About Learn&Co
A language only really arrives when it is used between people. For ten years Learn&Co has built the rooms where that happens — in London, in Paris, online, and abroad.
What we believe
Most people who come to us have already tried something else: an app that rewarded them for streaks, a class that moved at somebody else's pace, a tutor who was perfectly competent and entirely wrong for them. They can name the tenses. They still cannot hold the room.
What changes that is rarely more material. It is the right person opposite you, a programme built around the life you actually lead, and someone paying attention to whether it is working.
Progress follows the relationship.Everything else is arrangement around it.
Where that belief came from
Maria Toubbe grew up between languages — spoken over her head, between adults, in conversations she could hear but not yet enter. Language was never a school subject first. It was the difference between watching a room and belonging in it.
She learned the rest the hard way. At twenty-one she went to family in the United States, where there was nowhere left to hide from English. She moved to Spain knowing almost no Spanish and, months of self-teaching and daily conversation later, people were beginning to assume she was Spanish. No curriculum carried her there; paying attention to what she actually needed to say did.
Teaching came long before it was work. She was the student others came to, already finding a different way to explain something until it clicked for the person in front of her. When it became professional, she kept meeting the same failure from both sides: learners paired with the wrong person and told to persevere, excellent teachers placed into work that did not suit them. Those years of teaching shaped the company she founded in London in 2016: Learn&Co. Maria still leads discovery conversations, scopes corporate and school programmes, decides who joins the network and oversees quality across every route.
“I built this company because I love helping people. What I care about most is creating an environment where there's room for real human connection — something the world is sorely missing right now.”
How that became a way of working
The network exists before your enquiry does. Specialists are interviewed, assessed and referenced long before any brief reaches us, and chosen for whether we would want them representing the company.
We understand the brief first: goal, level, history, temperament, schedule, format. The pairing is then a human decision made against it — never a rota, never whoever is free.
We stay involved after the introduction: a first session before you commit, a check-in as the programme settles, and a different specialist if the fit is not right.
If a schedule will not deliver the goal, or you do not need us at all, we will say so before you pay.
Ten years on
2016 — private tuition, and a short list of specialists Maria knew personally. A decade of referrals later, it teaches nine languages across four worlds of work.
London & Paris
Worldwide
Immersive Retreats · School Trips & Exchanges
The people behind the proof
“… explained my worries, my background in the arts and the creative world and she really listened and based on everything I said, suggested Martina as a good fit for me”
“She often lets me determine the balance and content of each class, empowering me to guide the lessons to best serve me and my goals with the language.”
Ready to find your voice in a new language?
Every Learn&Co journey begins with a conversation. Tell Maria where you are, what you have tried before and what you want to be able to do — she will tell you honestly how we would approach it, and who she would match you with.
Maria Toubbe
20 min · video call · free
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