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language Tutors & self learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 9 of 22 20 April 2015 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I believe that using the services of a good professional tutor is one of the best things one can do to improve
one's language performance. I won't repeat what others have said here. For me it boils down to one key thing: corrective feedback from a native speaker. The plain truth is that you can't correct yourself. Sure, you can try, but why waste time trying to figure out what you're doing wrong when you can get instant help from an expert. I'll just give one tiny example. In my case I write around two pages of Spanish in the form of a real letter every week. I'm up to 40 letters now. With my tutor, one of our activities is to review and correct this letter. My writing is constantly improving but I still make mistakes. We also get into discussions about style and word usage. I look at the before and after results and see what I have to work on by myself. The whole process is very encouraging and helpful because I see the improvement. This does wonders for self- esteem and confidence. There is absolutely no way that I could correct my own writing to this degree. If you can afford it, get a good tutor right now. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7001 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 10 of 22 20 April 2015 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
Are you still using the same 300 words? 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 11 of 22 20 April 2015 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know that this last post from a rather nasty piece of work was meant to be another example of what I call
"scurrilous and puerile posts", but it is a good opportunity to raise a key point that I noticed when using the services of a Mexican tutor. Working for nearly a year with a good tutor has confirmed once and for all the importance of mastering what I call the working kernel of the language. The big mistake I was making when I started out was trying to show off all the many words and complex grammatical structures I could think of. All of this made my tutor chuckle, and I soon realized that there was no point in trying to display my linguistic prowess when I only ended up tripping over very basic things that I had never really totally mastered. Just last week I found myself hesitating over the conjugation of satisfacer. The solution I found was to go right back to that 300-word kernel - actually more like 500 words - that I had worked on with a group of colleagues. So, instead of spreading myself thin and ending up looking like a pretentious fool, I have found that concentrating on those high-frequency structures has been very effective for gaining accuracy and fluency. This is working out exactly as I had predicted. Edited by s_allard on 20 April 2015 at 10:19pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 12 of 22 21 April 2015 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, lots of input can take care about this problem with figuring out what you do
need and what not as well. But you still need to know much more than just the very narrow selection of words and structures, even if you don't use them every time. At least if you like to speak about more things than the normal touristy stuff. I think you can as well correct a lot of your own mistakes as well (depends on the kind of mistake but really a lot can be corrected if you use some time gap between writing and correction, a reliable grammar resource and google to check things out in tons of authentic texts on the internet), even thought a tutor is a more comfortable and complex option. Of course, a tutor is a much more practical option for correcting an essai that needs to follow some strict formal criteria while it is, in my opinion, an unnecesary luxuy when it comes to a simple "describe your room" beginner task. however, I wonder why so many people are using tutors for regular explanations of grammar and such things where you have sooo many cheaper (and often better) resources available. But if someone has that much money and time to spend, whatever. But I totally agree with tarvos. A tutor is a solution if you just need someone to speak with and cannot find an exchange partner (such as when you can find no natives interested in exchanging their language for yours). And you need your own plan and just use the tutor as a part of it. One thing that hasn't been mentioned: looking for a good tutor. I found it good to get references but they aren't always reliable, true. Many tutors offer first meeting for free or reduced price, which is a great thing, in my opinion. If they don't mention it in their advertisements, you might want to ask about it. Some tutor finding platforms, such as italki, have a reference system as well. A non- internet based alternative are language schools that offer individual lessons but just make yourself informed in time whether such classes follow the school's class aimed methodology as well or whether you'll have more freedom. But despite all of this, you may encounter a bad tutor or just one that doesn't suit you. Never forget you are the one who pays so tell them your needs and find someone else if the differences between your expectations and reality are too big. After all, the prices are not that low usually and the time wasted with a bad tutor could be invested elsewhere. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4086 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 13 of 22 21 April 2015 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||
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What is your budget? I also find it strange to do grammar with a tutor when it could
be done with for example, a grammar manual or some other book. And as said above, if money is no problem, or something else like you are a multi-millionaire, then that would not be a problem. Some people spend 5000€ on a first class flight, so it would be no surprise to me. I never used one because of many reasons, but in terms of financial efficiency it makes sense to use the tutor for all things that give you problems when doing things alone if you cannot solve it on your own, not things that you already can easily do and practise alone. Also I am not sure how much tutoring costs, but if it is sometihng like 50€ per week, it is a big sum of money and you are lucky to have the opportunity to afford that. Almost 1€/min to me means to use the session in blocks with each week's problems and serious one-to-one improvement instead of doing things that can be done alone. If for example, you earn 10000€ per year and are about to be foreclosed and all family members have lost their jobs, then this is when it becomes complicated. Perhaps less sessions, like twice a month, and make a list (checklist) by handwriting of all problem areas between each 2 weeks to maximise results from the session. Probably also should file the checklists and review every few months to see if the goals have been attained from each checklist. Edited by 1e4e6 on 21 April 2015 at 2:32am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 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 14 of 22 21 April 2015 at 2:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I charge $16/h for professional classes, $13 for informal tutoring. For professional
classes this implies more prep work on my part, that's why I charge more. I tutor Dutch and English. (But if you contact me privately I am willing to tutor Russian or French if you are a beginner, too). Most people take 1-2 hours a week with me, and in this case, they spend $15 or so a week (depending on the way they buy classes; taking 30 min classes with me works out a bit more expensive). I don't know what it comes down to in euro since it depends on the currency conversion, but the classes I do outside iTalki are in euro and I just receive €12 an hour for that. Edited by tarvos on 21 April 2015 at 6:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 15 of 22 21 April 2015 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I find it very amusing observing people trying to show that a tutor is not necessary or might be overkill when, in my
opinion, the only good reason for not using a tutor is simply the high cost. Can you correct your own mistakes by using a dictionary, a grammar book and google? For certain things, probably. But for something like conversational interaction, nothing can beat on-the-spot correction. What about correcting your pronunciation? What about deciphering a recording or a piece of written text? I have literally spent hours trying to just make out what a person was saying on a recording when the tutor was able to explain what the problem was in a few minutes. That's the whole point of using a good tutor. It makes everything just so much faster and more effective. All for a price. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 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 16 of 22 21 April 2015 at 7:02am | IP Logged | ||
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But there are plenty things a dictionary and a grammar can solve for you. The key is
to know what you can do at home and what you can discuss with your tutor. You can spend much less on a tutor if you know exactly what it is you need the tutor for. I call this targeted learning. You need to use the tools to suit your goals, not modify the goals to suit your tools. A tutor is an important tool, but for some things tutoring is entirely useless. I can read grammar conjugations on my own, I don't need tutors to drill me on it and when they try I usually tell them "I already know all of this" and give them the entire list upon which they're like "have to be more creative with you" next time. About written texts, you don't generally need a tutor except for a bunch of idiomatic specifics usually. Recordings are another matter entirely. There I entirely agree. But yes, you can drastically reduce your own mistakes by being attentive and careful, which is something I am unfortunately horrible at. Being thorough with your own writing reduces the amount of silly, unnecessary mistakes by at least half. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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