The task of trying to find a good online French teacher can be quite daunting. In this post I’ve taken a look at the top 10 websites which offer private French lessons at home. These sites contain hundreds of online teacher profiles. Take your time to read the tutors’ profiles and make your decision to find the best teacher today!
Online French teacher resources
Top websites for finding an online French tutor
Preply
Preply is a website that matches students with French tutors. The site has helped over 80,000 students find tutors online and has more than 2,000 French tutors.
To find an online Skype teacher simply click on “French tutors online” on Preply’s main page. The next step is to review teacher’s profiles and reviews.
You’ll see that the hourly rates tend to be very affordable. Once you’ve found a teacher you like click on “Contact Tutor”.
Then you’ll enter your Skype login name as well as information about what you’d like to learn. Once the teacher accepts your request you can pay on Preply’s online paying platform with PayPal or major credit card.
Verbling
Verbling is a website where students from all over the world can meet qualified French teachers. Similar to Verbal Planet, students and teachers agree on a schedule in advance and the lessons take place over Skype.
Verbling currently has just over 40 teachers offering French lessons, all of which are native speakers. What’s great is that each of the individual teachers uploads a personal introductory video on his or her profile.
On the profile pages you’ll also find a calendar of available time slots, complete résumés and students’ feedback scores. Each teacher sets his or her price and they tend to be quite affordable.
What’s more, you can contact the teachers directly before doing a trial lesson.
Takelessons
Takelessons.com is a website where you can find tutors for an extremely wide range of subjects including French. When you log onto the site you’re asked to enter the subject you’d like to learn with your zip code.
The site then suggests tutors who live closest to you as well as online teachers. This site offers both native and non-native speaking instructors.
You can see the tutor’s location and whether they teach online or not. The teachers’ profiles offer schedules for availability, price ranges and customer reviews.
You pay for your lessons on the site itself and have the right to ask for a refund.
Wyzant
Wyzant is an industry leader in matching students with tutors and has over 1,100 online French tutors. To find an instructor simply click on the link to the left.
Before browsing tutors you can enter your availability into a calandar and teachers with matching time slots will appear. Start scrolling through the tutors. Click on any of them and you can read their profiles as well as customer ratings and feedback scores.
Once you find a teaching you like click the “contact” button to establish contact with the tutor. Payments occur after lessons are completed through Wyzant’s online payment platform.
Verbal Planet
VerbalPlanet is a website that matches online French teachers with students from all over the world. Currently there are about 80 teachers on the site offering private French lessons.
Most teachers are native speakers. Lessons last 45 lessons, take place over Skype and are scheduled in advance. Some teachers offer free trial lessons while some offer trials at a discounted rates.
The teachers set their rates themselves and they can vary quite a bit. What’s great is that under each teacher’s profile you can view how many lessons they’ve taught as well as students’ detailed review comments and feedback scores.
Verbal Planet was established in 2005 and is based in the UK.
Chegg
Chegg Tutors is an industry leader in matching students with online French tutors. The key attractive feature to Chegg is that it offers students instant access to live tutoring.
To find a tutor immediately click on the link to the left. There you’ll see a complete list of tutors. Many of Chegg’s teachers are students themselves or graduates from leading universities.
Tutor profiles include academic credentials, teaching experience and customer reviews. To sign up for lessons simply click on “Send Message” from within a tutor’s profile.
The first thirty minutes of tutoring are free and after that Chegg offers additional minutes at very affordable weekly and monthly rates.
Iboux
Iboux.com is a website that matches students with online French teachers. The site offers only certified native-speaking teachers. All lessons are one-on-one and take place on the website itself.
One downside with this site is that it finds and suggests the teachers for your and doesn’t let you look at teachers’ profiles and customer reviews.
You can buy lesson packages in quantities of 10, 20 and 30 hours with prices varying accordingly.
The key advantage to iboux.com is that upon the completion of study you can take an exam and get a certificate indicating the amount of class hours you’ve completed as well as the level you’ve reached (A1 and upwards) within the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).
Varsity Tutors
Varsity Tutors is a company that introduces tutors to students. According to the site many of its tutors graduated from the top colleges and universities in the country including Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
Bases on the website (click link on the left) you’ll see that there are indeed numerous highly qualified French tutors.
To find out more about pricing and scheduling availability the site suggests that you either fill in the email form or contact them by telephone.
Lingoda
Lingoda is a website that matches students with online teachers. Unlike Verbal Planet and Verbling, Lingoda tends to focus on group lessons and helps students prepare for Common European Framework for Languages (CEFR) certification.
These certificates, ranging from A1 through C2 can be used for visa applications as well as university applications. All teachers are native speakers and you can start lessons at any time.
Lingoda offers three pricing packages for both private and group lessons. All classes are conducted from within Lingoda’s website and do not take place over Skype.
Live Linuga
Live Lingua is based in Boston, Massachusetts and has helped over 7,500 students to learn French on one-on-one lessons via Skype.
The company guarantees that all teachers are native speakers and sessions last a full sixty minutes. Most importantly, Live Lingua offers training to help students prepare for the DELF and DALF exams.
These exams are equivilant to the English TOEFL exam. The DELF has four levels (A1, A2, B1 & B2). After those are passed students may take the DALF exam.
Note that prices for training for these exams exceed standard French lesson costs. The company sells packages of lessons with lower prices for the higher amount of lessons you purchase.
All students get a free 60-minute trial lesson.