year (and very often two years) of preparatory studies and pass a difficult national entrance examination to be considered candidates for admission to an ESCAE. 1 Successful candidates may apply to more than one institution and must undergo a demanding and formal personal interview at each one. In 1987, for example, there were 2,500 applicants for the national entrance examination. The ESCAE in which I taught English from January to June 1988, Sup. de Co. Clermont, evaluated the results of the test according to its own scoring threshold and found only 740 of these young people eligible for admission. Of these 740 students, only 80 were admitted in September 1987 as the class of 1990 (Montpezat 1). In 1988, the number of applicants doubled, according to information we received at a faculty meeting, and the administration was making plans to increase the size of the next class to 120 students.
While those of us engaged in undergraduate education may at first find little to relate to in the above description, a more careful look at the regional French graduate business school will reveal a very different-and far more familiar-picture. Unlike the state-run French universities, the fate of each business school is inextricably linked to its geographical area and to the students it enrolls. The status of Sup. de Co. Clermont provides an excellent example. Approximately one-third of the school's normal operating budget comes from tuition payments (about 12,000 francs a year for each student), another third from the Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Auvergne, which is the legal owner of the school, and the final third from the school's share of the professional education tax ( la taxe d'apprentissage ) levied on all companies in France for graduate business education (Mary 1). The school is therefore thrust into a set of dynamics that is certainly familiar to all private colleges and universities in the United States, as well as to most public institutions, and that may be summarized by the terms publicity, performance , and cooperation. Like Sup. de Co. Clermont, each ESCAE is constantly engaged in a high-profile publicity campaign for two reasons: (1) although there is no dearth of applicants, each school must vie with all the others in the system for the candidates who score the highest on the national entrance examination, and each school raises the bar every year to weed out the less desirable applicants; (2) while French companies must pay the professional education tax, each may designate the institution that will recieve its contribution, so that the ESCAE must court the companies' favor. In addition to generating a great deal of publicity, each institution must demonstrate a high level of performance to attract the best students and to encourage support from nearby businesses. One way to prove itself is by the quality of its graduates (whose lucrative and prestigious entry-level positions are widely touted); another is by the service it renders the business community by providing student expertise for solving company problems, by hosting regular seminars and colloquia on a wide range of business topics, and by ensuring a regular program of continuing education. 2 Finally, cooperation between the graduate business schools and regional companies is sophisticated and reciprocal. Each ESCAE relies on surrounding companies for placement of student interns and for the constant stream of experts invited to lecture on specialized topics or to teach as part-time instructors. Like our own institutions of higher learning, then, the ESCAE must be responsive and responsible to the region on which it is highly dependent as well as to its immediate clientele-its students.
The curriculum of the ESCAE is a function of the dynamics just described, but it reflects internal academic considerations too, such as the need for general as well as specialized commercial formations, the importance of interpersonal relationships, and an over-riding concern with fostering experience and expertise in the international sphere, including attention to concomitant linguistic development. At Sup. de Co. Clermont, the curriculum has four principal components: required courses, electives, internships, and workshops and projects. 3
Certain courses are part of a series of general requirements taught in all three years and considered the core curriculum. Requirements for the core include management, international studies, languages (with primary emphasis given to English and German), marketing, social sciences, and company structure. First-and second-year students also take mandatory courses in computer science, and second- and third-year students must take a course in business policy.
The electives make up the second component of the Sup. de Co. Clermont program. As their name suggests, they provide not only a certain freedom of choice but also a way of introducing personalization and flexibility into the curriculum. In general, elective courses complement, amplify, or diversify offerings in the core curriculum and may include communications and publicity, marketing, exporting, financial management, sociology of the workplace, computer languages, accounting, business law, and an individual project, developed at the student's initiative.
Three obligatory internships form the third component of the curriculum, and they are strategically placed across the three-year program. The domestic internship, which takes place in the summer following the first year of studies, must last at least two months. Students work in a French company and learn their department's operation thoroughly. They may engage in marketing research, publicity, or inhouse compilation of data, and they must write a comprehensive exit report that they discuss during a seminar attended by both school authorities and company personnel. The six- to eight-week language internship must be spent in a foreign country, most commonly in England or in Germany, but increasingly in the United States, thanks to contacts developed by Sup. de Co. Clermont with several American universities. 4 This internship is obviously more challenging than the first because students must work in a foreign language and in a foreign culture. The study internship is an integral part of the third (and final) year of studies. Requiring ten weeks of work in a large French company such as Rhône Poulenc, it is the most demanding because students are called on to use their initiative and imagination more fully than in the first internship. The study internship very often paves the way for an entry-level position with the host company. Students normally complete this internship during the fall of their third year and then return to campus in early January to complete their studies in time to graduate in June. Participants are expected to write a detailed report on their work experience and to defend it before a jury made up of a senior professor and outside professionals.
The fourth and final component of the curriculum consists of a choice of workshops and projects in which third-year students explore a business topic thoroughly or solve a real problem at the request of a local company or organization. Students must organize their time and resources well and confer with the experts who guide and evaluate their work.
Students at Sup. de Co. Clermont may remain generalists or they may choose to group their courses, electives, internships, and projects and workshops into an identifiable major. Seven majors are possible: marketing and business management, international studies, founding and running a company, financial management, personnel management and auditing, computer science for managers, and preparation for the business-studies diploma ( le diplôme des études commerciales supérieures , or DECS). Those who successfully complete a major are awarded a certificate upon graduation from Sup. de Co. Clermont.
Since space does not permit an extensive interactive analysis of the entire curriculum and since we as foreign language teachers are primarily interested in the relation of the school's language instruction to our own efforts to teach business language, I would like to discuss several characteristics of the English program at Sup. de Co. Clermont that I feel have value for us.
1. Instruction in English is cross-cultural and integrative. Considered even quantitatively, English has a central role in the curriculum because it is part of the core curriculum in all but the first semester of the third year (when students leave the campus to do their study internship). English courses at all levels consist of hour-long classes meeting once a week for about fourteen weeks each semester; all students take two such courses each semester (two hours per week). Although first-year students must follow a set curriculum, second- and third-year students may choose two courses from many offerings each semester. Enrollment in English courses ranges from fifteen to twenty students. At all levels, the language department depends heavily on part-time instructors to aid the three fulltime professors. Students do not purchase textbooks for their English courses. Printed materials are prepared and distributed by the instructors.
The language department is well integrated into the academic structure of Sup. de Co. Clermont, and the three full-time English professors, all fluent in French, work closely with colleagues in other departments on designing and implementing workshops, internships, and company case studies. The company case studies are an especially good example of the cross-curricular and integrative English instruction in the school. To understand the relation of business to society at large, students must undertake a five-semester analysis of the business climate, beginning with courses in economics, sociology, and legal theory in the first year and progressing to a series of carefully controlled yet highly individualized projects in the second and third years. Part of the students' final comprehensive examination is an oral exam on their case-study projects at the end of the third year. Second- and third-year students choose topics that interest them, and the professor monitoring the projects divides the class into groups of eight to ten students according to topic. Each group is then divided into subgroups, and specific research tasks are assigned. Interviews with experts in the community and oral and written reports are completed according to a rigid schedule. Student representatives from the various groups take turns meeting with an English professor, who leads a discussion in English on the research being done on each topic. Students write their final reports in French, of course, but they must also provide English abstracts of their work. English professors are members of the juries for both the French-language and the English-language segments of the oral case-study exams.
Because of this carefully designed interface between the language department and the business departments, students come to understand quickly that English-language instruction at Sup. de Co. Clermont is a vital part of the curriculum and that it is neither a veneer nor a meaningless requirement that can be easily avoided.
2. Instruction in English is commercially oriented. Beginning in the first year, students are required to read and analyze English texts from newspapers and magazines on a variety of business-related topics (the Japanese economy, women in the American work force, the stock exchange, etc.). Several articles on the same topic are distributed, and students are directed to read them for the next class. When students meet again the following week, they are divided into small groups and each group analyzes and reports on an assigned article. Discussion and synthesis by all students follow the group reports. Students may not always be totally fluent in giving their reports or completely comfortable with the vocabulary and thought content of their articles, but they gain facility as the year progresses.
Second- and third-year courses are topically oriented and students may choose those that interest them most (subject to space limitations). Second-year offerings include Bid for Power , a thirteen-week video series featuring a soap-opera format and focusing on the development of projects in a mythical Third World country called Tanaku; American civilization; analysis of the International Herald-Tribune ; and English conversation. Examples of third-year courses are video news (analysis and discussion of British and American television programs), English translation of commercial French (in preparation for the British Chamber of Commerce examinations), business case studies, and courses on economics and marketing.
In all English courses, the instructor's role is primarily to guide discussion, to provide new vocabulary and cultural insights, and to aid in the synthesis of ideas. Students are regularly called on to serve as discussion leaders in their courses, and they generally make conscientious efforts to stimulate discussion and lead their peers.
3. Instruction in English is immediately motivating and reinforcing. While it is true that many French children begin learning English at age eleven and while successful candidates for admission to Sup. de Co. Clermont have passed a difficult oral entrance examination in the language, not all first-year students speak fluent English or understand rapid speech and sophisticated but common spoken nuances and idioms. First-year English instruction is thus designed to encourage thinking as well as speaking in English. First-year students are also given the opportunity to analyze audio and video programs in English. In addition to providing classroom work, Sup. de Co. Clermont has exchange programs with cooperating British and German commercial schools that enable first-year students to welcome their foreign counterparts to Clermont in January for a month-long visit and an intensive French-language program. The foreign students then return to Clermont the following January to begin a semester of study at the school. French students have the opportunity to spend the second semester of their second year studying in a cooperating British or German institution and about one-third of them choose to do so.
4. Instruction in English is productive and goal-oriented. Students are highly motivated to progress in English so that they can successfully complete the required foreign internship. Many also want to take the written British Chamber of Commerce exams in the spring of the third year. Moreover, Sup. de Co. Clermont has exchange programs with several American universities that permit especially ambitious students to spend a year and two summers earning an American MBA after their second year in Clermont and then to return to France for their final year of study. 5 Many students also want to work after graduation for companies that do business in English-speaking countries, and, of course, the prospects of Europe 1992 loom large in the plans of still others.
5. Instruction in English is subject to rigid outcomes assessment. In addition to evaluating students' written work in English courses, Sup. de Co. Clermont assesses their mastery of oral English in a variety of ways. Students are required to pass the English orals that are part of the national entrance examination, the English-language phase of the company case studies, and the language internship following the second year. In addition, first-year students must take several small-group oral exams (on designated topics) called tutorials, and each third-year student sits for a formal oral comprehensive exam before a jury of two English-speaking persons as a prerequisite for graduation. The entire program is thus designed to improve skills mastery progressively, and students cannot advance or graduate unless their command of oral and written English improves demonstrably. 6
6. Instruction in English is multidimensional. Sup. de Co. Clermont has bistandard and tristandard videocassette recorders, audiocassette players, a language lab, a recording studio, and a wide selection of British and American audiocassettes that are used on a regular basis. Students must eventually master at least a portion of this body of audiovisual material, or they cannot succeed in their English courses.
In my opinion, the value of the characteristics just described lies not in technique alone but in an outlook or optic, one that is worthy of our analysis. While it is true that Europeans are both psychologically and culturally motivated to learn foreign languages from an early age and while the French graduate business school is in many ways a unique institution fulfilling a specific educational need, we as foreign language educators should not be deterred from seeing worthwhile messages in the ESCAE system and from asking ourselves how our own institutions can adopt-and adapt-its successful approaches to business foreign language education. While there are many obvious strong points in the ESCAE organization and curriculum, I would like to discuss five areas in which the ESCAE model could have a positive influence:
1. Course materials and course organization. Primary sources such as newspaper and magazine articles and audio- and videocassettes could be incorporated into foreign language course offerings early on so that by the time students reach our commercial courses they will be accustomed to using these materials. The key word here ought to be quality, not quantity. It is better to introduce such sources in small doses at first than to fail to introduce them at all. Of course, we face the question of where to obtain suitable primary-source documents and cassettes-very often their acquisition will require determination and skill. The organization of the second- and third-year one-semester courses at Sup. de Co. Clermont is interesting because it offers variety and flexibility within the framework of what are essentially one-credit courses. The creation of such units in our departments might attract students who cannot regularly take three-credit offerings but who would like to explore certain business-language topics in greater depth and perhaps at their own pace.
2. Student initiative and motivation. We should become increasingly interested in techniques that give students the initiative to complete tasks for which they have primary responsibility. For example, multidisciplinary case studies of companies could be created and monitored by the language faculty in cooperation with colleagues in other departments. Analyzing these studies could serve students as a springboard to creative thinking and increased foreign language fluency. Additional efforts to find local and even international internships will certainly encourage sophomores or juniors who are becoming restless in the classroom and who are wondering if they will ever have the opportunity to work in the business field.
3. Interdepartmental cooperation. Interdisciplinary cooperation appears to be an important key to success at Sup. de Go. Clermont. We cannot underestimate this dimension of business-language instruction and should renew our efforts to create imaginative and productive links with colleagues in other departments. It seems to me that the company case studies are an excellent way to begin this cooperation.
4. Assessment of oral mastery. In France, students who cannot master oral English cannot complete a graduate business education. Faced with the stark reality that our business students are not as strong in languages as their French counterparts, we simply need to intensify our efforts to increase the speaking ability of our own students so that they will have an equivalent mastery of the target language. In addition to the regular use of primary-source audiovisuals, we may want to consider linking course grades to improvement in oral proficiency (and therefore to lab work beyond class time) and to consider developing oral examinations of various types in all our courses.
5. Cooperation with area business and industry. We must overcome stereotyping and negativism in our attitudes toward the business community and create more imaginative links. We might begin by asking what we have to offer companies in exchange for their cooperation. Perhaps we could agree to do a certain amount of translation work at a minimum charge in exchange for their taking student interns. Perhaps we could agree to provide low-cost foreign language instruction to company personnel in exchange for equipment grants or for seminars by company experts. We might even give special academic credit to students who serve highly productive internships that provide real benefits to participating companies.
The organization and curriculum of the French graduate business school can certainly stimulate the imagination and offer guidelines for pedagogical development here in the United States. I came away from my teaching experience in France with a renewed sense of purpose and a desire to implement in all my French courses the best of what I had seen at Sup. de Co. Clermont, because the philosophy of education I experienced there was consistent and successful.
The author is Associate Professor of French at Gannon University. This article is based on a paper presented in 1990 at the ninth annual Conference on Languages and Communication for World Business and the Professions at Eastern Michigan University.
1 Depending on the type of baccalauréat held, students may choose to be tested in one of four tracks of the national entrance examination: those who have earned le baccalauréat C (mathematics and physics) take track G; holders of le baccalauréat C may also compete with students having le bac D (natural sciences) in track G 1 . Track E groups holders of le bac B (economics) and le bac A (literature), and track T is open to students with le bac G (technical studies) or le bac H (computer science). Of the 101 openings in the class entering the graduate business school in Clermont in fall 1988, 40 were to be taken from track G, 36 from track G 1 , 22 from track E, and only 3 from track T. Le baccalauréat C is thus the surest route to a French graduate business school because it best prepares candidates for the preparatory studies beyond high school and for the G 1 examination, with its heavy emphasis on math and science. A few candidates are also accepted at Clermont directly from the university system through a process called parallel admission. Candidates must have completed the two-year first cycle of university studies and have received the general-studies degree ( le diplôme d'études universitaires générales , or DEUG) in order to apply for parallel admission (annual brochure, 1988).
2 Continuing education is in fact an important source of income for schools in the ESCAE system. Instruction is arranged by contract with local companies, and the schools actively seek such contracts. At Sup. de Go. Clermont, one professor is in charge of overseeing and expanding the entire continuing-education program. Profits from the programs become part of the institutional operating budget.
3 All information on the Sup. de Co. Clermont curriculum is based on my own experience and recollections as well as on promotional brochures the school published in 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989.
4 American universities having student-exchange agreements with Sup. de Co. Clermont are Rutgers University; Cornell University; the University of Kansas; the University of Oregon, Eugene; Georgia Tech University; and the University of Louisiana, Baton Rouge.
5 In 1989, this special exchange MBA program existed between Sup. de Co. Clermont and Cornell University; Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; the University of Oregon, Eugene; the University of Kansas; and Georgia Tech University. French students receive scholarship aid from the Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Auvergne for study in the United States, and tuition fees are waived by participating American universities, which in return are able to send business students to the Sup. de Co. Clermont.
6 Students are required to maintain a minimum grade of 7 out of 20 in all subjects at the end of each year. Those who fall below this minimum in English after the first year are advised to undertake summer study in England. Students who score below 7 in two academic subjects (including English) must repeat the entire year.
Annual brochures. Ecole Supérieure de Commerce et d'Administration des Entreprises de Clermont, 1986–89.
Mary, Michel. “Totalement partenaires.” Développements du groupe ESC Clermont 2 (Jan. 1987): 1–8.
Montpezat, Robert. “Le plein d'énergies.” Développements du groupe ESC Clermont 5 (Sept. 1987): 1–8.
© 1991 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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