Etienne L.

I am a 34 year-old French person who has been living and teaching in Vietnam, exploring Asia and working in a broadly international environment for 10 years. I am personally passionate about History, Arts and Literature, as well as learning and teaching languages.

As a teacher, I have come to realize that generally students know far more than they actually think they know. Moreover, they have strong intellectual abilities to acquire skills, understand and master concepts and information thanks to to their youth. The reason why they may be struggling with a subject is often due to a delay in skills acquisition prior to tackle a course at a certain level, a lack of attention to their specific problems and difficulties from the teachers (often due the the academic system itself) or a lack of motivation, originating from a mental block or learning trauma.

That is why I first make it a point of importance to really simplify difficult concepts or pieces of knowledge as much as possible, and build lessons that lead the students to understand them by themselves progressively, through Q&A, easy tasks that break down things to set a very step-by-step comprehension process, and other activities that involve the students and keep them active in every moment of the lesson.
I always strive to create lead-ins, activities, and present lessons in a way that I know will trigger their interest and hopefully strengthen their motivation for the subject.
I am really willing to understand why students may have difficulties with a particular subject and find an adapted and tailored way to lift the block.

I am definitely committed to help you improve fast in the subjects I specialize in and to help you overcome your difficulties with a tailored approach.

• IB DP diploma program:
• Language and literature, French. 4 years in teaching students, building a syllabus and lesson plans for self-taught students enrolled in IB schools.
• History: 2 years teaching the IB MYP Humanities curriculum in an international IB school. 1 year of tutoring DP History. Excellent knowledge of the curriculum and examination requirements and demanded methodology.
• French ab initio and French B: 2 years as a teacher in charge of teaching French ab initio to IB students, in a very difficult period (covid 19 years). Building of an original syllabus and lesson plan for this course and running exams successfully with a high success rate among my students. Also, 2 years tutoring for French ab initio and French B to DP students.
• IB Geography A, in French: Just had a student who I covered a large part of the two-year curriculum with, preparing lessons, reviewing the research paper and doing mock exams at a very regular frequency as the teacher was a bit overwhelmed in his school.
• French baccalaureate:
• 5 years tutoring History, Literature and other subjects for students enrolled in the French international school, before and after the last reform.
• French AP exams:
• 2 years preparing students for the French AP examination in an American international school in Hanoi.
• Others:
• 10 years teaching French as a Second Language (FLE) to students of various origin, age, and with very diverse learning objectives: French for university, French for expatriation, French for specific exam (DELF, DALF, TCF), French for daily life communication, French for non-native students enrolled in French schools.
• ESL: 3 years teaching English for various purposes as well: professional English for staff, academic ESL for non-native students, English reinforcement for non-native students enrolled in English-speaking schools, IELTS preparation.

• My teaching method is based on how I define the teacher's role:
• An enticer: students are as interested as others in understanding the world that surrounds them and they are truly concerned about achieving good results and developing their skills: all they need sometimes is a little trigger to understand their own interest in learning, and grow their curiosity for a topic. This is what the teacher must first do, in order to put them back on track: find ways to motivate them.
• A facilitator: students are lost due to many things that block them from understanding concept: lack of terminology that makes acquiring new knowledge too obscure and tough, for example. The teacher is here to simplify things and progressively build the student's capacity to handle complexity.
• A revealer: the teacher is also here to show the students that they do not need anyone to process and produce information, and drive them progressively towards becoming autonomous, as nobody will be here to help them during the examination. To achieve this, the teacher's role is to to guide students to finding the answer by themselves, rather than just stuffing them with blunt knowledge. At every stage of the lesson, the student should be using their own wits, and figure things out progressively by themselves, which is also rewarding.