High school- le lycée

I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with Zahra, the ‘mom’ of the family, who is a high school (le lycée) English teacher. The kids who attend her school have chosen the math + science track (not the ‘letters‘ or humanities track), meaning they will go on to major in math or sciences at university.  I am very impressed with the level of sophistication and complexity of the English they must learn to pass the Baccalaureate. This is a European-style test they must pass in order to exit high school and be able to apply to university (yes, a huge test to exit high school, students do sometimes fail and must then redo it, usually later in the summer, or even repeat the last year of school). Sometimes when students come to lycée, they have had little or no English, some have had some training in middle school (le collège) and sometimes a tiny bit the last year of primary school.  The teachers have one textbook that they are required to use to prepare students for this test, and they must “get through” the book by the end of the year.  In her school, the students have English (their ‘foreign language’, which is their 3^rd language, after Arabic and French) three times per week. They have strict methods they must follow, for example, vocabulary can only be taught and tested in context, e.g. they can’t have single word vocab matching tests.  They also must do all teaching and assessment in English, no translating words or sentences. Her classes are quite large, particularly for foreign language, between 30 and 40 students. Ouch. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to visit her school, but don’t yet know if it’s allowed.  It’s all very interesting.