rdearman wrote: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.
iguanamon wrote: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.
Le Baron wrote: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
s_allard wrote: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.