Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
Serpent
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3657
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 10:54 am
Location: Moskova
Languages: heritage
Russian (native); Belarusian, Polish

fluent or close: Finnish (certified C1), English; Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian
learning: Croatian+, Ukrainian; Romanian, Galician; Danish, Swedish; Estonian
exploring: Latin, Karelian, Catalan, Dutch, Czech, Latvian
x 5179
Contact:

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby Serpent » Sat May 06, 2017 10:41 am

Cavesa wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:Aside from the privilege discussion (and likely he was aware of what the privilege of paying for classes every day is) it would seem that his method is a good argument for advancing to C1 levels with a teacher/tutor.


Motivation is not priviledge, it is a personal quality.
Motivation can be a matter of survival, usually only for one language. Otherwise you need to be relatively privileged in order to be motivated for things that don't directly help your survival. Wanting to take daily classes is motivation. Being able to afford them is privilege, and so is having a parent or employer who is willing to pay for them.

I agree with other things you said :)
1 x
LyricsTraining now has Finnish and Polish :)
Corrections welcome

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby blaurebell » Sat May 06, 2017 1:18 pm

Serpent wrote:
Cavesa wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:Aside from the privilege discussion (and likely he was aware of what the privilege of paying for classes every day is) it would seem that his method is a good argument for advancing to C1 levels with a teacher/tutor.


Motivation is not priviledge, it is a personal quality.


Motivation can be a matter of survival, usually only for one language. Otherwise you need to be relatively privileged in order to be motivated for things that don't directly help your survival. Wanting to take daily classes is motivation. Being able to afford them is privilege, and so is having a parent or employer who is willing to pay for them.


I think we need one more layer to untangle this issue. If we assume that time = money or at least a highly valuable commodity that most of us lack, then language learning is always an activity for the privileged, no matter whether we have money for lessons or not. People who work 14h a day to simply survive usually are unlikely to be in a position where they could have the time to learn something new.

Now, motivation is in this case only the a *willingness* to invest, either in the form of time or money or even both. The *ability* to invest is a different problem and here is where privilege comes in. The common perspective of privilege is to say that someone is not motivated to change their situation, when in reality this person doesn't have the possibility to change their situation. And since it's such a common and infuriating thing to hear this is what we are likely to read into Cavesa's expression, although I'm pretty sure that's not what was meant here.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think what was meant was this: Being willing to invest what it takes, needs a certain level of discipline since we could also invest that time/money otherwise. Instead of paying for language classes we could go on a beach holiday. Instead of spending thousands of hours learning a language we could also relax more, spend more time with our friends and family or simply waste our time with native language TV. Yes, of course this all assumes that we are in the privileged position to be able to invest our time / money, but well, if we weren't in this position we wouldn't be having this discussion at all!

By the way, I personally have made the experience many times that *not* paying for a teacher is usually the more expensive option, which means that people who don't have the money, pretty much always have a disadvantage where it comes to education. Not having the guidance of a teacher means having to waste more money on materials or wasting time that could otherwise have been spent doing something productive. It often also means that people who can't pay tend to fail to learn in the end, which of course means more inequality and more privilege for those who do learn and who can then use their new skills for more economic gain. This applies to all sorts of complex skills, technicals skills foremost, but also languages, music, dancing etc. Sure, nowadays one can find pretty much all the information out there to learn just about anything on your own - youtube, online forums and books are a fantastic source -, but one wastes an awful lot of time when collecting all that information, trying out methods that might not work and so on. In general a good teacher is a valuable short cut worth the money.

Of course, separating the good teachers from the bad teachers and the various peddlers of snake-oil is always a problem. And even good language teachers might still not be appropriate for the needs of an advanced student. To go from A0 to B2 needs a very different approach than to go from B2 to C2 and most language teachers will never even encounter any advanced students. It's unsurprising that they have little experience in how to deal with them or help them properly. I personally think that most advanced language learners are better off paying native students of their own field for discussions and writing corrections rather than a language teacher. One can't expect specialised vocabulary and terminology from a language teacher! My dad's Spanish teacher simply can't understand what he's talking about when he tries to explain to her what kind of problem he has been trying to solve at work. She neither has the vocabulary nor the technical knowledge! And language teachers are really not qualified at all to do anything about accent reduction either! The only people really trained for that are speech therapists who are of course hard to find outside of the country. It's not that language teachers are incompetent to teach students anything beyond B2. It's simply not their job, because it's too specialised! Possibly one can expect the specific skills needed for the C1 and C2 proficiency exams, but bashing language teachers in general for not being able to provide more strikes me as somewhat unfair.
9 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

User avatar
tarvos
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2889
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 11:13 am
Location: The Lowlands
Languages: Native: NL, EN
Professional: ES, RU
Speak well: DE, FR, RO, EO, SV
Speak reasonably: IT, ZH, PT, NO, EL, CZ
Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI
Passive: AF, DK, LAT
Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1
x 6093
Contact:

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby tarvos » Sat May 06, 2017 6:11 pm

I've had my Russian teacher tell me "there's no point in you taking classes with me, I can barely teach you things because you don't need conversational skills and your grammar is excellent - we could do some writing exercises as that's the only area of Russian you could improve in, but other than that you speak Russian almost like we do anyway."

I found that an honest answer implying "I'm not going to do a job that I don't have the skill to pull off. You're an advanced C1-C2 learner of Russian - your knowledge needs to be tested by someone who's got such a wide range of skills they can actually challenge you." I wish more tutors were that honest when saying such things. I have refused students in the past for similar reasons saying "there are better tutors for learning this, don't splash cash on something you don't feel benefits you."

But not every tutor would do that, obviously.

About motivation - the ability to turn motivation into action can be privileged if you need a certain amount of financial spending power in order to get further, but motivation in and of itself is an intrinsic quality people have or they don't.
6 x
I hope your world is kind.

Is a girl.

User avatar
Chung
Blue Belt
Posts: 529
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:39 pm
Languages: SPEAKS: English*, French
STUDIES: Hungarian, Italian, Ukrainian
OTHER: Czech, German, Polish, Slovak
STUDIED: Azeri, BCMS/SC, Estonian, Finnish, Korean, Latin, Northern Saami, Russian, Slovenian, Turkish
DABBLED: Bashkir, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Inari Saami, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Meadow Mari, Mongolian, Romanian, Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvan, Uzbek
x 2309

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby Chung » Sat May 06, 2017 7:17 pm

blaurebell wrote: [...] Of course, separating the good teachers from the bad teachers and the various peddlers of snake-oil is always a problem. And even good language teachers might still not be appropriate for the needs of an advanced student. To go from A0 to B2 needs a very different approach than to go from B2 to C2 and most language teachers will never even encounter any advanced students. It's unsurprising that they have little experience in how to deal with them or help them properly. I personally think that most advanced language learners are better off paying native students of their own field for discussions and writing corrections rather than a language teacher. One can't expect specialised vocabulary and terminology from a language teacher! My dad's Spanish teacher simply can't understand what he's talking about when he tries to explain to her what kind of problem he has been trying to solve at work. She neither has the vocabulary nor the technical knowledge! And language teachers are really not qualified at all to do anything about accent reduction either! The only people really trained for that are speech therapists who are of course hard to find outside of the country. It's not that language teachers are incompetent to teach students anything beyond B2. It's simply not their job, because it's too specialised! Possibly one can expect the specific skills needed for the C1 and C2 proficiency exams, but bashing language teachers in general for not being able to provide more strikes me as somewhat unfair.


This makes me think of that time I took a course in business German. Looking back it was a bit laughable aside from the obvious opportunities for me just to practice German and increase my vocabulary. Working in business for as long as I have, I believe that this kind of course should be taught by people who have credible background experience in the associated specialty. In a similar way, if there were a course in German legalese, I'm thinking that a lawyer, a paralegal, or even someone who works extensively with contracts (I'm thinking of friend in Berlin who does just such a thing for a living even though she's neither a lawyer nor paralegal) with enough ability and interest in teaching and is/was licensed/trained in a German-speaking country should be teaching this kind of course rather than a tenured prof who teaches language or literature. Since instructors in higher education are not required to be teachers in a formal sense (i.e. have a degree in education/pedagogy) as they would be if they were working in primary or secondary education, I can't then see how someone with experience and training in business and enough inclination to teach (a corporate trainer, someone from HR?) would not want to teach business language at a college or university if the price and timing are right for everyone involved. Besides, the specialized nature of these courses (there's usually only one such course for the semester) means that it could be held on a weeknight once or twice a week to accommodate the instructor's day job. This would be like those instructors of an evening class in a MBA program who are regular businesspeople by day rather than full profs with tenure.

As it was, our instructor, competent as she was, was tethered to our textbook. Her explanations of business terminology and the associated environment were obviously cribbed from the textbook, although I guess that we couldn't expect more given her educational background which was heavy on German belles-lettres. Getting coached by a suit from say VW or Siemens to write business letters in German or parse the vocabulary/phrasing of simple contracts could have been more interesting/rewarding than having a literature prof with no such capitalist experience doing the same.
6 x

User avatar
neofight78
Blue Belt
Posts: 539
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:02 pm
Location: Novosibirsk, Russia
Languages: English (N), Russian (B2+), Spanish (A0)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=833
x 1232

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby neofight78 » Sun May 07, 2017 12:23 am

It would be great if it were possible on italki or Verbling to search by topic I.e. every tutor had to enter their interests, qualifications and experience. That's way if I wanted to focus on a particular topic such as chess, karate, programming etc I could find someone who actually knows about these things.

For work related stuff (in my case software development), it is possible to use a freelancing site to hire professionals to act as tutors. This is what I've done with my professional sphere. Some people are better than others at performing this role, and again you have to be prepared to expend some effort teaching them how to help.

If you're interested in business then probably an ordinary tutor could help with the very basics, but to really get into it you might need to hire an accountant or paralegal etc...
2 x

User avatar
reineke
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3570
Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2016 7:34 pm
Languages: Fox (C4)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=6979
x 6554

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby reineke » Sun May 07, 2017 2:25 am

Cavesa wrote:Most tutors are absolutely useless...

s_allard wrote: Tutors are an absolutely necessity...

No they're not. They're neither useless nor an absolute necessity. Most advanced learners who are keen on developing active skills should be able to appreciate the usefulness of having access to an educated, native-speaking tutor.The main impediment to further progress of such learners is not technical vocabulary or business letter writing but lack of fluency.
2 x

s_allard
Blue Belt
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:01 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: French (N), English (N), Spanish (C2 Cert.), German (B2 Cert)
x 2302

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby s_allard » Sun May 07, 2017 6:18 am

reineke wrote:...
s_allard wrote: Tutors are an absolutely necessity...

No they're not. They're neither useless nor an absolute necessity. Most advanced learners who are keen on developing active skills should be able to appreciate the usefulness of having access to an educated, native-speaking tutor.The main impediment to further progress of such learners is not technical vocabulary or business letter writing but lack of fluency.


I know that reineke loves to quote people and academic articles but I think it would be best to quote correctly. Here is what I really said:

I am of the totally opposite opinion. I believe that tutors are an absolutely necessity for advanced learners and especially for exam preparation. First, let me say that in my opinion the category tutors includes three kinds of resources:

1. Teachers who follow a formal program.
2. Tutors who provide interaction and corrective feedback with technical explanations.
3. Language buddies or exchange partners who provide conversation and some correction.

I stand by my statement about "absolute necessity". This is an opinion of course, not a scientific observation but I will add a nuance. I won't rehash my argument except to say that it ultimately boils down to how well you want to use the target language. If as an advanced or mastery learner you are not bothered by mistakes in your speech or your writing, in other words if mediocrity doesn't bother you, then a tutor is certainly not an "absolute necessity".

I would not send a professional letter in my target language without having it checked by a native speaker. Ditto for a professional report. I don't like language errors in my native languages. Why should I tolerate them in my target language? Looking at the big picture, what this means is that I want to speak my target language in a manner approximately similar to my native languages. Not exactly but close.

How can I eliminate my errors in my TL without external assistance, i.e. a tutor? I believe it's impossible or at best very laborious and unsure. If I have to give a speech in Spanish before a Spanish-speaking audience, doesn't it make sense to have this speech checked by an educated native speaker beforehand? Are there people here who believe that this is not necessary?

A tutor, or some sort of external assistance, is a necessity because you cannot see and fix all your own mistakes alone. It's as simple as that. If you are satisfied with mediocrity at the advanced or mastery level, then a tutor is certainly not a necessity.
1 x

User avatar
blaurebell
Blue Belt
Posts: 840
Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 1:24 pm
Location: Spain
Languages: German (N), English (C2), Spanish (B2-C1), French (B2+ passive), Italian (A2), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3235
x 2240

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby blaurebell » Sun May 07, 2017 10:22 am

s_allard wrote:A tutor, or some sort of external assistance, is a necessity because you cannot see and fix all your own mistakes alone. It's as simple as that. If you are satisfied with mediocrity at the advanced or mastery level, then a tutor is certainly not a necessity.


I'm sorry, but if you don't know how to correct your mistakes in written language with the help of google and a grammar checker, then you need to probably go back and fix your basic grammar, which is a B2 activity! If you are an advanced student, i.e. C1+, you will have already identified the main areas where you are likely to make mistakes - prepositions, idioms, maybe certain tenses or in some languages cases. And of course you will also simply know when you're making a mistake because it sounds wrong! Google is usually enough to correct mistakes in written language at that level. Basically the need for grammar books and massive input to get your mistake detection machine going will put you squarely in B2+ rather than the advanced category C1-C2 and in this case a tutor can indeed still help.

I'm now starting to wonder whether this whole discussion isn't based on a simple misunderstanding: How advanced does a student have to be to fall into the advanced category that the original statement mentions? I personally believe that you haven't really reached C1 if you can't send an email or any other kind of correspondence specific to your necessities without worrying about mistakes. In fact, my own standard for C1 would be to be able to submit an essay at a TL university without having a native speaker proofread it. After all C1 writing requirements are this:

"Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organizational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices."


University lecturers who often have to grade essays of foreigners tend to agree that grammar mistakes will ruin the clarity of a text. Texts on complex subjects require precision and grammar mistakes will make precision impossible. Same goes for simple writing conventions: Germans who write in English have a tendency to use too long sentence. Proofreading essays in English for Germans usually entails cutting every sentence in half. No English native will judge a text to be clear if it contains sentences that are half a page long! So, if you are unfamiliar with the writing conventions of a language and still produce grammar mistakes in written language you simply haven't reached C1/advanced level yet. There simply is no space for mediocrity at an advanced level.

So, the real question is here: Can a tutor help with going from C1 requirements to C2 requirements?

"Can summarize information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation.
Can express themselves spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations."


Sure, someone can definitely help with that, but only if they are able to understand the different kind of written and spoken sources and the topics that are the basis for your spontaneous expression! If my C2 requirement is to precisely express different shades of meaning in relation to the finer points of the philosophy of Derrida, a language teacher has no chance to even follow what's going on. If my requirement is to quickly discuss a complex computer programming problem that requires high level abstract thinking and problem solving abilities to even understand the problem in the first place, any language teacher would be completely lost!

To be perfectly honest, most native speakers fail at these requirements actually, even when they are experts in their field. Most programmers I know can't express themselves coherently at all without the use of a huge arsenal of diagrams and drawings. A surprisingly large number of philosophers don't even understand Derrida and even those who do are usually barely understandable themselves. In their native language!!! One philosopher told me that he considers reading Derrida a waste of lifetime. This stuff is really at the extreme limit of abstract thinking. In fact, I only know very few people who can express themselves coherently about Derrida OR highly complex programming problems, although I've met a large number of programmers and philosophers. The number of people who can do BOTH is extremely small - I think I might actually know every single one of them personally, it's barely a handful on the entire planet! How could I expect a language teacher to be of any use to me when the challenge is this?! Ideally you would need an expert in your own field to be your tutor and then there might be a chance that they can help you.

The best environment to move from C1 to C2 is of course a TL university, and the difference between an acceptable essay and a good essay is actually C1 vs C2. Now, the only reason why B2 is the usual language requirement for bachelor degrees is that 1. you can pay people to proofread your essays and 2. in most fields the topics at bachelor level are not extremely complex yet. Masters programs in certain humanities fields require at least C1, because you simply can't have a complex discussion in these fields with someone who can't use language precisely. A C1 level student will have problems participating in seminars, but they will be able to pass the assignments. If they want to not just pass, but to participate and excel, then C2 is definitely needed at this level.

So, I insist, language teachers are not qualified to help with C1-C2 level problems, unless you restrict yourself to working on the narrow set of sources required for the C2 level proficiency exam. Going to a TL university is usually way too expensive and a logistical problem. So, the best tutor to hire at this level would probably be a native language masters student in your own field.
3 x
: 20 / 100 Дэвид Эддингс - В поисках камня
: 14325 / 35000 LWT Known

: 17 / 55 FSI Spanish Basic
: 100 / 116 GdUdE B
: 8 / 72 Duolingo reverse Spanish -> German

s_allard
Blue Belt
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:01 pm
Location: Canada
Languages: French (N), English (N), Spanish (C2 Cert.), German (B2 Cert)
x 2302

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby s_allard » Sun May 07, 2017 11:44 am

blaurebell wrote:
s_allard wrote:A tutor, or some sort of external assistance, is a necessity because you cannot see and fix all your own mistakes alone. It's as simple as that. If you are satisfied with mediocrity at the advanced or mastery level, then a tutor is certainly not a necessity.


I'm sorry, but if you don't know how to correct your mistakes in written language with the help of google and a grammar checker, then you need to probably go back and fix your basic grammar, which is a B2 activity! If you are an advanced student, i.e. C1+, you will have already identified the main areas where you are likely to make mistakes - prepositions, idioms, maybe certain tenses or in some languages cases. And of course you will also simply know when you're making a mistake because it sounds wrong! Google is usually enough to correct mistakes in written language at that level. Basically the need for grammar books and massive input to get your mistake detection machine going will put you squarely in B2+ rather than the advanced category C1-C2 and in this case a tutor can indeed still help.

....

A very interesting post from blaurebell, and I actually agree with a lot but not all of it. In the quote above, she seems to be saying that at the C level, the learner has no need for correction because, for the written language, Google and a grammar checker are enough, and, for the spoken language, "you will also simply know when you're making a mistake because it sounds wrong!".

I interpret this to mean that at the C level the learner hardly makes any mistakes and can correct any rare mistakes on their own. Well, if this is the case, there really isn't much to discuss about. In an earlier post, I defined advanced learner situation as specifically the progression from C1 to C2, or possibly from B2 to C1. I also identified two main activities where a tutor is invaluable:

1. Identify and correct mistakes of all kinds including register and shades of meaning
2. Recommend stylistic changes, such as idioms and other formulations, to make the learner's speech more natural.

I also gave a specific example of a session that I recently had with a tutor:
5 minutes: pleasantries, catching-up on latest news, idle chatting
10 minutes: deciphering and discussing some recordings where I couldn't make out what was being said. I send the links and the timings to the tutor.
15 minutes: I've written a one-page letter in Spanish. We correct and discuss mistakes
10 minutes: We work on a paragraph of legal Spanish in a court judgment that appeared in a Spanish newspaper. This is formal Spanish legalese that I find very hard to understand. We look up some grammar or vocabulary points on the internet.
20 minutes: We discuss something that I've been reading or a topic that I want to talk about. I may want to summarize an article. On a few occasions, we have walked around respective houses to talk about certain house-related topics. I am continuously corrected as we go along. We often get into discussions of culture. I take notes of things to follow up on. I always play close attention to how my tutor speaks.


What I take from blaurebell's point of view is that this type of work with a tutor should not be necessary at the C level or that it is something that should be done at the B level. This is where we totally disagree. My viewpoint is that as we reach the mastery level according to the CEFR terminology the mistakes we make become more subtle and complex. We also know for example that the big difference between C1 and C2 speaking is the use of colloquialisms and idiomatic expressions. So, how do we know that we using these idiomatic expressions correctly unless we work with qualified guide?

Frankly, as much as I like Google and Google Translate, I would not send a cover letter and my CV in Spanish to a prospective employer in Spain without having them checked by an educated native speaker!

I actually think that the C-level learner probably appreciates working with a tutor more than at the other levels because the C-level learner is aware of how rich the language is and how much there is still to master. We're talking about details, nuances, fine shades of meaning and register and maybe differences of regional usage.
5 x

User avatar
Serpent
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3657
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 10:54 am
Location: Moskova
Languages: heritage
Russian (native); Belarusian, Polish

fluent or close: Finnish (certified C1), English; Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian
learning: Croatian+, Ukrainian; Romanian, Galician; Danish, Swedish; Estonian
exploring: Latin, Karelian, Catalan, Dutch, Czech, Latvian
x 5179
Contact:

Re: Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

Postby Serpent » Sun May 07, 2017 1:52 pm

I do believe google can be used to correct most mistakes, especially if you can reread your writing a couple of days later. In FIGS and other popular languages you're going to find questions posted by other learners. In Finnish you might need to google the exact expression with quotation marks (but a lot of the doubts you'll have are not a matter of preference). English is a tricky case because so much of the writing online is non-native and you need to determine which sites can be trusted. I imagine the same applies to Esperanto and from what I've read here it may be similar for Irish too. Other languages may have fewer quality issues but also less content overall, especially in searchable form.

Anyway, regardless of whether you'd like to use tutors, if your L2 has a writing system and an online presence, being able to google is an important skill.
3 x
LyricsTraining now has Finnish and Polish :)
Corrections welcome


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests