Getting Language Tuition to help (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Getting Language Tuition to help
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4710 days ago
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

Message 9 of 28

28 June 2014 at 11:58am | IP Logged

Several of my students record their sessions with me.
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s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
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2704 posts - 5425 votes

Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

Message 10 of 28

29 June 2014 at 10:23pm | IP Logged

I want to simply echo what others have said here: a good tutor makes all the difference in the world. Once you've
tasted good tutoring, you'll never go back.

I would make a distinction between one-on-one teaching where there's a specific syllabus and conversational
practice where you're basically developing your interactive speaking skills. In any case, you can't go wrong with a
good tutor. It just may be hard on the pocketbook.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6600 days ago
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4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 11 of 28

30 June 2014 at 2:42am | IP Logged

And once again you're generalizing from your own experience. I can say that I'd rather donate for HTLAL's renovation, Tadoku or one of Sprachprofi's projects than use a tutor. And neither of us will be wrong.

Let me just point out that there's nothing inherently difficult about speaking/conversing. All parts of it can be practised on your own - pronouncing words, listening, producing monologue, working on the accuracy of your grammar and expanding your vocabulary. There's no magic. Of course there's also nothing wrong with wanting to practise with a tutor as soon as possible, maybe especially for extraverts, but outside HTLAL tutors are generally overrated because "you can't learn a language on your own". Except that you still need to learn not to rely on your tutor.

For me as an introvert, it's not only about a lack of desire to communicate more than I absolutely have to. I also feel that the tutor-student relationship is too impersonal, especially when money is directly involved. I'd rather find a friend with similar interests and communicate in writing, like I prefer to do in my native language when possible. And if I manage to visit their country, we'll meet and speak in real life.

And for me as an aspiring polyglot, most tutors would seem as condescending as most coursebooks. But at the same time if I imagine getting tuition from someone like Prof Argüelles, my heart just beats like crazy and I'm not sure we'd get along all that well. Good tutors and good classes are possible, but for me they kind of don't exist.
1 person has voted this message useful

tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4710 days ago
5310 posts - 9399 votes

Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

Message 12 of 28

30 June 2014 at 1:59pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

And once again you're generalizing from your own experience. I can say
that I'd rather donate for HTLAL's renovation, Tadoku or one of Sprachprofi's projects
than use a tutor. And neither of us will be wrong.

Let me just point out that there's nothing inherently difficult about
speaking/conversing. All parts of it can be practised on your own - pronouncing words,
listening, producing monologue, working on the accuracy of your grammar and expanding
your vocabulary. There's no magic. Of course there's also nothing wrong with wanting to
practise with a tutor as soon as possible, maybe especially for extraverts, but outside
HTLAL tutors are generally overrated because "you can't learn a language on your own".
Except that you still need to learn not to rely on your tutor.

For me as an introvert, it's not only about a lack of desire to communicate more than I
absolutely have to. I also feel that the tutor-student relationship is too impersonal,
especially when money is directly involved. I'd rather find a friend with similar
interests and communicate in writing, like I prefer to do in my native language when
possible. And if I manage to visit their country, we'll meet and speak in real life.

And for me as an aspiring polyglot, most tutors would seem as condescending as most
coursebooks. But at the same time if I imagine getting tuition from someone like Prof
Argüelles, my heart just beats like crazy and I'm not sure we'd get along all that
well. Good tutors and good classes are possible, but for me they kind of don't exist.

Which is why half my classes are always bidirectional rants from partners that go
nowhere but end up being fun for both parties!

If you are looking for a tutor, don't just get a tutor. Get one that suits you. A tutor
who doesn't adapt to his student is in a poor damn way indeed. If a student is an
introvert a tutor can adapt to that.

Some tutors work better with polyglots. There are tutors that can adapt to that. For
example, some of my students are also people that attended the polyglot gathering. I
certainly won't bore them with grammatical concepts they are bound to understand. If a
teacher starts to explain the accusative to me, I just tell them "I know, I've studied
six languages with the accusative case already. The only thing I need to know: how is
its use different from Latin/German/Russian/Romanian/<insert language with that case
here>". Just tell them that. Correct your tutor if they are giving you useless advice.

Edited by tarvos on 30 June 2014 at 2:03pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6600 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 13 of 28

30 June 2014 at 8:06pm | IP Logged

Thanks. I just don't really see enough benefits, apart from solving specific problems that I really can't solve on my own (possibly the Danish pronunciation, for example). I'm not saying tutors are inherently useless, but tuition is a tool just like Anki or LR.
1 person has voted this message useful

iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5265 days ago
2241 posts - 6731 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

Message 14 of 28

30 June 2014 at 8:31pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

...If you are looking for a tutor, don't just get a tutor. Get one that suits you. A tutor who doesn't adapt to his student is in a poor damn way indeed. ...

s_allard wrote:

...I would make a distinction between one-on-one teaching where there's a specific syllabus and conversational practice where you're basically developing your interactive speaking skills. In any case, you can't go wrong with a good tutor.

Well said, tarvos and s_allard. I use my tutor for conversation practice and real time grammar correction. If I need practice in a certain area, we'll devote the session to that. It's great to have feedback from a native speaking tutor.

s_allard wrote:

...It just may be hard on the pocketbook.

Yeah, at about $10 - $15 an hour, it knocks a lot of folks out of the market, especially university students. I consider it to be some of the best money I've spent on language-learning. If a learner can afford it, I highly recommend it.

Edited by iguanamon on 30 June 2014 at 10:38pm
1 person has voted this message useful

s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5433 days ago
2704 posts - 5425 votes

Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

Message 15 of 28

30 June 2014 at 8:47pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

And once again you're generalizing from your own experience. I can say that I'd rather donate
for HTLAL's renovation, Tadoku or one of Sprachprofi's projects than use a tutor. And neither of us will be wrong.

Let me just point out that there's nothing inherently difficult about speaking/conversing. All parts of it can be
practised on your own - pronouncing words, listening, producing monologue, working on the accuracy of your
grammar and expanding your vocabulary. There's no magic. Of course there's also nothing wrong with wanting
to practise with a tutor as soon as possible, maybe especially for extraverts, but outside HTLAL tutors are
generally overrated because "you can't learn a language on your own". Except that you still need to learn not to
rely on your tutor.

For me as an introvert, it's not only about a lack of desire to communicate more than I absolutely have to. I also
feel that the tutor-student relationship is too impersonal, especially when money is directly involved. I'd rather
find a friend with similar interests and communicate in writing, like I prefer to do in my native language when
possible. And if I manage to visit their country, we'll meet and speak in real life.

And for me as an aspiring polyglot, most tutors would seem as condescending as most coursebooks. But at the
same time if I imagine getting tuition from someone like Prof Argüelles, my heart just beats like crazy and I'm not
sure we'd get along all that well. Good tutors and good classes are possible, but for me they kind of don't exist.

Let me try to make sense out of this. The idea here I think is this: If a tutor does not work for you, don't use one.
This really reminds of that joke where someone asks a person who is continuously hitting their head against the
wall: "Why are you banging your head against the wall?" The answer: "Because if feels good when I stop."

If you can spot your own performance mistakes and know how to correct them, if you can answer any questions
about anything related to the language or culture and if you interact with yourself as you would with a native
speaker, if you know how to say things in a better more idiomatic way, then you do not need a tutor.

Unlike some people here at HTLAL, I cannot do all these things by myself. I make mistakes and, for example, I
love having my tutor correct my e-mails and pointing out all the little things that I missed like spelling "quanto"
instead of "cuánto". I"m only human. If I spoke Spanish perfectly, I wouldn't need a tutor. For the time being, I
need one.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6600 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 16 of 28

01 July 2014 at 1:19am | IP Logged

No need to exaggerate. I never said I do everything perfectly without ever interacting with native speakers, just that if I don't have opportunities for that, then I don't even need what a tutor could teach me.
Also, the financial aspect is not the only or even main downside for me. With unlimited funds I would book maybe 1 hour per month with Zlatan Ibrahimović haha. And even in this case money wouldn't buy me his (sincere) respect. But that's something worth working for.
Back to reality, I don't see how a tutor-student relationship could work out without having to explain my strategies and discuss my past experience, maybe countless times until I find the right tutor. Nah I'd rather ask my question here on HTLAL :)))

To clarify, the only thing I truly disagree with is "once you've tasted good tutoring, you'll never go back". There's a time for everything; each tutor has their strengths and weaknesses. It's just like with Anki - perhaps 5-8 of each 10 successful language learners discover it and never look back, but the remaining ones do well without it, whether they've tried it or not.

Also, I wasn't saying that tuition is a bad option for the OP. I just think that it already gets waaay too much recognition outside HTLAL. I suppose most of us agree that it should be only a small fraction of what you do in the language, even if it may well be an important one.

1 person has voted this message useful

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