Pros and Cons of tutors

[rdearman]

Since people seemed determined to have another discussion about tutors, I thought I would start a new thread. If you're looking for a tutor, then here is my 2 cents.

Here are some things to consider:

• Qualifications
  Is the tutor a qualified teacher? Has the tutor completed relevant degrees and/or training courses? This is particularly relevant when it comes to finding a tutor to help students who struggle with specific difficulties.
  
  
• Experience
  Has the tutor worked with self-learners before? There are plenty of experts in a given field who lack the patience or experience required to work effectively with students who are self-learning. Tutoring is also a different situation than regular teaching. It’s important to find an educator who has been successful in coaching students using a one-on-one approach.
  
  
• Expertise
  How well does the tutor know their field? Are you looking for someone who is an expert in a particular area of the curriculum, such as exam preparation?
  
  
• Passion
  Positive emotions and enthusiasm are catchy. It’s easier to motivate students and get them excited about learning when a tutor is passionate about what he or she does. Look for educators who thrive on helping students achieve success.
  
  
• Personality
  Sometimes finding the right tutor comes down to personality, particularly if a student has already formed negative associations with schools or has had difficulty working with tutors in the past. Learning is social and if the interaction is not conducive to learning then the relationship is not worth pursuing.
  
  
• Convenience
  People have busy schedules, and may find that driving an hour for weekly tutoring sessions simply isn’t practical, or online at an inconvenient time.
  
  
• Pricing
  Money is an inevitable part of the discussion when it comes to finding the right tutor. Consider in advance how much you can afford and put together a budget, so you can find someone that suits your needs and can continue on a long-term basis if required.

[s_allard]

Congrats to rdearman for starting a new thread on an interesting topic. As a matter of fact, yesterday I paid a nice chunk of money for a year of tutoring. Right now I don't have time to comment in detail but I want to make one major point. Here we are starting by looking at the pros and cons of tutors but what about the pros and cons of the tutees? What makes a good student? Working with a tutor is all about a relationship. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

[Cavesa]

This is a thread about tutors, not about the tutees. The tutee pays, so the tutor needs to adapt. If they think the tutees are the problem, they should find a different job. And we all know what do most teachers want from their students anyways: to pay and to never question the teacher, even if they are extremely bad. And to not want anything too far away from the standard mold (an active learner is actually a problem for most teachers).

Pros: an exceptionally good teacher can do what no other resource can. To give high quality feedback on speaking and writing, to coach the learner towards improvement in these areas. In every other aspect of learning, there are better resources than teachers.

Cons:

1.most tutors are really low quality ones. Language teaching is seen as an easy job, with a very low qualification treshold (at least for natives of the popular languages). Therefore most tutors are just not too intelligent people, who failed at something else and think they can just teach. They can do a lot of damage. Also, the teaching degrees in some countries are known to be the least prestigious ones, which further relativises the info learner gets before paying. The famous CELTA has put the bar extremely low too.

2.A bad tutor can teach you mistakes or be too lenient (and therefore you don't get full value for your money and keep making the mistakes), they can discourage you, they can set you up for failure, they can convince you to use less efficient methods. Never forget that a tutor is not paid for your success, but always just for the time spent with you. And many will try to make their work as easy as possible at your expense.

..............
So, how to find a good tutor: no matter which channel you try (an online platform, a language school/agency, an advertisement somewhere), look for someone with real info on their profile, not just the generic trash. If they claim stuff like "I am experienced and great with students at any level, of any age, and will tailor the lessons exactly to your unique needs such as tourism", they are probably useless.

Look for real information. Real info on their qualification (not necessarily just a language degree. In some situations, you can profit from someone with an alternative background, such as education in your field of work), at least an approximate info on the experience (not just how many years, but also how many students). Info about the level of their students (some are better with beginners, some with advanced learners), and whether or not they've helped them pass any standard exam (again, what exams. Not some generic and vague answer).

But whether or not you find one, success is primarily about your work. Don't let a lack of tutor slow you down, and don't adapt your learning to the teacher's whims. And remember that a bad tutor is much worse than no tutor.
...............
Some alternatives to traditional tutoring:

-peer correction sites. Communities, where random natives correct texts written by the learners. They are of limited use to the advanced learners (because you cannot expect to get detailed analysis of a long text, focusing on style etc), but they can be excellent for learners up to B1 or even B2. Some examples are LangCorrect, Oplingo, eLingora.

-Speechling: probably the only pronunciation tutoring site in existence. The tutors are better than the standard lenient trash, they really do correct details. And the app protects the learner from any inefficiency, the tutor doesn't have the liberty to just start with some stupid nonsense (such as grammar drills) instead of pronunciation checking.

-independent incomplete solutions. Reread your text after a day, to discover a lot of problems yourself. Repeat after audio. Record yourself. Speak to yourself. And so on.

For anything else than speaking or writing, there are coursebooks, grammar books, srs, and tons of normal input. In all these areas, tutors are just a waste of money.

[rdearman]

Congrats to rdearman for starting a new thread on an interesting topic. As a matter of fact, yesterday I paid a nice chunk of money for a year of tutoring. Right now I don't have time to comment in detail but I want to make one major point. Here we are starting by looking at the pros and cons of tutors but what about the pros and cons of the tutees? What makes a good student? Working with a tutor is all about a relationship. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

Yes, I think that is another thread.

But that is one of the things I put in my first post. Make sure you and the tutor "click" and can establish a good relationship. Otherwise, you're not going to learn much if you're just spending time with a person who grates on your nerves.

One thing we all must remember, and I think Cavesa is pointing out is similar to a quote I once heard.

"A teacher only opens the door, the student must walk through."

So we shouldn't really think that a tutor, good, bad or indifferent is going to open up our skull and pour knowledge into our head. They are only opening the door, and you still have to have the motivation to walk through. So one of the Cons of getting a tutor is people think they can leave all the work up to them and somehow this knowledge will get poured into your head.

Also, another problem I have had, and others reported, with some iTalki tutors is they have their own lesson plans and agendas. So this can make it difficult for the student who has specific requirements. So you need to make sure that you're hiring the person who can do what you want. If you don't know what you want, then you can probably get by with anyone. After all, if you don't know where you are going, then any road will do.

In reality, hiring a tutor just like buying anything. "Caveat emptor", let the buyer beware.

[iguanamon]

even with the worse tutors I've always been able to learn something because I took charge of the situation.

Exactly! When choosing a tutor, a learner needs a different perspective than what is often a typical one. A student-pupil relationship in school instruction is one in which the pupil is subservient to the teacher. In a student-tutor relationship, one in which the student is at least at intermediate level, the student is the one who hires the tutor. This means that the tutor is the learner's employee. Because the learner is paying the tutor, this necessarily defines the tutor as subservient to the learner. Yes, the tutor will have more knowledge because they are a native-speaker, born into, brought-up in, and educated in, the TL. Hopefully, they will also have some skill in the TL besides just being a native-speaker.

So, given that the learner is reasonably at an intermediate level, and knows their own weaknesses. Given that the tutor is an employee of the learner. The learner has the right to want what they want and expect what they expect.

It is the learner's (the employer) responsibility to clearly inform the tutor (their employee) what they want and expect in return for their payment. If the tutor is unwilling or unable to fulfill the learner's wants and expectations then it is incumbent on the learner (the employer) to not hire/fire/terminate the tutor (the employee).

Too many learners view the student-tutor relationship as the tutor has the power because they speak the language and the learner does not... yet. I'm not saying it is easy to find a good tutor. Too many tutors see the relationship as one in which they have the power. I don't need them to teach me the basics of the language and/or its grammar. I do need them to correct me when I say or write something unnaturally; when I pronounce words incorrectly; when I calque my native language onto the TL; to suggest native material from which I can gain.

I was fortunate to find a good Portuguese tutor... and I didn't use iTalki. I purposely searched for one who did not speak my native English. We had to communicate in Portuguese and I had to learn as a result. It wasn't easy, but I persevered. I'm so glad I did. I learned from her techniques and replicated them with some success in my next languages.

When I was learning Haitian Creole, I didn't have a tutor. I had a native-speaker friend who was patient and would help me with my Creole once/twice a week in exchange for lunch for about six months until she left the island for the States. I would say at our meetings, this week I'm learning the past tense and when to use it (instead of the present tense for something more recent). We'd work on that and I would go back through my textbook lesson more informed than I was before and it really helped me.

Perhaps I was just lucky. Perhaps I just happened to pick the right people. Perhaps I just knew what I wanted and persisted until I got what I wanted. It is a waste of a learner's money to hire a tutor to teach them things they can learn on their own- the basics of the language. Yes, a lot of tutors are not accustomed to teaching advanced students. Again, a learner must weed these people out. A learner has to take responsibility to clearly explain what it is they want and what they need to advance. In a test preparation situation, a student needs to select a tutor with experience teaching learners who are signed up for the test. The learner needs to provide the tutor with evidence of their ability to perform at the level they claim. If a learner is testing for B2, they should be hiring someone who is familiar with the exam they want to take. The learner should always remember that the learner is the employer and the best use of a tutor is to help the student to work on their weaknesses! If the learner does not feel that they are getting what they want or need, it is the learner's responsibility to terminate their employee.

A tutor is most definitely not a necessity... by any means. A learner can do much, if not most, of the work on their own. It's just harder, perhaps slower, and not as much fun... but it can be done. It was done successfully by Cavesa.

[garyb]

If we're going to beat this dead horse again then I guess I'll give my input again!

Cavesa might be onto something with the "those who can't do, teach" point, at least based on my fairly limited experience: the best tutors I've had, and the ones I had most in common with, were people who weren't doing it as their main job but were typically students who were tutoring part-time to make a bit of extra cash in between academic years or work placements. In iTalki parlance, "community" rather than "professional" teachers. Plus they were very reasonably priced, but the downside of course was that after a handful of lessons they'd go back to their real job or studies and I'd need to find another tutor.

So I tried paying the premium for a few professionals so I could have a longer-term teacher, but I was always a bit disappointed, especially as an advanced student. I found that they just didn't know how to teach someone at that level so just bombarded me with lists of unusual vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, which gave us both the impression that learning was taking place but didn't actually help me a whole lot. Plus the "professionals" tended to be more rigid about doing the lesson their way using their prepared materials rather than trying to understand and cater to what the student really wants.

Looking back, they probably could've worked better if I had been clearer (to myself and to the tutors) about what I wanted from the lessons rather than just going in with a vague goal like "I want to improve my Italian", and that's mostly my fault although I do believe that a good teaher should be able to spot a student's weak points (especially as they aren't necessarily obvious to the student themself) and know how to work on them.

I don't have any experience of exam preparation; I've just used tutors to try to improve my speaking.

I'd go along with the majority opinion that good tutors are great but quite rare, especially ones that can help more advanced students, which is sad because that's the level where a tutor would be most useful. And I'd imagine that teaching intermediate-to-advanced students would be much more fun and satisfying rather than going over basic grammar with beginners that they could just as easily learn from a book. But nowhere near as lucrative, so I can't blame them.

[Le Baron]

The attitude of the student certainly matters, but if a person didn't need a tutor to guide them they wouldn't be hiring one in the first place. In a structured educational environment this problem doesn't really exist since the institute is responsible for hiring capable teachers.

This then creates a problem for the independent student hiring a tutor: how can you know if what the tutor is doing is 'good' or useful or 'correct'? Since you are the one who doesn't have the knowledge to begin with, otherwise you wouldn't be hiring a tutor! It's a conundrum for the kind of student who requires guidance more than a different sort of 'tutoring' mainly comprised of correction and real-life language interaction more suitable for a student who is pretty good at guiding most of their own learning.

So the question to ask is: what kind of student am I? If you need to be guided through a course you should sign up to language classes. If you're more of an autodidact and perhaps have experience with other languages, you can maybe better assess what you're getting from a tutor. For such a person they will likely be able to gauge if they are improving or not.

I agree that a lot of tutors seem to be amateurs and a bit rubbish. All of the fortune cookie stuff about 'the teacher only opens the door...' 'you can take a horse to water...' etc is all lovely, but it is a teacher's job to provide you with what you need. They are the guides, not you. They have to have the skill of being able to guide students who need convincing and reassuring and more explanation. It seems to me that in the age of pop-up tutoring and people freelancing themselves on websites from their living room, the 'tutor' is not always an all-round teacher like in the past. So it's a minefield.

[s_allard]

So, given that the learner is reasonably at an intermediate level, and knows their own weaknesses. Given that the tutor is an employee of the learner. The learner has the right to want what they want and expect what they expect.

It is the learner's (the employer) responsibility to clearly inform the tutor (their employee) what they want and expect in return for their payment. If the tutor is unwilling or unable to fulfill the learner's wants and expectations then it is incumbent on the learner (the employer) to not hire/fire/terminate the tutor (the employee).

...
A tutor is most definitely not a necessity... by any means. A learner can do much, if not most, of the work on their own. It's just harder, perhaps slower, and not as much fun... but it can be done. It was done successfully by Cavesa.

Although I don't want to send the thread off on a different tangent, I think that for the intermediate and advanced student, the so-called tutor is actually more like a coach. Some years back I was surprised to learn that nearly all professional athletes and musicians have coaches. These are specialists that are brought in to help with specific areas of perceived weaknesses. But let's not go of course and let's keep using the term tutor.

There is a fundamental question we must all answer: do I really need a tutor? If I'm happy with my progress and results so far and I don't feel anything is missing, then I don't need a tutor, end of story and money saved. In the case of exam preparation, it's the same logic. If you feel comfortable on your own, then go for it. On the other hand, as has been abundantly pointed out, if you can find someone familiar with the test preparation, it would make sense to spend some money to improve your chances of success. It's up to you.

If exam preparation is not an issue, the question of hiring a tutor takes on a different significance. In my mind, it boils down to two things. First of all, I want to interact with a native speaker. I can read, listen, study the grammar, take formal classes, and speak to myself all on my own but at a certain point I want to have someone speak back to me. In other words (no pun intended) I'm learning the language to speak with natives (preferably). So how do I know what I'm saying is correct or sounds good? I don't unless someone tells me so. So the tutor is there to help me stay on the right track.

The other thing about a tutor is that this person is an invaluable source of knowledge about culture and society. (And before I forget, the tutor is also very useful for decoding portions of recordings that stymie us). On any topic the tutor can have something to say whether we like it or not. They can answer our questions about events, society, geography, folklore, etc. In doing so they give us examples of how things are phrased in the target language. Of course we are making copious notes of all this. And the next time we meet, I try to use what I heard.

Finally, as an addendum I must add that there can be moments of joy when speaking the language with a tutor. I hear hours of terrible pronunciation and all kinds of mistakes. And then all of a sudden I hear a couple of well articulated sentences that bring a smile to my face and that of the student. Wow, you did it! Sometimes I'm really taken aback and I have to stop and congratulate the student.

When I'm the student, I just enjoy the feeling of having a real conversation or a discussion as if in my native language. I am communicating for real. The language just keeps rolling until I run out of steam.

[Cavesa]

One thing we all must remember, and I think Cavesa is pointing out is similar to a quote I once heard.

"A teacher only opens the door, the student must walk through."

So we shouldn't really think that a tutor, good, bad or indifferent is going to open up our skull and pour knowledge into our head. They are only opening the door, and you still have to have the motivation to walk through. So one of the Cons of getting a tutor is people think they can leave all the work up to them and somehow this knowledge will get poured into your head.

Also, another problem I have had, and others reported, with some iTalki tutors is they have their own lesson plans and agendas. So this can make it difficult for the student who has specific requirements. So you need to make sure that you're hiring the person who can do what you want. If you don't know what you want, then you can probably get by with anyone. After all, if you don't know where you are going, then any road will do.

In reality, hiring a tutor just like buying anything. "Caveat emptor", let the buyer beware.

The problem is, that it's often the tutor, who expects the student to abandon any control over the learning process. That's the issue. If a learner expects the tutor to do the work for them, it is a problem, sure. But a worse problem are tutors, whose first action is discouraging the learner from any other resource, from other methods, from independent work, from the original goals.

And I think you describe the reason very well. They have their own plans, a mold that they use and which doesn't require much extra work. So, the ubiquitous phrase on every profile "I will tailor the lessons to your specific needs" is just a huge lie in most cases. Could Italki ban everybody, who copy pastes this phrase, please? It would be a good filter.

Another problem is lack of experience with other learners than a very casual beginner. These tutors don't even realize how limited is their experience, how stereotypical and prejudiced are the views they base their methods on, or that many learners could have different needs. And let's not forget that many of them don't even have any serious experience as students either, they tend to have just easy humanities degree (so no wonder they don't know what it is like to study for many hours a day) and no C2 foreign language. They project their own frame of reference (what is possible, what is hard) on others.

It is the learner's (the employer) responsibility to clearly inform the tutor (their employee) what they want and expect in return for their payment. If the tutor is unwilling or unable to fulfill the learner's wants and expectations then it is incumbent on the learner (the employer) to not hire/fire/terminate the tutor (the employee).

The whole comment by Iguanamon is just so good!

But I really wanted to highlight this part. A huge problem are the lies and false advertisements of the tutors. It is imho simply too annoying and expensive to discover a lot of useless people, and without any guarantee you'll find a good match.

The attitude of the student certainly matters, but if a person didn't need a tutor to guide them they wouldn't be hiring one in the first place. In a structured educational environment this problem doesn't really exist since the institute is responsible for hiring capable teachers.

It does exist. Many institutions hire extremely bad teachers and there is no responsibility at all. Any failure is blamed on the student, or on the difficulty of the language. (a recent example: a friend of mine is teaching French here in Belgium. She speaks and writes significantly worse than me, with many mistakes and a strong accent. Her level really surprised me, as she is quite a language enthusiast and has a French degree. It doesn't bother the institution. Or back at my faculty, there were English teachers who couldn't speak English and understood only what was in the textbook.)

I agree that a lot of tutors seem to be amateurs and a bit rubbish. All of the fortune cookie stuff about 'the teacher only opens the door...' 'you can take a horse to water...' etc is all lovely, but it is a teacher's job to provide you with what you need. They are the guides, not you. They have to have the skill of being able to guide students who need convincing and reassuring and more explanation. It seems to me that in the age of pop-up tutoring and people freelancing themselves on websites from their living room, the 'tutor' is not always an all-round teacher like in the past. So it's a minefield.

The problem is, that most of them don't have the skill, even though they lie (or delusionally think) that they have it. If a tutor is clearly trying to destroy an already existing and good structure, instead of trying to fit in it, they are not doing their job. A tutor is just a tool, just like anki, a textbook, or anything else. They are not supposed to decide anything, unless the learners specifically wants that (and in that case, they may not get the optimal result).

If I had relied on what teachers were providing me with, I would have ended extremely badly

Although I don't want to send the thread off on a different tangent, I think that for the intermediate and advanced student, the so-called tutor is actually more like a coach. Some years back I was surprised to learn that nearly all professional athletes and musicians have coaches. These are specialists that are brought in to help with specific areas of perceived weaknesses. But let's not go of course and let's keep using the term tutor.

I would totally agree with that, but that is unfortunately not the reality. If the tutors were specializing and each doing what they are good at, it would be a totally different question. But when you look at Italki, you will see most profiles are stupid jacks of all trades, who are totally delusional about language learning and teaching.

And there is a huge difference: the typical music and sports teachers are oriented on their student's progress and results. They tend to approach their domain much more seriously, than a typical language teacher. That's a big part of the difference. They add value.

[jeff_lindqvist]

One thing we all must remember, and I think Cavesa is pointing out is similar to a quote I once heard.

"A teacher only opens the door, the student must walk through."

I came to think of this one:
When the student is ready, the master will appear.