9 Questions To Discuss With Your Language Tutor

Today's post is inspired by a recent episode of David Mansaray's "Language Is Culture" podcast. In Episode 12 of Language is Culture, we hear from computational linguist Judith Meyer - she's German, she loves languages and you can totally hear it in her voice!

Working with a language tutor is something I can recommend for any language learners, especially introverts, because you'll just get more out of the intense environment and focused attention.

Even if you have never worked 1-to-1 before, you can easily to use it as a booster, for example before an exam or as a quick refresher after a quiet spell.

But it's important to get the chemistry and expectations right from the start, so take account of the following key points.

First Conversation with Your Language Tutor

If you are looking for a tutor that works specifically on your goals, then it's much more important to have a clear conversation at the start. The experienced tutors will know what

Some questions I like asking my new students are:

• Do you want to work with a specific resource only, and do you want me to buy it too?
• Are you aiming for a specific skill like reading literature, applying for jobs or doing small talk?
• Are you working towards an exam or moving date?
• Is your goal about a feeling (confidence, comfort, encouragement?) or about hard data (vocab, grammar?)?

And here is what you should ask them:

• How long and how frequent are your lessons, and what is the pricing structure?
• Have you worked with my type of situation before?
• What kind of lesson structure would you suggest for my situation?
• What's your approach - strict or relaxed, friendly or formal?

You should know what kind of answer you want to hear, so make sure you have made some notes before the first conversation.

My Perspective

My own style, for example, is very friendly and I like to build up a supportive relationship with my students. If you were looking for a sober teacher, my lessons might not meet your expectations!

How To Use a Language Tutor

Judith's interview is focused on how learners get the most out of working with a language tutor. Here is her theory:

Any 1 to 1 language lesson should be led by either the tutor or the student, so an inexperienced learner should look for an experienced tutor and vice versa.

I thought about this point for a bit, and I do agree. The dynamic between me and my students can be very different depending on how experienced they are at language learning. When a student knows very definitely what they want out of the lessons, I often find that they're less keen to react to my input - it's not a lazier lesson for me, as I then take a role of watching out for errors, prompting the conversation and supporting through extra challenges. With a student who is new to language learning, I am more likely to direct the lesson in many ways and set the topics myself.

A good tutor is sensitive to what the student expects, and able to make adjustments to the teaching style that meet those expectations.

My Perspective

My favourite people are new to tutoring and often they're studying their first foreign language. In those cases, my students are often happy to experiment. They just love a challenge, so we can enjoy the variety that I bring to our lessons and just focus on having fun along with the more complicated parts. As someone with a love of coaching, I like providing those extra services of improving learning methods, finding new exercises and encouraging them along the way.

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent - The Language Learning Blog. Don't forget - if you sign up to our newsletter, you will receive a free Guide to the Best Language Learning Resources!

Language Learning Methods: Will Immersion Teach You A Language Faster?

As I was replying to a comment on this lovely blog the other day, I got to read more about one of my regular reader, Angel. She is a Pokémon nut and challenging herself with the impressive language combination Mandarin, Japanese and Russian. Such an ambitious and fearless lady. You'll be hearing more from Angel very soon as a regular writer here on the blog

In her comment on my blog, Angel mentioned immersion classes. She says:

Another reason I'm reviewing Japanese again is one of the interviews I saw in your book mentioned immersion. I want to take immersion classes once I finish reviewing everything (and) make sure that I'm not just going by the level I ended up at in college.

What's an Immersion Language Course?

Immersion is an interesting topic, and one of those words that always come up in language learning a bit like "polyglot method" or "language exchange". There is a bit of misinformation and myth around when it comes to the topic, so I decided to give you guys the Fluent summary.

First of all, let's look at the word. The OED has immersion as the "deep mental involvement in something" and points out that in foreign language learning it means your teacher will only teach you using the foreign language. That's all - immersion is not dependent on where you take the class or who you're learning with, it just means fewer explanations and more target language content. You do not have to live anywhere but where you live right now to make this work.

Advantages of Immersion in Language Learning

Many language learners dream of immersion classes as they promise quick results and otherwise unattainable levels of confidence, all wrapped up nicely with an impressive target language accent.

And all of this is kinda true - immersion works particularly well when building up to bilingualism, that means speaking two languages at practically native level all the time. This type of class challenges the brain in unique ways while forcing a learner to engage with the way language is used. There's no time for getting lost in grammar and rules, the point is to listen, copy and learn how to use language right.

Some more reading about advantages of immersion can be found over at Omniglot.

Guided Immersion Classes

Stephanie from To Be Fluent is an immersion language teacher in Canada, and she's keen to point out that sometimes explaining complex grammar and style issues does require English. But here's how she describes her classes:

We do lots of grammar, and also lots of reading and discussion. We read an article and discuss current affairs every morning. We also work a lot on oral interaction: asking and answering questions, telling stories, listening to dialogues (most of them work-related), doing role-plays of work-related situations (ex. running a meeting, giving instructions to a new recruit, dealing with problems at work, writing a memo). We also make time for "fun stuff" like watching French TV shows and playing games.

Immersion classes sound great! The key ingredient that the learner must have along with some determination is clearly time: It cannot happen while you're spending most of your days out of the foreign language environment. A true immersion environment requires at least a few hours spent speaking the new language, every day. That's probably why many people develop a simplistic view that learning a language comes naturally as a result of moving to a new country. The better logic looks like this: No fluency without classes, no immersion without time, but time can definitely equal immersion and will give you results.

Andrew Weiler, who writes at strategiesinlanguagelearning.com, makes the important point that people forget the dream of "Learning like a Child, naturally, carefree" is bobbins, because adults are not children. Immersion classes used too early in language learning will result in frustration and the feeling that you're "stupid" for being unable to learn just by copying. Your ego thinks it can understand things first time, and you'd be denying yourself a core understanding if you jumped straight in at the deep end.

And furthermore, immersion is a teaching method that focuses on communicating by sound and vision and can neglect important learning methods like note-taking and revision. The way to use it is key here.

Conclusion

Immersion is a trendy word among language learners and I have an allergy to trendy sometimes (anti-authority streak? teenage rebel?), so I do not personally use the word when describing how I teach or learn a language. The thing I find particularly important when I teach a language is that "immersion" must not mean "there is a teacher rambling at me in a foreign language and I can understand every 6th word".

Immersion will be right for you if you can follow these three simple rules:

1) Commit

As we've seen above, immersion means putting in the hours to study a language. Of course listening and reading are core parts of this, but producing target language sentences every day is another big part. Immersion classes work extremely well as language learning holidays or short programmes, but they're much rarer as ongoing programmes over the years. So when you decide that this is your chosen language learning method, make sure your schedule can handle it.

2) Structure

Good immersion tutors know that the key is to adapt your teaching and content to the skills or the learners. With that in mind, it's easy even for complete beginners to learn through gentle immersion, and I believe that the structure of guided lessons is a perfect environment. If you feel that you have to tackle immersion-style learning all by yourself, make sure you have Skype and italki ready for real world practice.

3) Know Your Limits

If an overambitious learner may use a bombardment of random target language content as a learning technique, they might as well just look at a flag for an hour. Don't put unreasonable demands on your understanding. Instead, know that it is a lot better for your learning to address the words and structures that you don't know, than to hope you will just assimilate them as if by magic. The "copy and speak" method does work, but only if you actually understand the input that you are getting.

Join the Fluent Newsletter for More Language Learning Tips

Kerstin's 3 Steps for Learning Topical Vocabulary

Topical vocabulary means the words and expressions that all relate to one topic, for example cookery, education or firefighting. Today's article introduces a foolproof 3-Step Method, plus get involved by posting your next vocab topic in the comments, and we'll feature you in a blog article next year.

Why is this useful?

If you make it your goal to learn all the words in a language, you'll never know when you're done. Setting a goal like "500 words" is also though, because who counts all the new words they're learning?! So bring on the topical approach. You can get into a topic you're interested in and feel like you're really getting somewhere.

Learning topical vocabulary is not difficult - here are 3 steps to success:

1. How much do you know about this in English or your native language?

The key here is to set your goal posts right, so that you'll know the detail of what your topic is all about. Plus, remember that language is never isolated from what it talks about. In other words, the success in remembering vocab is based on knowing what you're talking about. If you want to write like an expert about history, better know the facts before the words.

For example, I once worked at the fabulous Panaz, who make all kinds of flameproof fabrics. I was their Export Sales Administrator, on the phone all day taking and confirming orders in French. I could have learnt all the words for fabric and upholstery I wanted, but these customers wanted someone who first knew her stuff, and then knew all the words for it.

So here is Step 1: Be sure you know what you're talking about, and then you'll know which words and expressions you need.

2. Note it down, then relax-repeat-remember

Forget talent - repetition is the heart of success. Many people recommend "SRS", which means a spaced repetition system. In other words, you will have to go over words again even if you remembered them today. The repetition of running through those lists is what makes it go in, so it's got to be a routine for a week or two. Remember Fluency MC? It's relax - repeat - remember.

For more ideas on getting that vocabulary to stick, check out 6 Techniques for Learning Vocabulary.

Step 2: Follow the 3 R's: Relax, repeat, remember.

3. Test yourself twice

It's easy to check how many words you know, so make your first test an article in the paper and a TV show about your topic. With libraries, the internet, YouTube and Facebook at your service, I challenge you to find something you couldn't read a lot about in almost any language. How about searching for the #tag on Twitter (see below)?

Now for the second test, maybe a little bit more daunting but this is going to be more fun too: Have a conversation, chat about the topic, go listen to someone and say what you think! Of course it should be possible to bring most conversations around to your chosen topic (and an amusing challenge, too!) eventually, and then throw in the new words, ask questions and feel the power. You've just become an expert!

Step 3: Test yourself once by consuming, and twice by producing language.

Twitter search result for "Flameproof" in German - there really is media for anything

Favourite topics?

As always, I want you guys to get involved and think about how this article will serve you best, so you are invited to write a comment below and tell me what your vocabulary topics are. How about Christmas, cookery or knitting? Or look at the cool Sally Holmwood, who's currently studying personal banking words for her part-time job in an international bank.

Don't miss out on the launch of the Fluent Guide to Vocabulary Learning for Self-Directed Language Learners.

Thanks for reading this article on Fluent - The Language Learning Blog. Don't forget - if you sign up to our newsletter, you will receive a free Guide to the Best Language Learning Resources!

Language learning with Yabla

Today I want to write an article introducing you to some software that might really go some distance to keeping you learning languages online. It's called Yabla, and online at Yabla.com.

What I like about Yabla is that the system is not in a specific learning method or a big method that you have to learn first. Instead, their special software is designed to make that target language video world accessible.

Here's how it works

The materials come from TV, film and music videos in the original language. The system gives access to native language videos and allows language learners to watch things in the original language, understand them, expand their vocabulary and quiz themselves on listening comprehension. So in other words, if you've ever wasted an hour on YouTube this is your thing.

All videos display in the Yabla player, which looks like this:

I've annotated this picture for you so you can work out what the different sections are about. We have

1. Control buttons. The coolest ones are "Slow" which slows the whole video down without sounding like it's creepy monster talk (i.e. it's pitch corrected) so that you can understand the native speakers better, and "Loop" which will run a very short section on a loop until you are ready to move on.
2. Subtitles. These are available in the language of the video (here it's German) and the menu language (here that would be English), but as you can see there is a little "Hide"/"Show" menu on the right hand side so that you can watch the video with or without subtitles.
3. Subtitle Lookup. Every word in the subtitles is clickable, and will show up in the dictionary once you click on it.
4. Difficulty rating. Yabla tells users how difficult it thinks the videos are and rates them from 1 to 5. For example, my French is good enough to watch a 4/5 video without any subtitles, but I want them on for 5/5.
5. Game. The in-video game is a listening comprehension exercise, asking you to find the missing word in any phrase contained in the video. Yabla regularly publishes the high scores so I'm pretty sure you couldn't resist if there's a bit of a competitor in you.
6. Dictionary. Yabla player searches various dictionaries, or Wikipedia, for every word that you click on in the subtitles. This way you get the benefit of several uses and you can see the word used in a sentence straight away.

Here are two of my favourite demo videos:

1. Piggeldy und Frederick - Der Himmel: Piggeldy and Frederick are cartoon pigs and they live and learn, and have done this for as long as I can remember. I used to enjoy them when I was little, and still enjoy them today. Suitable even for early learners (or 2/5 on Yabla's own difficulty rating).
2. Canadian Chocolate Seller - Chocolats: The lady makes chocolate. The video contains chocolate. I think now I'm hungry.

In conclusion, I think you guys should give Yabla a go. A 1-month subscription costs $9.95 and it's refundable within 7 days, so that you can test drive the system thoroughly. The system is great for:

1. listening comprehension: slow it down where you need to.
2. writing skills - take notes and compare them with the subtitles afterwards
3. growing your vocabulary - write down new words and quiz yourself or use the in-built Game and Flashcards features.

Yabla is available for learners of English, French, Chinese, German, Spanish and Italian.

Final message to Yabla: Where is the Russian version? I can't wait!

Final message to you: Fluent Language's blog is an affiliate partner and receives a small commission if you decide to sign up for a Yabla account, so thanks in advance if you do!