AI is essential in learning French

They come from Egypt and Algeria and work in construction. Samir (1) and Nabil (1) have lived in France for more than two years but their French is still in its infancy. “All our colleagues speak Arabic, so it’s difficult to progress,” admits Samir, a little embarrassed.

To ward off fate, the two young men go twice a week to Le Cèdre, a branch of Secours catholique near the Paris ring road. Here, several volunteers give language lessons to asylum seekers and immigrants from Bangladesh, Peru or the Maghreb.

Mansoor Khan is Afghan and hopes to obtain asylum in France after crossing part of Central Asia and Europe to escape the Taliban. “I would like to find work and bring my wife and children here,” he confides, with a smile.

Between the reassuring walls of the Cèdre, we repeat key words like “housing” or “salary slip”. And we allow ourselves to imagine a better future on French soil. But the path to integration is strewn with pitfalls.

Since July 2025 and the decrees of the immigration law of January 2024, the State has imposed a new tempo on foreign people. From 2026, they will have to demonstrate a certain mastery of French to renew their residence permit. On the program, an exam to certify level A2 (middle school), mandatory in order to obtain a multi-year residence permit (two to four years), or B1 (high school) for a resident card (ten years).

Since the announcement, candidates have been rushing to benefit from French courses from the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Ofii). Mastering the basics of the language of your host country, the objective is not fundamentally scandalous. But the public establishment, undoubtedly overwhelmed, chose to send the majority of learners to a digital application. Which offers an introduction to French through online exercises, corrected by artificial intelligence.

A virtual teacher

Saiful (1), 36 years old, was following both Secours catholique and Ofii courses when he learned the news via a simple email. The Bangladeshi was to benefit from 400 hours of French taught by a teacher with other students. But since the summer, he has had to make do with the Frello application and spend several hours decoding, perplexed, the blank texts and instructions.

“Everything is written in French, so I have to copy and paste on a translation platform to understand the instructions in my language,” sighs Saiful in Bengali. “It’s discouraging not being able to train with anyone.” Arriving in France in 2023, Saiful can however consider himself lucky. He has obtained refugee status and will therefore be exempt from the language test to renew his residence permit.

A dissuasive decision?

But Ofii’s decision should penalize much more the more than 50,000 people who follow training with this organization each year (2). “They will lack the human support necessary for learning,” laments Myriam Dupouy, sociolinguist at the University of Le Mans (Sarthe). The current platform provides steps that lack logic and slow down progress. And many immigrants have not been educated long enough in their country of origin to learn a language without a tutor.”

By entrusting learning to an application, is the State seeking to dissuade some immigrants from staying in France? Hard to know. But several Ofii sources anonymously confirmed to France 2 in February 2025 (3) that around 20,000 of them risked losing their residence permit, and 40,000 their resident card.

Faced with this situation, several migrant rights defense networks have taken legal action. Among them, Secours catholique. But when will the judgment be rendered? Not before three to six months, lawyers estimate. “Through our action, we seek to alert the State,” underlines Hélène Ceccato, French learning project manager at Secours catholique. Society renounces its hospitality and human contact. This goes against our values!”

But in the midst of political turmoil, the newly appointed Lecornu government could, on the contrary, continue to toughen up its migration policy to establish its legitimacy. In 2024, 31,250 undocumented people were regularized in France, a drop of 10% compared to 2023. And the new Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nunez, immediately warned that he would maintain the very firm line of his predecessor, Bruno Retailleau. In the mouth of a former prefect, these words leave little room for doubt.