French Major
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About the Major
Elon’s French program emphasizes the richness of the French language and Francophone traditions from the Middle Ages to today. Students gain linguistic, intercultural, and analytical skills to understand French-speaking societies through literature, history, cinema and the arts, preparing them for contact with the French-speaking world in their studies and career.
Jobs in French
- International business leader
- Foreign service officer
- Humanitarian service worker
- Translator/interpreter
- Communications/marketing specialist
Past Elon French Internships
- French Embassy of New York
- Amaris Consulting
- European Independent Film Festival
Related Majors
Pursuing French major was her shot at redemption — but it became so much more
Isabel Zory toured 22 schools in an effort to find the perfect place to pursue her higher education, yet only at Elon University did the tour guide specifically mention — off the cuff — the school’s exemplary world languages program.
It just so happened that Zory was looking for a university that had a solid language program where she could pursue French. She also wanted to study abroad and do research — two other hallmarks of an Elon education.
“I was totally dreadful at French in high school, and I resolved myself that whatever school I went to would have a good language program because I wanted redemption,” said Zory, who had been taking French since middle school and was disappointed when she got a 2 on her AP French exam. “I didn’t want to be the monolinguistic American stereotype, and I knew there was a better education to be offered outside a high school or middle school environment. I wanted to see if there was a different, more effective, style of teaching, and it turns out, there was.”
Zory also had grown up surrounded by the arts — her dad was a bassist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and her mother is a writer and painter — and in her own art classes, she immediately connected with Degas, Monet and other famous French painters. She knew that in addition to French, she wanted to pursue an arts major in college and one day work in a career that expanded people’s access to culture.
The French program is incredible and so supportive. I cannot imagine having studied anything else or gone anywhere else.
Elon, as it turned out, also has a large and renowned arts program.
Zory graduated from Elon in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts in French language and literature and arts administration. During her four years, she took advantage of the many opportunities that drew her to Elon, study abroad and research among them.
“I always knew I wanted to go abroad,” she said. “I grew up in a small town that was called ‘the bubble,’ and I wanted to escape the bubble desperately. Then Elon was also called the bubble, so I was bouncing from bubble to bubble, but I knew that I wanted to get out into the world. I wanted to go to a city and immerse myself in the culture.”
When she entered Elon in 2020, her French was “atrocious,” so waiting until her junior year to study abroad, though not intentional, turned out to be very helpful. She also audited extra French classes at Elon before leaving to make sure the language was as fresh in her mind as possible.
For four months, she studied in Paris at the Cours de civilisation française de la Sorbonne, where she explored art history and French literature. And because she arrived in the winter during the Paris garbage strikes, she got to experience the country at its most raw.
“It was totally not the Paris that anyone thinks of,” she said. “But seeing people as they are living their lives, living with a host family, taking French classes, speaking only in French, it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done but also one of the most formative.”
As an Elon College Fellow, Zory spent much of her time at Elon researching topics that intertwined her French and arts interests. For her College Fellows research project, which she worked on for two years, she examined gender-based violence in French ballet. For her senior seminar project, she analyzed the letters of French impressionist Edgar Degas and how he spoke about and to women in his personal correspondence. She presented both of her research projects at Elon’s Spring Undergraduate Research Forum — in French.
“It served to remind me how far I’ve come in my major,” Zory wrote on LinkedIn in early May. “I came to Elon having bombed my AP French exam and determined to not only study the language but to major in it and with the goal of being proficient in it by the end of senior year. Being able to graduate having turned one of my biggest weaknesses into a strength makes me feel incredibly proud.”
She attributes much of that accomplishment to her French professors at Elon who never made her feel less than when she “created a new verb tense” or “turned in a paper that read like you were drunk when you were writing it.”
“Students are so afraid to fail — everyone is afraid to fail — and learning a language is failure; you’re not going to be great at it in the beginning,” she said. “You’re going to write papers where you have no idea what you’re saying, but you have to approach it like, ‘I’m not going to use Google Translate or AI tools; I’m just going to do my utmost to be authentically me, and if it’s cruddy, I’ll try it again.’ It’s such a hard learning curve for a lot of students, because you want to always be right. So it’s huge having professors who are going to teach those lessons, that it’s OK to not always be right, and who can tell when you’ve used Google Translate or when you’re BSing.”
Zory spent her college internships working in the arts administration world — at the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center and, after graduation, the Biltmore Estate. And she expects that she will eventually pursue community development and arts outreach. But before she launches into her career, she’s returning to France in the fall to teach English, having been accepted into the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF).
“Mostly, I don’t feel like my story with French is done yet,” she said. “I know that it’s going to be pretty difficult to find a job where I get to use French heavily, or at all, and it would be difficult to move to France, so being able to go abroad in this capacity as an adult having learned what I have, it’s a final opportunity to create an experience that involves the French language and possibly make me more hirable when I’m back in the U.S.”
Thinking back to when she made the decision to come to Elon for her education — and to major in something that terrified her — she is proud of and grateful for the end result.
Did You Know?
- The French program helps students build advanced linguistic proficiency and intercultural competency and develops their ability to be critical thinkers and problem solvers in the French language. All French classes in the major, including beginning levels, are taught in French.
- . French majors are required to study abroad for at least one semester in a university-approved program where classes are taught in French. Elon offers students a chance to broaden their awareness of other cultures through study abroad programs in Paris, Montpellier, Metz and Reims, France, as well as Rabat, Morocco.
- The study of French is ideal as a second major combined with another field, including business and communications, providing a distinct advantage for anyone interested in a career in the international arena. Students can also pursue a dual degree in international business by spending two years at Elon and two years at the NEOMA School of Management in Reims, France.