French Classes For Neurodivergent Learners
Our French school proposes individualized bilingual French classes for the discerning 40+ learner.
In an exclusive, service-led atmosphere, we put at your disposal exceptional language skills for a permier learning experience.
Hi, my name’s Chris the owner of this school and the creator of all the learning content.
For more info about my journey and my qualifications, please click here:
Why neurodivergent?
The term “neurodivergent” wasn’t one that was used in my time in school. We could say that the whole purpose of education was to standardize thought and behaviour. A kid such as myself who did badly in school was considered either lazy, incapable or rebellious. There were no other options. Our baby-boomer parents were not trained to think in terms of psychology, and the schools were not equipped to deal with this.
After barely scraping through high-school and repeating two years, I left education with a sense of exclusion. I was told that there were “academic” people and those that weren’t. As far back as I could remember, I was a poor student – even at age 7. It had accepted the idea and did not expect to do any better than low-average.
I then went into active life following high school and did any low-entry job I could find: setting up stages at events, working for removal companies, working as a bellboy in a hotel…and discovering the joys of creating music.
At 22, I met local musicians who composed their own songs and played shows. It was like a life injection that I had never suspected existed. I dove into the lifestyle and creative process and wrote song after song. Twenty years later, I’m still at it and play the drums, the trombone, the guitar and the bass. I create tunes daily and can never seem to dry up or run out of ideas. I always have 3 bands on the go (at least in my mind) and constantly come up with tunes to record.
Are my songs any good? Actually, this is where the neurodiverse aspect shows its face. I have a solo project on the acoustic guitar called August Bag for which the “rule of the game” is to invent standalone songs on a 10 dollar guitar from East Germany while seeking inspiration in nature. The purpose is to prove to myself that it is possible to write songs with minimal equipment. I do not care for production nor if anyone likes my songs. To me, the tunes make perfect sense and were not meant to be heard or shared. They are music for my own creative needs, and not for other people. It brought it up one level by inventing “necro-folk”, which is the fact of adapting to music old poems from the early to late Middle-Ages in English and in French. I find a poem, give it two tries and record a tune of my phone. It is individualistic music of the highest order.
To me, neurodiverse might be the fact of processing our life experience through a different set of filters. What appears satisfactory to the average is dreary to me. “how can this be enough?”, I ask myself. “Where is the beauty in this”? I’m always analyzing, re-thinking, comparing and trying to re-design. I often make connections where others see none and come to the conclusion that the narrative is absurd.
Just yesterday, I was angered by the sudden cancellation of a class that I was teaching through another school. They sent me a cold email saying “sorry we’re shutting down the class, not enough students wish to take it anymore”. What I saw was a different narrative: The school should have told me from the start “Listen, this is an experimental class that students are liable to quit at any time. We won’t tell you this in advance because we treat tutors like disposeable sh** which in turn makes us sh** also.”
This school (OFA Lycée) didn’t see an issue and didn’t quite connect the dots as I did. To them, we are still on good terms and all is fair in the Law of Business. But no. You are dealing with a neurodiverse teacher who sees 10 step ahead and sees you for what you are. Contemptible people.
You may wonder how a neuro-atypical musician ended up a teacher? It all started in my childhood: I was raised in two languages and cultures, which may have had the effect of “splitting my brain” for lack of a better description. I have an English side and a French side, both as a language, and identity and a culture. I feel that this has also given me the depth of perception I am hereby attempting to describe.
When I was 34, I found out there was a Government-run program that enabled adults to go to university if they met certain profession requirements. I set out for a Masters in English and German after a 15-year break from school, with no academic abilities or method.
It is then that I discovered that if I did things on my own terms, I could be quite good at studying. I passed all my degrees with Distinction and proved to myself that I was in fact quite capable.
From freethinking artist, I was able to transition to academic nerd and learn German in the process. Such is our secret power!
How a neurodivergent person might like this French course
To a neurodivergent person, many typical things make little sense. We are not better, just different in our appreciation. For example I see the typical French classes taught by “Franco-French” teachers and ask myself how it makes any sort of sense to learn from a teacher who has no idea what it’s like to be YOU?
Since your whole appreciation and subconscious understanding of language is based on English, how would it make sense to learn from a French teacher who cannot possibly know what goes on in your brain?
These “normal” practices have been done forever precisely because they are “neurotypical”. Sorry, but it makes no sense to us. None at all.
OuiCommunicate was created after several prior versions through different websites until its final form today. I built it following principles that made sense to me and with the ambition to be “the best” in the field.
First, I see language as an organic entity. An ocean, you might call it. For this reason, I do not lock students into levels of learning. The typical A1/A2/B1/B2/C1/C2 scale might make sense to some people, but to me they are just overly-vague constructs that find little relevance in reality. You either can’t speak at all, are able to express your thoughts, or can speak in an impressive way. These are all the levels you need to worry about.
After offering complete freedom to navigate and to discover French, I complement this learning-friendly structure with comprehensive and ultra-clear learning material. People such as myself get extremely aggravated when trying to make sense of someone else’s unstructured thoughts. Each one of my PDFs and video is made with structure and clarity in mind. No guessing, no scratching of heads. Just clear answers and relevant exercises to learn French.
The next step was to look at “normal” language classes and realize that they made no sense. The human brain cannot concentrate straight for 60 or 120 minutes and yet all these “top-level” langue schools are still selling knowledge by the minute. I shorted my classes to 20 minutes and created a system in which learners would show up and give me their best. They would explain to me their learning and I would assess them during these 20 minutes. I reversed the traditional “neurotypical” role of the teacher in the process. Yes, that very same that never worked in the first place!
I realized that students were not walking out of the class with 60 minutes’ worth of knowledge. How could it make sense to do it? Why pay for something that was mostly lost? So I changed this.
As a perfect bilingual native of English and French, I knew I could see much further into the learning of my students than the average French teacher. Though not a miracle solution, I does help quite a lot when explaining the reasons for mistakes and understanding why they happen. It also helps to be a qualified teacher of English with a degree in Linguistics. Not only do I know where you come from as a native but I also know the structure of English on a scientific level. This whole French course was designed exclusively for speakers of English.
I encourage independent learning, curiosity and freedom of discovery. I strongly dislike to be “boxed in” and as such I offer THE French. Not a part of it and not chunks of it. There are no levels and there is no clutter. You only get the necessary relevant skills that will be useful to you when learning French.
This course is naturally open to all, either neurodivergent or not. It focuses on the native speaker of English in view of making the leaning more approachable.
Click on our Learning Plans to discover our resources:
How to use our resources:
In 5 easy steps, each student has their own study plan. Your teacher will recommend specific parts of our French program, which you then complete in your own time. When you feel ready, meet up again for an evaluation of your skills.
Book a consultation
You can book a French class now.
We will meet on this website. Top of the page you will see CLASS. When you have the password, you will be able to log into our virtual class.
And even before that, we are happy to phone you to learn about your current level of French.
More about the owner...
Do you know, I only recently discovered the term “neurodivergent”. My wife actually has ADHD but I never suspected that it could apply to me. As I saw it, I was just a creative guy with a deep thought process. I didn’t know that it could carry a label.
Is it an accident though that the people I connected with at university had Asperger’s (for one) and were neuro “atypical” for the other? Yes indeed, I only had two friends. Two “out of the norm” students who are both completing their PhDs today. Like myself, they also failed miserably in high school. Could there be a pattern? Oh wait, my brother also has a PhD and he’s quite outside of the box also. I wonder…
Since I was recently told that I qualify as one, I feel I’ve gained a better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. I’m still hyper-sensitive to noises and find it hard to accept certain “typical” thought processes (the downsides) And I still indulge in daily creations with my teaching, my music and my photography. (the upsides)
Below, I provide links to some of my artistic projects to give a better insight into a typical week might look like for me.
I hope you enjoy visiting these pages and I hope I will have the pleasure of meeting you for some top-level French classes. Merci !
Discover a few of my projects
Chris the Trombonist
August Bag
Photography
Chris the Bassist
Two videos for an in-depth understanding:
Explore our resources
How we use bilingualism
