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language Tutors & self learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Potted Plant Newbie Ireland Joined 3444 days ago 27 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French | Message 1 of 22 17 April 2015 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
After reading this thread , specifically in rdearman's post:
I thought it could be worthwhile to discuss the role of private tutors in one's own studies. I was wondering how the other members of the forum integrate private tutors, into their own self-study schedules or strategies? What kind of lessons do you like? Are there particular areas of language study you prefer to cover with a tutor? Do you structure your learning plan around lessons with a tutor or is it the opposite? Do you prefer short 'bursts' of private lessons, perhaps coming up to an exam or a new job or a holiday or to cover one particular issue, and let exposure, pain and practice do the rest? Do you have more than one? etc. Of course, if there are any tutors on this forum and would like to add how they structure their lessons or what plans they may have when working with certain kinds of students, please feel free to do so. [If there has been another, older, post on this topic I apologise. My search only showed topics regarding the finding of tutors.] _______ To begin, in my own study of Japanese I ask my tutor to cover any grammatical points that are not adequately explained in my textbooks. Or cultural nuances in the language that I would like a more detailed explanation of, an example in Japanese would be words referring to oneself or others (I, you, etc). If we have time, we work through a few activities to check my understanding / reinforce the specific grammar point. All of the work is done through Japanese and we meet maybe twice or three times a month. No nuclear physics or Roman history as of yet! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5030 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 22 17 April 2015 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hummm... since I was singled out, I suppose I should respond. ;-)
I have a tutor for Italian and French which I meet with on a weekly basis. Initially I met on one-to-one, but now I have my French lesson with one other student, and the Italian lesson with 3-4 others. Mostly these sessions are now "free talk" with the only rule being, no English. The format is different for each although both consist of 50% lesson and 50% talking and are 2 hours long. In the Italian session we are given a A4 sheet of paper prepared by the tutor. This paper contains a 1/2 page of crossword puzzle like clues and we have to figure out the word. So an English example might be: "Writing Tables" and you have to figure out "Desks". This is a very trivial example, the ones the tutor prepares for us are much, much harder. There is also normally a tongue twister for us to repeat, and a couple of fill-in-the-blank exercises, which are paragraphs with some words missing which we have to fill in correctly. These fill-in-the-blanks are normally obscure or difficult uses of some grammatical point, past-tense, past-historic, etc. The French lesson is less formal, mainly because there is only two of us. We chat for 50% of the time (sometimes more) mostly about what we are doing or have done that week. We also play word games on occasion, I-Spy, or 20 questions, or Would You Rather. Other times the tutor has prepared a large number of sentences which she reads out, and we have to figure out the meaning (she uses lots of idioms here), or we are given sentences to translate into French. We've been drilled on numbers for a couple of weeks running, she appeared one week with four pages of randomly generated numbers from 1-10,000 and either read them to us, or had us say them. If you study French you'll understand why number drills are useful. I normally use these sessions to query any grammatical point, or idiom I've come across in my reading or film watching. We have a little time to cover questions. Personally I find these sessions very helpful because they are just about the only "output" I get other than the odd language exchange. It is also helpful to know I'm not the only one who struggles to remember quatre-vingt-douze, etc. I tend to treat these sessions as separate and distinct from my studies. Other than the odd question I might ask when I come across something confusing while reading or listening. The tutor (for French especially) likes to zero in on things she identifies as a weakness in either myself or the other student or both, and then we do that exhaustively until we "get it", at the moment that is a lot of future and past tense sentences. Lots of "passé composé", "imperfect", "futur proche", etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SomeGuy Groupie Germany Joined 4894 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: German* Studies: Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 3 of 22 17 April 2015 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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When i start a language my tutors are basically just helping me with my pronunciation , i can learn grammar and vocabulary on my own.
Later on i 'use' them for practice conversations and quite often as a gateway into their culture ( behavior, politics, history,...).Sometimes improving the language hasn't even the highest priority for me and its more about their opinion about certain events! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nieng Zhonghan Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Antarctica Joined 3465 days ago 108 posts - 315 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Japanese*, Spanish, Galician Studies: Finnish, Icelandic, Armenian, Mongolian Studies: Old English, Russian, English, German, Korean, Mandarin | Message 4 of 22 18 April 2015 at 2:10am | IP Logged | ||
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In short, it depends on you first.
I have generally advocated an input based approach during my initial stages. Of course, it depends on my target languages because for each one I have used different strategies mainly because my goals were not the same at short and long term. Some people here on HTLAL have mentioned the "massive input" approach in their logs and other threads. The basic concept is that you take in a lot of the language, paying attention to meaning and structure whenever you can. Some HTLALers focus exclusively on native media as soon as they can. Others balance massive input (reading fictions and non-fictions books, listening to music and podcast, watching native shows and films etc) with grammatical studies and vocabulary. I take this approach because they complement each other. Once I achieve a solid B1 or B2 level, I tend to focus more on my active skills. As for some of them, I don’t really care about being able to speak, but just write at a C1 up to C2 level. As for some others, due to my personal and professional goals, I need to be able to converse with different people on different settings, but it is usually a combination with writing and speaking, but never speaking alone. This is the time when I might start looking at some tutors to help me activating my skills faster. I’d like to write a little bit about how I have organized a productive session with a tutor, though productive is a matter of perspective. What was productive and effective to me might not be for you due to your learning or maintaining style. No matter what is your target language, the first thing you need to do is to make sure your realistic goals for short and long term goals.
I think we could discuss here about “what makes an amazing tutor” or “how to spot a bad tutor” too because it depends not only on my money, but on the quality of the tutors. As for me, one important characteristic on a good tutor is how he can adapt his language to my level, no matter which level I am at the moment. He should use neither too complicated words nor too easy words all the time. If the words and grammar used is too advanced or too easy, you will not only waste your time, but your precious money unnecessarily. Challenges are very important, but if he doesn’t provide an audio, image, video, gestures, drawings or whatever suits you at most to understand through the context, I think this session would not be as worth as you need. So, initially a good tutor will be able to assess your current level, clearly understand what your goals are and prepare your lessons according to what you have discussed beforehand. He should guide you in order to achieve your specific goals You can also use different kind of tutors. It can be either online or face him in real life. I prefer online sessions through Skype because I don’t waste my time while taking any kind of transport. Besides that, my tutor can type some words so that I won’t need to worry much about the vocabulary after the session. It is not the vocabulary beforehand that matters at most, but the one after the class. What attitude will both you and the tutor have with the vocabulary? Will he type for you? I particularly hope so, but you also need to work on it. Not knowing the vocabulary before the class is not too problematic, though I particularly prefer that the tutor send me the text beforehand so that I can prepare myself in order to go into a deeper conversation regarding the chosen topic. You can hire either very experienced tutors or less experienced tutors. From my personal experience, I’d personally go with less experienced tutors because the more experienced ones usually tell me things I disagree concerning learning methodology. For instance, I have hired a well experienced tutor once, but instead of discussing about what I have requested, we started having some unnecessary arguments because I totally disagreed about what she has told me by that time. I said I understood her points, but that made clear that I wanted to continue talking about the topic of the lesson, instead. She simply wanted to conduct me in a way doesn’t suit my learning style for that specific language. In this sense, a less experienced tutor tend to be more open minded because he or she won’t stick to the idea (usually don’t from my experience) of how students should learn. I rather prefer those who are open with different approaches. One way to spot a bad tutor is whether he can explain you grammar points to you very clearly. In case you are going to work with native speakers, you can realize that many of them barely know how to explain their own native language’s grammar topics. Of course, there many other ways which I am not going to list now. Objectively speaking let me give you some examples. Situation 1 I once needed to work in Zimbabwe temporarily. I needed to know how to be understood in a local market, supermarket, drugstore, hospital, bakery, etc. I hired a tutor to start understanding the spoken language related to those settings. What kind of words will I need in a local market where I expected to see neither many literate people nor someone who could converse to me in languages that I knew? If know nothing about the local market terminology (I mean, how to ask for a specific product you need), I would enlist a couple of words and present my ideas of what I need to know in order to successfully ask for a product, understand their basic words such as those related to payment (cash, coins, credit card, debit card, prices in general) and work out a dialogue or even do a role play which prepares me this kind of conversation. It will be short, for sure, but enough to “survive” under needy circumstances. Results will be noticed once you go to the local market and do everything by yourself without the help of your local co-workers and you really use any of the official languages of the region I worked in; if the communication works, then, you can say that you and your tutor have succeeded to reach that small goal. I also have asked my tutor how to be understood in the hospital and drugstores in case I need some medicine, though I have brought with me some specific ones in case of any emergency. But still, if you are going to live in that country for a while, it is desirable to know how to converse in that setting. I also have asked for some lessons related to the police station because I wasn’t much aware about the local security before going there. Since I cannot take in consideration what tourists say in traveling blogs and forum, I have asked a preparation of a session which I would be able to tell myself what has happened to me. So, words such as “rob”, “assault” etc were taken in consideration, with all the respect to those who are from that country. If you are in an urge to move to a country where your target language is spoken, then, make a list of what you can do and what you can't do. Make it very concrete as "I can go to a shop and ask for a local sim card”, but “I don’t know how to express yourself in case of emergency”. Choose which of all the problems you have is the one you can solve the quickest, then solve it. You will find problems come up along the way. Once they become pertinent, find solutions to tackle them. I needed to learn how to speak my target language, but not necessarily be functionally in either reading or writing them. I learned how to survive in those specific environments. Situation 2 I have once taken some lessons before a specific proficiency exam which required reading, listening, writing and speaking skills. I have studied the first three by myself for a couple of weeks and used the speaking tutoring to help me answer very clearly and objectively to all tasks. I got a C2 in that language and part of the merit should be given to my former tutor who has helped me with some tips of how to take that test. In this case I have hired two different tutors to valuate myself. Both of them have said that I would clearly pass the exam. My main concern was the speaking as my writing was pretty good at that time. Situation 3 If you are not going to move soon to where your target language is spoken, then, you can still make a list of "can do" as I wrote above. I suggest you solving your lack of vocabulary knowledge since it allows you to practice common structures of your target language by your own needs and based on what you definitely cannot do, ask, describe or even answer when I am asked etc. Choose which of all the problems you have is the one you can solve the quickest, then solve it. You will find problems come up along the way. Once they become pertinent, find solutions to tackle them with or without a tutor. Of course the lessons are never just about questions and answers, otherwise it would be boring after a while. Speaking lessons which I am talking about here is good for conversation practice or listening comprehension or whatever else I feel is my weakest area at the moment. Choose some topics you need to brush up, improve etc. Work on it for at least 10 minutes. Some normal tutors would give you a task to talk in 1-3 minutes, but this is not TOEFL or any kind of proficiency exam. You don’t need to think of any robotic ways to express yourself in order to achieve a high score, but to develop your listening and speaking skills. Once I'm talking about a specific subject, I refuse to give up on expressing something I wanted to express. I do try to rephrase sentences; however, if that does not help me at all, I will ask for every single word or any kind of expressions I'm missing and then try to rebuild the whole sentence. Unlike many learners, I don’t give up on changing the topics or keep silent because (at least for my target languages) I know that it causes an awkward feeling even if the idea is clearly beyond my current level to express. Whether I am talking about astrophysics or about Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, I do not allow my limited grammar and vocabulary knowledge to hinder from me expressing my own thoughts and opinions. What I wanted to say is that if one doesn’t change his attitude, hiring a tutor might be a waste of time and money sometimes. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4803 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 5 of 22 19 April 2015 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I can count two very distinct kinds of experience with tutors.
I'd say the prerequisites of using a tutor successfully are this: 1.They are willing to tailor the sessions to your needs and requirements 2.They know all that is needed for your goals (for exemple, they have already prepared someone for an exam you want to sit) 3.They are compatible with you as a personality. They are not un pleasant to you, they are able to mix enouragement and expectations and corrections in the right balance for you. 4.Work on your own. Don't let yourself feel like you don't need to work hard by yourself just because you have a tutor teaching you. 5.Give some thought to decision when, for how long and for what purpose do you want a tutor for. I think the tutor is not needed during large periods of time even though they can be a good tool if you want to activate your skills before going to the country or before an exam or interview. I'd say that for an "easy" language (I don't dare to guess about languages like Korean or Arabic), you don't need a tutor at all until you get into a situation describe a sentence ago. And even then you can get by without one. It is a matter of personal preference. Unlike Nieng Zhongan, I wouldn't say I prefer unexperienced tutors, experience is a good thing usually. However, I find it better if the tutor has had other than pedagogical education. I'd say the pedagogical faculties are making future teachers inflexible and make them trust wrong approaches. Such as the assumption that the teacher is always right about the methodology. My two examples. 1. French, years ago, I was intermediate. Bad results, demotivation It ended up bad, the results were far from what I had hoped for. At least, it worked a bit as a maintanence but not that much. Why: -she was not demanding enough. She was obviously shy to give much more homework -she wasn't making me progress at a reasonable pace. Two lessons in a coursebook per semester, repeating things all the time, that was not good. Especially with a crappy coursebook -she was following the usual class method, even though in a 1 on 1 setting. But the class methodologies count with having various learners mixed together and try to find a compromise. Applying the compromise solution to an individual student is much worse approach than adjusting the methodology to the said student. 2.A few months ago, French, preparation for DALF, good result My tutor was a man who had studied law and did lots of various jobs over the years. Intelligent yet not a typical intelectual. I found out a bit late that, despite having prepared people for other exams, he had never prepared people for DALF, that was a small trouble. Why it ended up well in the end: -He adjusted the meetings to my needs and we spent quite all the time just speaking with him correcting me when appropriate. -He did correct my writings, which was the most important part of my exam preparation. Unfortunately, I could have been spending more time on the preparation had I not had exams at university at the same time. -He tried his usual methods but they proved too easy for my level, so we just spent like 10 minutes (more often nothing) on things like grammar. -He had quite a lot of useful advice on writing and such things from his experience with the French education. The exams are in some ways similar to things the lyceens are to write. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6391 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 22 19 April 2015 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
In Finnish that's also doable. Proven by me :) (and I did the bulk of my learning at 15-19 without the experience that I have now) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3686 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 7 of 22 20 April 2015 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Cavesa said a very very true thing: Don't let yourself feel like you don't need to work hard by yourself just because you have a tutor teaching you.
I have done tutoring, and what I have learned is, different students need different things. There are some students with whom it's mainly about explaining to them how to make sentences properly (grammar, word order and stuff); there are some for whom the main work from my side is working on their pronunciation; there are some who always have 101 reasons why they could not do homework this time, but they enjoy speaking and thus are still progressing reasonably well; there are some who just need some guidance, some constructive approach, some new goals, some suggestions on textbooks, websites, methods. There are students who every time come with questions they encountered while studying on their own and want to clarify things. But the ones who do the best and progress the fastest are (of course) the ones who do the hard work on regular basis :) You should try to figure out which parts of language learning you can do on your own and where would you want help. A tutor can help you not to learn things wrong - give you timely corrections of your grammar, word usage, pronunciation, what ever. Find a flexible tutor who is willing to adjust to your needs. Make sure that his/her teaching style matches your learning style. I have also had tutors; what worked best for me was conversation practice with encouragement and corrections from tutors side (had both experienced teacher do that and an inexperienced one, in both cases I got a lot out of experience), also having corrections on written assignments, such as essays, is a huge help figuring out what is it that I'm getting wrong. The rest are things that I can easily enough do on my own - read, listen, look through a grammar book, etc. Edited by day1 on 20 April 2015 at 8:16am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 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 8 of 22 20 April 2015 at 8:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Tutoring does two things - it allows you to get practice with natives without having the
worries of an exchange partner (since you pay them) and it gives you an instant feedback loop. The reason people don't use tutors well is because they're not going in with a plan of what they're doing. Always have a plan. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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