Scottish man gives English lessons on French trains

Scottish expat Calum MacDougall had a successful career in finance in France for more than 20 years, before deciding he wanted to do something else. He is now France's fastest moving English teacher after winning a contract to teach French commuters on trains. Calum is the man behind English on Track – an innovative new project to teach French professionals English while traveling to and from work on France’s rail network.

Calum says: "I was traveling around France a lot, coming into businesses and teaching executives, and I saw all these French professionals spending hours sitting on trains, like me. I thought – all that time isn’t being used properly, it’s being wasted. So the idea of teaching English to commuters began to grow. I had a chance meeting with someone from [French rail operator] SNCF, and that got the ball rolling for English on Track.

"It's going really, really well. It has exceeded all of our expectations. It’s a pilot scheme at the moment, just running on the TER train between Paris and Marne Valley, and on the TGV between Paris and Reims. We have four or five lessons a week, 45 minutes to an hour each, with small, dynamic groups of equal language ability, which is really constructive.
"We’re teaching people from the hi-tech sector, journalists, export managers – a really wide variety. The beauty of it is that these people’s employers are delighted with the scheme. It’s a very efficient use of time – essentially they’re doing a training course before they’ve even arrived at the office, and about 80 percent are having the lessons paid for by their employers. The next logical step for us would be to work on the Eurostar, but we’re still at the pilot stage, and we’ll just have to see how it goes."