Dawn

I am a UK qualified Spanish and French teacher and an experienced online tutor. I am also a speaking examiner (GCSE/IGCSE/A Level) for private exam centres and an exam assessor, marking papers for a major UK exam board. I teach school students and home educated students from the UK and overseas, via the internet and occasionally from my home.

I am just as interested in helping a confident student achieve a top grade as helping another student nudge their grade up to a comfortable pass. As a parent too, I am aware of the need to meet a learner at their own level, and inspire them in the subject, as much as possible.

I travel to France and Spain regularly and like to keep up with political and cultural developments in the Francophone and Hispanic world, as well as the language. This particularly helps with supporting A Level students who need to be aware of the latest changes and developments in a topic area.

Tutoring Experience

I taught French and Spanish up to A Level at schools and I then began tutoring from home when my eldest son was born. I started teaching via Zoom in 2019.

Each year students come to me for help with AQA and Edexcel GCSEs as well as Edexcel and Cambridge IGCSEs, and I am used to helping them prepare for their specific exams.

For A Level, I am familiar with Edexcel, AQA and Eduqas for both French and Spanish. I do speaking A Level and AS exams in the summer. At this level students often want help with the Speaking exam or general support for grammar and essay writing.

During exam seasons, I conduct speaking exams for all the different boards, at private exam centres and I have been marking GCSE scripts and recordings since 2004.

Tutoring Approach

I make lessons as varied as possible, usually focusing on a few different topic areas in a sitting and trying to increase students' confidence to build on their skills. For GCSE/A Level students I can quickly identify gaps in knowledge and areas that can be built on, to boost grades. Nearer exam time I am prepared to hone in on whichever skills need more practice, having past papers ready to go each lesson, if students just want to work on these.

Although I can follow whichever syllabus/exam board a student is using, my lessons are always tailor made, to fit around the individual student's needs, abilities and time scale. I can set homework to maximise the lesson time and supply and mark past papers as required.

I currently have a few spaces left for the new academic year. My availability chart is a guide, but please ask as I can sometimes fit in different times. Lessons can be long or short term and I can schedule times over the holidays too. I can liaise over unusual times, to fit around overseas students or fit around free periods for sixth formers.

For the first lesson I will send a Zoom link and then take payment after the class, if everyone is happy. In the first lesson I aim to discretely assess a student's stronger and weaker areas so that we can see a path forwards. I prepare a range of materials for this, so that the student is also learning from the experience. Once a student is clear on a regular day for future lessons, I will then ask for a block payment of around half a term in advance, to secure the space.