Experienced tutor of French, puts you at ease and helps you with your project

Find out more about Odile

• 1) Do you speak this language fluently because of your origins or because a teacher inspired you to learn?

  I speak French fluently because I was born and bred in France. I came to live in England in the 1990s, so I have spent half of my life in both languages, French and English, in France and in England.

• 2) Can you name a living, historical or fictional character that you think is the emblematic representative of the language's culture?

  Coluche was a humourist, a standup comedian if you prefer, in the 1980s. He was very popular and ended up featuring in a few films. He died tragically in a motorbike accident. I liked his love for the people and his fine, never condescending nor humiliating style, he was a gentle soul who managed to speak loudly against social injustice, taking part for example in the Restos du cœur, to feed people living in the street or the disadvantaged.

• 3) Is there a typical word, phrase, tradition or behaviour in the language that you particularly like?

  There are a lot of funny words to say, like ‘Riquiqui’ (tiny) or ‘Chouchouter’ (pamper), which make my anglophone friends laugh. I particularly enjoy the sound of words and their capacity to evoke thoughts or trigger your imagination. Personally, I like playing with words. You have ‘Cétacée’ (Cetacean) which sounds like ‘C’est assez’ (That’s enough).

• 4) Why does speaking this language matter to you?

  I have a real love of languages, but further than that, what appeals to me in languages is the ability to switch from one world of sounds and ideas to another in an instant, by switching languages. Actually, words in different languages do cohabit seamlessly, it has been shown that we have the translation of all the different languages we know appearing simultaneously in our brain, activated or not, at our disposal, when we speak.

• 5) What is the main difficulty in learning this language and what can help the process of learning?

  The main difficulty in learning French is the irrational number of words that are spelt very differently to how they are sounded. In other words, unlike Arabic, a sound does not correspond to one unique graph. The conjugation and the gender of words might also feel alien to a lot of language-learners who tackle French for the first time.
  An important piece of advice is not to stop yourself when you make mistakes. I think that's where creativity kicks in an allies itself with the theoretical learning of languages. You must be ready to go out there and try your newly-learnt language in real-life situations, taking part in discussions or simply going shopping or visiting places. I also realised that the natives themselves make mistakes; we are only humans.

• 6) Provide a valuable anecdote related to your language learning or your days at school.

  I was educated in a private school, a Catholic school run by nuns, and every Friday morning, the mother superior would come in and line us up against the wall and we were asked maths questions, like timetables for instance. The last one standing, who had managed to find all the answers, would win a prize. I remember winning a bar of minty sweets. I think it is telling of the way we were taught to learn. It was a motivating environment.

• 7) How has travel or a specific trip helped you to increase your skill and knowledge of the language?

  I would say it is essential to live in the country where the language you learn is taught. When I first came to England more than 30 years ago, I only understood a third of what I had learnt at university. The regional accent (Yorkshire) that I could hear as well as the street talk or the noisy pubs environments gave me no choice but to perfect my use of the language on a daily basis.

• 8) What makes you a Superprof in language?

  Definitely my love of languages! I really like to communicate with people in a friendly way because it establishes a human connection that enables people to grow and develop, more obviously as we are in a language-learning context. I like discovering new stories, new ideas and new situations every time I meet a new person on Superprof.