One of the best ways to learn English as a second language is with a private English tutor.
Since you have to pay for each private lesson, you probably want to know how many you'll need.
In this article, we'll be looking at how quickly you can learn English with a private tutor.
The Advantages of Private ESOL Lessons
There are lots of different ways to learn English.
Among them, private tuition is regarded as one of the most efficient methods. Since the teaching is adapted to the student in a private English lesson, you can progress quite quickly.
Let's see some of the best advantages of learning English through private ESOL courses or with a private English tutor:
- Focusing on the Student
The best part of the private tutoring is that they're private. This doesn't mean that the lessons are a secret, but rather that they're one-on-one lessons with just you and your tutor. Your tutor can completely focus on you and what you need to learn as there aren't any other students in the class.
This enables the tutor to tailor their tuition to you, what you want to learn, and your strengths and weaknesses, all while using learning strategies that you know work well for you.
- Transform Weaknesses into Strengths
In your private English lessons, you can take as much time as you want to work on your weaknesses. Soon, you'll overcome these weaknesses and master them.
Your tutor can also adapt the pace of the lessons so that you don't go through any topics too quickly, especially if they're topics you find quite difficult.
This tailored approach works great for students learning English as a foreign language as it allows them to focus fully on their learning objectives, which they aren't always able to do in their everyday English classes at school.
- Use Relevant Language to Keep Things Interesting
A private language tutor can make sure their lessons are on things you're interested in. If you love music, for example, they can integrate English-language songs into your lessons and help you to learn the language through the things you love.
Students learn more quickly when they're having fun and talking about things they're interested in and as you're the only student in your private lessons, your tutor can make sure that this is always the case.
- Learning from Mistakes
There's nothing wrong with making mistakes in a foreign language. In fact, the mistakes you make and the subsequent corrections make you far less likely to make the same mistake again.
Your tutor will be able to spot common mistakes that you make and use them as focal points for their lessons to make sure your English improves.
- Practise Speaking English
With a face-to-face English tutor, you can work on speaking English the way native speakers do: by regularly speaking it. It doesn't matter whether you're learning English from New Zealand, Australia, the UK, the US, or Canada, by regularly practising your speaking, you'll soon become familiar with all the different ways English is spoken around the world.
Being good at reading and writing in English doesn't always transfer over to spoken English and in everyday situations where you'll need to use your English, it can help to be proficient in speaking.
Regularly speaking English can help your reading and writing, but there are always aspects of each of these skills that need to be practised in isolation to really improve.
How to Choose the Right Private ESOL Tutor
Just like every student is different, every ESOL tutor is different and it's important that you choose the right one for you.
There are objective and subjective ways to choose private tutors. You'll want to choose a tutor with the right qualifications and experience, but you also need to choose a tutor who you get on well with and who will teach you a lot.
When looking for tutors, you'll want to find ESOL tutors who prefer the teaching approaches that you know work well for you. While tutors can adapt their lessons, every tutor will still have a preferred style and methodology so think carefully about what works for you.
Here are some tips for choosing ESOL tutors:
- Work out what you need a tutor for
Choosing an ESOL tutor should be based on what you need to learn. For example, if you need to learn business English for work or your career, you should look for tutors who are experts in this area.
- Why Teaching Methods Matter
We've mentioned that one of the biggest advantages of working with a private tutor is that they can adapt their lessons to their students. This is why you should ask tutors about the approaches they use before you hire them.
For parents, it's important that you find a private English tutor who's familiar with teaching children. For adults, you can find out more about taking ESOL courses as an adult.
- Opportunities to Speak English
One of the best things about working with a private English tutor is that you get lots of opportunities to practise speaking the language, something you can't normally do in larger group classes. Make sure that tutors offer a lot of speaking practice in their lessons.
- Don't Forget that the Tuition is for the Student
Private tutors should look to tailor their lessons to their students and you really shouldn't look for tutors that try to offer a one-size-fits-all solution to their students.
Your private tutoring should involve an open dialogue with your tutor about what you want to learn and what your language learning goals are.
- Look for Well-Rounded Tuition
Every private English tutor should have a range of skills so that students can try different ways of learning.
Even if you're focusing on speaking, tutors should still cover a bit of reading, writing, listening, grammar, vocabulary, and conjugation, as every part of the language needs to be covered to effectively teach it.
- Tutors Should Keep You Motivated
A private ESOL tutor should act a bit like a sports coach or a personal trainer. They'll show you what to do during your sessions, but they'll also leave you with work and tasks to do to keep you sharp between lessons.
The exercises they have you doing should make you want to learn more English, not less. Their job is to teach you English, but it's also to make you love learning English.
The activities they give you should leave you with a hunger for learning and a passion for learning. Admittedly, not every aspect of the language can be fun, but they should help you to understand why the more boring parts of learning a language are important and worthwhile so that you can get to the fun stuff.
- Improve Your Accent in English
As your English language skills improve, so should your accent.
However, if you don't have a good native English tutor, you may find that your accent never improves. Every good English tutor should be able to help you work on your accent and pronunciation and you may even end up sounding like a native speaker.
Even if you don't, a good accent will help English speakers to understand you better.
The best thing about looking for private English tutors is that you can check out a few before deciding which one is right for you. On Superprof, for example, you can find private English tutors from all over the world.
Why You Should Learn English with a Tutor
Even with an excellent teacher at school, private tutoring should always be more effective.
To get the most out of your private tutorials, you should do a few things you should do regularly.
- Go back over your lessons from school with your private tutor to make sure that you've understood what you've been taught.
- Do your homework and have your tutor check it for you.
- Practise your English outside of class.
Your teacher in school can also give you advice on how to get the most out of their lessons. Every good teacher will likely advise you to do some self-guided study outside of your lessons.
Get the Most Out of Private ESOL Tutoring with a Native English Speaker
The better the tutor, the fewer hours of tuition you'll need.
How many hours this will take will depend on a lot of other factors such as the tutor, you, your level, and the approaches you use.
The more the tutor tailors the session to you, the fewer lessons you will need.
Here are some ways to get the most out of your private tutoring:
- Find the right tutor and make sure they tailor their lesson to you.
- Practise English as much as you can outside of your lessons and private tutorials.
- Immerse yourself in the English language by spending time in an English-speaking country like New Zealand, Australia, the UK, the US, or Canada.
- Take notes during your lessons and go back over them outside of class.
- Make sure to ask your tutor questions during class or make a note of questions to ask them next time.
- Watch English-language cinema and TV to get used to spoken English. It's a good idea to start with subtitles in your own language and then shift to English subtitles once you're used to them.
- Listen to English songs, read the lyrics, and sing along when you can.
- Read English books. Start with books for children and move on to more advanced books as your English progresses.
- Get into the habit of reading English every day via newspapers, magazines, and websites.
How Many ESOL Lessons Will You Need to Get Good at English?
As every learner is different, it's impossible to say exactly how many private lessons a student will need.
It will depend on your level when you start, how quickly you learn, and how much your tutor is tailoring their classes to you.
Absolute beginners will naturally need more lessons than advanced speakers.
It's important to remember that "good" means different things to different people. If your goals are just to speak English while travelling, you can likely do this more quickly than somebody who wants to speak English fluently for work or to live in an English-speaking country.
Don't worry too much about the absolute number of lessons that you'll need and instead focus on making progress towards your goals!
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