Christine Picard
Enthusiastic and passionate teacher of French as a Foreign Language (FFL)
A strong experience living abroad and a solid expertise in teaching French in a multicultural environment allow me to give courses adapted to each one with pragmatism and fun.
An expatriate's life
My name is Christine. I am a French native, born and raised in Provence, Southern France. As a young adult, I started to work in Paris and then freshly married, left to live and work in Australia for 3 years. After this first beautiful experience, we spent 7 years in Lyon, France and then we decided to continue with expatriation as a family!
We have lived in 4 different countries so far: Australia, Turkey, Morocco and Greece and managed to learn local languages each time. I therefore speak 6 languages: French, English (C1), Spanish (B2), German (B1 but it was a looooong time ago), Turkish (A1) and Greek (A2) and I can teach with French, English and Spanish as class languages.
Teaching french abroad
My experience with teaching started when I was in Turkey. I volunteered to teach French to the little ones in an International school in Istanbul, within a program for early awakening to foreign languages and… I loved it! I then decided that I belonged in teaching and that it was my next professional move.
In Morocco, I continued to teach in International schools and at home. At the same time, I took a 2 years Master’s course in Teaching French as a foreign language, through a distance learning program. I graduated in July 2019.
Experience & passion for teaching
A strong and diverse teaching experience
I have now been teaching for about 7 years, to a very diverse range of students, from age 5 to 60+. Students with very different levels, including students with specific needs, such as dyslexia or illiterate adults.
I have taught in both international schools and in private lessons at home, to full classes, small groups and individuals. And that’s precisely what I like with this activity: each student, each approach, each class is different. No routine for me!
An adaptive teaching method
Some students are much organized and feel comfortable with well structured classes, classical exercises and “squared” documents. Others have a visual memory and prefer to work with pictures, drawings and love mind maps. Still others are reluctant to do classical exercises and definitely prefer funnier activities.
I adapt my teaching to each of them. I definitely provide the opposite to a “one-size-fits-all” teaching.
Always taking care of my student
Everyday, I also put special attention on the best way I can support my students. At some stage, one can struggle on a specific grammatical point while others jump over it easily. In such a case, I take some more time to cover it and use more activities to make it clearer.
I aim to support them in the best way I can with all my resources and my patience, and…
…and a good sense of humor!
Indeed, I strongly believe that we learn better if we really enjoy the class. And to enjoy a language class, the situations that students experience have to be funny.
This is why I use fun resources and also games to place the students in real-life situations but always with humor.