Using language tutors..

[MorganClassicalPrep]

(crossposting this with the main board also.)

Has anyone here used a language tutor? How did it work out?

I've been working with DD for awhile now on French, and we will be starting Spanish soon (at her insistence...I was planning on waiting a little longer!) Next semester (Sept-Dec) I'll have classes 4 days a week and DD will be with a babysitter. 3/4 of those days are 3-4 hours or less that I'll be gone. I was considering hiring a French speaker and Spanish speaker each for a day. (We are, obviously, near a college campus with both French and Spanish major/minors, as well as a strong education program, I'm fairly sure I can find future teachers with at least a minor in each language). These would each be to supplement what we are already doing... but what exactly could they do with DD? She isn't fluent, and I think she would get very frustrated if they only spoke in the target language. I was thinking that they could read books with her, play games, do other activities supplementing our lessons/past learning....

Are there downsides to this that I'm missing? As I said, this would just be as supplement to what we are already doing (and language is the one thing we do fairly consistently... :tongue_smilie:) so I'm not expecting a once a week lesson to translate to any sort of fluency.
Any suggestions on what they could do with DD?

[CleoQc]

Your DD is 5, right?
She won't be frustrated for long if the tutor speaks entirely in the target language.
I live in a bilingual area, and that's how most kids learn. They get dropped in kindergarten in the target language with no preparation whatsoever. By Christmas, they're fluent at the level of a kindergardener. Granted, that's a 5 days a week immersion, so you'll see slower progress with 1 day a week.

Personnally, if this were I, I would go one language at a time, to maximise the learning experience instead of dragging the frustation over a longer time. But I know kids who speak 4 or 5 languages before they start school. (I do live in a multi cultural city, with many many languages, French and English being dominant). Kids here will learn a maternal language, a paternal language, French in daycare or school, and English on the street. Some learn their 5th language through a nanny, and all before the age of 6. Swearing becomes a fun game when you have 5 languages ! :lol:

[Ester Maria]

I am extremely selective as to who my children get to learn languages from, because I have seen way too many cases of good intentions which paved the road to "hell" (i.e. children having to "unlearn" and "relearn" the language later, having "cemented" their mistakes due to having "learned" the language from less than competent people). Because of that, I suggest:

(i) native speakers educated in their native language (this eliminates your average heritage speakers, whose language might not be "nuanced" enough to provide a good example and might not include higher registers of the language)

or

(ii) highly competent non-native speakers, with advanced degrees in the language and, preferably, at least some period of an extended stay in the country where the language is spoken. It happens that, rarely, people who are not native speakers and do not fulfill these criteria (extended stays in the area / high formal education in the field) speak the langauge truly well, but I repeat, rarely - so as a general rule of the thumb, you can use that.

The IDEAL, of course, is a person who combines both (the intuition and "feel" for the language of a native speaker, along with theoretical university-level expertise in language, literature and culture), but unless you live in a big city, that is usually hard to get... and it costs, as few such people will be willing to work for less than double/triple the "usual" price.

Most American colleges majors/minors in foreign languages are truly quite bad (from the point of view of academic quality), all until PhDs the situation is quite appalling, honestly, with few exceptions (barring people who learned the language by other means anyway, and are "only" formally enrolled in the program for the sake of getting qualified). I know more than one person whom I consider basically illiterate in Italian (as in, they would fail 4th grade elementary composition, such dire mistakes they make on a fairly regular basis in their writing) and whom I would never allow to teach anyone as the heights to which they can mess people up are far higher than those of the good they can provide for them. I would be particularly beware of language minors, because those people often do not even use that language as the full language of instruction in the university. So, if you cannot get one of those ideal options and if you still pick somebody, I suggest you to pick those who are studying directly in that language (which majors on a higher level do), and preferably who have been doing so for a while already - and then instruct them to teach only what they are competent of teaching, without "experimenting": to play games they know how to play, use books for kids which they are capable of reading and paraphrasing and are familiar with all expression, speak only to the extent they can remain correct (no fancy passive phrases or subjunctive phrases if they cannot handle them!), stay within the realm of vocabulary they are comfortable with and do not hesitate to use English too if they are not truly, without a shade of doubt, comfortable with the second language.

I know this might seem ultra-extra-stringent to some, and maybe I reason this way because I am from the field so I am more likely to pay attention to details, and for many other people's goals other things might be suitable too, but if you eventually want your children to be fluent and reach high-level literacy, they need to consistently learn from people who know the language, rather than learn things "wrongly" in the start and then struggle with "unlearning" and "relearning" most of the rest of the road.

So, if this is a fun exposure project, you cannot go wrong with anything, but if this is the beginning of a long road which you would like to see resulting in a kind of actual competence, you need competent people to lead the road and not just anyone enrolled in some program who speaks "a bit" of the language.

We are using a French tutor and I even partially outsourced English (though my children mingled with native speakers so much and lived in the US for about a decade so you cannot really tell them apart from native speakers; so the English I outsourced is a "native language with literature" type of English that most people on these boards do). I am generally satisfied with our French, but I have older kid so her needs are different than your kid's needs when it comes to foreign languages.

But in any case, you wanted to hear potential downsides, so there you have. :lol: