Having a tutor can be great for learning Chinese, but how much progress you make depends as much on you as on the tutor. Come prepared, stay engaged, and make the most of each session!
To learn Chinese successfully as an adult, you need to become an independent learner. That means you set your goals, choose a suitable approach and content, and take responsibility for the outcome.
This is true when enrolling in a formal course for learning Chinese, something I discussed in more detail here: What your Chinese course will not teach you.
Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#254):
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and many other platforms!
Independent learners don’t learn Chinese in isolation
Being an independent learner does not, however, mean that you learn Chinese in isolation, without the aid of other people. Languages are fundamentally social, so communication serves both as a method and a goal of language acquisition.
While you can get far by focusing on listening and reading on your own, interacting with real people in conversations is a skill that needs to be developed.
Interacting with learners, native speakers and teachers
To succeed, then, you need to communicate with other people. This could be with native speakers and other learners of the language, online or offline.
But it could also be with a tutor you pay to help you learn, or whom you return the favour to in some other fashion, such as through a language exchange.
Learning Chinese with a tutor or private teacher
The word “tutor” can normally mean many different things, but in this article, I simply mean someone who is paid to help you learn Mandarin, probably individually, or maybe in a small group. Any kind of private teacher is included.
There are two sides to the tutoring equation: you and the teacher.
In this article, we’re going to look at what you can and should bring as a student to the tutoring relationship.
In a follow-up article, we’re then going to explore the tutor’s side of the equation and what to look for in a good tutor.
Here are the most important things you can do to get more out of your Chinese tutoring sessions:
- Know what you want: Why are you learning Chinese?
- Write down things you’d like to be able to do but currently can’t
- Communicate your expectations with your tutor
- Give feedback to build a strong tutor relationship
- Be a good student: preview and review
- Adopt a positive attitude; stay engaged and curious
Know what you want: Why are you learning Chinese?
To get what you want out of a tutoring session, you need to first be clear about what you want. This ought to be obvious, but most students only have hazy ideas of what they hope to gain from hiring a tutor.
This is not hard to figure out, though. Take a walk and think about your goals for learning Chinese, your current challenges, and what kind of assistance you would need to overcome them.
Something like “improving my speaking ability” or “getting better at reading” is not specific enough.
What do you want to use your speaking ability for?
What is hindering you from doing that at the moment?
That’s what you should focus on.
Write down things you’d like to be able to do but currently can’t
It’s also good to write down some things you’d like to be able to do but currently can’t. This can include long-term goals that will take years to achieve, but should also include short-term goals that would be realistic to achieve while working with your tutor.
Here are some examples for speaking ability, but you could come up with similar goals for the other skills, too:
- I want to be able to introduce myself in an easy-to-understand manner.
- I want to be able to explain my job to someone who doesn’t know what it’s about.
- I want to be able to effectively tell someone about something I’ve read and make them think it sounds interesting.
- I want to be able to present ideas convincingly and eloquently.
Naturally, these are just examples. For inspiration, you can check can-do statements from the Central European Framework of Reference for Languages, CEFR. The details will depend on your goals, proficiency level and learning situation.
Communicate your expectations with your tutor
It’s great that you know what you want out of the tutoring relationship, but to get it, you also need to communicate that to your tutor.
Not all tutors can adapt to your learning situation and your expressed needs and preferences, but if you don’t tell them what you want, they probably won’t give it to you even if they could.
If you’re hiring a tutor with a very specific objective in mind, this is something you must mention upfront. Tutors are good at different things, and one who’s great at encouraging beginners to speak might not be good at nitpicking the pronunciation of advanced students.
This is not just about matching skills, it’s also about finding a tutor with a suitable teaching approach.
Suppose you’re a beginner and want someone who can adapt their language to your level and keep conversations in Chinese. In that case, you probably want someone who focuses on comprehensible input and communication in the target language, not someone who wants to go through difficult texts and teach you all about the new words and grammar.
Real communication: What it is, why you want it and how to get it
Give feedback to build a strong tutor relationship
Even though the need to communicate with your tutor is greatest as you start, you should have an ongoing conversation about your tutoring experience. You can provide feedback on what you think is working well and what can be improved, and your tutor can suggest ways to further boost your learning.
It’s worth noting that most teachers have a teaching style that they will default to unless they make an effort. Changing this can be hard, and if they don’t have any training, they might not even be aware of how they teach and why.
For example, a traditionally minded teacher might agree to speak with you using only words you already know to increase fluency, but after the first session, more and more new words creep in, and before you know it, it’s back to reading texts and explaining vocabulary again.
Thus, make a habit of evaluating your sessions. This needn’t be an accusatory session where you point out all the tutor’s shortcomings, but rather a dialogue where you both talk about how you think it’s going.
Naturally, if the gap between what your current tutor does and what you want them to do is too big, it’s easier to just find a new tutor, but we’ll save evaluating tutors for next time.
Be a good student: preview and review
Unless you hire a tutor simply to chat, you will get more out of your tutoring sessions if you preview properly. The tutoring sessions have a goal, so you need to make sure that you can work towards that without wasting time on things you could have done on your own.
This is all about time quality: studying the right thing at the right time. If you can do something on your own before you meet your tutor, do so. Spend the time with your tutor doing things you can only do with the tutor.
Adopt a positive attitude; stay engaged and curious
Finally, do your best to adopt a positive attitude and hold up your part of the conversation. If you are positive and curious, showing that you want to learn, your tutor is much more likely to reciprocate, and your relationship will grow.
When your tutor suggests an activity, engage with it wholeheartedly and give it a fair chance. If it doesn’t go as planned, you can try something else next time. Being an easy-to-work-with student allows your tutor to focus more on what truly matters.
Get more from tutoring by bringing your best to every session
If you want to get the most value for your time and money, try to bring your best to each tutoring session.
You can’t control what your tutor does or how they do it, but you can control what you do.
If you do your best, it’s more likely that your tutor will too!
