How do you feel about tutors for advanced learners?

[alcarazesco]

I'm still seeking a good online tutor. So far, all of mine have been grossly unqualified. Tutoring is a side-gig for most of them, meaning easy money for the smallest effort. It starts showing after the second lesson or so. Online tutors may bring secondary benefits, like having a native speaker talk to you and correct your spoken or written mistakes. They might--though not always--be able to help with specific tasks on request, like interview prep. I am indeed generalizing about thousands of available online tutors. However, I've been through 9 different ones, and none of them provided anything I couldn't figure out myself, or obtain freely through language exchange or online fora. My lessons went like this: catch up on personal things for five minutes, discuss the news, ask questions on grammar and vocabulary that I didn't have time to look up, discuss last week's listening assignment, and then schedule the next lesson. Some are much worse: the tutor ignores your requests and makes you work on exercises that you didn't ask for and are inappropriate for your level. I don't why students voluntarily pay over 20 USD per hour for that.

But I haven't give up yet! There's still a chance to salvage the situation. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Forum members, what do you look for in a good tutor, unless you think all online tutoring is unnecessary? Or what should the student do to have better sessions?

[rdearman]

I think you need to take more control. For example, I know that Leosmith contacts tutors beforehand and lays out ground rules for them to follow, and if they don't, he bins them off. I also try to control what I'm being given to some extent.

If you're an intermediate learner, then in theory you should know what you need help with. Therefore, it would help if you wrote out the lesson plan, and told them what they needed to teach you. For example, in French if you're struggling with futures, conditionals or modal auxiliaries then you need to tell them that is what you want to study and get corrections on. It might be you want to work on writing and therefore you want to go through some written word you've done and get corrections and explanations in real time.

Or perhaps you want to work on negatives.

Tutor: C'était la tête de Mme Détrône que vous avez vue ?
Résponse: Je ne sais pas si c'était la tête de Mme Détrône, mais c'était bien une tête de femme.

Take control of your education, after all you're paying for it!

Now, having said all of that, it might be a case of "I don't know what I don't know." and then you'll need a tutor to guide you, but if you've found someone who is willing to do all the above, they are probably good enough to ask, "What other flaws do I have and how can we fix them?"

[galaxyrocker]

Yeah, I think at the advanced level, you need to specify exactly what you're looking for in a tutor, and work towards that. Like for Irish, I want a tutor but haven't found a good one because I want to work on pronunciation and most Irish teachers suck at it. None on iTalki are natives (despite their claims) and only one or two even has anything close to native-like pronunciation. I might try to work with one of them on it, but you really need to be focused, as rdearman said and make sure the tutor recognises that.

[dylan413]

It depends on the language, but generally speaking I don't like using tutors for hardly anything. There are so many amazing resources for beginners and acquiring an A2 level language on my own is doable that I don't find it to be worth the money. I think they are quite helpful at the intermediate stage when it comes to making the jump from a level where communication is tedious to one where it's less taxing on your interlocutor and more interesting. At an advanced level, they can also be helpful, but this is rare.

I have tutored 1 on 1 and taught small classes for SAT English as well, so I have experience on both sides. My students were very happy with me and their scores improved dramatically, but I remember constantly thinking about how they could have learned everything I was teaching them on their own. Technically, this is true. All of the resources we used were publicly available and so were many of the tips that I gave them. However, they were teenagers with short attention spans, who didn't know what they were doing. As adults (most people on this forum are), we are more experienced and are generally better at staying focused and motivated. For people who fit this description, I don't think that tutors are all that useful. Of course, there are some excellent tutors out there, but they are usually so expensive that it's hard for most people to justify paying for their services all that much.

I would also say that before the advent of ChatGPT, tutors were much more useful. Now that we can get AI to correct all of our mistakes and answer nearly all of our questions >99% accuracy at the drop of a hat, it's hard to justify using a tutor for similar services.

My Italian has increased from 0 to a high B1 level in less than a year while working well over 40 hours per week and having all kinds of other responsibilities–all without the use of a tutor. I have had a few trial lessons with tutors, but all of them have gone nowhere. This isn't anything impressive, but having spent less than 50$ over this period and had very little time each day, I am quite happy with these results. Now I do not feel that I even need a tutor because I have found conversation partners with whom I can practice using what I have already learned on my own.

I'm not at the advance stages yet, so this isn't entirely relevant to your specific situation, but I have reached an advanced level in other languages, and I have found that it's generally not working with tutors at this level. For starters, many tutors don't know their languages well enough to be teaching them at an advanced level (being a native speaker doesn't mean you'll understand intricate grammar rules), and even for the ones who do, it's so rare to find advanced students that they likely won't have much experience teaching them.

Would this be the case if I were a kid or an inexperienced learner? Absolutely not. And I'm sure that other people have found their time with tutors to be more useful. They can do wonders for people who need to keep their motivation up or to make them feel the pressure of deadlines. As for me, I rarely find them to be worth it.

[s_allard]

I have used and still continue to use tutors for Spanish at my C2 level. Perhaps it’s more maintenance mode now but I felt that for speaking and especially for something like writing, a good tutor makes all the difference for a number of reasons. I should also point out that I do some tutoring myself in French and English

First of all, you need feedback, someone to correct your mistakes. The problem here is that not all tutors will actually correct everything, especially if there is a lot to correct. There is a school of thought that says it’s OK to let little mistakes go by in order to not interrupt the flow. That’s debatable.

Secondly, the tutor will usually provide good examples of the target language just by speaking to you. I keenly listen to how my tutors speak and try to imitate them.

Thirdly, tutors can provide a lot of cultural content that makes for interesting discussions.

Finally, I must add that as the student I really prepare for the tutoring session. I identify what I want to work on : a point or two of grammar with examples, some idioms, a newspaper article to discuss or even a recording with things I don’t understand.

So I take control of the session. Typically I’ll find a newspaper article and read it before the tutoring session. I identify grammar and vocabulary points. Then I read the article to the tutor but we often stop to discuss the contents or points of language. I often ask questions just to hear the tutor speaking. All this works fine for me.

[mattmo]

I personally feel that for advanced students and tutors can be useful when you need practice speaking or writing corrections. In other words things that you can't do by yourself through self-study.

[deekin]

It is the rare tutor that has experience working with advanced students. I agree with others here that you need to go in with a plan of what you want to work on.. It feels safe to say that most people never get to B1 or B2 in a language, let alone further than that. So the number of tutors that have experience working with advanced students are going to be very few and far between. But a good tutor, in my experience, can come up with a plan of attack if you tell them where you're weak and what you'd like help with. I have found tutors especially helpful with checking on the usage of particular vocabulary (level of formality, academic language, colloquialisms and slang) and prepping for specific language tests (working with someone that was a certified DELE examiner). I also use tutors to keep my speaking from getting too rusty.

[Flickserve]

An advanced learner most likely needs a tutor with specialist knowledge.

There’s no point in expecting a generalist tutor to cater for that straight away. Unrealistic expectations.

[Yunus39]

I actually want "tutors" who have no training. I have lesson plans and activities that I want to do, and I need them to be able to take my instructions.
For advanced language learners go through content that is new or too difficult for you to do on your own with your tutor. This may mean listening to a classic audiobook together or a book about local politics. It may mean watching a science fiction show or legal thriller. Every time you don't understand something stop and discuss it with your "tutor." Have them explain things, write down new words, and have them make recordings using those words/structures/concepts in context with different examples.