Marketing French through a French for the Professions Course

This article details a team-based marketing capstone project in a French for the Professions course at the low-advanced level based on ACTFL proficiency guidelines. The capstone project focuses on marketing and branding strategies, advertising campaigns, teamwork skills, and presentational communication skills. Rather than marketing a traditional product or service, however, students in this fifth-semester course were tasked with developing a marketing campaign specifically for the French language. By capturing and applying market data about attitudes toward language learning, students applied their coursework to real-world issues and then learned to become advocates for the study of the French language. Overall, students and faculty members rated this project positively: Students noted its real-world applications and faculty members reported the utility of the project in assessing content knowledge. What we have learned from the implementation of the capstone project has ultimately informed departmental marketing strategies that may be useful for attracting students to language programs.