IB Diploma · Years 12-13
IB French tutors
Language B at SL or HL, assessed across productive, receptive and interactive skills, with HL adding two literary works. The individual oral carries significant weight and rewards students who can sustain a conversation rather than deliver a prepared piece.
- USD 30-36 per hour
- One-to-one, online
- Free 1-hour trial class
What IB Diploma actually demands
Six subjects plus Theory of Knowledge, the Extended Essay and CAS. The workload is the defining feature, and the Internal Assessments, coursework worth a substantial share of each subject grade, are what most often slip.
Four skills assessed separately (listening, reading, writing and speaking) which means a student can be genuinely good at French and still have one skill dragging the grade down.
Where IB French students lose marks
- Speaking under-practised because it is the least comfortable skill, despite being very trainable
- Vocabulary learned as isolated words rather than in the phrases that make it usable under pressure
- Verb tenses recognised in reading but not produced accurately in writing
- Listening treated as untrainable, when it improves quickly with the right structured practice
Is this the right subject at this level?
Students taking French at any level, and particularly those whose written work is solid but who freeze in the speaking exam, which is the most common single-skill weakness.
What it costs
USD 30-36 per 60-minute one-to-one lesson at IB Diploma, 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 21-25 per student. Small group lessons (up to 6 students) are USD 15-18 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.
French: questions parents ask
Which skill usually holds the grade back?
Speaking, for most students, because it is the least comfortable to practise and the easiest to postpone. It is also highly trainable: structured practice with unpredictable follow-up questions improves it faster than almost any other intervention.
How should vocabulary be learned?
In phrases, not as isolated words. A student who has learned chunks they can deploy produces accurate French under pressure; one who has learned word lists has to assemble sentences from scratch, which is slow and error-prone in an exam.
Is listening practice actually useful?
Yes, and students often assume otherwise because progress feels invisible. Regular short sessions with authentic material at a slightly uncomfortable speed improve it reliably, where occasional long sessions do not.