French conversation meetup: November

The French conversation meetup runs on the third Saturday of every month: two hours of speaking French in a room full of people at slightly different levels, with coffee in the middle. It is free, it is unstructured enough that you can drop in, and it has run without missing a month since it started.

Who comes

Cohort learners keeping their speaking warm between intakes, former students who retained the grammar and lost the habit, complete beginners brave enough to start with the ten phrases they have, and Kenyans preparing for a posting in Paris or Dakar. Everybody speaks French; nobody is marked.

How the afternoon runs

• 15:00 · Table assignments. You draw a table number and a topic card: ordering at a market, a complaint letter, a job interview, directions lost in Lyon. Levels are grouped so nobody is stranded.
• 15:10 · First round. Twenty minutes on the card, in French only, then rotation to the next table and the next card. Three rotations before the break.
• 16:00 · Coffee and eavesdropping. Fifteen minutes of whatever language the room drifts into, most tables drift back anyway.
• 16:15 · The debate. One proposition for the whole room, this month's card reads: les grandes villes sont meilleures pour apprendre une langue (big cities are better for learning a language). Two teams, a moderator, and vocabulary support on the whiteboard for the structures people reach for and miss.
• 16:50 · Corrections circle. The three most common errors of the afternoon, collected anonymously, corrected together.
• 17:00 · Close. Sign-up sheet for the December date on the table.

Practicalities

Saturday 21 November, 15:00 to 17:00, Kendahouse, 4th Floor, Nairobi. Free entry, coffee included, no materials needed. The room is on the fourth floor; lift access is from the lobby.

Tables hold eight, so we plan numbers a day ahead. Send admissions a note through the contact page with the number of places and your rough level, and yours will be set aside.