I am a French native speaker with Russian and Tunisian backgrounds who lived in France or 'the country of Voltaire and Hugo' for eighteen years. I was brought to France at the age of seven by my family and I started to learn the ‘langage de l’amour’ (the language of love as they call it in France) both through primary school and my family, and I grew up in three different towns close to Paris.

About Me

As a curious person eager to discover new cultures I used to spend half of my time learning both English and Spanish either through books or music when I was a teenager. I studied Russian and English at high school and university. After graduating with a Bachelor's in Foreign Languages - English and Russian I obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Translation from English into French. Studies were almost my only chance to preserve my knowledge in Russian as much as I could. I always thought that the languages(es) one speaks is part of one’s identity.

When I started my Bachelor’s degree I realised that I wanted to become a French language teacher abroad and I was considering moving to England. I decided to spend a year in England as an Erasmus student to improve my English.

After graduating in 2017, I worked as a private English tutor in France for one year; it consisted of helping secondary school pupils with their homework and making them practice verbal expression in English. My pupils used to be shy but they were willing to overcome their struggles. Indeed, several schools in France do not make learners work on their listening and verbal expression enough.  At the end of each lesson, I always made my pupils watch short videos from British TV programmes where people express themselves using simple vocabulary and I asked them to tell me with their own words what they understood from it. After a few months, I was happy to notice that their understanding improved.  In 2018, I went back to England to do my Master’s in Translation from English into French. During my Master’s I volunteered once a week as a French and Russian tutor at university. Both French and Russian drop-ins consisted of one-to-one sessions to make learners practice their verbal expression. My two teaching experiences allowed me to gain both decent verbal communication skills and confidence.

I care about my students’ interests, success, and confidence. I enjoy teaching languages because from my point of view it equals to getting people closer to a foreign culture and this is what languages learners are looking for. I am a friendly and easy-going person with a sense of humour this is why I think that I am suitable for a private tutor’s role. I frequently meet people curious about both French culture and language and they often ask me France-related questions.

Although I have teaching experience some of my previous jobs were unrelated to teaching. For example, during my Bachelor’s degree, I did a traineeship in Legal Translation from Russian into French. During my Master’s degree, I worked as a French-English medical interpreter.

Services

Parlez-vous français? As Baccara used to sing. If you don’t, all you can do is progress.

My first lessons are the lessons where I teach basics in French: greetings, how to introduce yourself, how to ask for information, how to say you do not understand something, and of course what France is known for because when one learns a language one learns its culture. 

Basic sentences help people to get into the swing better, they feel more confident about learning what I call the 'technical details' of the language: grammar, spelling, good ways to word/rephrase what you wanted to say.

For me, a language is a bit like the human body; it is difficult to learn how an organ works if you do not an idea of where it is, and if you do not know what is a body.

At the end of the lesson, I make my students talk about a topic related to the lesson to have an idea about what they learned so far; I work this way with the beginners. For those who already have a more advanced level, I prepare exercises that can be the translation of a text that I wrote myself about the topics we approached; the translation has to be done from English into French or vice versa. I can also ask the student to write his or her opinion about a topic in particular.