How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

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issemiyaki
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How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby issemiyaki » Sun Jun 25, 2017 12:43 am

Any suggestions for how to conduct conversation sessions with tutor?

Despite being fairly fluent, I still have some problems grammatically. So, it’s hard to know where to begin.

I´m great talking about human right, international relations, politics, etc. But explaining to someone how to tie their shoes, I'm a bit lost.

When you learn a language, you sort of see it as a ladder, and you're on this quest to reach the top, learning more and more highfalutin words (especially if you use your L2 in professional settings). As a result, you sometimes neglect the more every-day, mundane language at the bottom of the ladder, the true foundation, arguably the most important part because is glues the language together.

So I want conversation sessions that will help me improve. I’m not looking for someone to stroke my ego. I’m looking to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

But then again, maybe I’m trying too hard? Maybe just basic conversation, letting it take its own course, is the best way to go?

Let me know what you think. I’m all ears!
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Re: How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby the1whoknocks » Sun Jun 25, 2017 6:45 am

Language-wise, I think we might be in a similar position. For better or worse, I’ve always studied grammar, and while I’ve been told I handle it well, I know I make mistakes. My approach has been to study more grammar (not the bulk of my time), and increase exposure to native material like series, books, YouTube videos, the news and whatever else I’d like ... and try to be patient.

I’m quite inexperienced as a language learner; surely others can speak better to your situation. For my part, I’ve found that after learning everything I need for basic communication, I’ve become most proficient at things I need to talk about. Sometimes that need came from:

- 1. A situation I landed in – I distinctly remember offering my basic opinion of US presidential candidates with my tutor a few days before I found myself feeling un-prepared to order lunch in Little Havana, Florida last year. That was funny, but frustrating. The thing is, I had run into that topic in a beginners course, which is probably why I was able to cobble a request together for our server. Still, it wasn’t until after that encounter that I went home and really decided I needed to learn how to order food.

-2. A course I was going through – Working through Assimil is the only reason I know that a cajón del armario is a wardrobe drawer. I am yet to actually ever use that word, but working to understand a certain Assimil dialog has ‘necessitated’ me learning that phrase.

-3. An artificial need, or one I anticipated – Part of why I was able to give my take on US presidential candidates is because it’s something I had practiced doing many times. Given my interests, and the people I work with, I knew it would serve me well if I could discuss that topic. So I worked at it.

It’s also why I was able to discuss things related to my work fairly well before I explain to you how to tie a shoe … well, I still can’t explain how to do that in Spanish. There are topics that I knew would serve me well in my job if I were able to discuss them, so I worked to one day be able to do so.

What’s my point? You’re comfortable talking about the topics you listed because they’re among your interests, and are things you’d probably be inclined to speak about if given a choice. Your situation sounds normal to me. I’ve been relying on necessity and exposure to learn the more ‘every-day stuff.’

By necessity, I mean no matter how much I prepare there are some things I won’t think to learn until I find myself in a situation where I need to express myself on a given thing. In such a case, I just try my best to get through the conversation as best I can ---> native speaker usually figures out what I’m talking about --->, I make a note of how to say that next time ... or go home and look it up.

By exposure, I mean learning incidentally through either, interaction with native speakers, or native materials. Sometimes I’ll notice something and say, “hmm, I should probably know that … I’ll make a mental note.” Either that, or it stands out so much that I learn it without trying. With enough time and exposure, I’ve learnt how to say things I KNOW I’ve never studied. It is hard, but I’m becoming more content with allowing time and exposure to fill in the gaps, while using focused study time to improve my fluency on topics that I anticipate needing to talk about.

Again, I’m not very experienced, and I don’t claim for this to be the fastest or most efficient way to fill in gaps … it’s just what I’m doing now.

issemiyaki wrote:Any suggestions for how to conduct conversation sessions with tutor?


For pure conversation, I’ve had good results with choosing a topic I wanted to talk about beforehand. Often, I’d write a few words, about 100, on the chosen topic. Sometimes, I’d ask my tutor to correct it; sometimes I’d have it reviewed by someone else in advance. In addition to what I’d written, I would have a notebook with phrases or vocabulary that I could either see myself using during the conversation, or that I’ve needed before but didn’t have at my disposal. Linguee, Google Translate, and sometimes a patient language partner over Watsapp, come in handy here.

Beyond that, I just let my tutor know what I’d like to talk about before the session, and use what I wrote, along with my notebook of random words and phrases on said topic, as a sort of cheat sheet. You can picture me sitting in the living room at a desk with a laptop, and a notebook with relevant phrases and vocabulary on one side, and a corrected short paragraph on the other side. As we’re speaking, I’m glancing at this open notebook to help me with the conversation.

Sometimes I use all the planned phrases, but often I don’t. It’s OK. For me, the act of trying to force myself to use the things I’ve written reinforces them in my memory. Having them written down and readily accessible allows me to be able to relax a bit more.

All the while, my tutor is writing in the chat-box and prompting me for a correction, or we’re just talking/ role-playing. After the session, I take all corrections and add them to Anki. After rinsing and repeating a few times, I’m usually able to express myself better on said topic. In the interest of transparency, I have started to develop a love-hate relationship with Anki. We sometimes need our time apart.

Anyway, all the best!
Last edited by the1whoknocks on Sun Jun 25, 2017 7:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby the1whoknocks » Sun Jun 25, 2017 7:11 am

“The why” behind writing the following is a long, and rather uninteresting story. It’s unfinished, and part of a larger document so it may contain references to things that are not obvious. I’ll post it anyway since you may find it relevant to your question.

--------------------
Unfinished piece
--------------------


Starting out, one of the things I struggled with was figuring out what a session should look like. The short answer, I discovered, is it depends on one’s goals. In my case, I needed to be able to communicate at work, but I also wanted to be able to communicate with friends. Starting out, we were usually doing one of a few things:

-1. Working with dialogs from SP101 and Assimil - I studied these on my own, added relevant parts to Anki and prepared questions on parts that I didn’t understand. We’d start the session by addressing my questions and proceeding to role-play the dialog. For example: if the dialog had been about the weather, my tutors would play the role of as inquisitive friend who was fascinated with the weather in my city, "I've never seen snow. What's it like?"

-2. Pictures - I took pictures of everything; Pets, work, a snow storm, my neighborhood etc. Nothing was off limits. I’d simply work beforehand to write all I could on said pictures and then talk about them with the tutor. Sometimes we would only focus on describing them, other times I'd make a story

-3. Articles of interest - Before class, either them or I would choose an article, I’d study it before class and we’d meet and talk about it. They would commonly start by asking me which words I had trouble with. They would take note of them and try to use them during the session if possible,

-4. Podcasts or videos of interest - Same deal as articles of interest. Videos chosen were usually no more than 6 minutes long and something that was fairly easy to understand, but would cause me to have to work at a bit. Often, I transcribed them before the class and had a language exchange partner help me confirm the transcription. As far as podcasts, we used Radioambulante extensively. I liked the stories so that kept me going, but I felt they longer than ideal for tutoring session. The only way I see this working is if the tutor is familiar with the particular episodes ahead of time.

-5. I got a copy of Cronometro B1 - It’s a preparatory book for the DELE. I’d work on writing prompts on my own, and run it my my exchange partners before finally sending it to my tutor. My thinking was the better the writing was in the first place, the more my tutor would be able focus on stylistic improvements and awkward phrasings that could be hard to explain without a good understanding of grammar. Cronometro also came with a CD with all the audio and pictures. For the pictures, I followed the same process listed earlier with the pictures I take.

-6. We just talk - This is where number 10 from the previous list comes in handy. Because we genuinely like speaking with each other, sometimes we would just talk about life. I typically watched the news (a habit) or something on the DVR before our sessions as a warm-up. Often, whatever I was watching or listening to acted as a nice segway for a 10-15 minute conversation. That conversation usually leads to something else and before we know it, the hour has passed. Most times, this is not a simple conversation; they’re writing things in the chat box, I’m being corrected, they’re challenging my opinions or just asking clarifying questions.

Any corrections or vocabulary suggestions get added to Anki.

-7. Review homework - Usually this is given as a follow-up to a problem I had during a session with one of my main tutors. One of my tutors likes literature and would often give me a story (already written) to rewrite as a way to practice the imperfect and preterit tenses (two past tenses in Spanish).

-8. Work on Islands - Usually, I find myself needing to say the same things repeatedly, albeit on different days/ in different places. Sure the details might be different for things I’d say at work but there’s a basic structure for most of the information I need to relay. Beyond that, there are common topics that come up when I meet someone; where are you from, what are you studying and why (at the time), what do you do for work, likes/ dislikes, whatever the ‘breaking news’ of the day is etc. Basically, I would practice mini-speeches with my tutors and sometimes have the same conversation with different tutors for a week or two. We'd often fit multiple 'islands' into one session.

Later, they or an exchange partner would record the mini speech and I’d memorize it. This may have been one of the most helpful things I did with a tutor. Because I was prepared for my most common situations and had native sounding expressions for those them, people often assumed I could speak better than I really could. I believe this led more people to being willing to speak and interact with me than they might have otherwise. This often meant that they spoke faster than they probaly should have, or used slang, but one learns to deal with it.

-9. Review our Google doc. - One of my tutors introduced me to the idea of Google docs. He’d use it for notes during the session, but after the session, I would record links to articles, videos, sentences or whatever else it was that I had questions about. Sometimes, just reviewing all the questions I had accumulated for the week along with general catching up, was enough to pass an entire hour.

-10. Writing - I write, send it to them, they review it before class, and we either correct it together and talk about why I wrote what I did or discuss corrections they did on their own.

I think the choice of tutors, and one’s willingness to be active in the process, is the factor that will make or break a good session. The tutor might have all the qualities I think are important, but if I am not preparing before class, doing my own work, and reviewing corrections then my time with them won’t be optimal.

One source of anxiety for me was that in the beginning, I was never certain I was doing the right thing with a tutor. I was frustrated when I couldn’t answer right during a role-play, or I wasn’t learning a memorized speech what I considered to be quickly enough. Non-sense! Progress, even with a tutor, will take time. For me, ‘be kind to yourself’ and ‘remain consistent’ would have been good advice.

Anyway, that’s my perspective on the whole using a tutor thing. It really is nothing fancy once you find the right person/people. Absent the right person, just save your time and money.

Here are some links from a very useful language learning forum on the topic. Here, you'll learn from people a lot more experienced and better at this whole thing than I am.

Paying for classes
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=814

Online Tutoring: your experiences and preferences
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1108

Italki tutors/ teachers at A2 level
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=1089

Skype Classes
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=3277

Another question re: tutors
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=4017

Are most tutors useless for advanced learners
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5790

Things to keep in mind:

-1. Finding a tutor that works well for you may take time. I got lucky by finding two early on but I kept searching in case I missed something and because I didn’t believe it could be so simple.

-2. Unless you’re very advanced, I don’t think a degree in teaching Spanish alone makes someone a good tutor. The things I listed above are much more important for me in that regard.

-3. My first two tutors charged single digits (US$) for an hour of their time when I started with them. They don’t anymore. My point is that just because someone is affordable, doesn’t mean they are not good. However, it’s fair to expect that they will start charging more. No doubt, that low price was just to lure a client base. Economics made it a good proposition for all involved.

-4. On italki, their presentation video, number of repeat students [i](hard if they’re new to the platform) and reviews out of the ordinary are usually what will drive me to try a session with someone. [/i]By reviews out of the ordinary I mean, something more than the usual, “thanks,” or, “it was a great session, see you again soon.” To me, when someone takes the time to be more specific in their comments, it often suggests that they were particularly satisfied with the session.

-5. You'll probably change tutors - As you progress, what you need from a tutor will change. In the beginning, you might only need someone to pay attention to your pronunciation, practice dialogs with or to simply be patient and engage you in conversation. As you become more able to manage basic conversations, you'll want someone to challenge you, while helping you to clean everything up and tie it all together.

[to be continued] ...
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Re: How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby issemiyaki » Sun Jun 25, 2017 2:08 pm

Thanks for such engaging responses. I read every single last word and all if it made absolute sense. Much of it I’ve already done, just on an intuitive basis.

You helped me make that important To-Do list:

1) Prepare a topic in advance on something I anticipate having to engage in; this includes turns of phrases that I may want to use, etc.

2) Write something ahead of time on the issue, and have it corrected by a tutor;

3) Pictures: How interesting! I used this technique with a French tutor once. She would show me the picture of a girl on an airplane, make me describe her clothes, hairstyle, facial expressions, and then other people on the plane, parts of the plane, etc. That discussion then morphed into airplane safety. So, you went from the very useful detailed vocabulary to the more abstract vocabulary. My French was horrible back then, so I thought it was a bit overwhelming. But I will certainly consider adding this into my current tutoring sessions

4) I think homework is good.

5) Use Google Docs – Check!

As far as changing tutors, I think I will use a variety, as suggested. Not sure if it’s something in the water, but tutors from Spain and Colombia tend to have low tolerance levels for Spanish that doesn’t sound like the Spanish in their current city, which can be a problem, especially given my situation. I speak with people from El Salvador, Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, you name it, so we can’t waste time in this coche/carro business (I’m exaggerating, but you get where I’m coming from.)

My current tutor is a great guy. Only problem is I believe he might be too easy on me. Nothing concerns me more when I hear myself make a mistake, and the tutor doesn’t correct it. Granted the mistakes sometime tend to be minor, or he could have been completely engaged in what I was saying. I would love to think of myself as a great public speaker, but if that distracts the tutor from making corrections, then that's concerning. But I'm still on the fence about this tutor, because when I'm with him I feel like the conversation really flows. But is that me just stroking my own ego, and not wanting to face the real problems I'm having. So, lots to chew on there.

Thanks for the advice and the link to: “Are most tutors useless for advanced learners.” I’m going to make some coffee and see what all the gossip is about over there. Sounds juicy.

Thanks.
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Re: How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby the1whoknocks » Sun Jun 25, 2017 5:53 pm

You’re welcome. Although, you should probably hear from someone more experienced than myself on the matter.

The third post was originally drafted to address a different, but somewhat similar, question. Given that you’re ‘fairly fluent’ when talking about things like politics, I only included it on the off chance it sparked an idea for you. Many are activities I put a premium on when I was still struggling to speak. Off the cuff speech was taxing, so the better I could plan our sessions, the more I was able to get from a conversation session.

issemiyaki wrote:As far as changing tutors, I think I will use a variety, as suggested. Not sure if it’s something in the water, but tutors from Spain and Colombia tend to have low tolerance levels for Spanish that doesn’t sound like the Spanish in their current city, which can be a problem, especially given my situation. I speak with people from El Salvador, Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, you name it, so we can’t waste time in this coche/carro business (I’m exaggerating, but you get where I’m coming from.


Not to deviate too much from your original question, but I tend to speak a Latin-American variety of Spanish, and often work with a tutor from Spain. There are some things she will correct me on that I hear the very next day uttered from someone at work. It’s somewhat nice since it draws my attention to what might sound off to a someone from Spain. Rather than just saying it’s wrong, she’s usually keen to say something like, “yeah, you might hear it all the time, but we don’t say that here .. this is why you may want to reconsider expressing X thought in that way.” I get what you’re saying though. If the reason I’m corrected on something is that it’s not expressed that way in a particular country, I usually just try to bear that detail in mind when speaking with someone from said country.

My current tutor is a great guy. Only problem is I believe he might be too easy on me. Nothing concerns me more when I hear myself make a mistake, and the tutor doesn’t correct it.


My view on this is still developing. Many believe that corrections are largely unnecessary, and can even be damaging. That with sufficient input and mindfulness, errors will iron themselves out. I agree with this to a large extent, but it’s still my preference to work with someone who is proving thoughtful and consistent feedback. What that feedback looks like can vary depending on the focus of the session, but I like to sense that there is, ‘a method to the madness.

[...]the link to: “Are most tutors useless for advanced learners.” I’m going to make some coffee and see what all the gossip is about over there. Sounds juicy.


Honestly, I was a bit surprised at how lively that discussion became. It has quite a bit of food for thought.
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Re: How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby tarvos » Sun Jun 25, 2017 7:45 pm

When you get to the advanced levels, you should strongly start looking into what type of tutoring you really need, and who might be a good fit. After all, if you get a cold, any kind of GP will do - but if you have to deal with brain cancer, better get the right kind of oncologist...
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Re: How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby issemiyaki » Sun Jun 25, 2017 8:01 pm

@ the1whoknocks

My view on this is still developing. Many believe that corrections are largely unnecessary, and can even be damaging. That with sufficient input and mindfulness, errors will iron themselves out. I agree with this to a large extent, but it’s still my preference to work with someone who is proving thoughtful and consistent feedback. What that feedback looks like can vary depending on the focus of the session, but I like to sense that there is, ‘a method to the madness.


I agree. What gets on my nerves is when they say - what are you stressing about? It's not a big deal. (My thinking is the following: I'm coming to you [the tutor] because the people that I work with say it is a big deal, and it should be corrected. Either you correct it or I move on.

But on the other hand, as you mentioned, this can be a VERY fine line. I have a French tutor, and it's just something about the way he expresses himself sometimes. It cuts right through me ... I forgot to use the preposition SUR. When he corrected me, I was in the middle of getting to the point of what I was saying, and I was already having trouble doing that, and then here he comes, interrupting, in a rather abrupt way to say SUR.

I don't want to sound like a crybaby but I wanted to say: Dude back the f/*k off! After that I didn't even want to continue the lesson and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Luckily this doesn't happen all the time.

And don't worry about your advice not relating to me because of some possible disparity in our proficiency levels. What you wrote really helped me organize things, which is what I was looking for.
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Re: How to get the most out of Conversations w/Tutor? Help?

Postby rdearman » Mon Jun 26, 2017 9:09 am

issemiyaki wrote:But on the other hand, as you mentioned, this can be a VERY fine line. I have a French tutor, and it's just something about the way he expresses himself sometimes. It cuts right through me ... I forgot to use the preposition SUR. When he corrected me, I was in the middle of getting to the point of what I was saying, and I was already having trouble doing that, and then here he comes, interrupting, in a rather abrupt way to say SUR.
.

During language exchanges or tutoring sessions I generally ask the person to leave the corrections until the end or a natural break in the conversation. When I do an exchange I try to write it down and go over it later rather than interrupt someone’s train of thought.
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