|
 |
Tutors | ||
Tags: Tutor | Usefulness | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| kchopping Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5140 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Studies: French | Message 1 of 6 24 November 2010 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Hello - I just wondered if any of you would share your experience of tutors ? do they make a real difference to your learning ? or would you say that self-learning with maybe a fluent friend/relation to talk to on a regular basis is more effective? Did anyone try so many tutors that you gave upon them and went ahead successfully on your own ?
thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 6 24 November 2010 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
|
In theory, having a friend available should be better than a tutor (more available, cheaper, etc.), but in reality, friends are not used to teaching and they don't necessarily understand why their language is the way it is, nor can they explain it.
If you study on your own, the smart way to use a tutor and a friend is ask the tutor all your questions and to ask him to support and direct you in your studies, but to use the friend to practice what you've learned. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5583 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 3 of 6 25 November 2010 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
|
From my experience, do not make the mistake I made of thinking that even a well-educated native speaker will automatically be a good tutor. There is an art to teaching and you want a tutor who can really teach( i.e. explain, encourage, challenge, etc.) I have found that native speakers often make very good partners with whom to practice, but not necessarily good tutors.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slymie Tetraglot Groupie China Joined 5220 days ago 81 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English, Macedonian Studies: French, Mandarin, Greek Studies: Shanghainese, Uyghur, Russian | Message 4 of 6 02 December 2010 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
|
It all depends on the tutor, your situation and level. Personally I think tutors are great at the intermediate level, when you are conversational, but still have trouble holding a conversation.
I would never want a tutor to explain grammar, teach me vocabulary, ect. All which I can do on my own for free and at my own pace through books and recordings. If I have a tutor I want them to sit there and listen to me attempt to employ the target language and make corrections when I am wrong. Maybe you have a friend who is fluent in your target language, but the difference is they aren't being paid. I would feel bad making a friend sit there and listen to me trying to piece together sentences for an hour and making them correct me, thus I would rather just pay the money and have a tutor do it for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 6 02 December 2010 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||
After you've looked up the grammar on your own, your tutor can help you build sentences using that grammar and instantly tell you whether you're using it the right way or not. I usually bring up grammar questions when I want more detail, or I want to know exactly what the usage or nuance is. I then try to use it spontaneously, pushing the limits a bit, and I get to see how far the expression goes and where another expression is better suited. As we do that, I'm still getting oral practice. As soon as I feel I got a good sense of it, I move on. Sometimes, I don't get something and I still move on. Certain things cannot be acquired on the spot. You have to give it time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6462 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 6 of 6 03 December 2010 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
|
I have worked with tutors a lot and I'm a tutor myself.
Most of the time, I use tutors as slymie said: when I'd like to practice having conversations in a language but my command of it is such that I spend an inordinate amount of time asking for words and constructing sentences. Also for providing new vocabulary and expressions, or providing additional explanations when my grammar books aren't good enough. For example, I had my Modern Greek tutor come up with situations in which the same subject+verb+object structure is used in all kinds of tenses, so that I could get a better feel for the difference, especially when it comes to Aorist stem vs. regular stem. My grammar book only contained examples using completely different verbs, but I love to use minimal pairs to understand things. In a similar vein I had someone at rhinospike.com (okay, not a tutor but free help) record confusing Arabic letters as minimal pairs, with the same vowels, because that allows me to better isolate what actually distinguishes the letters. Sometimes tutors will also have much simpler explanations for difficult parts of a language. A lot of grammar books and textbooks are written by perfectionist linguists, who have to describe things 100% and in the most accurate terms possible, skipping over shortcuts that could save students a lot of time. When I develop my own lesson materials for teaching, my driving principle is always to find the shortest, most direct route to a goal, and leave perfection for later. For example for Latin I have a course that consists of only 25 lessons (to be taught in 25 * 45 minutes). It obviously doesn't give you as much reading experience or as much vocabulary as you could learn from a more time-consuming course, but the words are enough and hand-picked in order to enable you to start reading original texts by various Roman authors immediately afterwards, and my philosophy is that you can then pick up more vocabulary and get more reading experience while doing what you signed up for - reading Roman authors in the original, rather than watered-down textbook texts. For Church Latin I even experimented with skipping textbook texts altogether and using the easiest sections of the Vulgate Latin Bible for instruction. Back to tutors... I also find tutors really useful to help me put in more hours. I make regular bookings, say once a week, so that's already time that I'll definitely spend on the language. But also I don't want to seem unprepared, so I can motivate myself to spend additional time before each lesson reviewing; at least reviewing the chat logs if there are no exercises or the like to do. And to study the new vocabulary when otherwise I might not feel like it. I don't want to embarrass myself asking for the same word two sessions in a row; that's a powerful motivator. Right now, I'm also doing more formal study, with a Chinese tutor. She helped me select a textbook appropriate to my level and interests and now we're going over it together. I try to do as much as possible outside the lessons (quite a contrast to school), so that I only need to read out my solutions to exercises in class. These exercises are not the kind that you could correct with an answer key; it's all about making sentences and constructing correct sentences on my own is a big weakness of mine in Chinese. We also spend half the lesson time talking, so that I get some speaking practice and also listening comprehension, and sometimes I read out texts looking for that elusive Chinese prosody. I don't think I could be where I am without tutors. Edited by Sprachprofi on 03 December 2010 at 12:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
