What even is a ‘lectrice‘??? I am coming to the end of my first week in my new job as ‘lectrice d’anglais‘ at l’Université de Haute-Alsace (the University of Upper Alsace) and I though it was about time to tell you a little bit more about what I’ll actually be doing this year!

First things first, a lecteur or a lectrice is basically just a language teacher. I am a lectrice d’anglais so an English language teacher. Responsibilities can very depending on the individual position. For example, I only teach the English licence students, so the students that study English for their bachelor’s degree. I take the English oral classes and it is up to me to plan my lessons, choose the topics we discuss throughout the year and also decide how to assess my students. Other lecteurs or lectrices d’anglais might be asked to teach translation, English for business or scientific English and here there is a different lectrice d’anglais for the students that want to take English as an elective course while studying different degrees.

I’ve met almost all of my students at this point and there’s a lot! There are three years in a French bachelor’s degree or licence, known as L1, L2 and L3. I have six groups of L1 students and four each of L2 and L3 which is about 170 students in total. I see each class once a week for an hour. I really want to focus on getting them talking as much as possible. They already have a pretty high level, even the L1s, so it will be about encouraging them to explore different English sources, different accents and different ways of expressing themselves. I’ve decided that the assessments for this semester will be split between participation, a presentation and some in class activities, pretty much the same across all three year groups. My timetable is looking pretty good so far. Monday and Tuesday are my busiest days but I don’t have any classes on Wednesday and then only half days on Thursday and Friday.

I am working at the Université de Haute-Alsace or the University of Upper-Alsace. There are campuses in Mulhouse and also the nearby town of Colmar. In Mulhouse there are two campuses, the Illberg campus where I work and also La Fonderie. They have strong links with universities in Strasbourg, Basel and Freiburg with some students travelling into Switzerland and Germany for courses. There are about 10,000 students over the two locations and multiple campuses. I am part of the FLSH department, the Faculté des Langues, Lettres et Sciences Humaines. Within the English section, there is the English licence, two types of masters, one for teaching English and one for research, and the doctorate programme.

I’m looking forward to getting to know my classes more as well as the other teachers in the department. I already have lots of ideas for things to talk about in class. We did some introductory activities this week and next week are going to talk about the Olympics. I also asked all my classes this week about their favourite English language films, TV shows, music and books so that I can try and fit some of them in later in the year!