LesRonces wrote:Ani wrote:LesRonces wrote:I never understood why asking for advice is the first port of call for people.
.
a.) Because they are uncomfortable with confrontation.
b.) Because they haven't formulated exactly what they want coherently yet.
c.) Because culturally they are used to being told what service they will receive for payment and are unused to the idea of telling another person what should be provided for the money.
d.) Because talking things out is a validating experience
I am sure there are plenty more...
Maybe, but it would be a lot easier and quicker and therefore more cost-effective to just tell them what you want. If i have guitar lessons and i like metal but the guy just teaches me some pop tune on day one, but all i want to do is play metal, surely the first point of call is just to tell the guy ? 9 times out of 10 he will just say 'yeah, let's just play some metal then' instead of having to go round the houses with ifs or buts.
The simplest solution is usually the quickest and most effective.
Speaking as a tutor myself, I nearly always acquiesce in these cases. Tutoring people who know what they want and are able to ask for it is generally a good sign because it means they are motivated and goal-oriented; those people progress fastest. I have had students with specific requests - these were generally the best students who did tons of work outside class without me ever having to ask them to do so. They were also nearly always those who scored best on exams, had the highest levels of fluency in the language and nearly always had attributes that made their language learning magnificent - and they don't have to be university educated nerds either. I once taught a girl Dutch who sat the B2 exam - and she was a US high school dropout who passed because she was dedicated, good, made sure she had the right approach and because she had worked so hard on her accent that people sometimes mistook her for Dutch. The fact she had decided, herself, that she wanted to be an au pair here and make sure her visit had tangible results was the clinching factor, never my teaching. I simply facilitated what she did.