Personally, I use two tutors for difficult languages as a beginner. They are
really great teachers, but
tutors are terrible way to learn a language and a waste of time for me. Still, I'm going to continue to use them.
Wait?! What? Read on. I'll explain.
Xmmm wrote:I think you have analysis paralysis and are trying to over-optimize your learning experience, which is not going to work since you don't know what you need to do to learn a language (not having done it before).
People have recommended Pimsleur and Assimil to you. If you think Pimsleur is slow and boring, but Assimil is fast and confusing you could do Assimil and do the lessons that are too fast and confusing more than once. French and Spanish have billions of intro courses. You could spend your life weighing the pros and cons of each. Or you could just pick Pimsleur or Assimil (or even better, both), get started, and have something to show for it in six months.
I think it's a mistake to start with a tutor because if you have no experience at all, how do you even know what you need in a tutor?
I am going to go with what Xmmm is saying, to a large extent.
I have not seen in this thread background on your objectives, learning activity and weaknesses - so, in reality we can only give general advice on what we've done or used or liked. You are not us and we are not you.
The problem with a tutor or Pimsleur or Assimil is that while each can be a good tool your are just passively subjecting yourself to a learning style, content on objectives as designed by someone else - just like it's a terrible way to build a house you are going to live in by choosing a random plan off a catalogue. You may accidentally choose a great architect or tutor but you need to know what you want to build.
You want to reach B1 - that is a great start, but to do what? General travel, study, work? Live in country? Read literature in depth? We can make assumptions here and consider at the minimum that it a general all around B1 level you want to achieve ... but is a tutor really the best tool for that?
You want to work on pronunciation, listening, reading, vocabulary and production (so much on production!) What short and mid-term learning goals do want to have in those categories.
And where are you today? What are your weaknesses, what are your strengths? What do you enjoy in learning?
You then need to choose
enjoyable activities that address those learning goals while focusing on your weaknesses and building from your strengths. Then from the cornucopia of possible activities, a weekly tutor being just one of them, you can build a plan and choose the resources that best fit.
So why are my tutors a waste of time yet my preferred method for my A1 languages?
Because I have weekly sessions and mostly focus my learning activity on that, I tend to not do much with these languages the rest of the time. The sessions are challenging, I learn a lot but I'm not really focused on active learning the rest of the week. These are a treat for me. I get to talk to someone knowledgeable about languages - we share an hour together, it's enjoyable. The quality of the material they present is excellent, but really, it's just an hour a week. I'm pretty passive about it - because I have no specific goals other than dabbling in the language and moving along. And thankfully, since I schedule the time, I do the time.
It's not that tutors are bad in general, they can be great. It's that I've (passively) chosen to let a once a week conversational activity drive my learning. But, for these languages, I'm mostly ok with that. It's like I'm not training for a marathon, heck, not even a good 5k. I'm just jogging to the corner bagel shop. In jeans.
You need to determine how you are going to couple your tutoring session with other activity. Is it going to be the only thing you are doing? Homework assignments (of what type? covering what goals?) With what material?
Finally, it also really depends on the language - for French, as rdearman noted, it can be a great tool to address pronunciation issues. But have you also looked into FSI? Wyner's pronunciation deck? YouTube videos?
French has a huge amount of good material out there, you really need to chose what activity you want to follow - personally, If I were learning it again with the objectives that I had of rapid and absolute mastery for living in country and understanding all literature, I'd start with cramming through Michel Thomas/Pimsleur/Assimil, add a very large dose of the grammaire progressive workbooks, do FSI and then add a tutor, a girlfriend and the AJATT method. A tutor would be a minor but extremely useful part of that craziness.
