Postby leosmith » Fri Jun 02, 2017 1:24 am
I’d like to write a bit about what I like in a tutor, with a focus on things specifically important to my method of learning languages.
I normally say I use tutors for conversation practice only, and leave it at that. While it’s basically true, it’s oversimplified. I have several goals for learning languages, but my biggest by far is being able to converse well. So my method is highly geared towards conversation.
Here’s something to keep in mind before I talk about teacher requirements. I like to spend 10-25% of my total daily study time doing vocabulary reviews, because, other than listening, I believe vocabulary is the most time consuming road block, and I’ve found this percentage of review time to be my sweet spot. If I put every new word I encountered in everything I studied during the day into anki, I’d be spending over half my time reviewing, which is much more than I want. So I have to choose where I want to get my vocabulary from, and it should come as no surprise that I choose to get it from conversation. When I talk to a tutor, I write down the words and phrases she says that I don’t understand, and the things I want to say but don’t know how. Later I put these items into anki.
So in my classes I practice speaking, not only for getting comfortable with what I already know, but also for collecting new vocabulary and grammar. As in many aspects of language learning, you can see the intensive and extensive possibilities in conversation. My teachers need to be able to switch modes from a nice comfortable conversation to times when my curiosity is just brimming with vocabulary and grammar questions. Because of my intensive spells, I have no problem getting enough items to hit the 1 hour (12.5% of my current daily study time) review mark in anki. If my anki review sessions exceed 1 hour, then I delete enough of the oldest cards to keep them under, and may do more extensive conversing for a while.
With all that in mind, here are the things I seek in a good tutor:
1) Doesn’t correct me unless I request it, I’m truly not understood, or I make a really big mistake. This is probably the single hardest quality to find in a tutor; it goes against most of their training. But it’s necessary to lay off of me so I can get comfortable and not have to focus on making perfect sentences all the time. My performance with someone who overcorrects me and one who just lets me be are like night and day. With my well-rounded method, I’m constantly getting correct language reinforcement and seeing the errors of my ways anyway. I notice my mistakes frequently. I don’t need one more source of correction hounding me, especially during conversation, when we take everything we’ve got and try to put the show on the road.
2) Is engaged and engaging. Again, very difficult to encounter. Tutors who are actually into the conversation and are more interested in it than trying to make me a good speaker are pure gold.
3) Has a positive, somewhat fun attitude. I’m a happy person; I smile and laugh a lot during lessons, so it’s nice to talk to someone who genuinely feels the same way.
4) Native speaker, good at translations, good internet, able to type, punctual, reasonably priced, compatible schedule and a lot of other general stuff that I’ve probably forgotten. But this stuff isn’t as specific to my method as the other items.
After thinking about this for a while and writing it out, I’m a bit surprised that there are only 3 items that are pretty specific to my method. So how successful am I at finding these tutors? I use italki. Continuing with Korean as my example, I’ve worked with about 60 of the 82 teachers presently on the site, and taken 135 lessons. Typically I take a lesson, and if I like the teacher I book her again. Although one of us might be having an off day, or the teacher might be fine at a later stage when I become more advanced, I have to draw the line somewhere, and I think 1 hour is a fair amount of time to see if someone is compatible.
I only took 1 lesson from half the tutors (30) I met with. There were many reasons for dropping them, with the most common being over correction. Before we met, I told every single teacher I didn’t want to be corrected except in the situations mentioned above, and everyone agreed to that, but most still corrected me. Sometimes I let it slide, but when it started to interfere, I reminded them of what we agreed to, and most made an effort to not correct me after that. Some didn’t, even after repeated reminders, so they didn’t get more bookings from me.
Of the remaining 30 tutors, I probably dropped about 15 after 2 or 3 lessons because they just aren’t into the conversation. I’ve had tutors whose idea of a good conversation is firing off question after question without letting me ask anything. I’ve had others that think it’s ok to talk 90% of the time. Still others sit in silence and wait for me to drive 100% of the time. These are just a few of the situations I’ve been in where the tutor clearly isn’t engaged or engaging.
Amazingly enough, there were a handful of the remaining 15 that I dropped after 4 or 5 lessons who weren’t terribly friendly, or had negative attitudes. They often wanted to argue or challenge me on trivial stuff. I actually like a good debate, but not all the time. There was also one teacher in this group who, in addition to having a bad attitude, inserted English into our conversations even after repeated warnings from me.
That left me with 8 tutors, but because I found out that nighttime lessons don’t really work for me, the number went down to 4. All of these are absolute superstars. I decided to book a whole month using only these 4 tutors. I did this because I found that I use more vocabulary and grammar, and just speak better in general with this group. I’ll let you know how it goes.
7 x