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

[Cavesa]

The shocking part was her dissociation of the clear proof that I could do it (as she was amazed herself at my speaking) and the trash she was offering me, really expecting me to pay. And also the complete lack of listening. I told her the goal, she ignored/changed it. I told her the methods that I wanted to add hers to, she told me to stop that. I told her the reason for the deadline, she assumed just ignoring and giving up on the deadline was no big deal.

If you're an exceptional learner looking for a teacher, then you have two reasonable options: (1) find an exceptional teacher, (2) find a very open-minded teacher and make sure you're in the driver's seat, with the teacher there as a helper rather than a guide. Otherwise, it's not going to work. (1) is tough to find and likely to be expensive. (2) shouldn't be that hard, but you really do have to know what you're doing.

No need to be patronizing, this was a thread about "what was your worst/strangest experience with an online tutor", I didn't ask for a totally obvious piece of advice.

I am actually not that exceptional. Just we, people with high IQ (several % of the population, and even more % of the population interested in learning stuff), get punished all the time and forced to underachieve and conform to the expectations, untill most of us give up. And there is nothing that exceptional about my study skills, I am actually under-average among people with demanding degrees, such as medicine. Unfortunately, the social standard and expectations in education are based on the lazy and not really serious students from the mass degrees. Which leads to many (language) teachers not really knowing, what to do, and also not really handling well students vastly more intelligent and capable than them.

Yes, of course I could not accept such average trash as a tutor. Obviously. I just wasn't asking any advice in this thread, just describing how weird behaving this moron was.

nope, you cannot reach B1 in a few months

What a terrible teacher. I wonder if she really believed that, or she just wanted to stick to some crappy pre-designed plan of hers.

That's a very good question! The second part was imho true in either case. But she really seemed to also believe that. Sometimes, a belief is much stronger than a proof.

[Irena]

nope, you cannot reach B1 in a few months

What a terrible teacher. I wonder if she really believed that, or she just wanted to stick to some crappy pre-designed plan of hers.

Most language learners suck (they take a lesson every week or three, and then do nothing or next to nothing between lessons), and most language teachers cater to students who suck. Teachers are also very used to students who come to them with ambitious goals (and occasionally impossible goals, such as becoming completely indistinguishable from native speakers), and then do nothing to achieve those goals. That being the case, it's unsurprising that some teachers come to the conclusion that all students are like that, or at least that all students who come to them are like that. (Perhaps they think that all the good ones are at Oxford or what have you.) But of course, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you assume all students who come to you suck, then the ones who don't suck will run away from you. Which just goes to confirm your conviction that all students suck.

But it's not an easy job, if you think about it. You have to be patient with lazy and/or clueless students, because that's where a lot of your income comes from. But you also need to be open-minded, because every once in a while, a serious student comes your way, and those are the students you want to keep.

[alaart]

I booked some lessons with a Japanese teacher asking to teach me Kansai dialect. However, the teacher spoke to me a lot in standard Japanese (but she was capable of speaking the dialect, just not with me).

It was a bit unusual also because of the politeness situation. The teacher student situation demanded polite language, and polite language wasn't used in the dialect. So she and me both diverged too much and ended up speaking too much standard Japanese.

I'm partially at fault, so I wasn't that angry. After 3-4 lessons I gave up though.

[Irena]

Worst or strangest experience with an online tutor? I refuse to write about it on a public forum. Here's the second weirdest experience I've had, though. I booked a conversation lesson for a language I was already advanced in. I'd already had a couple of lessons with this teacher (two lessons? three?), and they went well enough. But during this lesson, she apparently felt that she absolutely had to convince me of some cultural point, and she ended up completely dominating the conversation for an hour. And there I was, just sitting there, unable to get a word in. When the whole point of the lesson was for me to get conversation practice! The main effect was that I no longer booked lessons with her.

[leosmith]

It was a bit unusual also because of the politeness situation. The teacher student situation demanded polite language, and polite language wasn't used in the dialect. So she and me both diverged too much and ended up speaking too much standard Japanese.

Interesting - I didn't know that. It makes me wonder if most Japanese/Korean "dialects" only occur in the informal language.

I went to Pusan a few years ago. My tutors often ask me how I dealt with the dialect. I was a bit ashamed that I didn't know there was a dialect...says something about my level I'm afraid.

[leosmith]

And there I was, just sitting there, unable to get a word in. When the whole point of the lesson was for me to get conversation practice!

Grr! I hate being dominated like that. Conversation control is a delicate balance; I prefer something close to 50/50. But I've had teachers control too much or too little. I've learned to interrupt over-controllers; I rarely say anything to under-controllers though.

[lichtrausch]

I booked some lessons with a Japanese teacher asking to teach me Kansai dialect. However, the teacher spoke to me a lot in standard Japanese (but she was capable of speaking the dialect, just not with me).

It was a bit unusual also because of the politeness situation. The teacher student situation demanded polite language, and polite language wasn't used in the dialect. So she and me both diverged too much and ended up speaking too much standard Japanese.

Polite language isn't used in the Kansai dialect??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_dialect#Politeness

[alaart]

Polite language isn't used in the Kansai dialect??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_dialect#Politeness

Yeah, I have seen that form. But is it really used? When I studied about the dialect and wanted to use the polite form with the few Kansai people I have met people told me it's not used and I should speak standard Japanese in a polite context, or maybe it was only used in Kyoto or something. Maybe depending on the region where the speaker was from, the teacher mentioned was from Osaka. She did not use the polite Kansai form but standard Japanese in polite form or casual dialect without polite form.

Sorry, I have only very little knowledge on this matter. I mean I have never lived in Kansai. It's been a while, I was learning about the dialect in 2019 when I thought I would move to Kobe, but I ended up living in Nagoya and I then stopped. But it is an interesting topic, and if I move to Japan again I'd probably go to Kansai this time and learn the dialect a bit more.

[Shall We Talk?]

I find this topic to be very interesting.
I am sorry to read about your bad experiences with an online tutor. As an online English (ESL) tutor myself for many, many years, I can attest there are many good tutors, but unfortunately there are many "bad apples" too.
I believe some of these "bad apples" lack the necessary skills to be professional. Running a tutor business involves some business skills/background that many tutors do not have. Secondly, many of these "bad apples" do not possess the necessary business/corporate experience needed to deal with their clients. Tutors serve the client. The client should be doing most of the talking during a lesson. The tutor should adjust the lessons as per the client needs and skills. Thirdly, some people work alone online because they don't get along with others. There are some eccentric individuals with very questionable behaviours in a group setting, so they tend to turn to individual experiences to try to mask their peculiar behaviours. And lastly, I agree with many of the comments on this forum topic. There are some tutors who like to control a situation (i.e. the lesson/conversation), and be the "know-it-all". For example, when I tutor, I incorporate the lesson topic into real life situations according to the client. A tutor is just a coach. We are not showing anything new in life per se; just another way to communicate what you already know.
You can do all the checking (e.g. qualifications, experiences, reviews, testimonials, etc.), but one never really knows about a tutor until you start the lessons. As was written by some other posters here, the true individual eventually comes out; can't pretend forever.

[Le Baron]

Tutors serve the client. The client should be doing most of the talking during a lesson. The tutor should adjust the lessons as per the client needs and skills.

Well yes, but there's a bit of a disconnect when a tutor meets language learners of the type found on here on this forum. It seems to me a lot of 'students' don't want a tutor at all, but a sounding board for what they consider to already be an ideal plan. So there's going to be some friction. For good reasons or not there is less willingness to trust a tutor's ability to provide what a student seems to want. Not least because the general opinion appears to be that 'most tutors are rubbish'...yet palatable because they are cheap. Since a high-quality professional teacher wouldn't accept the likes of italki 'gig' wages. So people hire have-a-go teachers, then moan about the results. Baffling.

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.