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Simple French is a free innovative application that aims at teaching french to refugees in order for them to be able to meet their daily needs. No prerequisites are needed to use this application as vocabulary is learned through image sound association. Therefore it is accessible to refugees that are illiterate in their mother tongue. The pedagogy of Simple French is backed up by a strong research process and was developed directly together with FLE/FLI teachers and refugees from Several NGOs.
Simple French is a project founded in 2019 by Camille Duquesne and funded by the NGO AVVEJ.
The idea of Simple French emerged in 2018 when working on the project Studio Traversée. One participant of Studio Traversée, who was a refugee, came from Sri Lanka to France 7 years ago but he still couldn’t understand nor speak simple French (such as presenting himself for example). He was illiterate in both French and his mother tongue.
On the other hand, another participant of Studio Traversée, a refugee from Mali who arrived in France a year ago, was illiterate in French when he arrived in France but was literate in his mother tongue. In one year he had made significant progress in French, he was able to communicate with the facilitators, and the other participants, and he had no difficulty in French in his daily life by himself. After a year, he was no longer illiterate in French.
The gap of progress between the two participants being considerate, the hypothesis that being literate in your mother tongue is a decisive factor for learning a new language was put forward. Thus the idea of developing a media to learn french that is accessible to an illiterate public arose.
The application Simple French was developed during 6 months in 2019, as part of a research internship, funded by the NGO Rencontre 93 (one of the 19 establishments of AVVEJ).