Find qualified French tutors

Ask for the full qualification or professional status, which organisation awarded it and in which country, and the subject and age range the tutor trained to teach. A qualification is one part of the decision: you also need someone who can address the learner’s French difficulties.

For teachers in England, qualified teacher status (QTS) and a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) are different. Teacher-training courses can award QTS alone, QTS with a PGCE, or a PGCE without QTS. If QTS is important to you, confirm it separately. The Department for Education’s PGCE guidance explains these routes.

Here is an illustrative teaching example for a learner starting to describe completed events in the past. The intended message is “Yesterday I watched a film.” The learner writes “Hier, je regarde un film.” They have remembered hier (“yesterday”), but je regarde is the present-tense form (“I watch” or “I am watching”).

For this task, a suitable correction is “Hier, j’ai regardé un film.” This means “Yesterday I watched a film.” In this use of the perfect tense, the verb has two parts: j’ai, the “I” form of the helping verb avoir, and regardé, the past participle of regarder (“to watch”). For this regular -er verb, replace -er with -é to make the past participle. Adding hier alone does not change the verb’s tense.

A useful next step is to apply that pattern to a new message. Now use jouer (“to play”) in the phrase jouer au football (“to play football”). Try “Yesterday I played football.” The answer is “Hier, j’ai joué au football.” Both parts, j’ai and joué, are needed. Cover the model and try the new sentence before checking it.

The teaching value is in explaining the choice and checking whether the learner can make a new sentence. A beginner may need to hear and repeat the model before writing it; a more experienced learner can move on to recalling both verb parts without prompts. This is a worked language example, not a model answer for a particular exam. Other French verbs can form the past differently.

The Open University’s explanation of the French perfect tense gives further examples of this two-part form.

Bring a concrete goal and, where possible, something the learner has tried already. The same teaching qualification does not answer every question about course experience.

For the named exam tasks, see AQA’s GCSE French 8652 assessment guidance and A-level French 7652 assessment guidance. Other courses need their own materials.

Latimer tutors offer a free introductory meeting to discuss goals, teaching approach and arrangements. It is normally a conversation before paid lessons, rather than a full teaching lesson. Use it to agree what the first lesson should establish.

Latimer’s service is built around online one-to-one tuition. Microsoft Teams is the default lesson platform; you and the tutor can agree another option. Before starting French lessons, check that you can hear each other clearly and share the short text or exercise you want to discuss. Use the introductory meeting to try the setup and explain any difficulty hearing speech or reading shared material.

Each tutor sets their own hourly rate, shown on their profile. Latimer invoices after lessons on a pay-as-you-go basis. Agree the lesson length and what preparation, resources or feedback are included before booking. Comparing the cost of an agreed lesson and the work it will cover is more useful than assuming a qualification automatically makes a higher rate worthwhile.

For the wider booking and payment process, see how Latimer tuition works.