This article deals with an aspect of the movement of models of teaching between France and Germany in the early 1900s. At the beginning of the 20th century, many Arts Faculties in France recruited their first “lecturers of foreign languages”. These recruits were instructed to teach courses based on practical exercises in their mother tongue. They were under the strict control of the French universities, and imported teaching methods were unwelcome. The economic and professional status of lecturers of English, German, Italian, Russian or Spanish before 1914 was so precarious that it seems that this innovation of employing foreign lecturers to teach languages almost failed. This reluctance to adopt foreign teaching tools can be clearly seen in opinions on the import of a German model of teaching. This example, moreover, reveals much about the relationship of a section of the French educational elite to foreign languages.‪