My teaching degree and my French language degrees demonstrate that I love to assist others to learn to understand and speak French. My education and career of 35 years as an attorney demonstrate that I am able to teach how to excel as a legal professional in a foreign language. My lessons begin with listening to the language and focusing only on what you can understand at your stage - even if it is merely the strange sounds. You listen to a small segment as often as you want to pick up even more aurally the second or third time around. Constant listening allows you to frequently hear words that are very similar to the words in your own language to accelerate your knowledge of the foreign language - even the similar words with different meanings. You repeat what you hear with the new sounds of the French, not yours. You then develop the four skills of learning a language: first aural understanding and speaking, then reading and writing. You learn to operate in the foreign language with hints as to why it is spoken as it is. You increase the vocabulary and subject matter of the listening segments. At this stage, it is alright to "intelligently guess" the meaning of what you hear because you develop the continued concentration to follow the meaning as you listen to a conversation. Your understanding of the French increases through repetition at the normal spoken speed. You can learn to verify the meaning of an unknown segment by asking the speaker if you understood correctly, as part of the conversation. After feeling comfortable with operating in the language by listening and speaking by repetition, you begin spelling and reading to fortify your confidence and assist in the operation of the language in different subject matter areas. With certain comfortable listening and speaking skills, the student increases vocabulary in the area that they are interested in with constant listening exercises. The student eventually develops the ability to use their known knowledge of the language within the context of the spoken language to "intellectually guess" and determine what the unknown portions of the conversation are. When reading, the students review the glossary first so that they develop a passive vocabulary, thus they do not have to look up every word they are not familiar with, so the reading goes much more fluently and rapidly.