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If you’ve bravely chosen to undertake a foreign language by yourself, no matter where you live, “immersion” environment or not, you should have a (preferably bilingual) language tutor to guide you.
Why? It’s a simple fact: Real language learning and retention comes from you making and using sentences from your own original thoughts.
You want to make sure that those thoughts are understandable in the target language, and that you don’t keep saying the same wrong things over and over. You need a “parent” to correct and guide your language learning, not a friend, “language partner,” or “language exchange partner.” (You can see my more complete article about needing language “parents,” the myth of magic immersion environments, and how children don’t just magically learn their first language here.)
It is a grave delusion that a stay in the country of the language one is studying functions as a channel through which knowledge just pours into one’s head. I think people have been misled by the Latin proverb Saxa loquuntur, or “Stones talk.”
Kato Lomb, “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”
When I moved to Japan, I was both literally and figuratively surrounded by Japanese speakers and the Japanese language. But I knew that when I went to a bar and spoke to fellow patrons, they were happy with just the fact that I could speak some Japanese. They weren’t going to correct my strange constructions as long as they got the gist – or at least pretended to (because what tactless soul is going to tell a stranger at a bar that their sentences are messed up?).
After I bought a few textbooks for the N2 Japanese Language Proficiency Test (aka JLPT), a level that I thought was going to be difficult but challenging, I immediately went online to search for a Japanese teacher.
I was working full-time from the moment I arrived in Japan, so I didn’t have the time or money to sign up for group classes, which for that matter tended to only be available at impossible hours or frequencies that didn’t suit my unpredictable schedule. Even had I enough time or money to take classes, I was glad that I had found a private lesson teacher for my Japanese, and to this day, excepting a gap of about a year and a half, I still talk to and learn from her.
Why private > classroom
The biggest benefit of having a private language teacher or tutor, whatever you want to call it, is that you are forced to communicate and be engaged every minute of your time with them. In classroom settings, even a highly-motivated person like me finds it easy to stare off into space and be lazy and inattentive. There are just too many factors that make the classroom experience inconsistent.
I once took a B1 French course for a month at the Institut Français in Osaka. Some days, it felt like a hassle traveling to the class, especially when it was cold or raining (I usually went by bike). My classmates were much older than I, and though they were nice, I didn’t always feel like speaking with them, and their levels were often not up to par. During class, I kept taking notes of questions I had but knew that I couldn’t ask them all and swallow up the class time.
I can’t say that my time there was ill-spent as I feel like I did learn a lot about my French ability and how I learn, but I recall many times where I was sitting at the desk, anxious to talk to the teacher and ask them my questions or get feedback on my French or staring off into space or at the signs around the room during various lulls in the lesson. In the end, I still needed and wanted private instruction.
Most people prefer classroom settings because of their social nature (you’ve got classmates who are learning like you and can communicate with pressure-free) and because the contents of the classes are pre-structured for you, so all you have to do is be there. This takes a lot of pressure off of the student, which is obviously appealing.
The downside is that it is easy to stare absent-mindedly into space and just think that your presence in class is enough to learn (a problem also shared by people who take private lessons), and that the work for improving your individual language skills (like identifying and working on your weaknesses, and having free-talk time to pinpoint what language you specifically use or need to know) still lies entirely on the student. Even logistically speaking, taking the time to be somewhere at a specific time can be difficult, given traffic and weather, and whether or not you’re there, the class still goes on.
While most problems had by students in both classroom and private lesson settings come down to poor goal-setting and not knowing how to study effectively, if you’re serious about making progress in a language, no matter how big or small your goal be, private lessons are the way to go. But just choosing a teacher and meeting once a week is not enough. If you do not know how to find the right teacher, take advantage of your time, prepare, and use the tutor’s skills, you will not make progress. That is a fact.
Thanks to my experience trudging through Japanese on my own and forcing myself to make progress as I was paying a good amount of my small salary on my self-propelled language education, I know exactly what I’m looking for in my private lessons and how to get the most out of them.
I want to show you how you can combine self-study and, namely, private lessons to create *courses* for yourself and eventually reach your language goals. This guide of sorts will help you find the best teacher and teach you how to utilize your valuable lesson time to the fullest so that you actually see yourself improving and never lose sight of your goals.
Achtung! (Heads up!)
When will we finally accept that we must lay a foundation to learn a language, just as we must lay a foundation to build a house?
Kato Lomb, “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”
Before we get started, if you do not agree with the great and wise proverb, “No pain, no gain,” then you should probably stop reading. As I previously mentioned, people, especially language learners, seem to think that because at least one language comes naturally to them that it should not be hard to learn another, and that because children appear to learn languages magically (which I refute in my more complete blog post here), they will too.
The reality is that because you’ve already got one big language system, or Thought OS as I like to call it, like English running in your head, there is no real necessity for your brain to learn another, and that learning how to use and integrate another OS (or language) is a skill.
Yeah man, it is fundamentally no different from any other skill like learning a sport or muscle building. You are going to have to work for your abilities, and you will often feel some pain doing it. But sometimes that pain, like muscle pain, feels good, doesn’t it? It shows that you’ve been working hard to change your body and in turn that pain gives you bigger, stronger muscles.
Language learning is absolutely no different, and I have found that it is something that few language learners are able to recognize and accept, and thus make little progress and give up later, or continue to trudge on not ever knowing why they’re not making progress.
The Real Formulas for Success
Another thing you must accept before continuing on are the following equations:
- Time ≠ Effort ≠ Consistency
- (Time + Effort) – Consistency ≠ Progress
- (Time + Effort) x Consistency = Progress
Thus the following statements are true:
- Language learners who take classes or private lessons regularly but don’t concentrate, or study and review the content before and after their classes will make little progress. (Time ≠ Effort; Time ≠ Consistency; No Effort)
- Language learners who study intensively one day and don’t do so again for a long stretch of time will make little progress. (No Consistency)
- Language learners who study regularly for a set period of time but do not try to make sentences in the target language or actively engage with their learning materials will make little progress. (No Effort)
- Language learners who study for very short increments (like five minutes a day or an hour a week) will make little progress. (Insufficient Time)
- Language learners who put in time to study and review regularly (ideally, daily), prepare for their lessons, and review and work on their mistakes, will make significant progress. [(Time + Effort) x Consistency]
I’m no mathematician so be gentle when picking apart my logic equations up there – you get the gist.
What I mean is that just spending time going to a class or having a private lesson once a week will not make you better at a language unless you are willing to put in actual effort and do so consistently.
I know this because I have many a time tried to be the Lazy Magic Language Learner to no effect and only saw results when I began to work for them, and from being a teacher in both classroom and private settings where my English students who didn’t exert themselves or prepare for the lessons never got better, but the ones who did improved noticeably and significantly over time.
So if you agree with those above statements, great! Let’s continue on 🙂
The Ultimate Private Lesson Success Guide
- Why should I pay for a teacher?
- How much should I pay?
- Should they be bilingual?
- Where/how do I find a teacher?
- What should I look for in / ask of my teacher?
- For how long and how often should we meet?
- What should I be doing before, during, and after lessons?
- How do I know I’m making progress?
- I tried, but my lessons are going terribly. I can’t speak at all. I’ll never get better.
Why should I pay for a teacher?
First and foremost, if money is not involved, you can say “Sayonara!” to Consistency.
Let’s say you’ve agreed to meet a friend to chat in a different language, and before you head out it starts to rain, or you feel tired, or another event comes up. There is a much higher chance that you will skip out on meeting your friend than had they agreed to pay you for your time or vice versa. Time is money, and you need Consistency – so you will have to pay for it.
What about language exchanges?
I am a member of quite a few Facebook groups and fan of language learning pages where members frequently post or comment things like, “I’ll teach you English if you teach me Spanish,” where the meaning of ‘teach’ is more akin to ‘talk to me’ – or where groups will hold live language-exchange events in which members attempt to chat in only one language then switch to another. Often times these are done for free, with the idea that both parties will learn from each other in exchange for money. In other cases, people choose to learn from “friends” who are fluent in the target language and they meet up somewhere to chat.
If unfixed language did not fly away, so to speak, then the number of those who study a language would be identical to those who learn a language. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Kato Lomb, “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”
While I think these are great opportunities for practice, I don’t think they’re good for study. First off, what makes these people good at teaching?
I don’t like to toss the words ‘teach’ and ‘study’ around loosely, and I mean it in the kindest way possible when I say that having fluency in a language does not mean that you can teach it. Let’s say you were asked to teach someone English, and they asked you a question like the difference between “after ten minutes” and “in ten minutes.” Could you explain it, and do so well and confidently? Could you then adjust your explanation to their current level of understanding?
Of course, many participants in these such exchanges do not expect their partner to be true teachers, but the point is that there’s not a lot of teaching and learning going on. In the end, you can’t make or expect a language exchange partner make time to meet you every Wednesday at 5pm for zero money while explaining grammar, answering your questions about X Y and Z, and correcting your mistakes (something you really need to have done, no matter your feelings about *grammar* and so on). Keep the language exchange time fun, and do it for sure, but don’t make it and the people there your teachers. Hire one instead.
As I say, “No pay, no gain.”
How much should I pay?
Now that you’re willing to pay, you have to decide how much. In my experience, people who work for $10-15 USD or less per hour tend to be fluent or native speakers who are not teachers. Remember, you want a teacher. I know it’s a pain, but I recommend spending around $20-30/hr for your teacher.
Why? The higher price isn’t just a benefit for your teacher, acting as an incentive that keeps sudden cancellations and the like down, but it works to encourage you to take your lessons seriously. For me, because I’m paying so much, I make sure I prepare for my lessons ahead of time and review what I’ve had corrected before.
I pay this amount to people who are good at teaching and who meet the criteria I go into detail about below. You want your teachers to spend time preparing for your lessons; you want them to correct your mistakes, help you understand, and work on your weak points, and all of that is not a free service.
Remember – you need to control your lessons, and for that power, you will have to pay for it.
Should they be bilingual?
This is perhaps a controversial opinion, but I’ve seen, read, and experienced enough of the language learning world to know that different strokes work for different folks, and that while you may think it’s counter-intuitive or counter-productive to speak any English or use your native tongue during your lesson times, it really isn’t.
Remember that your lesson time is your time. If you’re just starting out in a language, there is no way you’ll be able to ask all of your grammar, vocab, and usage/meaning questions or even know the words to do so (like noun, verb, conjugate, article, etc.) and that is totally fine.
I recommend bilingual teachers for low-level/new/fresh language learners and to think of their teacher’s bilingual ability as an asset to their learning.
Ok so how much should I be using the target language??
You should try your hardest to speak in the target language for the majority of the time, but when you’re not sure about something, have a question, want to change topics, etc., you should feel comfortable asking it in your native language lest you go crazy trying to translate things far beyond your level and waste valuable time doing so.
Your end goal should be to learn how to ask them in the target language, but it isn’t necessary from the start. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just make sure you don’t rely on your teacher’s bilingual ability to coast through lessons. Aim to speak 80% plus of your lesson, and speak 70%+ of it in the target language whenever possible.
When I started my private Japanese lessons, I felt decent enough at the language to choose a monolingual (Japanese) teacher. When I started my German lessons, I searched for a bilingual (English and German) teacher because I hardly knew jack about the language and was nervous as heck. At first, my lessons were like 50-60% English because I didn’t know much and struggled to make questions. Now, they’re more like 10% English, if that.
Starting at a ratio of 50, 60, 70, or even 80% English is fine, but staying at that amount is a complete waste of your time and money, and when you don’t end up making progress, that’s on you.
Where and how do I find a teacher?
The answer to this question depends greatly on where you are physically in the world and the type of lesson you want to have.
Meeting in person seems the most *organic* and real, but I often find that it’s a time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes awkward pursuit.
Consider your travel time, travel costs, and the costs of the drink at the meeting space. Do you pay for your teacher’s drink? What do you do when your favorite café is busy or closed that day? What if you’re running late because of traffic? Meeting quickly becomes a headache that makes something that is already pretty hard (implementing a whole new Thought OS in your brain) into something you soon find excuses not to commit your time to.
Pro-Tip: Use Skype
That’s why I prefer online lessons conducted via Skype. Not only does the convenience of being able to Skype anywhere anytime remove my excuses for not taking a lesson, one of its greatest benefits is that whenever you make a mistake or want something your teacher said written down, they can type it in the chat window, and you have it forever to refer to later, copy and paste into another document, transcribe into your notebook, etc.
I always ask my teachers to write down things they’ve asked me that I didn’t understand, new words, or to rework my jumbled sentences into natural sounding ones in the target language, and having the chat window right there in front of us really helps. Usually files and pictures can be sent and exchanged through Skype easily so, we can look at the same document at the same time and imitate an in-person experience quite comfortably.
And just as well, being able to have the lesson at my apartment after work is peak modern-day convenience and cost efficiency. I’ve had times where I got off work, went right home, had a German lesson, then ten minutes later had a Japanese lesson, all with people in completely different areas and time zones, all while I was comfortable in my apartment, drinking tea and sitting cross-legged in sweatpants on my chair.
As to where to find a teacher, I recommend Preply.com (I used it to find my German teacher), and payment and scheduling have been a breeze. [If you use the link there to find yourself a teacher, I’ll get a credit that will support my continued language learning, so thanks in advance!)
What should I look for / ask of my teacher?
All in all, it comes down to who you can trust and feel comfortable talking with. You have to like their voice and accent, especially because you may find yourself speaking as they do over time.
They have to pay attention to what you’re saying and adjust their language to their level. They have to care about your progress and explain things in ways that you can understand.
What I expect from my [Azilian] teacher is what I cannot get from either books or from the radio.
Kato Lomb, “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”
I once had a French teacher who talked about herself way too much and also explained grammar and vocabulary too thoroughly, in ways that were beyond my level or unrelated to the original question or mistake and ended up devouring our limited and pricey time together. I realized that her style wasn’t right for me, so I chose a different teacher after just a few lessons. But you don’t have to wait it out – if you don’t like your teacher, don’t meet them anymore.
It is most important for me to choose someone who I could tell absolutely anything to and not feel judged, because I want to be able to practice speaking about all of the things I think about or what is going on in my life in the target language. I also want to feel comfortable asking for my teacher’s opinion and advice, so I tend to choose female professionals who are older than me.
They’re professionals, not your friends
No matter your preference in teacher, your relationship with your teacher should definitely not be casual like the ones you would have with your friends. While having a good relationship with your teacher is important, you must not forget that you are paying for a service, and that you’re not obligated to make lots of small talk and hear about their lives for the first half of your lessons.
This is a job for them, and they know that by nature of the pay-for-a-lesson, teacher-student relationship, that no matter how well you get along, they’re there to help you and paid to do so. Always keep in mind that you have goals to reach, things to practice and say, questions you’ve prepared, and only an hour to get as much of that as possible. You’re paying for their time and expertise, so don’t waste it.
One of my English students said that he often spent lesson times talking about topics he didn’t know much about or about the things that his teacher liked, all because his teacher was the one who chose the topics.
I told him that he was paying for his teacher’s time. If he felt that he wanted to change the topic to something easier or to something more relevant to his own interests and likes, or just something that focused on what he was currently studying, he should do so without worrying about coming off as rude. Because it’s not!
Lesson time isn’t friendly free-talk time. Because private lessons lack the pre-determined structure as classroom-based lessons do, it’s up to you to take control of the contents and flow. I then advised him to take charge and choose topics before the lesson, then to ask his teacher to follow along with them.
Never forget that it is your customized, focused time to learn. Do a little small talk, then jump right into your learning time.
Don’t ever be afraid to ask your teachers to correct you, write things down, change topics as you advise, or provide you with materials.
For how long and how often should we meet?
Remembering that you need both Time and Consistency in order to get Progress, you should aim for at least an hour a week with your teacher.
But seriously – don’t over do it. You may think that meeting five times a week is good but if you’re not also making time to prepare and study for each lesson, you may as well just meet once a week.
Slow and steady wins the race – so don’t go 5000% on your studies if you can’t realistically keep it up!
One of my students scheduled lessons every day with a different teacher (albeit for lessons under an hour) and soon realized that because he had budgeted all his time for the lessons, he had neglected making time to study for them (Effort). He didn’t learn new vocabulary or review the corrections his teachers made, so he wound up just saying the same things over and over all week.
Uncorrected mistakes are very perilous! If one keeps repeating wrong formulas, they take root in the mind and one will be inclined to accept them as authentic.
Kato Lomb, “Polyglot: How I Learn Languages”
Yes, output via speaking is important, but so is input. If you’ve got no battery left in your phone, it stops working, right? You should think of your language ability in the same way – if you don’t work to ‘charge’ your brain with new vocabulary, grammar, and sentences, or review, you’re always going to feel like you’re running on 1% battery, recycling the same old limited words. It won’t be long before you just let it ‘die’ and give up studying altogether.
But most importantly, if you don’t have time to prepare for your lessons, don’t pay for them. I’ve rescheduled many a lesson when I realized I didn’t make enough time in advance to prepare for it.
What should I be doing before, during, and after lessons?
BEFORE: Prepare something that you want to talk about or have corrected. For example, one week, I wrote in German about what my apartment looked like so I could practice room vocabulary and verbs for location, and for my Japanese lesson I wrote about the looming war in Iran and Trump with his unchecked and unfiltered Twitter use (– what a stark difference in language ability, amirite?).
I know it seems pointless to write about something I’m going to say anyway, but by doing so, I have to look up and study the words I think are appropriate ahead of time. This way I get to check if my understanding of them and the grammar is correct, and don’t waste time in my lesson stuttering through and asking my teacher to be a living dictionary.
When I am speaking with a native speaker out in the wild of a bar or other public place, I don’t have this luxury. My lesson time is my time to prepare for that, not an endless scrimmage where I never get feedback or am guessing half the time.
As I study throughout the week, I write any questions I have on one sheet of paper that I’ll go through when I talk to my teacher, checking them off and asking the ones we didn’t have time to get through at a later time.
DURING: Write notes! Write things you heard but didn’t know what they meant so you can check them later. Write things you wanted to say but couldn’t figure out how to say right then. Write what your teacher corrects, even if they write it down for you.
When I teach English lessons, I know how diligent my student is on how often they take notes in class and whether they review them or not (also important!). I had a student who studied for hours every day but hardly got better at writing and speaking. He had plenty of opportunities to speak with native speakers and yet continued making the same mistakes and was unable to level up his speaking ability for years. When I looked at how he studied, I realized that he didn’t have a single notebook!
He never wrote notes during his *lessons* or interactions with native speakers. He never wrote down and repeated words he didn’t know or that were new. I was shocked, but it was then that it was confirmed to me how important note-taking is.
Also – obviously – Speak! Keep the ratio of you speaking during lesson time to 70-80%. Tell your stories, ask your teacher questions, ask them to ask you questions. You’ll feel tired after your lesson, but that’s how you should feel.
AFTER: Review the notes / corrected sentences etc. from the finished lesson and previous lessons as well. Ask yourself, what did I have a hard time saying? What grammar was the most difficult for me? What do I need to study more?
Many people work better in short, concentrated spurts. If so, then that is the way they should study. Three spurts of twenty minutes each may add up to more than an hour in results achieved. The person who sits down to study for an hour often wastes a good part of it in sharpening pencils, getting a drink of water, and otherwise dawdling. The spurter tends to get the most out of his limited study time.
Paul Pimsleur, “How to Learn a Foreign Language”
How do I know if I’m making progress?
Remember how we talked about “No pain, no gain”? Well, ask yourself how you feel after your lessons, using the following as starting points.
- Does your head hurt a little?
- Are you tired from talking so much?
- Did you put a lot of effort into making sentences, and making them as correct as possible?
- Did you write notes? –> When you study well, your brain will hurt and your body will physically need a break. (All good things!!)
- Are things that were hard for you to say before, now easier?
- Do you feel like you’re better than you were before?
I tried, but my lessons are going terribly. I can’t speak at all. I’ll never get better.
Don’t give up! I cannot tell you how many times I’ve cried over Japanese and German, and even French in the past – even during my lessons! It’s part of the process.
You’re going to have days where you study and study and nothing seems to stick. But when you try hard consistently, it will. I promise.
Every time I feel like I’m not making progress or that I’m stuck, I think:
- Am I putting in effort?
- Am I working hard to fix my mistakes and learn the words I need to communicate?
- Am I devoting enough time, and doing so regularly?
- Am I making the most of my lessons with my teacher?
- Is my teacher right for me?
If I answer yes to the above questions, then I know that my progress will come in time, because that’s how it has always worked for everything I’ve ever learned how to do.
I’m sure you could say the same about what you’re good at now. You didn’t start off that way, did you? Language learning is a huge task! It takes considerable time and effort to develop that ‘muscle memory’ and for your brain to get used to operating in a whole new language. But you will get there – I guarantee it.