Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?

[zenmonkey]

The idea of finding people focusing on natives has already been mentioned once in this thread, and could be excellent. However, it is not that easy to do.

If you want to do that - look up services that help in tutoring for high-school/university level work in your target languages. While surely there is little available in, say, Nahuatl there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of sites for FESGI countries.

Here are a few tools for French:
http://www.letudiant.fr/lycee/soutien-s ... rmule.html
http://www.superprof.ch/cours/soutien-scolaire/suisse/

[s_allard]

What I am failing to see in this discussion of either tutor OR massive input is really why these need to be exclusive activities?

Why not both?

I agree wholeheartedly. I would quote myself but that would make even more people pissed off at me. Massive input feeds good output. But massive input does not lead automatically to good output. This is where tutoring can make the difference. All of this has been discussed at some length in the thread.

Hitherto much of my contribution has been about the power and value of corrective feedback. This is obviously essential and key to improvement. But, in my opinion, at the mastery or advanced level that we are talking about here, the real value of a good tutor is in developing natural-sounding speech patterns.

This aspect recently came to my attention in a class. A Turkish man said that when he, his wife and their 5-year old daughter would enter a bus or a metro wagon, people would always get up to offer them a seat. This was appreciated but sometimes they didn't want to sit down for various reasons. The question was: how should one politely refuse the offer?

I liked the question because it was framed not in terms of how do I translate something from Turkish to French but more like what would a native French-speaker say or expect to hear in this situation. We looked at a variety of solutions and the linguistic workings of each. This was a fabulous teaching moment because it emphasized so clearly the importance of developing a feel for how native speakers actually use the language in given situations.

So, when working with a tutor instead of asking: how do I say this? it's more: what can I say in this situation? It could be something as banal as interacting with the receptionist in an office. Or in my case, presenting a guest speaker at a conference or asking and answering questions. Or, say, something goes wrong with the audiovisual equipment. Sure, I can see glimpses of this on TV or a Youtube, but it's great to actually act it out and drill down to details.

This is what teachers call role-playing. The great thing about having a tutor is that I can push this in the direction I want.

And this is where input meets output. All those hundreds of hours and hundreds of pages of input that we talk about here can be processed into speaking with the tutor. This is the moment to experiment with things that I've heard or read. And most importantly, I can verify with my tutor how to use them properly.

Another aspect of all this is learning to interact with native speakers by carefully observing and channelling the speech of the tutor. This, by the way, is why I think it is effective to work with multiple tutors or language partners. You can take things from one speaker and experiment with another.

Using a tutor is a great self-esteem and confidence booster. Other contributors have mentioned developing the ability to know when something doesn't sound right. That's very useful. I prefer to emphasize feeling confident that what I'm saying is right because I have heard or used it with my tutor. This is absolutely fabulous for developing conversational skills and becoming comfortable around native speakers.

I'm dumbfounded that anyone can argue against using such a fabulous tool.

[Serpent]

As the debate moves on, I think we can assume that most people think that some form of tutoring can be very effective - I would say an absolute necessity - for the mastery level learner.

We can also assume that people are tired of trying to prove their point As someone who's actually passed a C1 exam without taking a single class, I certainly am.

As for money, well of course it's relevant because you can get native content for the price of a single session, no matter how cheap it is. But no, even if I had access to free perfect classes I probably wouldn't use them too frequently.

Getting to ask questions is more important but in many languages there are platforms to do that for free, with the bonus of getting the opinion of multiple native speakers.

[zenmonkey]

But no, even if I had access to free perfect classes I probably wouldn't use them too frequently.

I'm curious as to why would you not use "free perfect classes" too frequently?

[Cavesa]

As the debate moves on, I think we can assume that most people think that some form of tutoring can be very effective - I would say an absolute necessity - for the mastery level learner.

We can also assume that people are tired of trying to prove their point As someone who's actually passed a C1 exam without taking a single class, I certainly am.

As for money, well of course it's relevant because you can get native content for the price of a single session, no matter how cheap it is. But no, even if I had access to free perfect classes I probably wouldn't use them too frequently.

Getting to ask questions is more important but in many languages there are platforms to do that for free, with the bonus of getting the opinion of multiple native speakers.

Yes, being the loudest doesn't equal being the most right.

Noone ever disputed that an exceptionally good tutor is beneficial. But the simple fact is, that finding such a tutor in the sea of incompetent ones is extremely hard. It is not just a question of money. This is the whole point of this thread, no matter how much you try to redirect it. The subject is not "are all tutors useless for advanced learners?", no. The subject is "Are most tutors useless for advanced learners?", and it was clearly stated that yes, most tutors are useless for advanced learners.

Yes, the money is an important factor and we always consider the benefits we get for the price. The problem is, that we often cannot tell in time whether a tutor will be worth it and most simply won't. A more important problem is the money being of limited help, as you cannot buy something that is simply not available on the market. If I wanted to buy Pluto and have a walk on it, no money in the world would help me, as there is only one, it happens to be on the other side of the solar system, and it is not for sale right now. Chung's examples are exactly this. A Slovak tutor of sufficient quality is like Pluto.

I think it is not a good choice to turn this into "who doesn't agree tutor's are necessary is simply too poor/avaricious to learn a language to a good level". It is a simple reality we have various budgets. It is true that having money is always more pleasant than not having it. Money buys us advantages in all areas of life, including language learning. But that doesn't mean we should all live on bread and butter, if needed, to pay the tutor (most of which are not worth the money anyways) or settle for being "mediocre", as you say.

If I was to choose whether to invest 200 euro in tutor lessons (10-15 of not too expensive and probably not too useful ones, 5 with a more qualified tutor), or to invest 200 euros in resources I am gonna use by myself for a few hundred hours (8 or so courses or preparatory books, just an example), it is very clear the second option is more likely to bring results.

Using a tutor is a great self-esteem and confidence booster. Other contributors have mentioned developing the ability to know when something doesn't sound right. That's very useful. I prefer to emphasize feeling confident that what I'm saying is right because I have heard or used it with my tutor. This is absolutely fabulous for developing conversational skills and becoming comfortable around native speakers.

I'm dumbfounded that anyone can argue against using such a fabulous tool.

Again, we are hitting the same wall. The problem here is simple. Confidence boosting can easily cover incompetence of both the learner and the tutor. Yes, I felt very confident during my tutoring lessons, but obviously it was just the ignorance of my stupid accent. And it was either incompetence or laziness or a wrong choice of the tutor to not be strict enough. It could have easily been the nice intention to give me more confidence. In the hindsight, I really think a part of the money invested was actually wasted, as I prefer to learn, not to be given false self-esteem.

Confidence boosting is certainly useful to the beginner or intermediate learners (at least to those who choose to use a tutor, but that is for another discussion). But an advanced learner needs a strict tutor, as people in general agreed, before being tired of the thread (which I am getting tired of too).

So, I will always argue against using such a fabulous tool to give me confidence. Confidence comes from competence, from really having the skills. Without them, it is just a foolish illusion.

[tarvos]

I don't need yer ego-strokin' to prove I can speak a language well. A teacher's job isn't (usually) to shower me with praise, but point out what's wrong so she can point something else next time. If she got nowt better to do than to praise me, my job here is done.

[s_allard]

Woe unto me. I'm reminded of one of the last words of Christ: Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum hast Du mich verlassen? I always get accused of hijacking the thread, in this case my own. I guess I have to finally admit that everybody but me seems to agree the most tutors are useless for advanced users. I disagree of course. I think most tutors are of some use because few are totally useless. They may not be ideal for me but they are not useless.

I have given a long list of concrete examples and specific situations where I think most tutors can be useful. But I see few specific responses here. At the same time what I find so encouraging in the midst of all this naysaying and negativism is that many people actually do use tutors or would do so if their budget allowed it.

And before I forget, there is one last thing I didn't mention: working with tutors can be fun. It's great to meet and interact with people on the other side of the earth. I loved being given a tour of a tutor's house thanks to the magic of a smartphone and wifi. It was a great vocabulary lesson. What better way to learn the terminology of house-related things? And what better than chatting with the tutor's parents in the target language? Or what about cooking a dish in my kitchen under the guidance of someone 4000 km away? Another fabulous way to pick up cooking vocabulary.

Sourpusses abstain.

[zenmonkey]

Woe unto me. I'm reminded of one of the last words of Christ: Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum hast Du mich verlassen? I always get accused of hijacking the thread, in this case my own. I guess I have to finally admit that everybody but me seems to agree the most tutors are useless for advanced users. I disagree of course. I think most tutors are of some use because few are totally useless. They may not be ideal for me but they are not useless.

I have given a long list of concrete examples and specific situations where I think most tutors can be useful. But I see few specific responses here. At the same time what I find so encouraging in the midst of all this naysaying and negativism is that many people actually do use tutors or would do so if their budget allowed it.

And before I forget, there is one last thing I didn't mention: working with tutors can be fun. It's great to meet and interact with people on the other side of the earth. I loved being given a tour of a tutor's house thanks to the magic of a smartphone and wifi. It was a great vocabulary lesson. What better way to learn the terminology of house-related things? And what better than chatting with the tutor's parents in the target language? Or what about cooking a dish in my kitchen under the guidance of someone 4000 km away? Another fabulous way to pick up cooking vocabulary.

Sourpusses abstain.

While I use and like tutors - this is a bit out of the scope of the question?

I'd guess that for advanced learners learning house terminology or virtually visiting the tutors house (outside of the delights of voyeurism) aren't helping on that C1 acquisition learning.

For me, this thread has me thinking more about when is my point of stopping certain active learning focus/activities and moving on.
I tend to not actively work on C2 level acquisition because I pick up other more important (to me) language projects. So by the time I am getting to C1 levels the tutor tends to be gone, I'm using a shift in my environment to include more input in that L2 from native material rather than learning material or methods and the teacher/tutor get's dropped because of that.

The question has never been "are tutors useful" (personally I say 'yes') but at what happens at advanced level, are they or not? I'm in the 'likely yes' camp, but reducing those that find them not useful to 'sourpusses' is counter productive to the discussion.

[reineke]

I guess I have to finally admit that everybody but me seems to agree the most tutors are useless for advanced users. I disagree of course.

I don't know how you came to this conclusion except so that you can disagree, reiterate and quote yourself. A cooking lesson is a great idea assuming you find the right person. For everything else that you mentioned...thanks but no thanks. I find that the Oxford-Duden pictorial dictionary is a better tool. After you've familarized yourself with the vocabulary you have several options to check if the word is in current use. One of these options may include walking around the house with a phone and asking questions.

[s_allard]

...
While I use and like tutors - this is a bit out of the scope of the question?

I'd guess that for advanced learners learning house terminology or virtually visiting the tutors house (outside of the delights of voyeurism) aren't helping on that C1 acquisition learning.

...

This is where we disagree. Let's put aside the pure fun aspect which may not to everybody's taste. Why must one assume that learning house terminology doesn't help with C1 acquisition? What sort of house-related terminology are we talking about? Can't we talk about house things at a C1 or C2 level? Does talking about the room I'm in right now mean that I'm at an A2 level? Just the other day I had a long discussion about Feng Shui in Spanish where the room terminology was mixed with philosophical considerations. The point is that the subject per se, i.e. the room, a recipe, doesn't determine the level of linguistic complexity. It's rather how the subject is treated.