French - Calm & Confident Speaking Lab

I help adults worldwide and VCE students in Year 10 and 11 locally in Victoria, Australia, move from ‘I can count to 10 in French and introduce myself’ to confidently speaking at B1-B2 level in 1-2 years, with only one 60‑minute session per week. Or much, much faster if you have more time to invest.

I helped complete beginners to successfully prepare and pass their French exam for Canadian immigration in just 32 hours (while it normally takes 80h)! I brought a VCE student barely speaking at our first lesson to a level where I had to stop her, so the other student could practice! :-D

My students consistently improve oral exam scores and feel prepared, not panicked.

We also cover stress management techniques and exam strategies.

Why? Because speaking a foreign language is already challenging per se, let alone at an exam!

This is not just your average French tutoring. This is:

  • Brain friendly nervous‑system‑regulating approach including metacognitive awareness, mindfulness and breathing exercices…

  • …coupled with French, taught in a way that annihilates stress during the lessons and teaches how to cope with it during the exam.

  • Deep, long‑term transformation to B2 speaking confidence and fluency foundations, not just homework help.

  • Genuinely safe speaking practice in small groups.

I'm a qualified and highly experienced French teacher who taught and assessed exams at Alliance Française of Melbourne, Beaconhills college, Wesley college, St Bede's College, Ivanhoe Grammar and DFSL (Australian Defence Force School of Languages - multiple times. You bet Defence would not call me back if they were not happy with my teaching!). I also studied and worked in France for 15 years in professional settings at Thales, so I practiced professional French in real life, including running meetings and training sessions, writing emails and also translating to and from French as volunteer helping refugees in France.

Since I moved to Australia, even when I worked full time in IT roles, I always kept a couple of French students alongside my main job because I love teaching French and I love seeing students’ fluency increase by the minute.

VCE French oral exam results of my two students last year (Oct 2025):

35/40 and 36/40. French scales strongly for ATAR, e.g. 36 scaling to 47.

I offer both in person (Cockatoo Vic) and online French lessons - book a free call to discuss.

I use a unique Silent Way approach I learned from Roslyn Young, Director at Pronunciation Science Ltd. I’m the only French teacher in Australia AFAIK using this approach, and one of only a very few globally. Silent Way makes use of colours to bypass non-phonetic French spelling (where the written word almost never matches its pronunciation) - it’s a genius move its creator Caleb Gattegno took. It also creates unambiguous situations using coloured rods for students to describe. It’s called “Silent Way” because the teacher is mostly silent (but very active in facilitating learning) - students are those who speak! I provide continuous feedback and leave no stone unturned, so students always know if their production is correct and can be retained.

Here is my Superprof profile I recently created (it only captures a small fraction of my past students feedback!).

Book a free intro call

Nadia Ivanova teaching the French Modular Course (MPC) at Defence Force School of Languages (Laverton, Vic) where Australian Defence Force students go from 0 to B2 proficiency in 1 year.