Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

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Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby kujichagulia » Wed Aug 19, 2015 12:14 am

The other day, I was thinking about what I would look for and what I would like to do should I decide to get some online tutoring via italki or another service (if there are any). The thing is, I have no clue about what I want out of tutoring sessions.

Stelle mentioned in her log what she looks for in a tutoring session, and man, she has really fleshed out exactly what she wants!

Stelle wrote:Here's what I look for in an online tutor:

    * commitment to sticking to the target language. No letting me take the easy way out. Friendly but firm.
    * patient. Willing to let me stare at the ceiling for as long as I need while I look for a word or a structure. Won't jump in unless I ask for help. Comfortable with silence and wait time.
    * lets me lead the session. Is ready with questions or topics if necessary, but doesn't force his/her preplanned lesson on me.
    * corrects me often during natural breaks or pauses. Types corrections in the Skype chat feature so that I can revisit them later.
    * encourages me to try to say the same thing several times until I feel comfortable with it. Willing to have the same conversation multiple times.
    * strong knowledge of his or her own language. Able to explain how things are said (and why, if there is a why beyond "because that's how we say it")
    * personable and friendly. Seems interested in what I have to say. (What? I like feeling interesting. Ha!)



That sounds nice, and I have the urge to "borrow" some of these concepts for myself. :) But what works for one person may not work for another. However, I get my inspiration from other people's experiences, and I would like to know if people who get online tutoring do what Stelle does, or do people do something less proactive and let the tutor handle everything. Do you go into a tutoring session the first time, knowing exactly what you want, and tell the tutor that, or do you just sign up for a session with nothing in mind and see what happens? Would it be a mistake to go into a session without having something you want the tutor to concentrate on?

Also, how does a typical tutoring session go for you? Warm-ups and cool-downs? Dialogue practice? Vocabulary activities? Textbook work? Or just straight conversation? I'd be very interested to hear your experiences.

Let me add another question: how often do you do tutoring sessions? What's been holding me back from doing tutoring sessions is that I cannot do a regular schedule. I might have opportunities to do one or two sessions one week, then no opportunities for the next few weeks. Would it be pointless to try to do tutoring sessions if that is the case?
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby Elisac » Wed Aug 19, 2015 1:21 pm

@Kuji I take a tutoring session whenever I'm free so not on a regular schedule. I don't like to feel pressured to take lessons so I try to have one session a week but if I'm busy I can jump to whenever I believe I'll be free again...

What I look for in a tutor?

- Textbooks. I like to have a reference, something I can study, practice and review.
- Written corrections (Skype chat feature).

Usually my sessions ( 30 minutes) are about vocabulary learning, then my tutor asks me about a topic of choice and we talk a little about that. She also corrects the mistakes I do in my homeworks.

At the beginning of my lessons we talked a little about my needs and then she developed a lesson plan.
I don't like pure chat sessions since I like a more structured approach (hence the textbook :geek: ).
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby emk » Wed Aug 19, 2015 1:37 pm

These are all excellent questions! I can only share my own personal experiences, and of course other people may use tutors very differently. But with that disclaimer, here's how I've used tutors.

kuji wrote:Do you go into a tutoring session the first time, knowing exactly what you want, and tell the tutor that, or do you just sign up for a session with nothing in mind and see what happens? Would it be a mistake to go into a session without having something you want the tutor to concentrate on?

Whenever I've contacted tutors, I've definitely done so with some sort of goal in mind: preparing for the DELF B1/B2, improving my conversational skills, or preparing for a French startup conference, just for example.

For me, the first challenge is finding a good tutor! This usually takes me several tries. For example, when I was preparing for the DELF, I tried bunch of people:

  1. Several language exchanges, where people either didn't show up, or did show up, but then spent 20 minutes lecturing in an extremely pushy fashion about how this was supposed to work. I've decided that there is zero payoff in scheduling language exchanges with strangers, because people flake out more often that not, and some of the people who do keep their commitments are pretty bitter about it all. Maybe my luck was just awful?
  2. A tutor in French-speaking Africa who normally worked with students from Asia who needed to pass foreign language exams. He was nice enough, but he was also extremely inflexible, and he wasn't prepared to go outside his course.
  3. A French woman living in Spain, who had a Masters in language education and who had previously worked for the Alliance française. She was a polyglot: French, English, Spanish and at least one or two more in progress. She also cost twice what the average French tutor cost.
I stuck with (3), and she was amazing. We focused heavily on conversation, particularly on being able to explain and defend my opinions. She'd push me very hard, and she was very good at managing and defusing my frustration. And every week or two, she'd identify one mistake that I made consistently, and insist that I fix it. She pushed me mercilessly to replace my /ɾ/ (long story) with a proper /ʁ/. And all our communication was in French, including grammatical explanations, negotiations over the lesson plans, and so on. (At the same time, I started speaking exclusively French at home, created an AJATT-style "immersion" environment, and wrote 100 words a day for 30 days on lang-8. This is probably why I made it from A2 to B2 in ~4 months.)

More recently, I wanted to prepare for a French startup conference. My old tutor was semi-retired, so once again I went shopping (this time on iTalki), and I explained that I was looking to role-play business conversations. If I remember correctly, here's how it went:

  1. The first tutor was nice enough, but didn't really seem to understand what I wanted.
  2. The second tutor was a university student. She claimed to be "native", but she was either hung-over or sleep-deprived, because she spent more time pausing and looking for words than I did.
  3. The third tutor understood my goals instantly. He played the part of a French entrepreneur, and he acted out many different scenarios: explaining what my company did, asking other people about their companies, and talking about a variety of professional topics. This was exactly what I was looking for, and he just nailed it. Interestingly, he was also about twice as expensive as the average French tutor.
So I guess the moral of this story is that your first few tutors may be duds, but that if you keep looking, you may find somebody amazing. Or perhaps the moral of the story is that if your budget allows it, it's sometimes worth paying extra for languages like French and German, because there are some absolutely amazing professional tutors who won't necessarily work for $10/hour. (This is one of the reasons that those $450 Rosetta Stone packages annoy me so much: For that price, you could buy 15 hours of highly-skilled tutoring, or a huge stack of native media.)

kuji wrote:Also, how does a typical tutoring session go for you? Warm-ups and cool-downs? Dialogue practice? Vocabulary activities? Textbook work? Or just straight conversation? I'd be very interested to hear your experiences.

The two big things I use tutors for are (1) intense, focused conversational practice, and (2) feedback on which mistakes I need to focus on first. I wouldn't use a tutor for textbook stuff, or for anything which I could get from Assimil. I can do that stuff alone and save the money. :-)

kuji wrote:Let me add another question: how often do you do tutoring sessions? What's been holding me back from doing tutoring sessions is that I cannot do a regular schedule. I might have opportunities to do one or two sessions one week, then no opportunities for the next few weeks. Would it be pointless to try to do tutoring sessions if that is the case?

No, that could work pretty well. Usually you need to schedule your tutoring time several days in advance, but apart from that, the tutors don't care. I think it might help to speak as regularly as you can, but you could mix up tutoring sessions with other speaking and writing opportunities.
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby iguanamon » Wed Aug 19, 2015 3:37 pm

As usual, emk nails it. I used a tutor for Portuguese, along with DLI, listening, reading, writing on lang8 and with language-exchange partners.

My Portuguese tutor lived in a Spanish-speaking country outside Brazil and did not speak English. Of course, we had Spanish in common which we rarely used. She insisted on Portuguese. I was her first skype student. The good thing about her knowing Spanish was that she knew how to eliminate my Spanish-speaking mistakes and she was ruthless with it. She would assign me readings and ask me to summarize/review them in speech and/or write a review which we would go over in my next session.

She had me watch her favorite novela and that's when my Portuguese hit the next level. Since she knew the story well and actually enjoyed watching it again, she was able to correct me and help me with unknown vocabulary. The series had no subtitles at all in either Portuguese or any language so the first 15 episodes were rough, but they got better as it did it more. I started off doing one episode in three sessions in a week and a half and by the end of the 80 episodes I was doing three episodes in a week.

The work was, at first to listen/watch and write down time-stamps with unknown vocabulary. The next session was finishing up unknown vocabulary and review and then my retelling of the story. The last session had me finish the story and then summarize the main points.

It was, as emk says, "brain-melting" at first, especially since I couldn't fall back on English and didn't want to use Spanish very much at all. I did it and it worked well.

Afterwards, I would tell her about other Brazilian series I had watched or books or articles I had read or just how my week had went- being corrected all along, of course.

I agree with emk, I wouldn't want to use a tutor for anything I could do easily enough on my own. It's feedback, correction and interaction I want and need. That's what makes using a tutor worthwhile for me. Finding one who will fit your needs and is flexible enough to work with you is the hard part. You may have to try out a few first until you do find the right one. Once you do, it can make a huge difference. I always tried to arrange my schedule around my sessions and make it my priority. It was that important to me.

If I could only find a good (or any) tutor for Ladino or Kreyòl! I notice the difference even though I know how to best take advantage of all the resources I have, it's that interaction and being corrected that really makes my language skills better.
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby garyb » Wed Aug 19, 2015 4:11 pm

I took a handful of lessons at the start of the year, and am considering getting back into them soon. The two reasons I've chosen to work with tutors:

1. Not having enough conversation opportunities.
2. Having conversation opportunities, but feeling like I'm not getting enough out of them.

1 is simple enough: I pay someone in order to have reliable and consistent opportunities to converse, rather than being reliant on the presence and kindness of native speakers in my social life, flaky language exchange partners, or hit-or-miss meetups that are often dominated by other learners. When you compare the alternatives and the amount of time that you can waste pursuing them, the price of tutoring starts to look very reasonable.

But even with native speaker friends and exchanges, number 2 can often apply. Social conversations have their limitations. Sometimes they're too easy and repetitive, a lot of small-talk. Other times, especially if they're with several native speakers, they can be a bit too difficult to join in and keep up with and become mostly listening exercises, or I don't get any corrections or feedback so I feel I'm not learning much from them and I'm just spinning my wheels. Friends and exchange partners generally don't tell you about mistakes or things that would sound better phrased another way, unless they're particularly offensive or embarrassing. So I'd want a tutor who provides that feedback, keeps the conversation at a level that challenges me but isn't completely unmanageable, and lets me take my time.

Overall I think Stelle's list is a great summary of the things that I want from a tutor that I don't get from other conversation opportunities... Even that last point has been lacking in many exchange attempts and conversations with friends of friends!

I'd also pay a premium for a tutor who can help me with pronunciation and accent, as that's very slow and difficult to do alone, but such tutors seem very rare.

I found a tutor who taught both Italian (native) and French (not native but damn good) on iTalki, who was reasonably priced and helpful. We did a few lessons around the Winter break, but we stopped due to lack of time on both our parts and she now no longer seems to be teaching. The lessons were usually based around discussing an article or video, but with a good bit of more spontaneous conversation too. It was a good mix, as it challenged me by making me explain things and express my thoughts on various topics as well as practice more everyday conversation. The one negative was that she advertised "accent reduction", which was one of my reasons for choosing her (as per the above paragraph), but turned out to not be much help on that front. But overall I still felt it was worth the money; at the price I was paying, someone who did all she did and helped with accent would probably have been too good to be true.
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby CarlyD » Wed Aug 19, 2015 6:39 pm

I had a tutor for a short time a while back, but it was over the phone. I questioned that at the time and was told that when you are speaking to a tutor either in person or on Skype, you can pick up visual clues and be responding to them rather than the language itself.

It was amazingly hard. But she cleaned up every pronunciation problem I'd ever had and I made a lot of progress.
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby Serpent » Thu Aug 20, 2015 12:27 am

My perfect tutor is no less than Zlatan Ibrahimović 8-) :twisted:
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby basica » Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:36 am

My experience with tutoring is that I've done it with a few people, but only one really met all my criteria. Sometimes tutors are just horrible through and through, other times they are great to okay in some areas and bomb in others. One of my biggest pet peeves is someone trying to get me to repeat a whole sentence they've corrected for me - It feels like too much pressure especially since it might be a long sentence and I've already forgotten what they've said at the start by the time they're nearing the end. If they want me to repeat a sentence, I'm find with doing so but they have to write it out.

Anyways, I've sorta stopped using tutors for now (outside of a once in a while use) what I look for in an exchange partner are the following:

  • a "spark", if you don't feel some sort of connection then it makes the conversation feel very laborious
  • writes corrections down for me when I ask, or writes down vocab when I'm using circumlocutions/simply ask for the word
  • is an active participant, they're not just replying to endless series of questions without engaging in an actual conversation
  • try to speak towards my level, and don't get too caught up in making sure I understand what they say (in other words, saying something, then asking I understand or resorting to switching to english to explain what they just said because they felt it might be above my level)
  • are flexible for trying new things if I want to mix things up a bit

The main reason I have sorta stopped tutoring sessions is because I care for more freestyle conversations that go wherever they go as opposed to focusing too much on particular grammar structures or whatever. I do feel I need that, but for now I am just trying to focus on communicating, and broadening the subjects I can communicate about. Once I get to a higher level, I can begin polishing it off a bit more.
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby astromule » Thu Aug 20, 2015 2:57 am

I can only agree with what has been said before. I've used tutors three times:
-Once to prepare for the CPE, Cambridge Profiency in English.
-To study Swedish, twice in different time periods, always with the same teacher. The first in 2009 was a few months before my trip to Sweden. Now's to prepare me to take the Swedex exam on 2016 and to my second trip to Sweden, also on 2016.

I always have an objective in mind: to prepare for a specific test (CPE, Swedex) and/or to improve my conversational skills: it's better to pay for a tutor if you want to guarantee yourself enough conversation time with a native (one hour per week, let´s say), where you can correct your mistakes.

I think that there has to be a certain chemistry between you and your tutor, in the sense that both of you are on the same page. My teachers so far have shared more or less the same views than me on subjects that I consider important.

If I were to look for a tutor in the future, I'd expect:
-flexibility: "today could we focus more on conversation than on writing correction?";
-chemistry or being a nice person in general;
-to be a professional: "either hung-over or sleep-deprived" (:D) doesn't work for me either.
-native.
-to have knowledge of the language/culture that they're teaching: have read some books, have watched some films.

I anticipate a huge NO with capital letters and red colour for the following question, but couldn't we do a list of recommended tutors for each language? Or perhaps a section in the forum, "recommend me a tutor"? Perhaps only users with a certain ammount of posts could post there, to avoid spammers.
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Re: Online tutoring: your experiences and preferences?

Postby kujichagulia » Fri Aug 21, 2015 1:12 am

Thank you all for sharing your experiences and preferences regarding using online tutors. This has been really helpful!
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