Choosing a GCSE French or Spanish tutor

Recognising a word in a list is different from recalling it in speech or understanding it in a sentence. Ask the tutor to sample familiar vocabulary in listening, reading and a short spoken or written response before deciding that the answer is simply more memorisation.

A pupil who understands a printed sentence but misses it in a recording may need help connecting sounds to spelling. A pupil who knows the words but misreads who did what may need a grammar explanation. Ask how the tutor will distinguish these possibilities.

Share a recent marked task, the topic being taught and your child’s own description of the difficulty. Ask for one manageable initial priority and a short practice task that fits the school workload. Our guide to briefing a tutor from reports and mocks can help you choose what to send.

Ask how the tutor will combine reading aloud with listening and a short reply. For example, can your child distinguish je joue (‘I play’) from j’ai joué (‘I played’) when they hear the whole phrase, then use the right form in an answer? A useful tutor models the sound, lets the pupil try and explains a specific correction. Repeating a long memorised speech does not show whether the pupil can answer a new question.

Ask the tutor to work through a short passage and show which words establish time, opinion or who is acting. Have the pupil explain the meaning before translating every word. If they miss a familiar verb in a different form, the tutor should connect that form to the vocabulary they already know.

In this invented example, a pupil writes ‘Hier, je joue au foot’ when they mean ‘Yesterday I played football’. For that meaning, the correction is ‘Hier, j’ai joué au foot.’ The tutor can explain that hier means ‘yesterday’ and that this completed past action uses j’ai + joué, rather than the present je joue. Simply replacing the sentence leaves the pupil’s understanding uncertain.

Now give regarder (‘to watch’) and un film (‘a film’), then ask the pupil to write ‘Yesterday I watched a film’ without copying. ‘Hier, j’ai regardé un film’ shows the same pattern used with another verb. Read it aloud too. Ask whether the pupil can explain and reproduce the change in a later fresh task. This is a teaching illustration, not an exam-board model answer.

Ask how the tutor handles a word the pupil recognises in print but cannot identify by sound. AQA’s Spanish sound–spelling examples include silent h in hoy (‘today’) and ñ in mañana (‘tomorrow’). The tutor could model a short phrase, ask the pupil to identify it when heard and then use it in a reply. Look for precise, manageable feedback and another attempt, rather than ‘say it with a better accent’.

Ask whether the pupil can explain who a sentence is about and whether a noun is singular or plural. If they guess from a few familiar words, the tutor should show which part of the sentence changes the meaning. Use a new sentence afterwards so that recognising a corrected answer is not mistaken for understanding.

In this invented example, ‘Me gusta los deportes’ needs to become ‘Me gustan los deportes’ (‘I like sports’). With this simple gustar construction, the verb agrees with the thing liked: los deportes is plural, so it takes gustan. Compare ‘Me gusta el fútbol’ (‘I like football’), where el fútbol is singular. The choice is not based on how many people like it.

Give the pupil las películas (‘films’) and ask them to write ‘I like films’: ‘Me gustan las películas.’ Ask why they chose gustan, then try another suitable noun without a model to copy. This checks whether the pupil can use the correction in a new sentence. It is a teaching illustration, not an exam-board model answer.

Agree what to compare: for example, a short independent answer using a past tense, a listening task or a brief writing sample. Record the help given. A corrected paragraph produced jointly with the tutor is a different starting point from unaided writing.

At an agreed review point, use a fresh task with similar demands. Can your child understand or produce the target language more accurately with less prompting? For speaking, a new follow-up question can show more than repeating the same prepared response.

Ask the tutor to explain what has improved, what still needs teaching and the next priority. If the work remains fully tutor-led, the same error keeps returning without a changed explanation, or every lesson is only a past paper, discuss a more focused approach before continuing unchanged.