Services

Porta mundi specialises in teaching primary, secondary and grammar school students and covers all school subjects up to and including the Matura.

Bookings can be made at any time by telephone or e-mail.
Mobile: Franziska Basler +41 79 506 57 07 - Mail: info@portamundi.org

One of our specialities is to prepare your child with focus on the upcoming Gymnasium examination - in short Gymiprüfung - in the area of the Canton of Zurich. Our trained teachers can help your child prepare for both types of Gymnasium entrance examinations. Regardless of whether it is the preparation for the long-term Gymnasium entrance examination or the preparation for the short-term Gymnasium entrance examination. Thanks to the porta mundi team, the Gymi exam will be a piece of cake for your child. More on the topic of preparation for the Gymi can be found here.

For targeted preparation and support, we offer not only complete preparation for the upcoming Gymnasium examination, but also suitable simulation assessments. When taking part in the simulation exam, a test situation is carried out for the child which corresponds 100% to the actual gymnasium entrance exam. This gives your child the opportunity to learn in a protected environment and to test their abilities for the upcoming Gymi test. Click here to see our current simulation courses for the Gymnasium entrance exam, both for the long-term Gymnasium and for the short-term Gymnasium edition.

Porta mundi believes that the acquisition of foreign languages is central to future career and employment opportunities. The earlier that intensive lessons are started, the easier it is for students to acquire the language. Here too, it is important to follow an approach that links reading, writing and speaking skills as well as grammar.
We offer lessons that accompany the school curriculum as well as coaching for official language diplomas. Porta mundi specialises in the following foreign languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian and Latin.

German is a big part in every students’ life, not only in the sense of it being a subject, but also in that it affects other areas – for example this could be in written maths problems or writing essays in history. It is really important that the student’s language skills are not just fit for daily use, but also that their spelling, writing, reading, grammar and communication skills are well developed. Porta mundi pursues a holistic approach in which all these skills are linked. The structures of the language are also taught so that students can compare them with foreign languages and gain an overall picture. Porta mundi also specialises in teaching German as a second language and offers comprehensive support for this option.

More often than not, essay writing is not (or is only superficially) addressed in regular classes at school. porta mundi offers customised writing training, which focuses on essay writing assignments as are typical in school, and also on writing different types of texts. These include reports, narratives of experiences, discussions, descriptions of pictures, newspaper articles or even job applications. Each writing activity includes orthography as well as vocabulary exercises, interlinking the subject areas.

A solid grasp of maths is essential for students in their future careers. Here, the aim is to consolidate the skills required in academia while also laying the foundations for related subjects such as physics or chemistry. Students often enjoy maths at the beginning, but then either lose faith in their skills over the years, or more and more gaps accumulate, which puts them at a great disadvantage for future lessons. Porta mundi focuses on the consolidation and understanding of the core competencies to help students in their current academic topics. A great deal of attention is paid to mathematical reasoning skills, as these often cause difficulties from a linguistic point of view. We also teach strategies for the right approach. This means that tasks are not viewed as individual problem areas. Instead the assignments are dealt with across topics so that students can develop a comprehensive understanding of mathematics.

Calculation skills are extremely important – not just in school but in many other areas of life too. Often this is practiced briefly in primary school, but then not sufficiently revisited. This causes students to lose speed and confidence. It also makes the rest of the maths lessons more difficult and means students are even more likely to use a calculator, even for routine sums. Porta mundi wishes to counteract this trend and therefore regularly incorporates mental arithmetic into its coaching sessions. The knowledge gained in this way not only has a positive effect on mathematical matters, but also on the students’ self-confidence.

Students often have a very good command of a subject but struggle to retrieve that knowledge during an exam. Another difficulty, especially when transferring from primary to secondary school or the Gymnasium, is how to properly group and process information and content. Porta mundi teaches its students learning and exam strategies to help not only in school or with a specific subject, but also with other areas of their lives. We believe that you don’t just learn for school, but for life. As the network of information grows and becomes more challenging, excellent planning and organisational skills are of great importance across all areas of life.