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Nicole Courtet
Nicole Courtet was born in Paris, grew up in the Loire Valley, spending many vacations in Franche-Comté, the region of her family roots.
She holds Bachelor's degree in Spanish and in General Linguistics, and a Master's degree in Linguistics Applied to the Teaching of French as a Foreign Language, from the Université de Besançon. She has spent extensive time in Spain where she first had the enriching experience of living in a foreign culture.
Nicole taught French to adults at the Centre de Linguistique Appliquée de Besançon for two years, at the Alliance Française de San Francisco for 20 years, at the Monterey Institute of International Studies for two summers, and briefly at Berlitz. She has been on the staff of the Alliance Française de Berkeley for 12 years. She returns to France every year, with her bi-lingual American husband of 30+ years, for family reunions.
Outside of the classroom, you will find Nicole in nature on the hiking trails, and on her old beloved bicycle in the streets of Berkeley.
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Anne Le Masson
Anne has been teaching at the Alliance in Berkeley for about 15 years and a little longer at the Alliance in San Francisco.
Born and raised in Brittany, she studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and English at the university in Brest. After graduating from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts she moved to London to work and study, then on to California where she worked as an assistant in French in a High School. The next five years she lived in Paris, working at the cultural section of the American Embassy (USIS). Anne moved back to California in 1990 and has been teaching on site at a variety of Bay Area businesses as well as at the Alliance Francaise. Six years ago she started a week-long summer program in Provence in association with a chef, combining French immersion, culinary classes and cultural outings. She has taught French classes at Hillcrest Elementary School in Oakland. Although she enjoyed it very much, she prefers working with adults.
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Chantal Wilson
Born in Paris, Chantal is a true Parisian, who has nevertheless been attracted by other cities and places. She has worked in different jobs which have allowed her to cultivate her taste for traveling and learning other languages: English, German, Italian, Spanish and Greek. She actually met her American husband in one of her trips.
She has two BA in literature and history from the University of Paris VII. In preparation for coming to live in California she received training for two years to obtain the Daefle (teaching diploma for teaching French as a Second Language) from the Alliance Française de Paris.
She has taught at the AFSF and AFB since she moved here in 2002. In order to teach children, she took classes in Early Childhood Education at the Merritt College (Oakland) and obtain a degree as Assistant Teacher in 2007.
She loves teaching and working with people. In order to help her students to better understand the actual spoken French and the nuances of pronunciation, she wrote a book "C'est Clair ! Comprendre le Français parlé" that explains the anomalies of oral syntax and is useful for recognising actual vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. She uses it in her "Atelier de l'Oral" class.
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Olivier Walty
Olivier is a native of the Champagne region (hence his bubbly personality!) but spent most of his time between Paris, its suburbs and the French Riviera.
He has been a French teacher for the Alliance Francaise since 2004 in the Bay Area and San Francisco. Graduate of French and Literature Baccalauréat, he also has experience in the cinema industry as an audiovisual student. Olivier is involved in theater, painting, drawing and music making. At times, he enjoys needlepoint on French tapestries to relax. Olivier's method in teaching French is based on progressive conversation, grammar and intuition, asking each student to become an element, an actor in class and to interact at every level.
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Ingrid Rombaut
Ingrid was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium.
While her first college degree was in musicology, Ingrid's interest and passion for languages were already obvious in high school, where she accepted the challenge to write and defend her baccalaureate paper in Dutch instead of French, her first language.
Ten years later, enriched by her years of French teaching experience in elementary and middle schools, she studied linguistics applied to teaching foreign languages to adults at UC Berkeley. Later on, she also obtained the Cambridge CELTA Certificate, and a degree in Early Childhood Development.
A polyglot herself, she has a keen understanding of what the students need in order to begin to master a foreign language. Being multilingual and having taught students of many different mother tongues has greatly helped her relate to the specific pronunciation and sentence structure challenges of her students.
Ingrid has taught French at the Alliance Française de Berkeley for six years, and also teaches ESL and Portuguese. Her students know how thorough she is, and appreciate the special attention they get with their pronunciation challenges.
Ingrid has had experience teaching students of all ages and levels, from preschoolers to older adults, in Belgium, Brazil, England, and California. She enjoys teaching both children and adults, whether at the Alliance Française, at corporate sites, or privately.
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Guy Cassegrain
Born in Pamiers (Ariège) in southern France, Guy grew up in Paris. At the age of six he moved to New York with his family and there attended the Lycée Français de N.Y. The family returned to France to live near Versailles. After completing his B.A. in literature at the Université de Paris-Vincennes he became a translator, moving later to Boston to study music. While there he also began to work as an interpreter at the Kennedy Library, Harvard, MIT, the French Consulate, the INS, in the courts, and in industry. Starting in Boston, he has enjoyed teaching and tutoring French to people of all ages - at the Alliance Française-French Library, Berlitz - and privately. He likes to engage students of all levels in sentence-building and conversation so that they can make practical use of the lessons and methods that he teaches.
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