AS and A Level · Years 12-13
A Level Arabic tutors
Adds literature and extended writing in Modern Standard Arabic, with a significant step up in the grammatical precision expected. Students who reached this point on spoken fluency alone find the written papers exposing, because the register and syntax required are markedly further from everyday speech than at IGCSE.
- USD 28-34 per hour
- One-to-one, online
- Free 1-hour trial class
What AS and A Level actually demands
Three or four subjects studied in real depth, and the grades universities actually offer against. The jump from IGCSE is larger than most students expect: questions stop testing one topic at a time and start combining several.
Taught as a first language, a second language or a foreign language, and the three are genuinely different qualifications. Modern Standard Arabic is what is examined, which is not the dialect most students in the Gulf speak at home.
Where A Level Arabic students lose marks
- Fluent spoken dialect masking weak Modern Standard Arabic, which is what the exam actually assesses
- Grammar (cases, verb forms, agreement) absorbed by ear rather than learned as a system
- Writing tasks that ignore the register and format the question specified
- Being entered for the wrong tier, so a heritage speaker sits a foreign-language paper or the reverse
Is this the right subject at this level?
Students in Gulf schools where Arabic is compulsory, heritage speakers whose spoken fluency runs well ahead of their written accuracy, and learners starting from scratch. These three groups need genuinely different work, and being taught as though they are one is the most common reason progress stalls.
What it costs
USD 28-34 per 60-minute one-to-one lesson at AS and A Level, the same rate in every city we teach in. Billed monthly against lessons actually taught, with no prepaid blocks and no minimum commitment.
Paired lessons (2 students) are USD 20-24 per student. Small group lessons (up to 6 students) are USD 14-17 per student. What each format is good for is here.
How we teach it
One-to-one, online, with a shared whiteboard. The first thing we establish is the exact syllabus the student is entered for: schools do not always publish the version they actually enter, and preparing for the wrong paper structure wastes a term.
After that the work is diagnostic: a past paper under timed conditions, marked together against the published scheme, to find out where the marks are genuinely going. That is almost always more useful than covering the syllabus again more slowly. The full process is here.
Arabic: questions parents ask
My child speaks Arabic at home but does badly in Arabic exams. Why?
Because the exam assesses Modern Standard Arabic, which is not the dialect spoken at home. Fluent spoken Gulf or Levantine Arabic does not translate into the formal grammar, vocabulary and register the papers require, and it often masks how much work is needed.
Which Arabic syllabus should my child take?
It depends on their actual written standard, not their spoken fluency. First Language, Second Language and Foreign Language are genuinely different qualifications, and a mismatch is one of the most common and most costly errors in this subject.
Can grammar be fixed quickly?
The systematic parts can. Cases, verb forms and agreement follow rules, and a student who has absorbed Arabic by ear often improves fast once those rules are made explicit rather than intuited.