What a French tutor actually needs to do
French is a frequency subject before it’s anything else. The genders, the agreement rules, the verb endings — they all fade within days unless you keep touching them. That’s why a weekly French tutor, however good, struggles to move a grade on its own: one hour of contact, then six days in which the passé composé endings and half your vocabulary quietly evaporate. The exposure simply isn’t frequent enough to build durable memory.
So a French tutor’s real job is to manufacture daily contact: drill conjugations and gendered vocabulary every day with spaced repetition, rehearse the speaking-exam answers aloud, and mark your writing for the agreement, tense and accent errors that cap your accuracy. Frequency beats session length every time.
Skoolskill is an AI tutor that turns your textbook and vocab lists into daily practice — and because it lives on your phone, the daily contact actually happens.
How the French practice plan works
| Stage | Focus |
|---|---|
| Core verbs | Présent, passé composé, imparfait, futur, conditionnel |
| Tense choice | Passé composé vs imparfait, and the subjonctif triggers |
| Vocabulary | Spaced-repetition decks with gender attached to every word |
| Writing | Marked paragraphs for agreement, tense range and accents |
| Speaking prep | Role-play, photo card and conversation answers rehearsed |
Where French students actually lose marks
- Gender errors — guessing le/la wrong cascades into wrong adjective agreement and lost accuracy marks.
- Passé composé agreement — forgetting être verbs agree with the subject (“elle est allée”), or the preceding-direct-object rule.
- Passé composé vs imparfait — using the wrong past tense for completed actions versus description or habit.
- Accents — missing or wrong accents (é vs è) change meaning and cost marks the mark scheme tracks.
The AI targets these because they’re predictable and, with reps, fixable.
Speaking, writing and the four-skill split
GCSE and A-Level French test four separate skills, and most students are uneven — comfortable reading and listening, anxious about producing speech and writing. The speaking exam (role-play, photo card and conversation at GCSE; theme discussion and a research presentation at A-Level) and the writing paper reward exactly the daily rehearsal the AI provides, because fluent production is built through repetition. For live pronunciation and liaison, though, a human partner is still needed — the same balance that suits Spanish.
Comparison: private French tutor vs Skoolskill
| Private French tutor | Skoolskill | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | £25–£45/hr (UK), $25–$60/hr (US) | Free or £6.99/$6.99 a month |
| Contact | ~1 hour/week | Daily 10–15 min sessions |
| Vocabulary | Limited drilling | Spaced repetition, gender attached |
| Writing marked | Occasionally | Every paragraph you write |
| Per year | £1,000–£1,800 | £0 or ~£84 |
When a human French tutor still matters
- Pronunciation, liaison and accent feedback an algorithm can’t fully judge
- Spontaneous conversation with an unpredictable human partner
- Cultural nuance, register and idiom that surface only in real dialogue
- Live speaking-exam rehearsal at an examiner’s pace
- Specific learning differences needing tailored support
The strongest setup pairs a human (or your teacher) for live speaking with Skoolskill for the daily verb, gender and vocab drilling that retention depends on.
Get started — free
- Create a free account — no credit card.
- Tell us your level and exam board.
- Scan your vocab list or snap a photo of your notes.
- Your first session starts in under three minutes.
Start free — free tier always available.