Do you need a French tutor?

In the past few years a whole industry has popped up around one-on-one language tutoring — usually conducted over video chat. There are services connecting French students with tutors all over the world, making it easier (and cheaper) than ever to find your own personal French tutor.

But do you really need a tutor? Will using a tutor accelerate your learning? If you use a tutor, can you get away without using a French course? 

The answer, like always, is a big, fuzzy, "it depends"...

A tutor is useful when...

• You're struggling. When you just can't seem to "get" something in your study, it can do some serious damage to your motivation. A tutor can help explain things in a way you'll understand, or they can help you practice until it sticks.
• You find it hard to stay motivated or stick to a routine, and you need someone else to hold you accountable. A regular session with a tutor might do the trick here.
• You simply find learning much more enjoyable with a bit of social interaction. A tutor (or conversation partner) is great for making learning less lonely.
• You need help working on your free-wheeling spoken or written French skills. A tutor or conversation partner will be able to let you know what you get right (or wrong!) in your production skills.
• You want to expose yourself to real-world spoken French. A tutor or conversation partner can start exposing you to casual French that you might not meet in your "textbooky" French course, so you're not completely bewildered when you step out into the real world. (But don't neglect learning the ”proper” French too.)
• You hit the intermediate plateau, and you need help moving forward. At this point you need more real-life French, and a tutor can help you with that.  

BUT! A tutor is not a magic bullet

If you're a beginner and your only French study is the hour or two you spend with a tutor each week, you're not going to get very far.

It's best to think of a tutor as a supplement to your learning, rather than your sole source of knowledge. Outside of your tutoring session, you still need to be doing your own study— working through your French grammar course, completing exercises, and building your vocabulary.

Types of tutor

I'm using the word "tutor" pretty broadly to mean "another human with some experience in French who you can chat with face to face (or video to video) in real time to help with your learning." 

But there are actually a few different types of tutor that you should be aware of: 

• Teacher tutors: This is a tutor with teaching qualifications or experience, who can design a learning plan for you based on your skills and needs. They might introduce and explain new concepts to you, and give you exercises and homework to complete.
• Tutors: A French speaker (either native or advanced) who can help talk through material you're finding difficult, drill you on things you need to practice, and give you valuable speaking practice. They typically charge a lower rate than teacher tutors.
• A conversation partner or language exchange partner is where a French speaker (native or advanced) helps you improve your French, in exchange for you helping them with your own language. You could try Tandem or HelloTalk for matching and chatting with conversation partners, or look for language exchange programs in your local area.

A tutoring platform is the website or service that connects a learner with a tutor. They'll help you find a tutor based on things like: 

Some platforms will offer a matching service, but usually it's up to you to browse through the listings of available tutors and pick someone who seems suitable.

Not all tutoring platforms operate the same way, and you’ll find differences in...

• Teacher quality: Do they select / screen their tutors? Or is it open to any tutor who wants to work on the platform? Languatalk and Verbling screen and select teachers, iTalki asks "professional teachers" to provide copies of their credentials, Preply doesn't require any qualifications.
• Conditions of payment / refunds / cancellations: Do you need to purchase blocks of lessons up front? Do you pay per lesson? What happens if you need to cancel a lesson? What happens if you want to switch tutors? What happens if you want a refund? 
• The conditions they offer their tutors: Are they treating their tutors well? This can be a hard thing to figure out from the outside, but just keep it in mind. Would you feel good about getting a great price on tutoring if it means that your tutor (a real live human who you chat with) is getting a raw deal?

A tutor isn't a magic bullet — you will still need to work on your French outside of these hours. But they make a powerful additional tool to add to your language learning toolbox.

In the next chapter we're going to add even more to your toolbox with some sweet, supplementary resources you can use to add more variety to your study.