Leah Meirinhos

Tired of boring teachers?

Boost your French while having fun with a proven tutor that you will love!

As a tutor, I can only take a limited number of students per year, so if you’re interested, request a slot as soon as possible.

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How your life will look like

So you’re at home right now, sitting at your computer, thinking that it would be nice to take some time for yourself to become an even better person and start (or keep) practising French. You’ve always wanted to do it but could never find the time.

Maybe you’re in school, and you want to improve your French, maybe you need it for work, or maybe you just want to learn because you dream of speaking the language of love.

I know how you feel - when the time comes to speak with someone, you become anxious, you feel stuck, slow, you think that you are not good enough. And just thinking about learning French feels very frustrating.

Reading a book to learn is extremely boring, the apps don’t correct you in real-time, traditional schools and teachers give you the most boring verbs to memorise - it’s painful. But don’t worry, I have the perfect solution for you.

Imagine, just for a second, arriving in Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, calling a taxi and giving him the direction of your beautiful hotel: “Je vais au Ritz, s’il-vous-plaît” clearly, without hesitation.

After dropping off your luggage in your fresh and tidy hotel room just in front of the Tour Eiffel, you decide to call your French friend, Mathieu, who lives in Paris, to have dinner at your favourite restaurant, Avenue George V.

This time, you ask the menu in French, and start to read. You understand the whole menu perfectly. Feeling confident, you ask your friend what he would like to eat and if you can make the order yourself. Then you call the waiter:

- “Excusez-moi, pouvons-nous commander, s’il vous plaît?"

You can see the surprise in your friend’s face. You look confidently at the waiter and order:

“Nous allons prendre une salade, une assiette d’escargots à partager, puis mon ami prendra une entrecôte bien cuite avec des légumes, quant à moi, je vais prendre le saumon fumé avec les pommes de terre cuites au four. Avec ça, nous prendrons une bouteille de Bordeaux rouge et une bouteille d’eau pétillante s’il vous plaît"

- “Très bien et comme dessert?”

- “Mon ami prendra un éclair au café, je prendrai un fondant au chocolat et avec ça, deux Expresso s’il vous plaît"

- “Merci beaucoup! Je vous apporte le vin et les entrées dans un instant”

Your friend is flabbergasted, how can you speak so fluently, while last year you couldn’t even ask for coffee? You also noticed that the waiter didn’t even realise that you were not French.

Imagine how proud, powerful, and respected you’d feel. You don’t think twice anymore when formulating a sentence and your accent and pronunciation are perfect.

How to get there

The best way to learn any language is by practicing, doing, imitating and acting. Forget books, forget boring teachers, forget online courses, they are boring, you will hate them, probably even tried them and so you know what I am talking about. The most interesting and funny way to learn any language is by actually talking the language.

So this is what you need to do. You need to find someone, who is not judgemental, who listens to you and who actually has a conversation with you.

You begin to take baby steps, start using some words, constructing some phrases and if you don’t know, well hopefully if this person is good enough, she will tells you this first words you need to learn and the first rules of how to construct the phrase and than you build on it like Legos

Before you realise it, you will be making full frases, on your own. So this is what you need to do, practice, make mistakes, practice, and practice again.

How learning with me feels like

After your first lesson with me, you realised that you spoke so much. More than that, you also understood some words, some sentences, and that some vocabulary are very close to your own language.

After some lessons already, you feel your progress. Your listening improved, you speak faster and some words appear like that in your head. New sound comes out of your mouth, and the melody is pretty great.

Now, some weeks have already passed and the conversations are deeper, you are more engaged, you even lead the conversation sometimes, asking questions and you received very good compliments from your teacher. You can see in her eyes that she is very very proud of you.

This is what learning with me feels like: chatting with a non-judgmental friend and feeling the progress. At first, you can - and should - make a lot of mistakes and you won’t be judged on correctness but clarity.

With me, you feel as if you were travelling in France being in front of different realistic situations, and being able to be part of conversations with friends or colleagues or hold yourself properly in a job interview.

After you progress through the basics and can hold a clear conversation, I’ll help you refine the details: verbs, intonation, pronunciation, etc.

How is it possible?

Because I provide a different approach to learning the language. I give you all my attention to teach you in a fun and easy way, where you learn and laugh at the same time.

My lessons are based on active learning, which means that I want to give you the support to be able to speak easily, in a real situation, with a real French speaker. I also work on the “Break it Down” that focuses on vocabulary for one area or topic each week - like travel and foods, for example. Just like teaching yourself new sentences and expressions. This organised routine will make learning vocabulary and other important keywords interesting, and you’ll begin to be able to string phrases together.

What I don't do: give you grammar, verb conjugations and all the rules that you can learn at school or by reading a book. I'm here to give you an awesome pronunciation, fluidity, and vocabulary. I let you decide, in real-time and in the flow of conversation, what you would like to talk about so that the conversation is actually interesting to you.

Yes - having a fun conversation with a friendly human is more motivating than being bored with a book! Learning is also about sharing!