This paper focuses on the European policy initiative to increase the number of teachers able to teach a modern foreign language in primary schools. It particularly focuses on the exchange placement which is an integral part of a training programme run by a university faculty of education in England and an Institut de Formation des Maitres in France. Through an analysis of interviews with trainees about their placement experiences a number of tensions emerged as trainees' own assumptions about approaches to teaching and learning were challenged. The paper points to the benefits of the placement in both helping trainee teachers reflect upon their own national education culture and language and also understand and appreciate the differences that underlie another educational culture and language.