Whether you are choosing a language tutor for a child, for an adult or for a group, there are several considerations that you may want to bear in mind when it comes to finding the right person for you. Here are some ideas for you if you are looking for someone to tutor a student under the age of 18:
1. Be timely. If your student is finding the subject hard at school then consider getting a short burst of tuition as soon as possible, to get them back on the right track. Please do not leave it until just a few weeks before the exams and expect the tutor to unpick years of misunderstandings and lack of confidence.
2. Ask for their DBS check. It is not compulsory for someone to have a DBS check in order to tutor, but it is definitely good practice to do so.
3. Consider carefully whether you would be better to have tuition at your home or at the tutor’s premises. Some students work better in unfamiliar surroundings, away from familiar distractions – others do better when they feel comfortable. Do note that most professional tutors will be unwilling to be left alone with a child in the child’s own home due to safeguarding reasons.
4. Match your tutor to your needs. If you would like your 8-year-old to have a little booster then you may be fine with a University student. However, if your child has specific additional learning needs or is studying for an exam then it may be a good idea to pay extra for someone with relevant experience!
5. The GCSE curriculum and exam methods have changed in the last two years – so University students DID NOT sit the same exam that your child will be taking. If you need to be boosting grades then ask your tutor questions about how they have kept their knowledge of the curriculum up-to-date.
6. Have reasonable expectations of what you will be paying. Remember that the minimum wage for someone aged 21 or over will be £12.71 per hour from April 2026. So, if you are expecting to pay just £10 per hour you can only legally employ those aged 20 or under! With a good tutor you are not just paying for the one hour of the class, but also for the time they spend planning and marking homework. It can take quite some time to plan a student-specific scheme of work to boost that particular student’s grades in the time available. As a rough guide, prepare for the cost of the tutor to be similar to the cost of a 1:1 session with a physiotherapist or personal trainer at the gym.
7. If your tutor is just going over the same material that was covered in school, using the same books and worksheets, then it is time for another tutor. They should be adding value by bringing different/more resources. Not that you
necessarily want lots of different explanations (that’s confusing) but a range of new exercises and challenges will really help to consolidate the information.
8. Personality. Ensuring that your child gets on well with the tutor and will work nicely for them is a key element. Sometimes two people just don’t get on well, without it being anyone’s fault – so be prepared to review the situation after two or three classes to make sure that both sides are happy.
Teri Fleetwood has been providing French and German tutoring for 20 years. Her students consistently exceed expectations at GCSE and A Level through a careful mixture of topic and grammar work as well as a keen attention to exam technique.
As an experienced speaker of a second (or third) language it is important to keep your language skills up to date rather than allowing them to benignly stagnate in a smug cloud of “I’ve got this – I have a certificate/A Level/degree”. This isn’t simply a question of keeping your grammar knowledge sharp and remembering a few spelling rules, but more about following the progress of the language as it evolves.
A story which highlights this need comes from the German exchange arranged by my school when I was a teenager. As with all exchanges of the time, a group of students from our school stayed in the host town, living with students and their families. We visited museums and places of interest, had a day in the host school and generally did our best to get by in a language that we had been learning for about two years. While I have vague memories of a lovely host family and a rather strange host teenager (probably more to do with cultural differences than our personalities), the thing that stood out for me most was one of the English teachers from the host school. I can’t even describe his physical appearance particularly well, except that he had a beard and wore jeans when all of our teachers were in suits. What struck me was his use of English. Quite grammatically accurate, but all of his more colloquial language was stuck about 20 years in the past. He sounded quite like my parents when they were being deliberately silly and using “old” phrases from the 1960s and 1970s!
Now that I am probably of a similar age to that man, (give or take a decade or so!), it is something that I am acutely aware of in my own teaching and use of language. Keeping my own language skills relevant to the modern day is an ongoing challenge. What tips can I give for anyone in a similar position who would like to maintain their language skills?
Use modern technology, streaming services and the like to watch films/TV in the source language. Choose your material wisely – if you use your language for work or need more formal language then watch appropriate material and don’t restrict yourself to daytime gossip TV or the kind of show where “his girlfriend ran away with the hairdresser’s neighbour’s cat”. For colloquialisms, a little bit of reality TV goes a long way, but bear in mind that slang is generational, so try not to “get down with the kids” too much!
Read the news from the country, in the source language. Do so regularly. It can be really useful to note how a story is reported differently in different countries. It helps boost cultural awareness as well as giving a broader depth of perspectives on a topic. You could also choose a variety of news sources, so you read the same story in both a broadsheet and a more popular format.
Visit the country when you can. During that visit do not withdraw into your personal bubble of headphones and an English film on your tablet, but use public transport and be fully aware of what is around you. That may be as simple as noticing that shop adverts and announcements now use the informal “you” rather than the formal one that you were taught is correct in such situations. Or it may be that you casually overhear a rapid conversation between friends and then spend 10 minutes afterwards trying to work out what they were talking about.
Speak with native speakers whenever possible. Especially while you are in the relevant country, or with speakers who still live there. Those who have lived abroad for an extended period may also find that their language skills become dated.
Above all, have fun with your language! Real-life use is much more likely to stick than pure book work.
Teri is an experienced language tutor with a particular interest in both French and German. Her most recent short holiday included many opportunities to practise her skills, including protracted negotiations at the railway station around using the ticket app and its failings, making purchases at the Christmas market and translating a 10-minute demonstration about medieval instruments of torture!
If you are wondering, the photo is of a historical reenactment group in Geneva, preparing for a demonstration of épée techniques in use in 1602 at the time of the “Escalade” attack on the city by the Duke of Savoie. Don’t let your language get this outdated!
Idioms – those colourful phrases that don’t always translate directly very well, but which add interest to our speech and show that we aren’t just stuck with the formal language taught in school.
It can be tricky to learn idioms in a classroom environment, at least partly because it is hard to remember phrases that come without context. Some teachers therefore prefer to either group the idioms by theme, or to teach a small selection within a particular setting. Do remember that context is everything. Using too many idioms all at once can make your meaning unclear, so try to use them sparingly.
Our gift to you this month – 8 German idioms which are all to do with sausages!
Das ist mir Wurst. Direct translation: that is sausage to me. Hidden meaning: I don’t care. It’s not important to me.
Es geht um die Wurst. Direct translation: it’s about the sausage. Meaning: It’s a really important thing.
Die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen. Direct translation: to play the offended/huffy liver sausage. Meaning: to sulk
Alles hat ein Ende nur die Wurst hat zwei. Direct translation: Everything has an end, only the sausage has two. Meaning: Everything comes to an end.
Du armes Würstchen. Direct: You poor little sausage. Meaning: This expression shows sympathy, sometimes ironic, for someone in an uncomfortable situation.
Eine Extrawurst verlangen. Direct: to demand a pork sausage. Meaning: The Extrawurst is a special treat kind of sausage. So, this means to ask for special treatment.
In der Not schmeckt die Wurst auch ohne Brot. Direct translation: In an emergency the sausage tastes good even without bread. Meaning: in hardship you can make do without some things.
Sein Senf dazu geben. Direct translation: to add one’s mustard to it (after all, every Wurst needs a bit of mustard!). Meaning: to add one’s opinion, even if it is not wanted.
I hope you have fun with these. If you would like to find more German idioms, try looking for those which include the “Fuß” (foot) or the one with the old Swedish man “Alter Schwede”!
If you are anything like me, then the term “learning vocabulary” may bring back memories of school. A list of words that you absolutely have to learn in time for a test – knowing that a poor mark means a retest, or maybe a detention. Or maybe your school simply didn’t do vocabulary tests (a common situation these days) and so you didn’t learn your new words, which may have had a noticeable effect on your learning outcomes. Sadly, there is no denying that learning words is an essential part of learning a language, so here is Part 2 on “Tips for learning vocabulary”.
If you always have to use a dictionary (whether online or paper) every time you want to say something, then it is no wonder that so many people use translation software. It may be no surprise that I am limited in my enthusiasm for such software – besides the sometimes hilarious errors it can make, I also find that it is often used as a solution rather than a tool, and that it limits a student’s ability to recognise links between words and to work out which option they need when there are several choices.
So, besides learning for yourself and reducing reliance on technology, what other tips can I offer on learning vocabulary?
Make a vocabulary book. I mentioned it last month, but if you don’t make a note of the new word, you won’t remember the new word or think to try and learn it. A simple small notebook will do, preferably divided into topics so that all clothes are in one area, food in another, rather than one long muddled list. Keep it to hand. If you make notes on your phone, do remember to transfer them to the book.
Learn the genders of the words at the same time as you learn the word itself. If a language uses gender for words like “table” then that will have an effect on other words later on, such as adjective endings. The photo attached shows a beautiful picture made by one of my adult students to help her remember the words and genders of parts of the body. Each body part has been coloured in a way to show the gender of the word (pink for feminine, blue for masculine). This way when she thinks of the word, she can picture the image and see whether it was a pink word or a blue one.
Practice with a friend. If you know someone else learning the same language, or have someone helpful in your circle, then why not make a game and test each other? Who can score the highest?
Test yourself regularly. Even if you don’t have a teacher to mark them, set yourself tests and practise regularly. Maybe try a mind-map or a “word splurge”. Write a key word in the middle of your piece of paper (e.g. clothes) then write every word you can think of on that topic. A mind-map would link them together, a “word splurge” is just that – a bunch of words with no obvious structure to the arrangement.
Tips #5? – This one’s a cheat, but try reading last month’s blog for more ideas!
I hope these tips for learning vocabulary are helpful. We all have our own way of learning, so try out a few different ideas and see what works best for you.
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