pinkyslippers wrote:I had some iTalki credits to use up so I booked a conversation class with a Spanish tutor. He said I had a number of fossilised errors and that the best thing would be for me to stop learning, “take everything out of my head, clean it, and put it back again”. In practice this would mean starting again from scratch at A1 and re-learning everything from the beginning. He also said I needed some phonetics training, which shocked me a bit as no one has ever commented on that before, and that, “at your age”
, it won’t be too easy. I asked if he meant my accent was bad and he shrugged and made the equivalent sort of doubtful noise a plumber makes to mean ‘this is going to be expensive’. My regular language partner has never said that I didn’t speak clearly, but now I am feeling rather paranoid about it.
He said an example of one of the fossilised errors was me saying ‘yo misma’ when I should be saying ‘mí misma’, so this was a useful practical bit of feedback (although I’m still not entirely clear on the difference). He also said my goals weren’t clear, and so I said maybe I could work towards taking the SIELE exam and he made a ‘pfft’ sound and said this wasn’t a real challenge, “you just sit in front of a computer, beep boop”. He asked me why I study Spanish and I answered, “for intellectual stimulation and to read books”. He said I should read graded readers, and I said (probably a bit haughtily) that I didn’t need graded readers and that I usually found them very boring, which I suppose came across quite rude. Things deteriorated from there. Honestly the whole situation made me feel quite depressed and reinforced that internal feeling I have that every ‘real life’ social interaction I have (in any language) is a complete disaster. I had booked a “conversation” class but he spent 75% of it talking and blowing smoke up his own ass and telling me all the big companies he has worked for and that some of his students had taken over 200 classes with him (not so surprising if everyone has to start from scratch). I’ve logged it as 25 minutes of speaking in my tracker but I’m not sure it was even that much. I’ve decided that I’m done with iTalki for now and done with speaking too, apart from my longstanding language exchange partner. What does it matter? It’s not like I have any travel planned anytime soon and I have enough Spanish to handle all the touristy transactions, and it doesn’t really matter if these are not perfect. I’m headed back to Hermitville with my books. I may be some time.
I've had three such terrible experiences when going to a new tutor as not a beginner. I went to one, having told him I had reached a high level in the past (demonstrable by results achieved academically) and had picked up the language again recently, reading a (named) book, so my passive knowledge was good and all the framework was there but I was rusty. He responded by having me read a A1/A2 level text in class, taken from a magazine for learners. He also told me I couldn't pronounce the word for kitchen, and made a thing of that, but with the result that I ended up feeling bad about it but didn't leave being able to pronounce it correctly. He also clearly wanted to show me how to borrow e-books for free, and even though I told him I already knew about the exact same source he wanted to tell me about, he went through a screen-share demonstration of how to do it. He also kept using English, when I'd shown no signs of needing it (and definitely did not need it).
Another was particularly unpleasant during the class, but I don't actually remember much because it was so bad that I think I've suppressed the memory! What she did do, however, was send me homework after class, and that included a A1 graded reader text (my name is John, I have a wife, I am from Canada, this is Susan, she is John's wife, etc) even though I'd said I was working with B1 materials. She also made a massive deal about the need to make friends in the TL when, like you, that's not really my need/focus/something I'd necessarily wholly enjoy.
Finally, another one, when again I'd said I was working with B1 materials, stopped me partway through to ask if I was actually sure I had completed A2 and had I actually passed a test. He also, without having asked me how much I was doing, went on about how much time I'd have to spend a day if I wanted to be any good - as he would have known had he asked, I was already pretty much at his figure, so that clearly was not going to be the panacea. After this one, I tried out a few more in the days afterwards, who were much more pleasant, and, unsurprisingly, not having started with a negative outlook and having made me feel comfortable, their assessments were far higher. They were able to see my weaknesses as weaknesses in certain areas, but those did not blind them to strengths I had in other areas.
I've come to the conclusion that the issue comes down to (critical) judgment. Assess away and give feedback, no problem, but there is no need for judgment. The need for lack of judgment extends to people's reasons for learning too. If I say I want to learn a language (and have months/years of effort to show), then there is no need to question whether the goals are "proper".
I think such critiques also evince a lack of experience/understanding. There is "noise" in assessment - the same person can be evaluated by different people in wildly different ways. And once you get beyond beginner, abilities start to diverge. A textbook I've just bought (and I don't even have the excuse of being half asleep when I did so), which is roughly B1 moving towards B2 level, says in the introduction that at this stage learners vary a lot, with it being expected for students to have different strengths and weaknesses.
I got back on the horse after all of these experiences, and in some cases managed to find really good people I'm now working with, but it is very tiring and tiresome having to deal with not-uncommon experiences like the above!