TUTORING

My devise - "Understand people and to be understood"

Priorities:

I love teaching people how to speak French, and I emphasize the word "speak", as I focalize my lessons on talking - essential when travelling or communicating with foreigners !

Most of the time, people are afraid of talking or making mistakes... but not with me ! :-)
Teaching is an art! :-)

Different people – different methods :

Everybody being different, I always try my best to adaptate on the learner.

After a quick talk on the phone or through Skype – everything is pretty obvious on what to work on ! :-)

Yes, a good teacher should also be a good psychologist :-)

Giving the choice on how to learn :

I never force anybody to do anything (homeworks, reading, writing), but always give the choice.

Many people ask me about grammar ; they usually make a big deal out of it (habit from school?)
I also teach it of course, but in context – without, it's usually not worth it. It is like learning how to count and not understanding that it's useful when buying something. :-)
Furthermore, I don't think that talking French the whole time is always necessary. «  To be immerged » in a one-hour-lesson is an illusion. The immersion happens only when living abroad for a while or going to special languages camps, where only the foreign language is used. And in order not to lose too much time trying to guess what I can sometimes draw – better to translate the word ! :-)
Sorry... a teacher is not always an artist :-)
As I work on the motivation and the wish of the person to learn a language, I don't prepare to any exam. It is a lot of stress and pressure on everybody, very unpredictable results and sometimes disappointment at the end.

Results :

I love to see how beginners who never learnt french before, could present themselves after the second or the third lesson. Things are going so fast in improvement!!! It warms the Heart :-)

But I should also point out that results depend not only on the teacher, but also on the student. I can give maximum energy and material, but if people are lazy – it won't help ! :-)

Of course there would also be improvments - things will just go slower... no big deal ! :-)

The most important thing - not to give up !

Experiences of teaching :

I'm teaching for about 15 years, as a tutor, but also worked at the university, and in different schools.

The public is always different, which makes my job – amazing ! :-)

Learning languages myself :

My experience in teaching and learning many different languages help me motivate people or calm them down when they don't see any improvements. Just don't forget – when learning a language, nobody can regress! :-)

And if afterwards, we can find common ground on everything - we'll all have fun working together! I'm sure ! :-)