Mastering French, English, and Mandarin: A Core Mission of LIFT.

Offering our children a truly trilingual education in French, English, and Mandarin was one of the main motivations that led the French community of Taipei to create LIFT. LIFT, through its unique trilingual approach and ambition, provides a singular educational offer.

Language acquisition and the learning of several modern languages are fundamental skills for understanding and engaging with the world, for flourishing, for communicating and socializing, and for enriching oneself through cultures in dialogue.
Trilingual LIFT students are opened to new possibilities in higher education and will become tomorrow’s intercultural mediators and autonomous agents of change in a globalized world.

The founding parents observed that there was no option in Taiwan that combined both international education and a sufficiently ambitious Mandarin learning pathway.
The high expectations (and variety of needs) regarding language learning within our families are central to LIFT’s identity.
We do not seek to be an isolated and standardized international “bubble,” disconnected from the culture and language of our host country. On the contrary, we aim to fully root LIFT as an educational institution that is French—through its curriculum—but also Taiwanese, open and cooperative with the Taiwanese society.
For instance, we are building a true educational and linguistic partnership with the public school that hosts us by providing their students with French as a Foreign Language classes.

Thus, LIFT upholds a unique linguistic ambition in Taiwan, and perhaps even in the region: to prepare its students, by the end of their schooling, to master three languages—enabling them to pursue higher education or enter the workforce in a French-, English-, or Chinese-speaking country.
This ambition is structured at the school level by the AEFE’s new French International Baccalaureate (BFI) program, which will eventually certify LIFT students’ education.

Meeting the Linguistic and Cultural Diversity of Our Families

LIFT specifically meets the needs of binational families who wish to give their children Mandarin proficiency on par with the Taiwanese public system—alongside French or English—and who are currently forced to supplement international school programs with costly and exhausting evening classes.

We also believe that French-speaking or Francophile expatriate families in Taiwan can greatly benefit from the excellence and richness of the Taiwanese language and culture.

We consider the inclusion of all student profiles to be part of the DNA of French education.
We are proud to welcome Taiwanese students who wish to embrace the values and pedagogy of the French school system, and we support them toward mastering French and English while also helping them maintain strong literacy in Mandarin.
We offer exceptional support in French at the elementary level, with a specialized FLE teacher working alongside our classroom teachers.

To this end, we place a strong emphasis on multilingualism as a core pillar of our pedagogical project, starting with early foreign language exposure in preschool and continuing throughout schooling.

Languages at the Heart of Our Educational Approach

This trilingual approach is grounded in differentiation and individualized attention—recognizing each student as a unique individual with their own story, talents, and goals.
This reflects the linguistic diversity of our students, their mother tongues, and their prior schooling experiences.

The first level of “personalization” happens during the admission process, when families are offered two language tracks from CP onward: French/English or French/Mandarin, based on their preferred primary bilingual pairing.
Students from both tracks are in the same class and learn all three languages; their schedules differ based on the selected track and the corresponding time spent in either English or Mandarin.

Later, families can adjust this exposure throughout the school year, based on pedagogical advice, through optional after-school sessions (from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m.) delivered in the three languages.
These sessions allow each student to receive the most relevant and personalized exposure to all three languages.
By choosing appropriate extracurricular activities, linguistic exposure can be adjusted and reinforced.

While switching tracks during the elementary cycle is not recommended, families may fine-tune their child’s language exposure each year through the selection of extracurricular activities.