Bay Area French Tutor — Local services in Hillsborough

I have been working with Christelle for about 6 months now and take lessons with her once per week. I had no previous exposure to French before meeting her.

During our sessions, we review what she taught me last session or she teaches something new and we practice it through listening, speaking, or writing. She corrects my pronunciation, which I really appreciate, because it allows me to form good habits that don't need to be fixed later on. In between sessions, she assigns homework which helps me make progress on my own. She's super patient when I don't know something and explains things very clearly. She's intuitive and knows how to focus the session on what I'm struggling with the most. I feel safe to make mistakes or not know something but also challenged to learn and improve. I tend to be impatient with my own process and she's been assuring.

Having a strong grasp on the language still feels like a far away goal, but I certainly have learned A LOT in a short period of time. After my first 2 sessions, I was able to conjugate verbs and form basic sentences. Before our lessons, listening to French radio sounded like a blur of words that ran together and I understood almost none of it. My listening skills have improved tremendously and can get a general understanding of the news when I listen to French radio. Speaking and reading aloud feels a lot more comfortable too. When I tell French speakers I have studied the language for 6 months, they are super impressed, even if I'm nowhere near fluent.

Christelle has both the technical skills of a strong teacher as well as the intangible/soft skills of understanding your needs and making adjustments based on them. I'm very thankful to be working with her and higher...

I have been working with one of the tutors on Pascale's team of amazing French teachers, Christelle. I highly recommend her. She clearly is passionate about the French language and teaching it. She is the real deal -- current on the rules of the French language regulatory agency and extremely knowledgeable about French culture and history as it pertains to the language.

We meet regularly at a cafe near my work. I'm only two months into my lessons and already several people have interrupted my lesson to ask for Christelle's information because they, too, thought my French lessons seemed fun and they felt they had learned so much...simply by eavesdropping!

And they're right :) I started from knowing zero French. I wanted to take lessons so I could speak with my boyfriend and his mother's side of the family from France. Nowadays I'm texting with him mostly in French, because my lessons have given me so many skills with French grammar. He is so impressed with how much I've learned in such a short amount of time. I'm also improving my spoken and listening skills so much through the practical tips Christelle gives me. Merci, Bay Area...

Learning French from the bottom up is where Christelle has been my life saver and language coach. I've been studying French with her for five years and I don't know what I would do without her! My husband is from France, and we both live in the US, but I desperately needed to learn French in order to communicate with his family as they don't speak any English. I started only knowing, basic words like "Bonjour" and "Oui" and now I am very proficient and speak fluid, conversational French. I take class weekly with Christelle via Skype (used to be in person) and it's always a pleasure, never a chore. She is extremely patient and reinforces everything from grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, idioms, etc. She always keeps the class interactive and spices it up with new exercises. Christelle is not only formally trained as a teacher, but she also clearly has a passion for teaching French which comes through in her lessons. She takes note on basics that I'm forgetting and incorporates the simple stuff along with advanced level complexities, so I don't keep making novice mistakes. I would highly recommend learning French...