I’m Caroline, and French has been my life’s work.

I grew up in northern France, where the sky is often grey, the beer is Belgian, and the fries are non-negotiable. I studied language and translation at postgraduate level, trained as a teacher, and spent my early career in secondary school classrooms in France before making the move to Australia. I’ve been here for twenty years now, and Melbourne has been home for all of them.

When I arrived, I kept teaching, this time at university level, where I’ve spent the past fifteen years working with students at every stage of their language journey.

« I am not just interested in French. I am interested in how language works, how it is taught, how it is learned, and what it means to truly inhabit another one. »

Along the way I completed a PhD in Translation Studies, exploring how racially marginalised voices are translated and represented in French, research that sits at the intersection of language, literature, and the politics of representation. I am also a certified professional translator, which means French is not just something I teach. It is something I use, at a high level, every day.

That combination of classroom teacher, university academic, and practising translator gives me a particular vantage point. I have watched thousands of learners acquire French, seen where the real difficulties lie, and thought carefully about why standard explanations so often fall short. French Forward is my attempt to bring that thinking into a public space.

French Forward is for anyone who wants to go deeper into the grammar, the culture, the francophone world, and the pleasure of the language itself. But it is also, I hope, a place where the thinking behind language teaching becomes visible.