I’m new to LingQ, and I’m definitely not a Tutor, so I don’t know if it’s okay for me to post here…?
But I do teach English as a foreign language, as my job, so I have a lot of experience teaching beginners, however I actually don’t speak in the student’s native language at all. I don’t know if this is possible for your LingQ system. I know if I were talking with a tutor here (I haven’t yet), I would prefer that they make me speak my language-of-study, and not let me speak English at all.
I realize maybe most students wouldn’t be comfortable with this, so maybe this is why you don’t consider using this style. My (real life) students are uncertain at first, but I do my best to make the atmosphere warm and stress free, and use only words or phrases the student knows or is studying - which obviously is very little for beginners.
Some of my first classes with English-learners begin like this:
T: Hello
S: Hello.
T: Name?
S: My name is Andrei.
T: Question? Me? Name?
S: What’s your name?
T: My name is Jen. From?
S: I’m from Russia.
T: Question? Me? From?
S: Where are you from?
T: Good. I’m from America. Nationality?
S: I’m Russian.
T: Question? Me?
S: What’s nationality?
T: Eh? What’s -mmmm- nationality?
S: …
T: What’s -ehhhhhhh- nationality?
S: What’s your nationality?
T: Good. What’s your nationality. I’m American.
The idea is, before this kind of conversation, the student has already listened to, read, and practiced speaking vocabulary and phrases/topics like Names, Jobs, Nationalities, his/her/yours/mine.
Again, it might not work for LingQ, because in my classes (especially with beginners) I tend to do A LOT of drawing, acting, miming, or face-making for the student to understand, but regardless, we never speak the student’s native language.
It’s just what I was thinking. Anyway, I’m new to LingQ, but sometime in the future I might be interested in Tutoring for English, if you’re in need of English Tutors, but I want to use the system for awhile first and see how it goes. I’m trying to work on my Russian and refresh my Spanish and Chinese at the moment. I’d like to start Dutch and Finnish as well, so I’m awaiting the day maybe those languages are added here. (o:
Thanks,
Jen