About - At Home with French

I have always loved languages and been acutely aware of the doors of opportunity they open. I studied French, German and Spanish at St Andrews University in the 80s, spending a year of that time working in Freiburg, Germany and a term at Grenoble University. Since then, I’ve worked for companies both in the UK and abroad, where my languages have proved invaluable to both my career progression and my job satisfaction. I’ve been teaching languages for the past 15 years and when I left school teaching in 2016 I set up Language Gateway to help open doors for others in the same way I feel languages have benefited me. I am now very fortunate in having a base in both “Bretagne” and in “la Grande Bretagne”, and through my teaching of English to the Bretons and French to the Brits, I aim to foster both cultural and linguistic partnerships and make both nations feel equally at home with each other.

Who am I?

1/ UPON GRADUATING

I embarked on an IBM graduate training programme for three years before travelling around the world for just over a year, latterly in South America where my Spanish proved invaluable. On returning, I sought work using my language skills, getting a job firstly as a European trainer for a database company, then as Account Manager in Europe and Asia for and then moving into marketing where I worked as European Marketing Communications Manager for AP Dow Jones.

2/ FAMILY & TEACHING

By this point I had met and married my husband, John, and I soon fell pregnant will our first daughter, at which point I decided to be a full-time Mum for a couple of years. By the time our second and third daughters came along I was already doing part-time language teaching and I soon undertook teacher training for the post-16 sector.

3/ TESOL QUALIFICATION

Before heading to Brittany, France, where we lived for a couple of years, I studied for a TESOL qualification, and spent much of my time in France giving French lessons to British people living there and English lessons to French, both individuals and also business professionals.

4/ BIRTH OF LANGUAGE GATEWAY

After returning from France in 2010 I continued to give online lessons part-time but I also did my PGCE for language teaching in secondary schools. I then worked as an MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) teacher until the summer of 2016, when I decided I would rather build up my own business, offering a variety of lessons in both France and England. Language Gateway was thus born, and with it a medium for me to pass on my enthusiasm for languages and the opportunities which are opened up through them, both in the work-place and beyond. In the summer of 2018 I moved over to France on a more permanent basis, to our lovely home in Corseul Brittany, where I will be all the more able to meet the language needs of my students.

5/ VARIETY OF TEACHING

I love the variety of teaching both adults and children, each of whom bring different facets into the “classroom”. Ultimately, of course, each student is an individual, with their own particular background, abilities, needs and desires. My challenge, which I enjoy, is getting to know each person on an individual level, so that I can motivate them and help them to succeed in their language goals.

BIRTH OF “@HOME WITH FRENCH”

With our two family homes in France and England respectively we are often travelling between the two, and I have for some time wanted to promote cultural and linguistic links between my two homelands. Thus was born the idea of “@Home with French” to bring Brits and Bretons closer together, both linguistically and culturally.