As a tutor, I know that it is only by being patient, passionate, and flexible that I can provide the best learning environment. I believe in communicative language teaching approach where practice of language is a recurrent process. This is why I rely on speaking in the target language as the only way to learn a foreign language. I take every chance to ???roll??? with the unexpected. Whenever a teaching moment presents itself, I never hesitate to jump on this occasion by embracing it and turning it into a learning opportunity. By doing so, my students get the most of my knowledge, my heritage, and the culture that I love. I can, also, lessen the challenging development of acquiring knowledge of a foreign language by filling my tutoring sessions with interactive, engaging, and contextualized activities. I encourage my students to take control of their learning providing authentic resources to achieve this goal. Also, with my own experience while learning languages I know that it is a road of ups-and-downs and sometimes it can lead to a lot of frustration. I, nevertheless, always remind my students that it is part of the process and that these difficult times will be overcome and will never prevent their learning.

Learning occurs when students can make sense of a subject and interpret it in their own words and apply their new knowledge in contextual settings using the target language. As a tutor, I give them resources to actively involve them using a variety of approaches exploiting authentic realias such as magazines and/or music. For instance, I create an inclusive environment by providing different ways to let each and every student show their learning with posters and presentations.

Spending time to build relationships with students is powerful and meaningful and will contribute to a positive and productive time spent together. In addition, I show my students that I really do care about them and I am invested in their success by making myself available to them. I feel it is important from the beginning to build sincere, reciprocal, and deep relationship. All students need different type of structured environment in order to be given the opportunity to academically grow. It is my goal to provide them with these tools.

Students are like sponges, they absorb information very fast if I give them the opportunities through a variety of contextualized activities where each literacy skills can be applied (speaking, writing, listening, and reading). They draw connections with the French language in their own ways and develop a personal love for the language they learn. In addition, my view of teaching aims not only to master the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages??? (ACTFL) four skills via accuracy and fluency, but to refine intercultural competence and critical thinking using different materials. I allow them to experiment authentic French or Francophone cultural expressions and connect them with their own personal life experiences. I am able to achieve this goal by using artifacts and let students make connections or comparisons with what they are familiar with. For instance, when covering a unit using Switzerland as a cultural setting, I show students videos on Swiss and American wrestling. They, then work with a Venn diagram as a base to see the differences, the similarities, and what was unique to each of this physical activity before showing their appreciation orally and in writing.

Teaching of grammar is an important part of learning a foreign language and can sometimes be difficult to understand and then reproduce. I let my students elaborate rules grounded on their findings instead of plain memorization. For instance, I used a song to understand the concept of the difficult use of the past tense. Students listened to it to familiarize themselves with the differences in sounds or pronunciations and then were able to work in pairs with the lyrics explaining to each other the reason why one tense was used over the other (pass??? compos??? and imparfait). Once this understanding is set in place, students are offered various activities in both writing and speaking where they can apply and demonstrate their grasp of this concept through active communication.

When teaching I am incorporating cultural content to build stronger lessons. My purpose is not only to teach French but also to enrich students with a better understanding of what Francophone culture, habits, and celebrations are about but also to sharpen their appreciation of what constitute the arts of the people using painting, music or literature. Language and culture are inevitably tied together reason why I offer different presentations that I put together covering a variety of French speaking countries (Morocco, Monaco, Tah???ti, Belgium, Switzerland and Paris). I use them as a foundation to allow students to understand the perspectives of other cultures through comparisons. I am a strong believer that it is only when they can fully appreciate their own culture versus others that they can finally create a ???third culture??? in order to grow and value what else is in the world.

Assessments are an important part of measuring progress. I understand that formative and summative assessments should be used and that they are obviously important for collecting data, but they should not be a final determination of a student???s growth. Students need to engage in proficiency-based assessments, they need to play with the material or learning targets every day and in every learning activity. Most students will not demonstrate mastery the first time they have a chance to practice a new skill. They need multiple opportunities to show the knowledge and abilities they have been developing in class with Comprehensible Input. This is where today???s technology can bring life to the classroom. I incorporate videos, authentic websites to support personalized questions or discussions based on real-life situations.

I focus as much as possible my instruction towards my students. Working with this focus in mind, I try to reach out to every style of learners that I work with (auditory, visual, etc.) and support each of them walk from being novice-low to mid-low or even higher students. I constantly push myself to give them the knowledge that with effort they can have fun. Thus, always teaching and allowing them to interact with French by making mistakes and learning from them without any fear or stress. I have discovered that I can teach my students to take risks even if they don???t master the language.