Getting the most out of your language tutoring sessions

Congratulations! You have taken a huge step in your language learning journey: hiring a tutor. Taking language classes is a big investment in terms of your time, energy and finance. So, here are some ways you can maximize the benefits of your taking language classes.

In between classes:

Do some homework and class preparation! Trust me, homework for language learning doesn’t have to be daunting like school assignments. It can be fun and you can choose between different effort level homework! Here are some examples my students and I myself enjoy doing:

Low effort: Consume content in your target language

Actively listening to native speech and doing short shadowing exercise are good ways to immerse yourself in your target language.

Moderate effort: Create your own sentences using new vocabulary

Extra helpful if you have notes from your previous class, most language tutors provide that for you. If not, organising notes on your own can become part of your study routine too.

Making your own sentences, in my opinion, is the king of language learning practice. By doing this one exercise you get to practice: sentence structure, remembering and using new words, retaining old words, grammar points etc.

High effort: Writing dairies and short paragraphs.

Send it to your tutor and go through it together in your class! The good thing about having a written version visible for your tutor is that you can go through grammar points and sentence structures easier. And, in the case of Cantonese, makes it easier to look at your Chinese characters.

Before the class:

1. Review the notes from your previous class

Notes are mostly the gaps of knowledge that your tutor helped you fill in from the previous classes, so reviewing them is key to progressing in your target language.

2. Discussion topic preparation

Say you watched a video or read an article about a certain topic in your target language, you might have accumulated a bunch of phrases and vocabs associated with that topic. Let your tutor know that you would like to converse on that topic in class, and prepare some things you want to say.

3. Prepare pictures from your daily life

When learning a language, it’s always more engaging when it is relevant to you. Send your tutor pictures that you want to talk about with your tutor. For example: What is in the picture? Where was this picture taken? What was the context? The possibility is endless. Better yet, your tutor can ask you questions so that you can practice elaborating your thoughts in your target language.

4. Warm up

Having taken over 100 classes of 4 different languages myself ever since I started learning languages, I realised warm up before class is ESSENTIAL even when I am already quite comfortable in the target language. Otherwise, I spend at least 15 minutes of my class time warming up, instead of getting the 15 mins of real practice time!

Warming up can be as easy as watching a Youtube video in your target language, just to give your brain a head’s up that it’s time to switch to your target language.

During the class:

1. Record yourself

No seriously, knowing how you sound like is key to improving your speaking. After your class, listen back to your recording and take notes on where you struggle on, look up the words you didn’t know and there you have your new flashcard material!

2. Speak more and elaborate

Language classes is a safe space for you to speak as much as you can without fear of judgement and making mistakes. When you can, try not to only answer your tutor’s questions, but also elaborate more on your answer! Don’t be afraid to be yappy, that’s part of what you pay your tutor for and that’s how you improve.

3. Speaking corrections

After your tutor corrects your mistake, say your sentence again the correct way so that you have a stronger impression.

I hope these were helpful! As a language tutor and learner, I’ve found that everything mentioned here is a tried-and-true way to get the most out of your classes. Of course, these are just what works for me and my students, so be sure to check in with your own tutor too!