How to recognize a good English tutor. When do you need an English tutor for schoolchildren Private English tutor

The article was written by an English language tutor who has been successfully working with clients for more than 5 years, so the information is relevant, first-hand. Here you will get answers to the following questions:

  • what is the role of the tutor in the educational process;
  • what goals to set for yourself;
  • how to find the teacher you need.

Who is a tutor?

Tutor- this is, first of all, mentor, mentor. This is a person who will show you the direction, correct your mistakes and charge you with energy and enthusiasm to study on your own. All.

The tutor should not do homework for your children or communicate with you informally, in a familiar way. The lessons should maintain a friendly atmosphere, business communication, and mutual respect.

I am convinced that a professional English tutor will not chat in Russian on abstract topics during lessons, give tasks to complete or turn on, and immerse himself in reading a tablet. A real teacher will not raise his voice at your children. I understand that life always makes its own adjustments, but if there is a non-working atmosphere in the lesson, the tutor should leave.

Do you need an English tutor?

The best and most cost-effective solution is to start learning English on your own, read, buy any teaching aid with answers for self-test, expand your vocabulary to, and also watch. And only then, having reached intermediate, find someone with work experience and good reviews. On the other hand, studying with a tutor from scratch will make progress faster, but this option will be more expensive.

A good tutor is only 20% of your success. 80% is your motivation and availability of free time. I am often asked, . And I already have a good answer ready. In the appendix to my diploma it is written that we studied English 2846 hours. So, in order for me to have time to teach the Inyazov program in your favorite intensity mode (twice a week for 90 minutes), I will need 16 years. And this does not take into account the school curriculum and related disciplines at the university. Do you still want to “learn English in a month”?

💡 Answer yourself the question, why do you need English , and then read the typical answers below. Do you recognize yourself in a certain profile? In certain cases you need to think twice. 💡

1) To pass a test or international exam, for example , FCE, . Great! You are most likely well motivated and know why you are taking this or that test. In the average untreated case, you should start studying a year before you are supposed to take the exam.

2) For work. Commendable! But keep in mind that only you know the specifics of your work; the tutor does not know it. Most business English textbooks are about 10 percent useful, unless of course you work as a guide or in a call center. In other words, you will get more from reading professional literature and. You can find a tutor specifically for these purposes. At the same time, improve your spoken English.

3) Pass an interview in English or any other short-term order. You have excellent motivation, you are ready for brainstorming and intensive training! You definitely need a tutor. However, not everyone can afford urgent orders, because the teacher’s schedule is usually drawn up a year in advance! On the other hand, at lunchtime you are always welcome.

4) For study. Very good, especially if classes are supposed to be with a student. Stable and regular exercises yield rich fruits in the future. Perhaps, by the 11th grade, the student will know the language almost at the level of a language university, and he will not have to spend money on language courses, he can easily find a job in a foreign company. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to go ahead of the school curriculum, give much more, and the child must complete all homework at school independently. But working with a tutor for years is, of course, expensive. Or maybe you are a student? This is not very good, the tutors don’t like you... Today you again have an urgent test, an exam, a sudden lecture, so the lesson will have to be canceled urgently? A good tutor will stay with you only if he has regular lessons without cancellations.

5) For travel. This is where the red zone begins, think twice about why you need a tutor. You will lose some of the benefits of group learning that are available in English courses, namely: working in a group, communicating with non-native speakers in broken English, dialogues with different people and different things. Do you think that in Italy, Turkey and Egypt they speak pure Royal English? On the other hand, some teachers can help (but certainly not your complex).

6) For yourself. Badly! You don't know why you need a tutor. You don't set any goals for yourself, you have no motivation. Maybe you want someone to entertain you? Think three times, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, buy, watch and evolve into another category. If all this is not interesting to you, then do something else, find another hobby.

How to find an English tutor?

The best teachers are usually recommended by friends. Ask your friends and colleagues, post on social networks. If word of mouth does not work, then you need to go to the so-called "tutor website" These are special agencies for the selection of teachers, and various specialists in general. I'll recommend a few:

– market leader, the largest database of tutors in all regions of the Russian Federation. Many tutors have their passport details, higher education diplomas, etc. checked. There is a feedback system.

Repetit.ru is second place among tutoring sites. They also check passport details to protect clients. They don’t bother you so much on the phone; they communicate more cordially and at home.

Karta-repetitorov.ru is convenient when the tutor lives near you. On this site you can visually see where your English teacher lives. Moscow is big. On the other hand, neighborhood should not be a deciding factor in this matter.

On any of these sites you can leave a request for a tutor. It is advisable to indicate your goals, a convenient time, and also decide whether you will study at home or go to the teacher’s home yourself. You can also choose a tutor yourself, based on the questionnaire data. If you are taking international exams, make sure that the teacher has the required certificate. But the best thing to say about him is certificates of his students who successfully passed this test.

By the way, to help with the school curriculum, it is not necessary to look for a tutor with 10 years of experience. A responsible senior student at a language university would be a good fit for you. In other cases, it is better to rely on the professionalism of the tutor. In the first classes, a training program is usually built, a class schedule is fixed... and then everyday schoolwork begins and the mandatory completion of homework, without independent work - no way.

With great pleasure I am ready to continue the discussion of this topic in the comments or on the forum!

When asking how much an English tutor's lesson costs, the customer of educational services assumes the average cost in Moscow, but this statistical value has approximately the same value as the average temperature in a hospital. Firstly, a lesson can have different durations. Also, the price of training with a tutor is directly affected not only by the latter’s qualifications, but also by the student’s existing knowledge and the objectives of a particular course. Additional factors will be the location of the lesson, the number of lessons per week, and the duration of the entire course.

Of course, English remains one of the most popular subjects for tutoring. The demand for the service is high, and the supply matches it. Price dynamics in recent years show that the cost of language training in Moscow is not growing. The price for an hour-long lesson with an English tutor today is about 1,200 rubles. At the same time, the rate for tutors with up to 5 years of experience usually does not exceed 1,000 rubles; for more experienced teachers it can reach up to 1,500 rubles. / 60 minutes.

Preparation for serious international exams is usually carried out by the tutoring elite, and the cost of a training session here can go through the roof for 2,000 - 2,500 rubles / hour. On the contrary, the most popular course in the primary school program is often priced at 600 - 700 rubles. and even less. In addition, the price of an English lesson varies depending on whose territory the course is held and whether we are talking about individual or group lessons. The effectiveness of the latter is inferior to that of the former, and the cost is significantly lower.

English tutors offer
On our website you will find a large number of profiles of professional English tutors. The teachers graduated from the best higher educational institutions in Moscow, including Moscow State University. Lomonosov, Moscow State Pedagogical University named after. Lenin, Moscow State Linguistic University. Many received linguistic education at universities in Russian cities, as well as in neighboring countries, some actively practiced abroad or have titles, academic degrees, and are active English language teachers in Moscow educational institutions. Here you can meet school teachers, graduate students, graduate specialists, masters and candidates of science. A significant part of the tutors have experience working in European countries and are fluent in spoken English. The cost of a trial lesson for each tutor on the portal is 50% of the full cost of the lesson.

Our tutors prepare schoolchildren for passing the Unified State Exam (USE) final exams, entering a university, and teach a full course for international tests such as TOELF, IELTS, GRE. If you want to get a qualified answer to the question of how much an English tutor lesson costs in Moscow, call us at 968-643-3324 and consult with the site administrator. Regardless of whether we are talking about a school curriculum, a final exam, a conversation course, Business English or preparation for admission to international universities, we will select for you professional teachers who can raise the level of English proficiency to a completely new height at an optimal price-quality ratio .

Regardless of the question of how much a lesson with an English tutor in Moscow costs, the effectiveness of the lessons for any client plays the most important role. Today, most employers require applicants to have communicative competence at the international level. Often, career prospects also depend on language skills. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of fluent language skills when it comes to studying or working in Europe or North America.

If you are reading this, then you probably know where and how to find English tutors. Therefore, I will not waste your time and will share some thoughts on how to correctly approach the choice of this very tutor. So as not to be disappointed when it turns out that you or your child paid money and wasted time in vain. I'll try to be brief.

I think you can determine whether you have a good or not a good tutor already in the first lesson. Let's imagine that you come with complete ignorance of the English language or with confusion in your head after countless repetitions of the same thing at school and college. In short, you start with a clean slate.

What shouldn't a good tutor do?

First of all, he shouldn't teach you how to read English words. If he is really good, then he knows very well from experience that English words are hieroglyphs that cannot be read: they can only be recognized and voiced. My favorite example is the word lives, which when combined with a pronoun, say, he, will be read “livs” and mean the verb “lives”, and in combination with many- will already read “lives” and mean the noun “life” in the plural. No, of course, the tutor can mention that, in fact, there are certain rules for reading in “open and closed syllables,” but if you need a result and a quick result, then you don’t even have to think about it: there are still no exceptions to these rules less.

Secondly, a good English tutor will not correct your accent. Why? Because he knows that, as many English-speaking people in the world as there are, there are as many accents. Of course, he will definitely correct you if you pronounce a word with the wrong emphasis, or make English too Russian h, or say match so that it looks like much- that is, in those fundamental points that will lead to a misunderstanding of you by your listeners. Otherwise, he will not waste time on something that is either unimportant (what difference does it make if you are not Stirlitz, what accent do you speak with, if everyone understands you perfectly?), or can easily be corrected by you yourself in the process of further use in English. Over time, some people like the Californian accent, some like the New York accent, some find the Irish easier, etc. From my own experience, I usually advise my students to try to speak with a simple "English accent" so that it is not clear where they are coming from. After all, you yourself can probably tell when someone speaks English whether it’s a German, a Frenchman, an Italian, or even a Dane. This is the kind of accent that, in my opinion, should be avoided. It’s better to let your interlocutor guess where you are from. The Russian accent (in an exaggerated form) should only be used in “bad” places in America and Europe in order to scare away local hooligans.

Thirdly, a good tutor is recognized by his structural approach to the subject. Do not be lazy in preliminary correspondence or at the very first lesson to ask a simple and direct question about what his methodology is. If you have ever studied English (for example) with native speakers, then you have probably noticed that they often present the material chaotically, based on the situation, focusing on what they do best - speaking. For some reason, they believe that you don’t need to know the grammar of their language, it only gets in the way, you need to immediately take the bull by the horns and talk, even if you don’t know the words and how these words form phrases. I can tell you a secret why this is so. Because sometimes they themselves do not know their own grammar. They, students living in a foreign country, journalists, former so-and-so, just need to earn some money, and the easiest way to do this is in their native language, since they are a priori experts in it. No, not specialists. They haven’t been taught grammar in schools for a long time, just like Russian – our idiots. However, I digress. Method. Very important. Without it, your classes will turn into chatter about nothing, and the mess will remain. A good tutor, in response to your question, should clearly and concisely tell you how each lesson will be structured. Believe me, for a good tutor this will not be difficult.

Now a few words about what a good English tutor should and will do with you. If it doesn't, start doubting it.

He will speak to you in English. Not in the sense of explaining complex rules so that you and your level will not understand anything, but in the sense of spending part of the time talking at your level about this and that, just to get you excited. I usually ask from the door, what’s new, and who among us doesn’t like to talk about ourselves? Five to ten minutes (or even more if some pressing topic is raised) of quick communication in English is guaranteed.

He will give you listening exercises. This usually means that you receive an audio or video file at home, which you must “decipher” for the next lesson, i.e. Write down in English everything you hear in it. During the lesson, you then read it out, and a “debriefing” takes place, identifying your mistakes, and most importantly, their causes. We usually don't hear what we don't know.

He will definitely force you to learn something by heart. False democracy forces current teachers, especially in schools, to follow the lead of students and not strain them too much. When you learn a language, and even for your own money, forget about democracy, you need results. In other words, you should be grateful to a demanding tutor and doubt your success if the tutor tailors his classes to you. Of course, he won’t always want to argue with you, and he may limit himself to a phrase like “If you don’t want to, don’t.” But you must understand it correctly: this is necessary and you need it. So whatever you want. It is desirable, however, that for memorization not just anything is offered, but all sorts of English templates and cliches on which any communication is based.

He will force you to read. We perceive most of the world with our eyes. Therefore, in learning English it is very important to see the structure of sentences, get used to it and thus gain much-needed experience. At the same time, it is very important, firstly, to read what interests you, and, secondly, to start reading books adapted to your level, so that the originals do not scare you away by the need to look into the dictionary twenty times per page.

He will force you to translate. And in Russian too. From the sheet. Perhaps even without prior reading. Or by ear. Putting you in the situation of an inexperienced translator who must understand what the speaker is saying to him in English and convey his understanding as adequately as possible to an imaginary audience. If your English sword is forged by previous exercises, then in translations “back and forth” it is sharpened. And the hopelessness of the situation, when it is simply impossible not to speak, is extremely useful.

If the above points, or at least most of them, are met, you can be sure that there will be some sense. If not, move on and look for someone else. And if you don’t want to waste time searching, you can limit yourself to filling out this simple one, and maybe not the worst English tutor will find you.

"Repetit Center" is one of the oldest associations of private teachers. The site is over seven years old. Private English tutors in Moscow for preschoolers, children and adults are the largest part of our database. There are more than 6,000 advertisements for such tutors on the site. We work throughout Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Finding a language tutor will be easy, the main thing is to set the necessary search parameters.

However, the selection of a tutor can also be entrusted to the administrator - we will advise you on suitable options.

However, a few tips for finding a private English teacher may come in handy.

  1. If you are interested in learning spoken language (removing communication barriers, establishing correct pronunciation), then you most likely need to hire an individual English tutor - a native speaker or an experienced Russian teacher who often deals with native English speakers or has lived in an English-speaking country for more than 5 years . Such a teacher will be able to quickly achieve results in these aspects of the language.
  2. If you need a tutor to prepare for the Unified State Exam or State Examination in English, then pay attention to teachers who have experience preparing for these exams. Despite the fact that, first of all, knowledge of the language is important, the Unified State Examination has its own specifics. Therefore, look for an English tutor for your child, asking about his experience: how successfully he prepared high school students for the Unified State Exam. However, the cost of such a teacher’s services is unlikely to be low.
  3. If you need to improve your grammar, then you need any Russian-speaking teacher with relevant experience and knowledge. As a rule, such teachers know grammar and general theory of the English language even better than native speakers. The price of individual lessons from such tutors is low - they usually charge inexpensively for their lessons.
  4. If you are interested in preparing for the TOEFL, GMAT, or IELTS, then you are likely looking for the services of an English tutor who teaches to adults, is certified, and has passed these exams with high scores. The best teachers and specialists in this field are quite in demand and are often busy from the beginning of the academic year. Therefore, even if you don’t need a tutor urgently, not right now, it’s still worth taking a closer look at the English teachers you like and, perhaps, agreeing on lessons.
  5. You should always pay attention to reviews and prices. A good English tutor in Moscow cannot be very “inexpensive”. 300-400 rubles per hour - this rate is already of little interest even for student language tutors 🇬🇧. Moreover, teachers who have confirmation in the form of real student reviews charge more expensively - after all, there is a demand for their services.
An English language tutor is a highly qualified teacher who knows English perfectly and conducts individual lessons to teach children this language. The lessons he prepares are aimed at studying grammar, syntax features, correct pronunciation, and competent explanation of the speech subtleties of “living” English.

Relevance of the service

Tutoring in Moscow can be aimed at solving different problems:
  • doing homework in English,
  • in-depth study of the subject,
  • preparation for the Olympiad, school exam, Unified State Exam,
  • training in spoken English skills,
  • removing the language barrier before a planned trip abroad, travel,
  • preparation for upcoming international exams/testing (TOEFL, IELTS, etc.),
  • improving grammar knowledge.
An English tutor offers an individual lesson plan to each of his clients, and before the lessons begin, he establishes the student’s level of language knowledge. Provides the necessary educational materials (videos, audio aids) and printed publications for use.

Results that can be achieved with the help of a tutor

An individual English teacher helps you master a foreign language perfectly, successfully pass exams, and enroll in a university. Its services will be useful not only to schoolchildren, students, but also to specialists whose activities involve cooperation with foreigners and the promotion of goods abroad. You can also contact an English tutor to solve one-time problems, for example, translating a letter, drafting business papers, presentations, etc.