French Tutoring Necessary? Grade 9 Pre - IB

[oohwill]

Greetings fellow forum members!

I'm currently a grade 8 student joining the Grade 9 Pre-IB Program this September, and I have a question both my family and I are having trouble answering.

My french mark for grade 8 were:

Oral: 85%

Reading: 85%

Writing: 92%

And I was wondering if I should continue my tutoring for French, my tutor has a very good reputation and that leads to a big price. My mom says it is worth it but my dad says that I should go and learn French when in school. I just wanted to get another opinion from someone with experience with the Pre-IB/IB Program.

Should I just use it as a starting point and discontinue it later on? or go through with it all throughout?

I'm currently paying $235/month (1.5 Hours/ week).

Here are some extra information:

School: St. Francis Xavier SS

Average for Grade 8: 91%

I want to become a doctor (Surgeon).

Your opinions are much needed! Thank you!

P.S: I'm sorry if I did something wrong with the thread, I'm still trying to get used to everything. (New Member)

Edited August 8, 2012 by Willstuhh

[Award Winning Boss]

Gosh, you posted all wrong. ALL WRONG. You aren't allowed to use digits when writing numbers it messes up the system You've also overdone it on the smileys. (one is the limit, only VIPs and supervisors can use more).

Now that is out of the way, I can address your post. I think it'd be better for you to pick it up later in the year if you find yourself having trouble with French because your marks are good now. Plus, you can do well without a tutor if you study well.

Good luck

[sarahlouise]

I think it would be worthwhile to just get a native French speaker and have conversation (or just a class) with them for 1h a week. Often they only charge around $30, sometimes even less, and it's really just as good as any tutor you may have. That way you sort of get them both - you can learn French in school, but also pay a little bit but not as much for French outside of school as well. Much better imo.

[oohwill]

Gosh, you posted all wrong. ALL WRONG. You aren't allowed to use digits when writing numbers it messes up the system You've also overdone it on the smileys. (one is the limit, only VIPs and supervisors can use more).

Now that is out of the way, I can address your post. I think it'd be better for you to pick it up later in the year if you find yourself having trouble with French because your marks are good now. Plus, you can do well without a tutor if you study well.

Good luck

Oh geez, I'm sorry, I didn't see anything about the number and smiley issue, but I guess I should look around more. But just to get this clear, I cannot use any digits at all? So if I wanted to say a number, I would have to say it as word form? (e.g: two hundred.)

I've edited the post for the smiley issue, but I don't clearly understand the digit problem. Sorry.

And thanks for the opinions both of you, I will be sure to take it into consideration!

[Emmi]

Gosh, you posted all wrong. ALL WRONG. You aren't allowed to use digits when writing numbers it messes up the system You've also overdone it on the smileys. (one is the limit, only VIPs and supervisors can use more).

Now that is out of the way, I can address your post. I think it'd be better for you to pick it up later in the year if you find yourself having trouble with French because your marks are good now. Plus, you can do well without a tutor if you study well.

Good luck

Oh geez, I'm sorry, I didn't see anything about the number and smiley issue, but I guess I should look around more. But just to get this clear, I cannot use any digits at all? So if I wanted to say a number, I would have to say it as word form? (e.g: two hundred.)

I've edited the post for the smiley issue, but I don't clearly understand the digit problem. Sorry.

And thanks for the opinions both of you, I will be sure to take it into consideration!

There is no smiley limit, otherwise I would have been banned a long time ago And there is no digit thing either, he's just messing with you. Don't take things too seriously!

[kuc]

if you REALLY feel like needing a tutor, than go for it. But your marks are great and you shoul ace the French with no special effort

[Summer Glau]

Whoa, a future Xavier kid on the forum...welcome!

I just finished IB at Xavier so I can be of help to you

It's hard to say if your marks are good or not because not all teachers mark the same way...especially in elementary school, you pretty much get what the teacher thinks you should get, not necessarily what you earned (or at least that was my experience).

$235/month is steep for only 1.5 hours a week...just saying...

A lot of people at my school went to Alliance Francaise for French (basically French classes, they have some geared specifically to pre-IB/IB) and they said it helped a lot (the people who went regularly mostly got 6/7). I don't know how much it costs though, since I didn't go there.

I think your dad is right...you should just go to French class for a month or so and see how you find it. If you can manage 85+ in grade 9 French, you probably don't need a tutor. Even 80 is not bad.

If you want to improve your speaking, just participate in class. Try to answer questions when the teacher takes up homework. And actually do the homework! If you want to do well in IB French, it's important you have a good basic knowledge of French, which starts in grade 9/10. Make sure you can conjugate verbs well (ie without using a Bescherelle/verb dictionary) in present, imparfait, and passe compose at least because it will make your life so much easier in grade 11. Also picking up vocab is important too; nothing fancy but enough to string together basic sentences and have a simple conversation is a good idea. Of course it doesn't hurt to pick up extra vocab though.

If you make any friends who did extended French/French immersion, they can be pretty helpful too

[RandomPeersoon]

I'm in Pre-IB, moving onto grade 10 in a couple of days and I've had my fair share of problems with French. This year I had a terrible teacher and although my marks were good and above the average of the class, they weren't very good as they'd gone down from a seven or eight to a five or six (out of eight). I never thought of getting a tutor because of the price so the best thing to do really is study. I went on youtube and found tutorials of people teaching some french vocabulary and things such as past tenses and future tenses (which if you haven't started studying yet, you will soon) and studied during my holidays and after school in my free time. I also did extra work, as in I would do a written task that hadn't been requested by the teacher and ask her to correct it for me and when I got it back I would look at my mistakes and avoid making them during the exam or just in-class tests.

From experience, I'm telling you that if you think it's too expensive you can stop tutoring and if you study very hard you'll be able to get good grades even in the toughest of times. In term three I managed to get a seven out of seven for achievement in french, when in term one I got a five or a six.

Plus, your grades are amazing right now! Congrats for that!

If you need any help, PM me and I can try to help you or to find people that can do so for me, given that my father speaks fluent french and I have french friends.

Good luck!

[oohwill]

Well, I'm going to the last week of this month's schedule today and I'll be taking everyone's opinions into consideration gladly!

The plan is to go into school without tutoring for September and see how my progress will be, if it is good than I'll take the studying method, if not I will return to tutoring with Alliance Francaise instead or look online as you kind people suggested! \

Maybe I will update everyone as the school year starts in a few weeks! c;

EDIT: I got my course outline today, and turns out I have french second semester. I'm not sure if I should be happy about that or not.

Edited August 30, 2012 by Willstuhh