I don’t know if this is happening for any other language, but there are no group conversations available for Spanish! And this isn’t the only time I’ve checked. To me a group conversation is more “bang for your buck” and I’d imagine the tutor would earn more points so why are no tutors willing to host a group conversation?
My guess is that they DON’T get more points per minute because group discussions are longer. But that doesn’t answer your question as to why there are none. I also have noticed during my time here at LingQ that Spanish group discussions are scarce.
@watupboy, jingle - Tutors are paid the same whether they host individual or group conversations. Individual times are easier to implement perhaps but I’m not really sure why tutors don’t create more of them. Perhaps you should ask some tutors on their walls if they would mind creating some group conversations. If you indicate you are willing to join these, they will be more willing to do so. If you have friends who would also join, they would be even more willing. You could create a regular group that meets with a tutor at a specific time each week. These types of conversations and conversation groups are very enjoyable.
@Mark thank you for the reply. Now is there 3 other people here that we can request a group conversation from a Spanish tutor together?? Also Mark, as group conversations are more beneficial to the learner, why aren’t more points offered to tutors who host them as a way to boost this kind of learning?
@watupboy - In fact, most of the time tutors do earn more points for group conversations since they generally go longer than 1 on 1’s. Conversations are paid for based on time and tutors are paid for their time. They earn more for spending an hour with a group than for spending 15 minutes for a private lesson. In a way, all group participants are pooling and sharing their time during a group conversation.
@Billyjoe But from my understanding they’re not getting more points proportionally. You earn 375 points for every 15 minutes, but because of the fact that not any more points are made for offering a group session for an hour, what’s the point when you could just do 15 minute segments individually (in the mind of the tutor)? If maybe more points were offered per 15 minutes in a group session this would inspire more tutors to host these kinds of conversations. Plus they are more beneficial to the learner because they get to not only hear their mistakes corrected but the mistakes of others. Also they get to spend up to an hour with the language versus just 15 minutes. To me it just seems that there isn’t enough incentive for tutors to spend an hour at a time tutoring, and I think it would be beneficial to the learner if there was. In no way am I trying to bash LingQ or the tutors here, and I hope everyone can see that.
@watupboy - In fact, many tutors prefer group conversations and we’re quite comfortable with our rates. However, we will try to encourage more tutors to create group conversations.
@Mark thank you for assessing my claims, and sorry if I made it seem as though tutors are not satisfied with the current system. I think all of us here are more than satisfied for this site as I owe the majority of my language journey to this system. Thank you again for taking what I’ve said into consideration.
@watupboy - No problem. We are always happy for feedback!
I am interessed also by a group conversation for Spanish. Also, there is not a lot of choice for Spanish Tutor compare to other languages. Nothing against the current tutors, by the way, it’s just an observation.