Liz and Linda are both qualified and experienced tutors who have studied, lived and worked in France.   Both tutors run courses for the Devon Adult and Community Learning service (under the Devon County Council umbrella), as well as their independently run workshops and courses.

Most importantly we both specialise in helping adult learners to actually speak French. We are well aware that knowledge of the rules of the language are of little help when you want to say something to some-one in France, but nothing comes out!! We also know how worried adult learners usually are about forgetting words, making mistakes, going blank, holding the others in the group back, and so on. People are usually calling to mind their less-than-comfortable memories of school French. As tutors the most important thing we can do is to make sure everyone feels comfortable and create a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Mistakes are part of the learning process and also part of the fun, so nothing is taken too seriously. No-one can learn to speak a language unless they are relaxed and one of our jobs is to create the right environment for your language learning.

We will be running the workshop as a team and you will be able to benefit from hearing us speaking French to each other during the day, as well as being able to tune in to and participate in all the usual interaction going on between individual students working in pairs, involvement in small group activities and taking part in activities where tutors and students will be talking and listening to each other. 

Liz Oliver
Degree in French and Comparative Literature; further studies at the University of Toulouse in France. Teacher and teacher trainer in Paris for several years, and specialist in teaching French and English to adults in France, the Middle East and the UK. French tutor in the Devon Adult and Community Learning Service since 1991 currently teaching French at various levels.

Linda Jackson
Licence and Maitrise in linguistics, University of Paris; Ph. D. in lingustics, University of Florida; Lecturer in French, University of Surrey with research interests in Second Language Acquisition and Communicative Language Learning and Teaching; French tutor in the Devon Adult and Community Learning service since 2004 currently teaching French at various levels.

Email us for more details or to arrange to have a chat if you're unsure about anything