Your Passport to Mastering the English Language
I provide customized English language lessons to learners of all ages and levels.
I believe that learning a new language should be engaging, interactive and personalized.
I am passionate about helping my students achieve their personal, academic and professional goals.
TOEFL/TOEIC Lessons
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Prepare for the TOEFL or TOEIC Exam with an expert
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Improve your Writing, Reading, Speaking, Listening
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Improve grammar & conversation skills
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Discuss a wide-variety of topics
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Boost fluency & confidence
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All materials are provided
1:1 Writing Classes
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Private Academic writing lesson
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Easy to book - according to your schedule
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For both Americans and International Students
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ALL AGES
1:1 Reading Lessons
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This reading course fits the needs of the student
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For all ages, both children and adults can take this course
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Practice over thousands of e-books with Melissa to improve your pronunciation, reading skills, and vocabulary to boost your fluency!
About Me
Melissa has been teaching English to children and adults since 2007. Since day one, she knew she had found her calling.
Melissa was born and spent the first 20 years of her life in San Jose, California, a.k.a. The Silicon Valley.
She spent 2 years teaching English to teachers in rural Thailand in the Peace Corps, and for the past 7 years, she has been living in France with her husband and daughter.
She has taught both online as well as at the University of California in San Diego, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Blaise Pascal in France. She currently lives in the south of France.
Her positive attitude and friendly disposition make her a good fit for any level and age group.
Melissa loves teaching Grammar in an effective and interactive way, and she also enjoys learning languages in her free time. In addition to English, Melissa speaks Thai, Spanish, and French.
Recommendations
"With absolute certainty, I highly recommend Melissa if you’re are searching for professional English language coaching. Actually, she was more than an English teacher for me - she helped me during my career search with invaluable suggestions regarding how to organize and write my professional profile and other complex related documents. I’m an Italian native speaker and when I moved to San Jose (California), I struggled a lot in performing interviews especially due to my accent. Throughout our six months working together, Melissa was an endlessly encouraging and positive force who always pushed me to take my thinking one step further and make my goals as ambitious as possible. She gave me the best tips to accelerate progress and helped me understand my mistakes. I saw the impact of her teaching in all areas of my life. I love her for her great humanitarian sensitivity."
Laura Ciravolo
Director of Research Facilities and Operations
University of California Santa Cruz
2021
"I highly recommend Melissa as a personal English teacher. I had received her teaching for 9 months and was impressed with her teaching. For example, she was trying to search and make up for student's weak points through sufficient conversation (etc, a variety of grammar and vocabulary exercises, and easy play for learning).
Moreover, she is not only intelligent and friendly but has a strong sense of responsibility for the client's lesson and promise. I have no doubt that your choice in choosing her as your teacher would be nice and great."
SK Hynix Employee
Santa Clara, California
2018
"First, I am pleased to be able to recommend Melissa. Melissa taught English to my family for over two years.
Before recommending Melissa, I will briefly introduce my family as listed. I have worked as a software engineer for Samsung Electronics' 13 years and joined Hynix in the US in 2015. At that time, our family had no experience of overseas life. We needed to learn English as well as living abroad. Especially my two children, my 6-year old son, and 10-year old daughter needed special assistance to adjust to the foreign school life. My 10-year-old daughter was offered a lot of information necessary for school life as well as English. And my 6-year-old son gained the courage and confidence to adapt to the new environment.
Sometimes she provided a systematic curriculum and also carried out special maps - essays, resumes - as necessary in good faith. Melissa is passionate, especially to teach children. She loves children, observes them carefully, and approaches them lovingly. Rather than insisting on a formal curriculum, voluntary participation is derived through interesting topics. My shy son, especially, was encouraged to adapt to his new environment through Melissa.
Another strength of Melissa is her respectful attitude towards other cultures. She has not forced us to use English to improve our child's English ability, even at home. She always emphasizes that it is important not to forget the mother tongue, and advised us to keep speaking Korean at home. Unlike other immigrant second-generation people in the neighborhood, my child now has no difficulty speaking both Korean and English. I believe this will be a great advantage for my children.
Understanding and acceptance of various races and diverse cultures is also her great strength. We introduced Melissa to other Korean families, many of them - both adult and child - who became her students.
My family was very sorry to hear that she was going to France. But I am convinced that she can teach other families and children in her new passion to a new environment and help them grow confidently."
SK Hynix Employee
Santa Clara, California
2018
"The lessons with Melissa allowed Sophie to begin building a vocabulary and getting her ear used to English listening.
Melissa's approach makes Sophie feel completely confident to speak out freely without fear of making mistakes.
This is beyond our expectations!
The Belgadi Family
Parents of Sophie (age 8)
Paris, France
2020
"Melissa is simply fantastic! She has a natural gift for teaching, is incredibly patient, flexible and makes every lesson fun. We worked together on my TOEFL training. As a French lawyer student applying for an LLM in the US, I was looking for a professor who could help me achieve a minimum score of 100/120. Thanks to Melissa, not only did I achieve my goal, but I gained confidence, fluency, and rediscovered how much fun it is to speak English! In addition, Melissa helped me prepare my applications and interviews for American Law Schools – it turned out to be a success, and this wouldn’t have been possible without her.
In a nutshell, I have found Melissa to be a teacher of the highest standards and could not have wished more from a teacher. Quite simply, I could not recommend her highly enough."
Camille Ley
Law Student
Paris, France
2021
"A friend advised me to call for Melissa to improve my professional and personal English, having studied and been himself very pleased with her in the past. After just a few weeks, I can claim that results are awesome and classes nice!
Melissa is American and so a native English speaking teacher that is for me the best way to learn “everyday English," personal and professional as well. Melissa is such a caring (no pressure), listening and available person with her students. Especially the availability is important for me because I have a busy work at the same time, which requiring a good flexibility from my teacher to keep the lessons on track (so important to keep on improving). She has been teaching for several years and above all, I find her teaching method as being extremely efficient and successful. It consists of 1 hour remote meeting based on spontaneous discussions and prepared topics as well. The lessons are customised to the student, both purpose and English level. During the discussion, Melissa fills a handout with expression, vocabulary, grammar, misunderstanding words… that makes the meeting very interactive, ludic and understanding. The handout is also used as follow-up by including the background of lessons and is available online at any time with google doc (very useful and convenient). It’s like a bible basically! To sum up, I definitely recommend learning with Melissa."
Anthony Feltrin
Key Account Director
Intersnack Groupe
Paris, France
2021