Quickly Fix Language Mistakes with a Teacher

by | Jun 23, 2021 | Culture, Education

Working with a language tutor at ABC Languages, I’ve recently begun to build on the foundation I constructed for myself in learning a language while picking up a few pointers along the way. Some courses were formal, others casual, some private and others in a group. The faculty at ABC Languages are immensely flexible, orienting their schedules to help you find the best fit at the school given your experience, learning style, and skill level. Dropping in on a few courses, I quickly learned about myself what I probably expected along the way: I taught myself the pretty fundamental constructions behind French, but still face some gaps in accurately articulating myself with coherent grammar and sentence structure. 

An Hour Over Years

Sitting in on a private class, my tutor for the hour quickly brought to my attention an issue I had been repeating while speaking in past tense. For the language learners, it was an issue around speaking in past tense using irregular verbs — obviously. Yet just an hour with a fluent teacher, and I was walked through my mistakes and given a textbook page breaking down the proper conjugations as needed. Flashbacks of the times I had made that very mistake — many of them while living in Bordeaux, attempting to communicate myself to native speakers — came to mind, all now standing to be resolved with the education I was arming myself with. My experience, in this case, wasn’t unique: mistakes like this are of the everyday, and it’s normal and even gratuitous that any person learning a language seriously will turn to a teacher at some point.

How a Language Tutor Can Make a World of Difference

While proclamations for the self-learning movement abound with the many free, independent tools the Internet has given us, it turns out that collaborating with a teacher on anything, whether it’s sports, music, or learning a language, can be indispensable in the personal guidance a student stands to receive from even an hour of feedback. As I look back on several years of a single mistake quickly rectified by a teacher’s advice, I’ll put it out there for the many other students and language-learners who find themselves in the same position: working with a tutor can be game-changing, and often might mean the difference between coming halfway and taking it home. With ABC Languages, I’d recommend anything from the drop-in conversation classes to setting up a private session with a tutor to get that same level of customized feedback touching on the many minor points you yourself may not have even realized you were skipping over. And for anyone looking to achieve fluency or even just a conversational level, classes like these are practically a must. To browse classes, schedules, and connect with teachers, visit ABC Language private tutors.

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