Online tutoring
Mandarin Chinese tutors
Two largely separate learning problems: a tonal spoken language and a character-based writing system. Progress in one does not carry over to the other, and students are usually much stronger in one than the other.
- USD 20-36 per hour
- IGCSE
- A Level
- IB
Who takes Mandarin Chinese, and who should
Students taking Mandarin at school, heritage speakers whose spoken fluency is ahead of their literacy, and complete beginners who need a structured route into characters.
Where students actually lose marks
These are the patterns we see repeatedly. None of them are about ability, and every one of them is trainable, which is why a diagnosis is worth more than a general offer of help.
- Tones treated as optional, which makes otherwise correct speech hard to follow
- Characters learned by repetition rather than by radical and component, so recall does not scale
- Heritage speakers fluent in conversation but unable to write to the standard the paper requires
- Measure words and particles used approximately, which is exactly where accuracy marks go
Mandarin Chinese at each level
Mandarin Chinese at IGCSE and GCSE
Four skills with a defined character list. Whether a student is a heritage speaker or a foreign-language learner changes the preparation completely, and the two are often taught in the same class.
Mandarin Chinese at AS and A Level
Adds cultural topics, extended writing in characters and an independent research project, with a substantially larger character requirement. Heritage speakers frequently find the written papers harder than the spoken ones by a wide margin, which is the reverse of what families expect.
Mandarin Chinese at IB Diploma
Available as Language A or Language B, and placement between them matters more in Mandarin than in most languages because spoken fluency and literacy diverge so sharply. A student strong in conversation may still belong in Language B on the strength of their written work.
What Mandarin Chinese tutoring costs
| Level | Typical years | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| IGCSE and GCSE | Years 10-11 | USD 20-28 |
| AS and A Level | Years 12-13 | USD 28-34 |
| IB Diploma | Years 12-13 | USD 30-36 |
One-to-one, per 60-minute lesson, billed monthly against lessons actually taught. The same rates apply in every city we teach in, and the subject does not change the price. Paired and small-group rates are on the pricing page.
How lessons run
One-to-one over video with a shared whiteboard, so tutor and student work on the same page at the same time. Sixty minutes weekly as standard, twice weekly in the eight weeks before a paper.
Every session starts with marked work from the previous week, moves to the day's topic with a worked example, and ends with the student attempting a real past paper question while the tutor watches how they approach it. After it you get a written note from the tutor saying what was covered and what needs to happen next. The full process is here.
Mandarin Chinese: questions parents ask
Are characters or tones the bigger problem?
They are separate problems, and students are usually much stronger in one. Spoken fluency does not help with characters and character knowledge does not help with tones, so preparation has to address them independently.
My child speaks Mandarin at home. Is that enough?
For the speaking and listening components, often. For reading and writing, rarely: heritage speakers are frequently fluent in conversation and unable to write to the standard the paper requires, and the gap is easy to underestimate.
How should characters be learned?
By radical and component rather than by repetition. Learning characters as arbitrary shapes does not scale past a few hundred; understanding how they are built lets a student make sense of unfamiliar ones.