Alice

Certified Tutor

I graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with a PhD in French language and literature and I have ten years of teaching experience. A French native, I completed my undergraduate studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. During my senior year I was also a French teaching assistant "abroad" for an American university in New York State. My role was to tutor students taking intermediate French during one-on-one sessions in my office. I helped them learn new vocabulary and acquire grammar tools; we read and discussed short texts from movie reviews to novella chapters; we compared paintings or photographs available on the internet but always in French. After that year, I taught French classes at Johns Hopkins from French 1 to French 4 as a graduate student. Upon graduation I was hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor by a small Southern California liberal arts college where I taught language and literature classes in French. I had office hours during which I answered questions and made sure students had assimilated the new material, from grammar rules to literary concepts. As a tutor and a teacher, I use French as much as possible even with beginners. I like to use auditory and visual inputs at the same time and I contextualize new words to ease the process of memorization.
Most of all, I will adapt my methods to your needs and level of French. If you are more advanced I will help you converse and write about more complex material. I am a good listener and I will appreciate your feedback after each session if you wish to provide any.
I have traveled to more than fifteen countries and lived in France, Austria, Switzerland and the USA. I have always enjoyed speaking foreign languages and I learned a lot from my own teachers and tutors in German and English. Their knowledge, confidence, open-mindedness and patience always inspired me; I strive to be to you the kind of tutors they were to me.