I am a native French speaker from the South of Belgium and a PhD candidate at the University of Stirling in French Sociolinguistics. For the last eight to nine years, I have been involved with learning and teaching foreign languages. Already at secondary school, I specialised in languages and focused on French, Dutch, English and Spanish. I then moved on to learning Translation and Interpreting in Dutch and English to French at the University of Mons in the South of Belgium.
My desire to become proficient in foreign languages lead to me apply for a language exchange with a Flemish Translation and Interpreting school in Antwerp where I studied Spanish intensively. After graduating, I realised that what I really wanted to do was to teach my native French language to non-native speakers. So I applied for a preparatory programme in French literature and linguistics at the University of Antwerp and got my second bachelor degree in one year. It allowed me to move on to the master’s degree in French linguistics and literature which I completed in 2011. During my master’s degree, I started to teach French, Dutch and English professionally for Berlitz International in Brussels while also providing private lessons to people of all ages and levels.
In 2011, I started my PhD in French Sociolinguistics at the university of Stirling where I carried on giving private French lessons to many students. A year later, I moved to Edinburgh and also got a position of part-time French tutor at the university of Stirling as well as French teacher at the “Institut français d’Ecosse” (French Institute of Scotland). So my whole academic and professional career has revolved around teaching foreign languages, and more specifically my native French language.
Thanks to this varied experienced, I have seen a lot and have come to understand the pitfalls to avoid when teaching foreign languages. Many schools focus a lot more on attracting students than actually delivering high quality teaching. I know from my own experience of mastering three foreign languages (and also some basic knowledge of Hebrew) what is needed to acquire a new language and I have seen how these principles are rarely applied by professional schools due to a lack of time and money to fund excellent courses. Most schools don’t focus enough on the planning of lessons according to tried and true methods. My status of both avid language learner and professional language teacher allows me to implement in my teaching what I know works. This is exactly what I intend to deliver with Verbeke French For All: some excellent teaching material based on methods which deliver great results.
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Daily French lessons for 30 days
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