I have been teaching and tutoring French for over 10 years. I have also taught High School Spanish and crash courses in Mandarin Chinese and German. My degree and experience in Linguistics helps me ... to avoid using technical jargon and explain how French works without intimidating or confusing my students. My teaching approach is friendly and conversational, and is most influenced by the Direct Approach methodology of Siegfried Engelmann and the Bilingual Method of Wolfgang Butzkamm. My lessons are fun and engaging, and they produce phenomenal results! My students, of all skill levels and backgrounds, find the exercises to be intuitive and exciting. Best of all, they find that they quickly develop the skills and knowledge necessary to no longer need a tutor, and that their understanding of French is profound. Though I love tutoring and getting my students up to snuff in their classes, my comprehensive French course is the best way to begin. In my comprehensive course, I take an absolute beginner, or a struggling intermediate student, and run them through the entire structure of the language, while providing them with a very large and productive vocabulary. In my free time I often study Latin and Ancient Greek, or the native languages of the students to whom I teach English. I also homeschool my children and work as a phonics instructor to children and adults. Language and literacy are my world.read more

I live in rural Oregon in the town where I grew up. After years living in Europe, Asia and the big American cities, I decided to come home to raise my children. My professional life is dedicated to ... language, language development and literacy. My hobbies coincide exactly with my work. In my free time I study languages and linguistics. My teaching philosophy is straight from Siegfried Engelmann: (paraphrased) if a student is not learning the material, you must assume that there is not something wrong with the student, but that there is something wrong with the material or your presentation of the material; you must assume that it is the teacher's fault. I approach every student with a sense of gratitude and honor for being allowed such an important role. I learn whatever I can from the student's errors, and use this to personalize the instruction. I always assume that the student would rather be somewhere else, and I justify my lessons by their utility, effectiveness, and enjoyability. Methodologically, I know that even absolute beginners in French have developed a great many skills that we must utilize and expand upon to learn the new language. For example: I once had a student who was originally from Szechuan China. He was struggling with his High School French class, and disliked the subject. I was able to show him a couple ways that Szechuan Chinese and French were similar. From this, our lessons began to blossom: he was happy that I acknowledged something about him that was special, and how he could exploit it productively in this new way. He learned to articulate something he had never considered about himself, which in turn helped him to understand something that he previously found incomprehensible. He never stopped disliking French, but he enjoyed our lessons and was very proud that he was no longer embarrassed to speak in class, and that students started asking him for help. This kind of experience is why I teach.read more