IGCSE French Tutors for Foreign Language and First Language Routes

Give us the code printed on the school's exam entry list or reported on the statement of entry. For Cambridge that will usually be 0520 for the international Foreign Language course, 0685 for the UK-approved version, 0528 in American centres, 7156 where results are reported on 9-1 grading, or 0501 for First Language French. If the school follows Pearson Edexcel, the International GCSE French code is commonly 4FR1. If you genuinely cannot find it, tell us the school and the course book and we will usually work it out.

They are different qualifications for different students. Foreign Language French, including 0520, is for learners who have studied French as an additional language at school, and it assesses listening, reading, writing and speaking at a level built up over the course. First Language French 0501 assumes the student already lives in the language, and tests reading of unseen passages, directed writing and composition, where accuracy is taken as given and the marks go to argument, structure and register. A student entered for the wrong one is in real trouble, so confirm with the school.

Yes, and it is one of the most fixable problems in the subject. Freezing after a well-delivered presentation almost always means the student has only ever produced French they scripted in advance. The fix is volume of unpredictability: short conversations on topics revealed at the start of the session, deliberate follow-up questions, and practice at recovering from a blank rather than avoiding one. We also teach filler and repair strategies in French so a pause becomes a sentence rather than silence. What a tutor cannot do is take part in or influence the school's assessment.

For speaking, an online session with a French specialist is usually better than an in-person session with a non-specialist. The variable that matters is whether the person opposite can run unscripted French at pace, grade their speed to the student, and push into unfamiliar territory without switching to English. Proximity does not supply that. What online does require is decent audio: a wired headset rather than laptop speakers, because liaison and nasal vowels are exactly what poor microphones flatten. Recording the conversation for playback is also easier online than at a dining table.

Home tutoring is available in India only, and only where a tutor is currently taking in-person students near you. Requests are densest in Gurugram, South Delhi, Noida, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai, but availability changes term by term and we will not pretend otherwise to keep a conversation going. Outside India, including the Gulf, Africa, Europe, Canada and the UK, tutoring is online only. There is no IB Gram centre, branch or campus anywhere, and nothing to visit in person.

Almost always because accuracy criteria are being drained by agreement errors that start with noun gender. If the gender of a noun is wrong, the adjective agreeing with it is wrong, the past participle after être may be wrong, and the pronoun referring back to it is wrong as well, so one lapse produces a cluster of marked errors. Verb-tense choice between passé composé and imparfait is the second common leak. Both are trainable, but they are trained through the student's own marked work, not through a fresh list of rules.

More than most schools have lesson time for, and of a specific kind. The problem is rarely vocabulary; it is that spoken French elides, liaises and drops final consonants, so words the student can read fluently arrive unrecognisable. Useful practice means full-pace authentic audio first, a slowed pass to locate what was missed, then full pace again, several times a week in short blocks rather than one long session. Fifteen focused minutes daily outperforms an hour on a Sunday. A tutor's job here is largely to choose the audio and check the diagnosis.

No. IB Gram tutors coach and never write, script, co-author or complete any assessed work, and that includes a prepared presentation for a speaking assessment. A tutor can help a student plan their own content, can question the choices they have made, can correct the French the student wrote themselves, and can rehearse delivery until it is comfortable. A tutor cannot attend the assessment, contact the teacher conducting it, or influence the moderator. Any service offering more than that is describing something that would put the entry at risk.

Yes, where it is relevant to the family, and this matters more than the exam specification suggests. A student in Doha whose parents are Moroccan, or one in Montreal, or a family in Lagos with Francophone neighbours, will encounter vocabulary and rhythm that a metropolitan-only tutor may treat as error. Examiners assess French, not Parisian French. Our tutors are asked directly how they would handle a student whose French comes from Casablanca, Abidjan or Quebec, and dismissiveness there is a reason not to match them.

The first lesson is free and usually happens within a few days of your message, sometimes sooner if the time zone lines up. Send the syllabus code, the route, the grade, the recent problem and your location, and you will get two or three tutor options with their actual teaching background. The trial is a working session rather than a sales call: the tutor holds a short conversation in French, marks a piece of the student's existing work and reports what they found in writing. Only then do you decide.

Fees depend on the tutor's experience and tier, the student's grade, the route they are entered for and how often sessions run, and we quote them in writing before anything is booked. There is no published price list on this site, because a single advertised rate would be wrong for most families who read it. A Grade 9 student wanting fortnightly support and a Grade 11 student wanting twice-weekly speaking rehearsal before a moderation window are not the same commitment. Ask for the written quote early and compare it against what you are paying now.

It is a common situation in the Gulf and in francophone African cities, and it is not automatically a problem, but it needs checking with the school. Home-spoken French often carries excellent fluency alongside shaky written accuracy, informal register and gaps in the specific structures the paper rewards. Those students can lose marks precisely because they write the way they speak. The tutoring they need is different: less conversation practice, more work on register, spelling, agreement and the shape of the written tasks. Confirm the entry route with the school first.

Grade 9 is the better time to start, though most families arrive later. The foundations that decide the final two years are built early: storing noun gender with the article, conjugating the high-frequency irregular verbs without hesitation, placing negation correctly and getting adjective agreement automatic. None of that can be installed in an exam term, and trying to fix it in Grade 11 costs time that should be going to speaking rehearsal and past papers. Steady fortnightly work from Grade 9 is cheaper and calmer than a rescue later.

Where the school's approach is working, yes, deliberately so. Teaching a competing method for pronoun order or tense choice to a student who is halfway through learning the school's version produces two half-methods and a confused student. Sessions start from the class's current topic, the last marked piece and the teacher's comments. Where an approach genuinely is not landing, the tutor will try a different one and will say so in the written session note, so you know it was a decision rather than a drift away from the syllabus.

By trigger, not by system. Candidates do not need to deploy the subjunctive throughout a piece of writing, and attempts scattered across a page half-formed cost more than they earn. We teach recognition of the common triggers such as il faut que, bien que, pour que, vouloir que and expressions of doubt or emotion, then build two or three reliable constructions the student can use deliberately. Accurate and limited beats ambitious and broken. The same applies in speaking, where one confident subjunctive lands better than a stalled sentence.

Tell us and we change the tutor, without a negotiation about it. Fit in French fails in recognisable ways: the tutor talks more than the student, the conversation keeps sliding into English, the corrections arrive without explanation, or the session notes stop appearing. None of those improve with patience. We would rather move a student in week two than have a family stay out of politeness for a term. Your feedback and the quality of the written notes are also what determines whether a tutor keeps getting matched at all.