7 Stellar Online French Tutoring Platforms :
Prepare to up your French language skills with some real-life immersion.
But don’t sing au revoir (goodbye) to your friends and family quite yet!
In order to perfect your French skills about five years ago you’d be packing your bags, saying goodbye to your loved ones and hopping on a flight to a French-speaking region in order to get direct access to real native French speakers.
Oh, but how times change!
Don’t get me wrong, I am still a big believer in the deep cultural and emotional value added to your language learning by packing those bags and setting off, in addition to that liberating feeling of setting off.
Nonetheless, at times you need those far off places to come to you, right to your home!
Lucky you. You’re alive in the age of online tutors, qualified native-speaking language professionals waiting to work with you in order for you to reach your language goals.
This means no more clicking on the Google Translate voice recognition over and over to make sure you got the pronunciation right or spending countless hours listening to French through movies and sitcoms without ever really speaking it. All of these things come to an end (or at least happen far less often) the day you say “oui” to an online French tutor!
Before we expand and explore the many resources available to you to find and contact an online French language tutor, let’s first explore the reasons why you should invest in one in the first place.
5 Reasons to Get an Online French Tutor
1. Learn French through French
This point cannot be stressed enough!
Using the target language as the medium in which one learns is an extremely effective strategy, from Day 1.
Some suggest this is overwhelming for beginners, but you’ll do yourself, your comprehension and your pronunciation a big favor by jumping into the deep end of the language pool and swimming right away.
Even if it feels like you’re drowning, your tutor is there to save you and help you float. Just think how much harder it would be to learn how to actually swim if you never touched water and just read about breaststrokes instead!
For a complete beginner, it may be a good idea to make sure the tutor understands some English, but for intermediate learners and beyond, go 100% in French!
2. Learn the French you want to learn
Are you planning to live, travel, study or work abroad in a particular part of the French-speaking world? Then you can choose a tutor that speaks this region’s unique breed of French!
Bring France, Quebec, Senegal, Belgium or Morocco to your home! The beauty of online learning means you can access the world with a click. This way not only do you get to learn, practice and converse with a native speaker, but you can pick where that person is from.
3. Pick up pertinent cultural knowledge
As language learners, we know that simply memorizing a vocabulary list isn’t enough. We begin learning a language because deep down there’s something that intrigues us about the peoples and cultures that speak it and, to really improve, we need to keep up to date and familiarize ourselves with our target language’s culture.
Working one-on-one with a native tutor living in a French-speaking country can give you insider access to cultural knowledge and current events. Just think, you can explore and access a rich source of information about the traditions and views of life held by French speakers with an individual who lives and breathes them every day!
4. Make your language learning live and physically present
When we do our learning online, sometimes we get a bit tired learning alone. This isn’t to say that we get tired of our language but we do feel a bit stretched out after all those PDFs, print-outs and online grammar activities because we don’t get a chance to practice what we learn in a live setting.
With a tutor, you can schedule in that all-so-important live practice, where you can try out your subjunctive, conditional and even ask about idiomatic expressions. Take a break from interactive activities and get down to real interaction with your online tutor!
5. Reinforce good study habits and get feedback
Speaking of making your learning present, meeting with a tutor 1-2 times a week helps to reinforce good study habits and it also gets you straight and timely feedback on your progress with the language.
Your tutor will adapt to you and your needs so you can really reinforce weak areas and further strengthen your pronunciation and comprehension.
Indeed another practical thing about having a tutor is the ability to adjust the time around your work life and personal commitments. We cannot all attend language classes from Monday to Friday at 10 a.m., but we can all meet with our online tutors for a minimum 30 minutes a week, perhaps on a laid back Saturday afternoon or even Sunday morning. The sheer flexibility of this system is enough to accommodate anyone.
7 Stellar Online French Tutoring Platforms
VerbalPlanet
VerbalPlanet really brings the planet to your language learning. You can sign up for free, create an online profile and then start your search for an online tutor from a global database of teachers right away.
The feature that really stands out about VerbalPlanet is that the French language tutors hail from all over the world: Africa, North America, Europe and the Caribbean.
Also, they have your budget in mind, as in you can adapt your profile to filter for tutors that fit your availability and price range. You can also access ratings from current and previous students in order for you to pick the tutor that’s just right!
Lingoda
Lingoda is specialized in the main European languages, including French! All the teachers are certified and native speakers. A really great bonus about this platform is that for €0.99 Euros (about $1.20 USD) you get a student profile and a free trial class.
With a trial class you can get a feel for the online tutor experience. If you’re happy with what you get, simply sign up for sessions with your trial class tutor! Awesome? Yes!
Keep in mind that this platform is geared to the European market, so most native teachers will thus speak European French.
Some other key features that really stand out here are that language classes are available around the clock, teaching and learning materials are included at no additional cost and, if you need an official certificate, you can sign up for a full class cycle with your tutor to get a report and certificate on your language level within the Common European Framework of References for Languages.
French Faster
Need to learn French, and fast? Well, get yourself a tutor on the French Faster platform. The teachers on this platform come from around the French-speaking world, are native speakers and are also certified teachers.
This platform allows you to sign up for free using your contact information and language level. Then they give you a complimentary trial class with a teacher. If you’re happy with the accelerated learning method, you can sign up for more sessions with your tutor! The accelerated learning method has three pillars: Constructivism, participative learning and memorization.
Constructivism allows you to see the general patterns between English and French. In this way, your tutor helps you develop an intuition of what would and wouldn’t work in French. Participative learning means that these tutors adapt to your learning style rather than imposing one, and this is further reinforced by memorization techniques adapted to your learning style.
Learn French At Home
Learning French at Home is another European platform. The tutors are from either France or Switzerland. This platform does not give you any trial classes, but it does give you real structure regardless of your language level.
As an advanced learner your concern may simply be improving conversation skills. All right, then sign up for the Conversation Programme.
Maybe you’re in University and really need to refine your writing skills. No problem. Sign up for the Customized French Writing Programme.
Maybe you really need to prepare to take a French assessment test. Well, they also have specialized tutors to help you prepare!
LiveLingua
LiveLingua uses Skype as their online platform to give you live web-conference or telephone tutoring sessions in French.
This is another platform that allows you to sign up for free and gives you a free trial class. Keep in mind that the French tutors and teachers on this platform are exclusively from France. If France is your Francophone destination, go for these tutors.
This platform is very flexible, as in you can sign up for as little or as many class sessions as you would like with your tutor, and there’s no minimum or maximum.
Verbling Online French Tutoring
Verbling has a database of over 300 native, certified and qualified teachers from around the world ready to work with you today. Verbling allows you to really refine your search to help you find the perfect teacher.
This is great for beginners because you can find a native teacher who also speaks English, just in case you need to during your sessions! Also, you can refine your search around preparing for specific exams, general French, business French, price range or simply reviews of other students who have worked with the same teacher!
French Tutor Online
French Tutor Online is geared solely to the French learning market, so they’re really specialized! Teachers are also mostly European-based but the real added bonus here is that, in addition to flexible and affordable rates, you can sign up for 1:1 sessions or group lessons.
Group sessions are a fantastic way to get you motivated and working alongside a friend or colleague who’s also learning. The group sessions are a budget friendly option as they allow you to sign up for more classes at a discounted rate. Talk about a fantastic Christmas or birthday gift!
