Thread: Tutoring vs Self-Study

1. i can't imagine learning russian without a tutor. by "learning" i mean really learning the language, being able to read, speak, listen, on a proficient level.
2. tutors, like most things, can vary widely. i worked with several tutors and interviewed many many more before i found someone who is helping me progress at the rate i want. I've also found that learning Russian from someone who speaks my native language (english) is much better than learning from a native russian speaker. they;ve been better able to understand the pitfalls in learning the language and there is also zero communication issues with explaining difficult grammar topics.

It's my luck that my tutor can speak Romanian, though he's the native Russian. It helps a lot, I agree. But he's proficient in English and most of his other students have no problem that he doesn't speak their mother tongue. (Deleted.L.).

I have a relatively unstructured way of learning a language. I don't work with a tutor, I try to teach myself using grammar books and dictionaries, but I have little use for workbooks. I find myself unable to memorize rules or declension tables etc., this approach is quite useless to me. I try to learn the language by using it; I am in correspondence with a couple of Russian-speaking friends, and I am in contact with some native speakers where I live, too. They are all acquaintances or even friends first, not tutors.

I am trying to replicate the way a child would learn the language, mostly by trial and error, which I only supplement with my knowledge of grammatical theory and linguistics.

Robin

I think it all depends on where you come from. For Eastern European people it's a whole lot easier to start studying on your own. They have less trouble with the Phonetic part of Russian and the vocubulary can be very similar at times. For me, coming from the Netherlands it would have been impossible to learn the language on my own. Simply coz the Russian language uses a completely different system and logic. I've been studying Russian in Moscow for more than 4 months now. I have improved incredibly fast and I'm surely not a beginner anymore. But I can't call myself advanced yet. Intermediate I guess. I'm lucky with a lot of Russian friends who can practice with. At the moment I can speak Russian with them, tho I still use English quite often.

After these 4-5 months I know all the main grammatics and with it will be very easy to improve my Russian fast. The main problems I encounter with Russian, is the Phonetics. Not for me to pronounce things, but to understand people. It often happened to me that people spoke to me and I didn't understand. Then a friend of mine told me I should have understood coz she used only words I already knew. This can be very frustrating. Other than that, I keep on going. With Russian you have to be patient.

Originally Posted by Scholes

I think it all depends on where you come from. For Eastern European people it's a whole lot easier to start studying on your own. They have less trouble with the Phonetic part of Russian and the vocubulary can be very similar at times. For me, coming from the Netherlands it would have been impossible to learn the language on my own. Simply coz the Russian language uses a completely different system and logic. I've been studying Russian in Moscow for more than 4 months now. I have improved incredibly fast and I'm surely not a beginner anymore. But I can't call myself advanced yet. Intermediate I guess. I'm lucky with a lot of Russian friends who can practice with. At the moment I can speak Russian with them, tho I still use English quite often.

After these 4-5 months I know all the main grammatics and with it will be very easy to improve my Russian fast. The main problems I encounter with Russian, is the Phonetics. Not for me to pronounce things, but to understand people. It often happened to me that people spoke to me and I didn't understand. Then a friend of mine told me I should have understood coz she used only words I already knew. This can be very frustrating. Other than that, I keep on going. With Russian you have to be patient.

I understand what you mean completely but next time use English please, OK?

Uhm am I missing something?

Originally Posted by Scholes

Uhm am I missing something?

You and me both.

Originally Posted by Matroskin Kot

Well, in the USA, finding a decent tutor is not easy irrespective of cost, which starts around $20/hr and goes up from there. There are a number of former teachers around, but they don't necessarily know how to teach Russian as a foreign language.

College courses are available, but they are expensive. IMO, they aren't worth the time and money unless you need the degree.

I've tried both self-study courses, and study with a human teacher in Ukraine, and I made SO much more progress with a teacher. Maybe I just got lucky and had an unusually good teacher (no kidding, she was a rock star), but the methods she used were the same ones that all the other teachers used as well, and which had been part of the curriculum for decades.

Did you study with your teacher in Ukraine or did you study with her via internet?