Italki tutors/teachers at A2 level

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garyb
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Re: Italki tutors/teachers at A2 level

Postby garyb » Fri Aug 21, 2015 3:09 pm

tarvos wrote:'The thing is that you use them for different purposes. I tend to switch tutors for different levels. Horses for courses.

The other part is that I need reality to motivate me, and books are not reality. I live in a real world where the need for me to speak another language often eclipses that of reading purely because I move around a lot and for work reasons.


Fair points, although I don't think anybody was arguing for books and reading over speaking. I certainly prefer to focus on spoken language first and worry about reading later on. I just don't really feel the need for tutoring early on, because I don't have that immediate real-world need to speak that you describe. I'm sure tutoring at beginner level would help me, but I'm not sure it's worth the cost and hassle when I'm in no rush, have no shortage of motivation, and I can learn the basics soon enough in my own time. As always this is just my own situation and preferences though, and my language study is currently very much for pleasure rather than necessity. For your situation I agree that tutoring from early on is the way to go.
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vm_nm
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Re: Italki tutors/teachers at A2 level

Postby vm_nm » Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:02 pm

Thanks everyone for sharing your experience. I'm getting a lot of helpful information out of it.

I really like the idea of covering the same topic with different tutors - sound like a great way not just to get loads of practice without boring one tutor to death, but also for getting used to different speakers and getting a greater variety of input/feedback.

I had a 30 min session with a community tutor yesterday that was quite enjoyable - she's definitely someone I'd reach out to again.

We only roughly stayed on topic, so I didn't get to use many of the sentences (variations of textbook dialogs) I had so diligently rehearsed beforehand :), but with a little cheating (using an online dictionary) I was still able to come up with replies.

Unlike the teacher, she threw a lot of Japanese at me that I didn't understand but it didn't really matter much. I just checked back in English if I had correctly understood her, and if not, she'd repeat and/or rephrase it.

I'm now thinking that it's probably a good idea anyway to start practicing listening to more natural Japanese and trying to catch the meaning even if I don't understand everything. After all, that's the situation I'll have to deal with in a few months (I'll likely spend four weeks in Tokyo).

Since she didn't tell me what I got wrong right away, but instead just typed the correct/more natural version into the chat window (which I had asked her to do), I had time to string my sentences together while she was typing. This arrangement helped a lot - I still felt challenged, but not stressed out or overwhelmed.

My plan is to go through the notes now and mine vocabulary and sentences for Anki, and after a couple of Anki reviews, try that out on the next tutor to really drill it in.
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