French

Next to English, French is the most popular second language in the world.  Over 29 countries, from Europe to Africa to the Caribbean, use French as their official language.  And we haven’t even mentioned the food!  French is one of those languages that lavishes rewards upon anyone willing to put in the effort to learn it, and that’s where Cambridge Coaching comes in. We offer customized private French tutorials at all levels:

  • Beginners: introduction to grammar, speaking, and basic characters (sample syllabus here)
  • Intermediate: taking reading, writing, and speaking to the next level
  • Advanced: exploring seminal texts and literary/business French

We have also worked with even more advanced students looking to prepare for a standardized test, or to fine-tune oral skills through conversation tutorials that emphasize usage, vocabulary, and the mastery of common idiom--and even slang.

Our French tutors are exceptional teachers - they are PhD candidates and teaching fellows at NYU and Harvard University, published authors, and professional French teachers. They can teach anyone French; whether you're planning a long-dreamt trip around wine country, or looking to gain an edge in the college process by acing the French SAT subject test.

Select the focus that is right for you to learn more about how we can help you improve your French.

Academic    Test Preparation    Business    Enrichment    Cultural Exploration

Suggested Approaches

Our 5 favorite approaches are inclusive of all linguistic goals from grammar heavy test preparation and translation to conversational enrichment and business packages. While each of the language teaching methods below can be effective, your specific goals will impact which method we choose for your tutoring.

Resources

Because we are not invested in selling proprietary materials, we prefer to draw from the numerous language learning and teaching methods available to us. Here are some of our favorites:

Daily Immersion: Newspapers & Music

In addition to what you study during your tutoring session, one of the most fun aspects of learning a new language is exploring the culture that it comes from! Check out podcasts, music and local newspapers to get a taste of French culture.

Podcasts are a great way to supplement your language classes. Immerse yourself in French as you stroll through Harvard Square, or as you walk down Lexington Avenue.

Local and regional newspapers are a great way to follow current events in your new language, while advancing your reading comprehension:

There are also tons of newspapers published in the United States that cater to bilingual populations. Find these daily publications around NYC or Boston to get local news in your target language.

Tip: Highlight or make a list of the words you do not recognize as you read. Don’t stop to look them up immediately. Finish the article and see how much you can understand without the dictionary. Then, look up the words, and re-read. This process may seem repetitive, but it asks your brain to work a bit more actively, and will yield results!

Don’t miss out on French music! Some musicians are particularly easy to listen to in their native tongue. Listening to music will get you comfortable hearing your target language and help your comprehension.  While you’re at it, you’ll expand your knowledge of colloquial vernacular and regional slang.  

Tip: Look up the lyrics in English before starting so you have a sense of the meaning of the song before you start listening. This will make it easier to recognize vocabulary.

Popular Subjects: Elementary French, Intermediate French, Advanced French, French Grammar Intensive, Conversational French, Advanced Reading & Writing, Classic French Literature, French Language & Culture, Francophone Readings, Business French
Tests: French SAT Subject Test, AP French Language, AP French Literature, French Proficiency Exam (College and Graduate Level)
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French Tutors

Emma

Emma was born and raised in Washington, D.C.  where she attended the National Cathedral School for girls.  She attended the University of Chicago for college, where she earned her BA in English.  Her senior thesis, “Look at the Harlequins!: Nabokov’s Corpus Compendium” was nominated for the...

Manoah

Manoah was born in the Bay Area and raised in New Jersey’s endless suburbs. At the University of Chicago, Manoah earned two honors Bachelor’s degrees in English and French language and literature. He was admitted into Phi Beta Kappa as a junior and graduated in 2007. He then went on to earn an...

Max

Max claims Casper, Wyoming, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Cooperstown, New York as his hometowns, depending on whom he's talking to. He grew up loving the mountains, the Tar Heels and surviving as a lone Twins fan in Yankee-country. He went off to Carleton College in Minnesota, where he earned...

Sam A.

A true Manhattanite from head to toe, Sam attended Horace Mann High School before emigrating, in a fit of wanderlust and questionable judgment, to Ireland to enroll in the English Department of Trinity College Dublin. At Trinity, he earned honors and had his poetry and prose published in a...

Eric I.

Eric grew up in Wisconsin, and double majored in history and English literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where occasional rumors that the school had a football team (“Badgers?”) reached him while he was getting hooked on the writing of Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot and Woolf. He...

Erica F

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Erica also lived in Brussels, Paris, and Massachusetts before coming to New York in 2005. Salutatorian of her high school class, she graduated a year early from Smith College, with high honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. During her time at Smith, Erica...

Ryan

Ryan P. was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and so remains—in accordance with the unwritten law of that city—a bantam of a Pittsburgh sports fan, even as he’s lived and worked in other places. In 2013, he graduated with a B.A., magna cum laude, in English Language and Literature from Yale...

Callum

Born in Scotland and raised in France, Callum is now a very happy resident of NYC. He graduated summa cum laude with a double major in Philosophy and Political science from the University of Exeter, where he was top of his philosophy class and made the deans' honors list. He recently completed...

Lina

Lina Verchery is a French Canadian filmmaker and lifelong student of religion. Born in Paris and raised in Nova Scotia, she did an Honors Undergraduate degree in Religion at McGill University in Montreal before coming to Harvard to pursue a PhD in Buddhist Studies as a Frank Knox Fellow and...

Patrick B.

Patrick grew up in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, then chased an education across an ocean before coming back home. Fascinated by how things work, he studied Materials Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he graduated Cum Laude, before going on for his Master’s at...

Mina

Mina is originally from Canada, brought up in the French speaking city of Montreal. She graduated from McGill University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and was the first at her university to receive the National IBM scholarship. Post-undergrad, Mina worked several years in consulting...

Guy

I did my undergrad in France at the Université de Limoges where I got a Maîtrise in English Literature, with a Minor in Linguistics. I then did an MA in Classics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, in which I performed “spectacularly” on the General Exams, to use the Chair’s own words. Finally...

Sophie

Sophie was born in France and moved to New York City in elementary school. After graduating from St. Ann’s School, she pursued a degree in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, graduating with honors. She also received a Master’s in Public Administration at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner School...

Alison

Alison grew up in Concord, MA, known for its literary and revolutionary history (Henry David Thoreau inspired the name of her first dog Walden). Alison has always loved reading and writing; at Brown University, she studied Comparative Literature and Italian Studies. While studying abroad for a...

Emily Mo.

Emily has always had a love of learning. She enjoyed coming early to elementary school for French lessons and math club, asked her middle school math teacher for extra homework, and was the valedictorian of her high school class at Northfield Mount Hermon. She graduated from Princeton University...

Elisabeth

Elisabeth was born and raised in Greenwich, CT. In 2015 she earned a Bachelor of Music with a double major in French and Cello Performance from Vanderbilt University, where she was a cello student of Felix Wang at the Blair School of Music. A cellist of 15 years, she has performed at Carnegie...

Emma ZC

Emma hails from rural Minnesota, where she frequented her local library to the point that her parents were forced to threaten returning her literary spoils as a form of disciplinary leverage. After graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2014...

Jonah

Jonah wore a wig as a child. This was not because he was ashamed of his head (although it was both the size and color of a pumpkin); it was because he was dressed as George Washington. Although he no longer regularly dons colonial apparel, Jonah is still an enormous nerd. His passion for...

Jonah

Jonah wore a wig as a child. This was not because he was ashamed of his head (although it was both the size and color of a pumpkin); it was because he was dressed as George Washington. Although he no longer regularly dons colonial apparel, Jonah is still an enormous nerd. His passion for...

Terry

Terry is from revolutionary Lexington, Massachusetts, where he grew up marching in parades as a minuteman until he was old enough to think better of it. He attended Amherst College, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with degrees in English and French. His thesis on medieval...

Alexa

A childhood fascination with animals and their habitats led Alexa to an early start in science education. Joining the Boston Museum of Science as a volunteer throughout high school and college, Alexa honed her skills as an engaging science educator for all ages. Valedictorian of her high school...

Hannah Y.

Hannah is a recent graduate of the Wharton School, where she completed an MBA and an MA in International Studies from the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. As a student at Wharton, Hannah spent her extracurricular time as an admissions reader for the MBA program and was able...

Serge

Serge is a French chemist who grew up in the northeast region of France, before moving to the great city of Lyon where he attended the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. He then moved to the US to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry at Columbia University in New York City, working mainly on...

Rachel

Rachel has wanted to be a teacher ever since she first assembled her teddy bears and dolls in a circle in her bedroom and assigned them homework. After graduating from the University of Virginia, where she double majored in Art History and French, Rachel spent two years in Europe. She taught...

Sydney

Sydney is a second-year law student at Harvard Law School from Montgomery County, Maryland. A National AP Scholar in high school, Sydney graduated from Princeton University in 2015 with an A.B. in English Literature and a certificate in French Language and Culture. In high school Sydney scored 5...

Jacob M.

Born and raised in South Boston, Jacob attended Princeton, where he developed long-abiding interests in Franco-Russian literary exchange, and concentrated in Comparative Literature, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in June 2013. After Princeton, Jacob completed an M.Phil in Modern...

Eric L.

Eric spent the first eighteen years of his life in Cleveland, but since then has lived in five different countries.  He went to college at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied History & Political Science and studied abroad his junior year at Sciences Po in Paris.  Eric then...

Eli

Eli was born in Russia and grew up in Israel, where he graduated from the IDC with a degree in Business Administration and Finance. He is currently an MBA candidate at Columbia Business School. During the summer, he interned at McKinsey Brazil, where he is going back as an associate upon...

Andrew M.

As a youngster in Ontario, Canada, Andrew always felt lost in French class, intimidated by the initial difficulties of language learning. However, when he went to live and study in Paris for his junior year of college, he fell in love with the language and intellectual culture. He now possesses...

Muriel

Muriel was born in Montreal and moved to the historic town of Lexington, Massachusetts where she lived until the end of high school. She attended Middlebury College and majored in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry with a minor in Global Health. Since sophomore year she pursued independent...

Laure

Whereas her third-grade peers dreaded “dictées” (French writing and spelling tests), Laure looked forward to them. Her love of French grammar and vocabulary is longstanding. After attending an arts high school where she majored in theatre and played Elmire in Molière’s Tartuffe, Laure completed...

Emily E.

A Midwest transplant, before coming to Cambridge, Emily attended Carleton College where she spent many hours exploring the college’s arboretum and majored in French and Francophone Studies. She graduated Summa Cum Laude and with distinction in her major and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Having...

Guy

Guy did his undergrad in France at the Université de Limoges where he got a Maîtrise in English Literature, with a Minor in Linguistics. He then did an MA in Classics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, in which he performed “spectacularly” on the General Exams, to use the Chair’s own words....

Stephanie M

Stephanía (or Stephanie, whichever is easier!) is originally from Puerto Rico, where she escapes when the winter comes. Stephanía attended the University of Puerto Rico, majoring in Foreign Languages (French, Portuguese, and Italian), International Relations and Government, Law, and Public...

Eliane

Originally from California’s Bay Area, Eliane attended bilingual French school growing up, and spent much of her childhood in Brittany, France. She studied philosophy at the University of Chicago, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with Special Departmental Honors. Her senior thesis, on the...

Andy D.

Andy is a Brooklynite by way of Kansas City and Marseille, France. A passionate language teacher, writing coach, and UX designer, he earned his PhD in French literature from NYU while also helping to create a language teaching chatbot for the wildly popular app Duolingo. Andy currently works as...

Aubrey K.

Aubrey was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs and has since lived in Paris, London, and New York. She began studying French in high school because Italian wasn’t an option, but this second choice language soon became her top priority. As an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, she...

Elizabeth Anne K.
Anne R.

As an undergraduate at Wellesley College, Anne’s love of language and reading led her to double major in Linguistics and French. After a year studying abroad in the south of France, she was determined to spend many more years living à la française after she graduated. She taught English in two...

Melanie L.

Melanie was born to NY parents, grew up in LA, and feels happiest when she’s living in Paris. After realizing that her favorite part of all her English and history classes was thinking about all the people (and characters), she majored in psychology with the philosophy track at Yale University,...

Apolline J.

Apolline was born in Paris, France and moved to LA when she was a kid. After bouncing around a bit, her family ultimately settled in Boston. She is the second of five kids, so she grew up helping her little siblings with homework and beating them at basketball. Her younger brother is now 6 ft...

Max No.

Max was born and raised in Northern California, near the redwood groves that perch on the Pacific Coast. He then moved east to attend Yale College, where he received his BA in Literature. At Yale, Max won the Calabresi Prize for best senior thesis in comparative literature. He continued with a...

Parker L.

Parker grew up in California and London in a French-American family. After graduating from Yale University with a B.S. in Geology & Geophysics, he became a Policy Advisor for Natural Resources at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where his portfolio touched on...