Learning requires lots of patience, and so, I exhibit a step-by-step learning process aimed at letting the student grasp the basis of whatever I teach. Being somehow a complex language relative to English, French demands that a student be careful with its grammatical rules and semantics. This could sometimes be discouraging, but a way around it is usually done with fun—which I do so gladly.
Learning a language also comes with learning its culture—as well as its history. To make learning more interesting, I blend music, poetry and history into the lessons in order to spice them up. Ranging from texts and music from the Métropole (mainland France), its DOM/TOM (overseas regions and territories) to the rest of "la francophonie" (the French speaking world), students come to appreciate the variety of the French language and its nuanced accents, as well as certain diction perculiar to each regional dialect of the language.
To test the level of students' comprehension, I usually give assignments at the end of each lesson. Lessons are then corrected and – if need be– lessons are repeated or new lessons are introduced.
Worthy of mention is the need to make periodic comparisons between English and French as a way of letting the student appreciate and effectively grasp how the language is structured and how it works.
By the end of every level (right from fresh beginner level to mid-intermediate), students should be at ease in reading, writing, and speaking French with competence commensurate with their level of learning.