Bonjour... My name is Alexandre de Chambure.
French teacher, linguist at heart, and founder of Language City.
I'm the former private English tutor of French President Chirac's daughter, and the former private French tutor of Golden Globe winner Jessica Chastain, Ali Larter from the TV show Heroes, and many Hollywood celebrities including actors, producers, writers and CEO's from Lionsgate, Miramax, Friends, CSI, NCIS, Full House, Pushing Daisies, and many more.
At the tender age of 11, I fell in love with the English language & decided I would become fluent by the age of 18.
At the age of 15, after studying 2 or 3 hours a day, knowing all the grammar by heart, and after memorizing entire vocabulary books, I went to the US for the 1st time & realized I couldn't understand a word of English.
It took me years of full immersion, being proactive and asking questions to become truly bilingual.
• I found out many rules I'd learned were either inaccurate or partially true.
• I was missing 80% of the useful vocabulary I needed to hold a conversation.
• There were quite a few useful structures I'd never learned in school.
• No one had taught me the informal pronunciation patterns Americans use when speaking, making contractions & taking shortcuts throughout sentences.
For the first years of my career, I was guilty of doing like all other French teachers... →