We planned everything around son's course. Our son was very excited to attend this program. Canceling the course only a few days before it was supposed to start is completely unacceptable. Giving such last-minute notice left us with no alternatives and caused serious inconvenience. Canceling a course that was supposed to start on Monday at the very last moment shows a clear lack of professionalism. In addition, we paid from Turkey and incurred around $100 in bank transfer fees. This extra cost was completely wasted. The fact that this was not considered at all and the course was cancelled at the very last minute has significantly damaged our trust. This process has been very poorly managed, and the situation we experienced is unacceptable. read more

I've downgraded my review to 1 of 5. When asked for any feedback at all on how my child did to see if she should rejoin the next session, the office advised "it's up to the teacher to fill it up." I don't think they understand that parents just want to know their kids are improving. Plus, they are absolutely rude. read more

I was interested in learning some French before taking a trip to Montréal, so enrolled in a five week on line course in their most basic class, Initiation A1.1. It was held via Zoom, and had ordered the required textbooks from Amazon. The schedule was for two hours, twice a week. The students were from all over the world; even the instructor was hosting the class from Acapulco, Mexico. The goal at the end of this session was to be able to both orally and in writing, introduce yourself in French. There were also various class projects based on cultural aspects of the French speaking world. Plenty of homework, but overall, it was a fun experience, especially coming from not knowing any French before. This class actually did come in handy in one instance. When I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel, the driver knew no English. Fortunately, he had a GPS and I knew how to say the address number in French. Now he understood and entered it in his GPS and my hotel came up on his screen and off we went! read more

I'm shocked by the poor quality of teaching and administrative disorganization at Alliance Francaise. This was my first time taking a course here, and I will not be back. Never have I had an instructor who teaches so little, consistently interrupts students, forgets what they've assigned, and is generally incompetent. The administration at Alliance Francaise was also shockingly terrible. Nobody picks up the phone, and they don't inform you that your class was cancelled until last minute. Furthermore, my classmates had a significantly lower French fluency level than me -- I couldn't comprehend how or why they decided to place us in the same course. Alliance Francaise would do best by hiring more qualified teachers, administrative staff, and standardizing their placement test to improve the experience for future students. They should sent a mid-course survey to students, giving them the opportunity to switch classes. Lastly, they should make tuition cheaper because right now, $550 is not even close to being worth the money for a 2 month course. read more

I had a placement test with an old french lady, that almost ruined my afternoon. The teacher she was being unfriendly, did not reply to my greeting and long face all the time. She kept on telling me I was wrong, and how bad I did, try to gave me the rating as low as possible, so that they could sell me more classes. I saw comment below that the teacher asked inappropriate questions. I got that too. She asked me twice why I did not take the french class in high school, the fact was my high school just did not have french class. She could not get over this, which I could not see a point. My purpose for the class is just to have fun, now I feel before I learn french I will get the mental disease. Life is difficult enough, I don't need someone else to discourage me. read more

This school is a shame. I just finished B2.1 online class and I promised myself I will never ever take classes from this school. To start with the placement test : it was canceled once but the teacher called ne and asked me why I was not online. I explained her I got a cancellation email from the office. Second attempt: the teacher was late 10 minutes, I was about to call them, she showed up without any excuse for being late. Talked few minutes B1.1 your level - did not agree. Okay, you need to study on your own the subjunctif and we might think B1.6 .. and I studied ( I actually repeated as I already did this but few years ago). - So : B1.6. Time to register: no B1.6 class, asked if I could try B2.1 ( well, so and so , here and there). Finally, B2.1 ,but be careful! ( this is an advanced class)) Start the class, awful, awful awful - met beginners, people not able to put a sentence together, but advanced. As an example, last class: after a group exercise exchanging some info in between us, one of the advanced student was request to tell us the conversation previously had it with her partner.... silence... silence... silence ... The teacher"vous avez oublie"... silence ... silence " Je n'ai oublie" ( I wrote what was said). The class started 6;00 pm, but why to respect the rules, respect yourself and respect others when you, as a student, are allowed not to do it. I ended up in a group not able to articulate a sentence after I was warned this might to be to high for me. If you want to learn , please do yourself a favor and try to find something else. I did find online classes with a good teacher and we are really happy with one each other; I was looking for something else while I was taking this awful one. read more

Facilities are ok but I felt there's a total lack of caring with students. Paid for a semester Saturday course from a Jan to March last year and could only attend 01 day since I got sick and had a brutal change of work shit at the same time. I am aware that I should have tried to let them know in order to try to cancel or reschedule but since I was then extremely busy, at the end i didn't to do it. But that made me wonder how come NO ONE ever reported that a weekend student was absent for the entire term? Nor teacher nor staff thought about contacting the student (Me) not even a single time, to check what was going on? Specially since the course wall FULLY PAID?Not the kind of school I would ever try again or leave my kids attend. read more

French was one of my favourite subjects in high school it was challenging, sounded beautiful and seemed to be the gateway to new experiences in Eastern Canada. I was blessed with a fantastic teacher who was tres enthusiastic and encouraging all the more impressive given that she was contending with small class sizes in rural BC. Those classes gave way to a cruel first year experience in university where I struggled in an immersion class under german prof, quel dommage! So when I found that I could no longer conjugate basic verbs with ease or had trouble recalling a ton of words en francais, I turned to the local AF chapter for a reboot last year. I hadn't practised enough during my years in bilingual Ottawa and several years in Tawrana had blunted what little knowledge remained. The downtown chapter of the Toronto AF is located in a pretty and sprawling victorian house on Spadina Rd near Bloor. The courses range from beginnier to advanced training for language certification. A complimentary fluency test is offered at the outset of any registration to assess your training needs, mine served as a wake up call to say the least. :D The classes are run by experienced and friendly instructors in an immersion setting so active speaking and thinking in french is emphasized from the get-go. Classes also vary from general, conversational and others have a literary or artistic slant. It costs roughly $300 per course each one usually running the length of two months. Yeah, it's a bit pricey but if you're looking for kick-start into the french language or a quick way to recover lost instruction it's not a bad option until you can find some native french speakers to converse with regularly! There's a minimal membership fee that allows you to attend many of their scheduled cultural events such as screenings, wine and cheese, art exhibits or concerts. Access is also given to their multimedia library which has a host of cd's, movies and books, added stimulus for your french instruction! So pricey yes, but if you need a kick in the arse with your french or want to pick it up in a disciplined setting-this is an option worth exploring. read more

La meilleure école de Toronto pour apprendre, revoir ou perfectionner son français. Les cours s'adressent aux adultes, enfants scolarisés et pré scolaires. Tous les enseignants sont des professionnels de l'enseignement du Français Langue Seconde. Le nouveau théâtre offre des concerts, spectacles, projections de film: plus d'une centaine d'événements entre septembre et juin. read more

A devoted student for many (many!) years, I'm an AFan - with emphasis on Madame Marwah. Marlène is not only a great FRENCH teacher, she's a great TEACHER. In addition to serving-up vocabulaire, grammaire et pronunciation creatively, she's intelligent, well-rounded and patient. If you want to (re)learn French for the pleasure rather than academic credit, I'd recommend the AF. read more

Very unprofessional. I would not recommend this school unless you want to be frustrated. Scheduling is very disorganized. I paid $550 for 10 private lessons for my son. When I cancelled a lesson, the teacher showed up and emailed me asking where he was. Then on 2 other occasions when I rebooked with the teacher she didn't show up and told me he wasn't on her schedule when I had just spoken to her the day before and the other time she had showed me her calendar on her laptop. Unbelievable. I'm trying to get my money back. read more

Alliance Francaise de Toronto is a wonderful partner whom we have organized several events over the years, including the European Day of Languages. read more

Haven't taken the course yet, but had a disconcerting experience while getting a level assessment yesterday. The person doing the assessment - old French lady - asked some quite inappropriate personal questions during the assessment, including why it took me so long to find employment after graduating, made some mean remarks about not knowing a Minister's name when I told her I worked for government, and almost accused me of lying when I told her I had passed the DELF B1 Junior while in highschool after two years of study. I left the assessment quite surprised and little offended. read more

My 10 year old daughter was so excited to learn french after moving back to Canada from Ireland. We found ourselves living around the corner from Alliance Francaise and she asked me if she could attend classes. Being a single parent the cost was prohibitive ( about $550 including the workbook for one semester) for me but I made it happen. She was eager in the beginning and tried her best to study at home but we soon realized that the book we had paid $50 and the class didn't co-relate. I went to talk to the teacher about the book but he just said the book wasn't good and not to use it. My daughter became more and more reluctant to attend classes and even said she didn't want me to try to talk to the teacher because she would be mean to her which I believe had already become an issue. This level 101 class was the worst schooling experience my daughter has ever had and now she never wants to learn french. I sent a couple emails to the administrators sharing our experience I got no response. I cant believe this place has the reputation it does and can charge so much. read more

What a fraud!!! They cancelled one course and reduced the number of instructional hours for the other one. No money back for the shortened course. Tried to speak to Nazanin Shahdi the principal of Markham campus. She was very rude, she hung up on me. If this is an institution who provides education then I don't want my child anywhere near them. They should educate their own staff! Waste of money, parents be aware. Rating zero. read more

This school is a bit hit-or-miss. There are some great teachers, and there are some terrible, temperamental teachers. You never know what you're going to get and the school isn't very supportive if you get a bad teacher. Also, instruction seems to get worse the higher your level. My most recent class had THREE different instructors... one quit, another got sick, and then we had a third. Two of the teachers were brand new to teaching in Canada, which affects their experience, obviously. Given the classes are quite expensive, I would expect the school to give some sort of discount on the next class since *clearly* the learning experience was much worse than normal when you're changing teachers every 3 weeks; however, they just said sorry and that was that. I guess after having me pay for 5 different courses (again, 3 of those courses had good teachers, 2 had bad teachers), they felt they'd already got enough money from me. I'm rather unimpressed by the school, but there isn't a lot of competition. I'd try another Alliance location (Mississauga?) but downtown, there are some issues with consistency of the courses. If you are going to take courses here, keep it restricted to the lower levels, otherwise it's probably worth trying another program, or spending the money on private tutoring. read more

The course materials are fairly good, but the class was very disappointing. It was not worth the $300 fee. The teacher just followed the course materials in the books and did the exercises in class. I did the first two courses on my own to prepare for the level I was placed in and found that going to class added nothing to that experience. Anyone who is willing to do the work on their own could skip the class entirely and make the same progress. I will not be back! read more

I've always really enjoyed French throughout school, and I felt that it was worth pursuing a course to become fluent in the language. I heard great things about Alliance Francaise, and quickly registered for the $300 course. After spending a few weeks in the course, I started to lose interest in the course. This was partly because of the unenthusiastic teacher, but also because of the tedious class work. The course moved through topics at a very slow pace, which made the experience much less pleasant. All in all, if you are only looking to refresh your knowledge of the language and don't mind tedious classwork, then this course is for you. But if you are looking to truly become fluent in French in an interesting and engaging way, I would look somewhere else. read more