How to Pick the Right Language Tutor

No, don’t just get any random “native speaker”

One of the worst things a language learner can do is meet people who say they are native speakers and strike up a language exchange/tutoring arrangement. Here are the reasons why that may not work well:

• the person thinks they’re fluent, but they’re not
• the person doesn’t have good subject knowledge of what you’re trying to learn
• the person may actually be fluent, but they don’t know how to teach anyone else to also be fluent

Some examples that seem unconnected but actually have the same problem:

• a grown man sounds ridiculous speaking Japanese — turns out he learned Japanese from a younger girl who was all into cutesy cosplay manga stuff
• a young woman starting out in the French banking industry lacks the necessary and appropriate vocabulary and mannerisms, even though she’s been studying French every summer during high school — turns out her summer job for five years was working on a farm for her uncle who raised sheep his whole life

It may seem like this is a gender issue, but it’s not. That’s just the most obvious part. The real issue is that the language learners did not discern what was appropriate for their language goals or social purpose of their…