Skype Classes

[LadyGrey1986]

Who has had classes over skype by a professional tutor? What are your experiences? How many classes do you have each week and for how long (30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes) Does your teacher make you do homework? Have you stuck with the same teacher for an extended period of time or have you switched? Enquiring minds want to know! Apologies for all the questions and my English!

[Stelle]

I just looked over my italki profile, and I've done over 200 paid sessions with 26 different teachers over the past three years. Several of those were one-off sessions, because the teacher and I just didn't click. Other teachers I worked with for various periods of time, and then stopped either because something changed in my life or because the teacher's schedule changed. I've taken over 100 lessons with my favourite tutor since I started learning Spanish.

When I started Spanish, I had Skype conversations every single day, although some of those were language exchanges and not tutoring. I think I was doing two one-hour sessions per week of paid tutoring. Now I'm only doing one a week, since Spanish is in maintenance right now.

I had a few stretches where I was working with Tagalog teachers. I found that an hour was way too long for my abilities (especially since I insist on staying only in the target language), so I preferred half-hour sessions, usually twice a week.

Now I'm really pushing Italian, so I'm aiming for three sessions per week.

I would say that at the very beginning, two or three half-hour sessions per week are ideal, preferably with different teachers. That way I can practice the same conversation multiple times, and I can build my stamina for conversation.

I have very specific requirements for Skype sessions. I don't want homework (since I'm already self-studying), I don't want a teacher who insists on set lesson plans, and I don't want to learn grammar void of any context. My only goal is to practice having conversations, so I look for someone patient and encouraging who is willing to stay in the target language (no matter how much I'm struggling), who looks for ways to reword when I don't understand, who is comfortable giving me wait time (ie. doesn't try to fill every second of silence when I'm thinking) and who is an interesting conversationalist.

[s_allard]

Wow, that's some serious use of Skype tutoring from Stelle. But I realized that if you do three sessions a week it really adds up. I'm a great fan of tutoring over Skype. For some reason that I have never understood some people in this very forum - I won't mention names - don't believe in using tutors.

I've found that an hour made up of half formal work and half just talking works well for me at an advanced level. 30 minutes is too short for me and 90 minutes is too long. What I think is very important is have a specific goal or program for each session otherwise you're spending money just meandering around in the language thinking of what to talk about.

[Stelle]

Wow, that's some serious use of Skype tutoring from Stelle.

I should probably clarify that at one point I was teaching quite a lot on italki. I never withdrew any of my credits - I use all of my credits to book tutoring sessions. I haven't taught in a while, though, and I'm down to my last 300 credits, so I'll need to slow down soon!

I'm a language teacher. If I didn't believe in the power of a good language teacher, I'd probably have to change professions.

[LadyGrey1986]

Thanks for sharing Stelle! I am considering becoming a community tutor on Italki. Some day..
I meet with my tutor once a week for a one-hour session. I would rather have two sessions every week, but this would be too expensive for
me at the moment. My tutor has considerable experience teaching people "in real life."
He always gives me homework and the first 30 minutes of every session are spent reviewing my homework. This works well for me, as I am quite lazy and probably wouldn't get very far otherwise. Now I have the grazy feeling of not wanting to disappoint my tutor. I have only had four lessons and I feel like made a real progress. I have only tried one tutor, but so far I am a happy camper.

[tastyonions]

In the past three years I would say I have done somewhere from 150 to 200 paid Skype sessions facilitated through Italki. I stuck with the same French teacher for a long time, maybe more than a year, but she kept raising her prices and I couldn't afford it at the time, so I moved on to others. For the past few months Arekkusu (from the old HTLAL) has been my tutor and it's going great. For Italian and Spanish I don't currently have a stable tutor, though based on last week's session the Italian tutor is promising.

I find that one class per language per week works fine for me.

Like Stelle I focus more or less entirely on conversation. For this reason I don't sign up for tutoring until I can already make mostly-correct (if simple) sentences and talk about at least a few things that interest me.

I don't like formal "homework" as such but I like the idea of generally "preparing" to talk about a specific topic or something I have read, which makes for deeper and more challenging conversation.

[garyb]

I've taken lessons on and off, and found them beneficial, but never gotten into a consistent routine. Either the teacher gets too busy or I do, plus my schedule's a bit unpredictable so it can be hard to commit to lessons at a certain time. On iTalki I've generally chosen cheaper community tutors rather than professional ones, and while I've generally been happy with the quality, they're not always reliable and they're often only doing the teaching thing for a few months and then they stop and I have to find another. So I'm beginning to think it's worth paying extra for a professional just for the reliability and long-term possibility.

Like others I mostly focus on conversation, but what I find most useful and what makes it different from a conversation with a friend or a language exchange is:
- Corrections, especially of phrases that "don't sound quite right" or would be more naturally expressed another way.
- Detailed discussions on particular subjects.

45 minutes to an hour has been a good length for me. I find lessons more useful at an intermediate to advanced level. As a beginner I don't really feel the need, although if I were in a rush to improve my speaking quickly then I'd maybe go for it.

[Brun Ugle]

For those of you who've had a bit of experience with tutoring, how do you set up your tutoring sessions initially and how do you arrange what to do in each session? That is, when you first make contact with a new tutor, what do you tell/ask them? And how specifically do you organize sessions? Do you tell them what grammar point you've been working on or struggling with and ask to have a lesson based on that? Or do you maybe give them a topic of conversation ahead of time and practice talking about it? I like teaching myself and am usually quite able to learn the grammar from books and I can usually drill it with FSI and the like, but I'd like to start using tutors to find my weaknesses and also to become better at speaking. So far, I've had limited success with it in part due to not really knowing how to take control and organize the tutoring session myself (and also because of internet problems). But I've just found out that my internet is going to be fixed soon and I want to take advantage of it by having some more tutoring sessions, so I'd like to learn more about how to get more use out of them.

[iguanamon]

I've learned languages, with and without tutors to a high level. In my experience, I am one who has benefited greatly from one on one skype tutoring. My Portuguese tutor spoke no English, though she did speak Spanish. We kept our sessions in Portuguese and her Spanish helped tremendously with my mixing problems in Portuguese. In the beginning stages we worked on my weak points in conversation and I had homework where I would read something and then talk about what I read. Then she worked on a novela with me and that was a huge help, in listening, comprehension, new vocabulary, cultural knowledge, speech and conversational ability. Having someone to talk to who had seen the episodes and knew what I was referring to (or needed to refer to) made all the difference for me in using the novela as a learning exercise.

At first, my sessions were twice a week for six months and then I increased them to three times a week for six months and then twice a week for almost a year. In the meantime, I was of course studying on my own. The tutoring interaction was a huge help and I would definitely do it again if I had the opportunity and desire to speak a language well. I believe even one, one hour a session a week with a good tutor, can work wonders.

Also, italki is not the only place to find tutors, just the most convenient. Good Spanish skype tutors can be found at nulengua.com and plqe non-profit language school from Guatemala at $10 US an hour. There are other language schools that offer tutoring and individuals as well, you just have to look.

For those of you who've had a bit of experience with tutoring, how do you set up your tutoring sessions initially and how do you arrange what to do in each session? That is, when you first make contact with a new tutor, what do you tell/ask them? And how specifically do you organize sessions?...

I'd say first, as everyone else has said, I want to practice speaking and using the language in conversation. Know your objective. Ask your tutor to help you work on your weak points (obviously not all at once) with an aim towards getting better. I wouldn't look for a tutor to teach me the language per se, but to provide that extra missing ingredient that helps to tie all that you've been doing on your own together.

[Stelle]

For those of you who've had a bit of experience with tutoring, how do you set up your tutoring sessions initially and how do you arrange what to do in each session? That is, when you first make contact with a new tutor, what do you tell/ask them? And how specifically do you organize sessions? Do you tell them what grammar point you've been working on or struggling with and ask to have a lesson based on that? Or do you maybe give them a topic of conversation ahead of time and practice talking about it?

I connect by email/message first, and tell the tutor that I want to practise conversation. I tell them that they don't need to prepare anything (this is my own preference, you might prefer a teacher with structured lesson plans), and that my main request is that they speak to me only in the target language (so no English). I've had a few experiences with teachers who keep switching to English, and I rarely book further sessions with them.

The first session is generally just a "get to know you" session - generally talking about where we live, why I'm learning the language, etc. That gives the teacher an idea of my level.

From there, it depends on my ability to converse. If my language is strong enough, I prefer to just let conversations develop naturally. Even though I'm new to Italian, my French and Spanish crutches are strong enough that general conversation is what's best for me right now.

If I'm at a lower level, I prefer to set topics in advance so that I can prepare vocabulary etc. So, in Tagalog, I might spend a whole hour on family: talking about my family, asking my tutor questions about his/her family, showing and describing pictures of family, etc. Then a second half-hour session with a different tutor doing the same thing.

I've used question cards before, where I come up with a few questions (Where do you live? What's your name? What do you do for a living? etc) and share them with my tutor, and then we shuffle the cards and take turns asking each other questions. This helps me to practice the same simple conversations over and over again, adding more details to my answers as I feel more confident.

I also like to have a simple article or dialogue ready just in case, so that I can practice reading aloud if I need a break from the conversation. I almost never use them, but it's nice to have them there just in case.

A really good teacher will teach you grammar in context, focus the conversation towards what you need practice with, and give you tips and pointers. That's why I love my long-term Spanish tutor. We just talk in general, but last week she noticed that I made a mistake with hypothetical situations ("if clauses"), so she corrected me, typed up a few examples, and then steered the conversation so that I had to use a few more "if clauses". I would never have said to her "I want to practise 'if clauses' today", but it ended up being exactly what I needed at that particular time.

Most of my tutoring has been specifically focused on learning to have regular conversations, since that's what I need help with. I can teach myself the rest of the stuff, but I can't teach myself to have a conversation.

I've only once worked with a tutor who led all of the sessions. She was excellent and we used a geography textbook as the basis for our lessons. I really enjoyed working with her, since the goal was to learn something else through Spanish (as opposed to learning Spanish itself). We stopped working together because our schedules didn't mesh anymore, but it's definitely something I would consider doing again.

If I were preparing for a formal exam, I'd definitely use an experienced tutor and let him/her lead the lessons.