How to find the perfect language tutor

What are the ideal characteristics that I see when it comes to a language tutor?

It used to be that to learn a language, to find a tutor, you had to go to school.

Now there's all kinds of people offering language tutoring services online.

Italki is perhaps the best known, but there are many places where you

can find the tutor, including LingQ.

Different rates they charge.

They have different skill sets, different personalities,

obviously for different languages.

And I say this because I am now

in preparation for going to Turkey in October.

I am engaging with the tutors more than I have in the past.

I've got my sort of basic passive vocabulary up to a level where

I want to use the language more.

And I'm going or have been going roughly with two tutors twice

a week with each one of them.

So that's four sessions a week.

Each session is an hour or so long.

And, uh, of course, again, with other languages, I have tutors.

I've had tutors in Persian.

I've had tutors in Arabic.

So I have had some experience with the kinds of people who are available.

And most of the online tutors I have found to be very pleasant, very

engaging, very serious, and very helpful.

So what are the most important things?

Important characteristics, either from the perspective of a learner or

from the perspective of someone who wants to start, uh, tutoring online.

To me, the most important characteristic of a successful and effective language

tutor is that that person be sympathetic, that the learner likes the tutor, and

that the tutor seems to like the learner.

That is the number one characteristic.

In other words.

The learner has to want to go back and meet with the tutor again.

And that has certainly been the case with the tutors that I have had.

That's the case with my two Turkish tutors.

It was the case with my Persian tutor.

I looked forward to our next session.

It's not like, gee, I have to spend an hour with that person now.

And in fact, you end up almost wanting to perform.

You want to show the tutor that you've actually made a little bit of progress.

And the hour goes very, very quickly if you have the right tutor.

So, first of all, you have to like the tutor, the tutor has to like you.

That's the number one characteristic of a successful online language tutor.

Now, the second thing is that the tutor has to be a good listener.

I have had tutors in the past who wanted to talk.

I have access to all kinds of listening material.

I don't need to listen to the tutor.

I want to talk with the tutor.

I want to engage in a conversation with the tutor on a subject of interest.

So that in the course of an hour, Within that sort of limited range of

what I can say, we are able to have an interesting, meaningful conversation.

That's very important to me.

That's why I don't engage with a tutor until I'm able to some extent

to have a meaningful conversation on subjects of interest to me.

With gaps, with missing words, with mistakes, with whatever,

but at least I have the feeling that I'm having a conversation

and that's extremely important.

So therefore the tutor has to be a good listener.

That means that when I make a mistake, the tutor cannot show

impatience, and I've had that.

You know, or disappointment, or you know, kind of, why are you so stupid?

In other words, the tutor should just let the mistakes fly by, and I'll mention

later how we capture the mistakes in the report that the tutor gives me later on.

But while we're conversing, I want to have the feeling that the tutor

actually enjoys speaking with me.

Which may or may not be the case, but at least the tutor gives the

impression that he or she is happy to be engaged in a conversation with you.

And the tutor offers you something that's very valuable and that is

the opportunity to speak because the listening and the reading

opportunity, I have a limitless amount.

So I mentioned the tutor's reports and I just thought I'd show you

what it actually looks like.

So conversation reports is actually a course and I can open this up and I can

see all the conversation reports that I've had going back however long it's

been that I've been learning Turkish.

But first, let me show you how I get the tutor reports.

I always get a notification in my email, but the notification in the

email directs me to my, uh, activities.

And if I go to activities, and I click on activities, then I will see

both the conversations that I have lined up with my tutors, as well as

conversation reports that I have received.

So I can go to this conversation report, and I see it here.

Uh, these are sentences that contain, contain some of the errors that I.

Made in our conversation, uh, but I can also import it as a

lesson and that's how it becomes a part of my conversation course.

So, and here, I have again words that I can look up, look

up, and so forth and so on.

I can also, of course, go through sentence views.

I have trouble with this word, karselars, karselarshterelsak,

comparing, or if we compare.

And I can listen to it now.

If we compare it with Farsi, Turkish is an easier language.

Because Turks use the Latin alphabet. So compared to Farsi, Turkey is easier.

It's an easier language because Turkish uses the Latin alphabet.

Now, if I want to like review this sentence, I can try to put the

whole sentence together again.

So if we compare it with Farsi, If we compare it with Farsi, Türkçe

daha kolay bir dil çünkü Türkler Latin alfabesini kullanıyor.

So that kind of gives me a chance to delve deeper into sentences that I might have

been struggling with during my lesson.

And of course if I go back to my main page here, the lesson page, and

I can see my conversation reports.

Of course here, and it's not in any particular order.

But I can, of course, put it in an order, oldest to newest, last open,

newest percentage, whatever I want.

Typically, I look at this newest to oldest, but sometimes.

I might do it some other way.

The third thing is when it comes to the structure and the grammar

and the correctness of speech and all of these other aspects of the

language, it's important that the tutor would not be too didactic.

In other words, I've had tutors who perhaps they were recent graduates of

some language teaching school, you know, T E F L or whatever it might be for

in the case of English, and they say, okay, today we're going to cover This,

or we're going to cover the numbers, or we're going to cover the subjunctive.

Or in other words, the tutor tries to dictate what they

want to cover in the lesson.

I react very poorly to that.

When teachers have, or tutors have come at me with that, I've said, okay, I will give

them a chance to try it, do it their way.

And I'm always disappointed.

And I find that less effective.

I can get a grammar book.

I can look grammar up.

I don't need to have a sort of teacher teaching me the grammar.

That's not the main purpose.

The main purpose for me is to have a natural conversation where I see

the gaps in my knowledge and where the tutor can guide me and a very

skilled tutor will be able to keep the conversation going despite the problems

that I have, the gaps, the lack in my vocabulary that just keep me talking.

If I, as a learner, and, and it does come up, like, why is it this and why that?

And here are three words that seem to have the same meaning.

How are they different?

And I will ask those questions and I will get an explanation,

which I'll probably forget.

However, if I'm interested in something, I'll ask for it, but

I don't want the tutor to impose an agenda or an explanation or

today we're going to cover this.

I don't want that.

Tutors should be flexible, engaging, interesting.

A clever tutor will see where I have problems of structure or vocabulary

and they'll bring the conversation back to something where I have to

try to use that structure again and then they will capture that in the

report with more and more examples.

Remember, whatever mistake I make, and even if the tutor kind of repeats

it correctly, and I'm kind of pick up on it a little bit, but I will

continue to make those same mistakes.

That's just the nature of language learning.

We continue making the same mistakes, whether we're corrected or not, whether

things are explained to us or not, we continue making the same mistakes

because it's one thing to understand.

In theory, how the language is supposed to work, it's quite another

thing to actually execute that, to use that structure or those words

correctly when you are speaking.

That requires a lot of practice in a natural environment.

So from that point of view, it's very important that the tutor provide

examples while we're speaking and also in the report that the tutor circles

back to the same types of errors that I will continue to make week after week

and that the tutor has the patience.

to do this.

Another thing that a very good tutor does is the tutor will either create content,

as was the case with Sahra, who created that wonderful series we have on the

history of Iran, and many other content items as well that we have in our Persian

library, or the tutor will help me find the content, perhaps a website where I

can download audio or just Text material.

In other words, the tutor takes an interest in helping you

build up your compelling input that you can use for learning.

So the tutor is not just someone who's going to teach the language or

allow you to engage in conversation.

The teacher actually helps you find an answer.

You know, learning content that's going to help you.

And finally, and this is something that's perhaps more specific to, to

LingQ where we're trying to improve our tutoring function and create sort

of a list of LingQ accredited tutors who understand the LingQ system.

who follow the learners statistics, who have an understanding of how

LingQ works, who can help the learner get more out of LingQ.

Sort of a range of call it hand holding and coaching in the language

and in LingQ that goes beyond just the hour that is spent with the tutor.

And, uh, certainly the Tutors that I've been using, uh, for Turkish are very

familiar with LingQ and that helps make my session more useful and rewarding.

They're well aware that their report to me will be a lesson for me in LingQ,

that I'm going to import it, that I'm going to go through the errors, the

examples, uh, so that I have an ongoing, uh, you know, benefit from the lesson.

And also all of these lessons are part of a course then that I can then go

back to three months earlier, reviewing.

What was covered in a lesson back then, and, and, you know, continue

to improve and lessen because inevitably we have to circle back.

We have to circle back.

We don't learn something and then it's no, we learn it and forget it, learn

it, forget it, don't really learn it, come back to it, and eventually

slowly, slowly these things sock in.

And I think a good tutor should be aware of these things.

One other thing, it has often come by, come up, you know, does the

tutor have to be a native speaker?

Matter of preference, I would not like to learn a language

from a non native speaker.

If I'm learning Turkish, I don't want to learn it from a German, from

an American, from a Chinese person.

I want to learn it from a Turkish person.

However, I know there are a lot of non native speakers.

There are arguments out there that the tutor who has learned the language

is more familiar with some of the pitfalls and difficulties that may be.

And I think it's a matter of learning.

A personal preference, but in my case, it's more inspiring to speak Turkish

with a Turkish person, Chinese with the Chinese person, and so forth.

It's their language, it's their culture.

And so that motivates me more.

And motivation is such an important part of language of learning

that I prefer a native speaker.

However, obviously there are schools all over the world where non native

speakers are teaching English or French.

And, and I've had, you know, when I was at school, we had non native

speakers, uh, teaching French.

If you're stuck there in the classroom, that's what you get.

But if you have a choice, my choice is a native speaker of the language.

Now you can Google and find different, uh, recommendations of, uh, Uh,

what makes a good online tutor.

And some of these recommendations are that you should make sure they

cover all the four language skills.

I don't believe in any of that.

I think an unstructured class that you enjoy, that you look forward going

back to, and where you feel that you're supported by a sympathetic tutor, that's

far more important than any sort of formalized structure, teach the four

skills or any of these other things that I found browsing the internet for

suggestions on what makes a good tutor.

So I hope you find that useful.

Thanks for listening.