What was your worst or strangest experience with an online tutor?

[leosmith]

A tutor is just a coach.

Nicely said, and welcome to the forum!

the general opinion appears to be that 'most tutors are rubbish

I doubt that, and it’s certainly not the case for me. I’ve literally taken thousands of online lessons, and satisfaction wise, this is how I’d break them down:
40% - excellent
40% - good
15% - acceptable
5% - unacceptable
Of the unacceptable ones, over half were due to technical difficulties (bad internet, no electricity, etc.). So for me, only 1 or 2% of my lessons were unacceptable due to the tutor/teacher. But this thread is about those bad, or strange, classes, so maybe these stories are skewing your view of what members think of teachers.

[Sae]

I think that's a fair point, a tutor is just a coach. I think iTalki can blur the lines a bit, although their definition is "informal tutoring" for their community tutors to differentiate from the professional teachers on the platform. Some of the community tutors are trying to teach and be teachers but may not have the qualifications or experience to be classified as a professional teacher. My tutor would count, he has 1000's of hours of teaching experience and is serious about it but isn't a qualified teacher. And I think qualifications don't mean you're good and lack of qualifications doesn't mean you're bad, but obviously with qualifications there's a higher probability that they know what they're talking about and have a higher probability of being more efficient.

And from what I see of people saying about services like iTalki, leosmith's figures feel pretty plausible to me. Not every tutor is necessarily suitable for everyone, but people seem to have an overall positive experience. But the platform also makes it fairly easy to get a feel of the tutor or teacher before you commit. I imaine the "wrong" kind of people don't last long or get many students.

[Irena]

Most of the individual lessons I've had with online tutors were quite good (the one that I described upthread was a rare exception). However, there's a difference between a bad lesson and a bad study plan. A sequence of individually good lessons (the student was engaged and learned something) can yield suboptimal results if the whole study plan isn't well thought out. This happened to me when I tried (and failed) to learn German. I can't really complain about any individual lesson. The problem was that grammar wasn't properly integrated into those lessons. It's not that you have to spend time on grammar during each individual lesson (you certainly don't). But if the student is a beginner, and grammar is absent from one lesson, and then from the next one as well, and then from the next one, and so on until the student gives up, well, that's a bad study plan. Even if each individual lesson was good. After that bad experience, I made sure I made my own study plan for Czech, and the teacher helped me execute it. (Mind you, she might have been able to make a perfectly good study plan for me if I'd asked her to do it. But I didn't, and so we don't know.) I think it worked out well enough: waiting for the results of my C1 Czech exam now... (I hope I passed, but even I failed, I've come a long way. No regrets.)

Now, conversation lessons for advanced students are a different matter. You don't necessarily need much of a plan. The student just needs to be engaged and talk a lot. So for conversation lessons, you don't need the teacher to be any sort of expert. You just need someone you enjoy talking to and is able to offer some corrections. What should not happen is that the teacher talks 90% of the lesson time and shuts the student up when the student tries to say something. But I've had literally hundreds of conversation lessons, and the thing I'm describing happened exactly once.

[luke]

Considering the average autodidact believes they already know more than the teacher I'm surprised they don't send an invoice to the teacher after the lesson, with a list of spelling and pronunciation corrections enclosed for the teacher to think about and improve for the next meeting.

Sounds like time for a poll.

[Le Baron]

I doubt that, and it’s certainly not the case for me. I’ve literally taken thousands of online lessons, and satisfaction wise, this is how I’d break them down:

Hang on, weren't you the fellow who eschewed native speakers (if they were) for learning (especially pronunciation), yet you've taken thousands of lessons? What for?

Am I imagining that you were the author of this very recent thread ?

Opening with:

HTLAL was designed for people who study languages on their own. There were some discussions involving teachers too, but it seems to me that many (most?) of the really long threads here are obsessed with teachers. So, which do you think is more effective - self study, or learning with a teacher?

Is it not the case that you were implying here that self-study is superior and teachers are inferior?

[leosmith]

Hang on

I study on my own, except when I want to converse. My rules for conversation are "100% L2 with no corrections and no fixed topics". I consider my method to be "self-study" or "self-directed study", although others may not.

[Le Baron]

Hang on

I study on my own, except when I want to converse. My rules for conversation are "100% L2 with no corrections and no fixed topics". I consider my method to be "self-study" or "self-directed study", although others may not.

Which effectively means those are not 'lessons', right? And as such don't even require a teacher. Although I actually think such encounters are lessons, because the person you talk to will likely know more vocabulary and structure, which they will use and you will learn from. If they don't know more what's the point? I can't fathom this rule of 'no corrections'. It's possible you will get lots of things wrong, especially at the start. Why pay someone who can give you valuable tips to speed things up and then prevent them doing so? I can't say I'd enjoy listening to someone butchering a language and telling me not to say anything about it, though if they want to pay me for it I'll happily take it.

100% L2 is fair enough, common sense I would think. Unless it's an exchange.

[leosmith]

Which effectively means those are not 'lessons', right? And as such don't even require a teacher. Although I actually think such encounters are lessons

italki calls them lessons, if that helps.

I can't fathom this rule of 'no corrections'.

I discussed this in detail here.

[Le Baron]

italki may indeed call the lessons, but it matters what people use them for.

I do remember that other discussion. I think it's wrong. You can't correct all your own errors, because if you knew the errors you wouldn't really be making them. There will be some basic errors that are just a matter of ironing out in beginning speech, but to imagine a learner is cognisant of all errors is not real. I do agree that over-correcting is a nuisance in discussion, but making a lot of errors also isn't great.

I'm not one for thinking all errors get 'fossilised' and can't be altered, but to be undone they need to be seen. A self-learner may undo a fair number of errors down the line. I have done and still do, but it's piecemeal over decades not weeks, months and a few years. You can do what pleases you though since you are your own boss, but just know that when you think you know all your own errors, you don't and other people (like teachers) will see them sticking out like a sore thumb, but you won't because you are a learner.

[leosmith]

From your comments I could tell that I gave you the wrong thread. My bad; this is the one I was thinking of. As you can see, we've had this exact same argument before. If you want to add onto it, do you mind doing it in Cainntear's excellent Correction thread?

I think it's wrong.

I've been checkmated.