FOREIGN LANGUAGES
< Back to Academic Tutoring OverviewAt the Joe Ferrante Music Academy, we have excellent teachers who take students to the next level in their Spanish or Mandarin language studies. We help students get better results with their homework, essay assignments, special projects and presentations, and even raising their abilities should they want to test out of a language level requirement in school. We work with our students students to improve both their reading, writing, and comprehensive skills by focussing on grammar and conversation. Our foreign language tutors are able to read, write, and converse in the languages they teach, and are often native speakers.
In our private one-on-one lessons, beginning students focus on learning the alphabet, numbers, basic vocabulary, nouns, adjectives and pronunciation. Students study the various narrative (first person, third person) and verb tenses (present, past, future, subjunctive, etc.). As the student advances to an intermediate level, our teachers will work on verb conjugation, irregular verbs, and how to speak in past tense and future tense. Our teachers will work to expand the students’ basic vocabulary and comprehension of the foreign language working towards the goal of navigating a conversation solely in Spanish or Mandarin to communicate everyday business, transactions, and interactions. Students will also study the differences between casual and formal phrases. At intermediate and advanced levels, students study literature and learn to translate texts.
Tutoring is taught in sessions of 30 minutes, 45 minutes and one hour, with the cost being the same as that of private music instruction.
SPANISH
Spanish is the second most popular natively spoken language in the world after Chinese, and the second most studied language after English. Spanish is used in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia. In California alone, more than a quarter of the residents speak Spanish at home and it is the second most spoken language in the United States. In our private one-on-one lessons, beginning Spanish students focus on learning the alphabet, numbers, basic vocabulary, nouns, verbs, and pronunciation. They learn basic basic conversational speech such as greetings, requests, and self introduction. As the student advances to an intermediate level, they learn how to use past tense, future tense and a variety of word labels, learn sentences wants and needs. Our teachers will work to expand the students’ basic vocabulary and comprehension of Spanish working towards the goal of navigating a conversation to communicate everyday business, transactions, and social interactions. At intermediate and advanced levels, students study literature and learn to translate texts. Studies have proven that people who speak more than one language ward off alzheimer’s and have stronger interpersonal and problem-solving skills.
SPANISH TEACHERS
MANDARIN CHINESE
One fifth of the world’s population, over a billion, speak some form of Chinese as their native tongue. Among what are considered a variety of dialects, Standard Chinese is based on Beijing Mandarin and is the most spoken form, as well as the official language of China and Taiwan, one of Singapore’s four official language, and one of the United Nation’s six official languages. In our private one-on-one lessons, beginning students focus on learning the alphabet, numbers, basic vocabulary, nouns, verbs, basic Chinese characters and pronunciation. They will learn such useful conversational speech as greetings, requests, and self introductions. As the student advances to an intermediate level, they learn how to use past tense, future tense and a variety of word labels, learn sentences wants and needs. Our teachers will work to expand the students’ basic vocabulary and comprehension of Mandarin working towards the goal of navigating a conversation solely in Mandarin to communicate everyday business, transactions, and interactions. At intermediate and advanced levels, students study literature and learn to translate texts. Studies have proven that people who speak more than one language ward off alzheimer’s and have stronger interpersonal and problem-solving skills.
MANDARIN TEACHERS
[instructors="mandarin"]