Very true! I can't agree with you more. Since I am only a language student on italki, I should be more prepared so that teachers and tutors know how to help me more, instead of tackling my deeply ingrained habits.

Penny, as I'm considering being an English tutor, who's actually English :) I have seen the other side of this, the odd thing is people with teaching experience are really happy with talk, a little prepared stuff and some diagnosis and specific help. But a lot of Italki people are unrealistic, you ask them beforehand what they want to do but they come with nothing, you have material to help get them talking, then they tell you they want to listen, then they complain about that. It's really not easy, the last thing they'll ever do is admit where the real problem lies. Quite often and I think teachers agree, is the problem IS NOT the language, but something else that has nothing to do with English or Esperanto or Deutsch or Mandarin. Now when you try and help someone communicate better in a foreign language, you MIGHT be provoking discomfort as you're tackling deeply ingrained habits. In my case I learnt to do something in Spanish, which I am lazy about in my native language preferring to borrow a bit from a common regional accent feature. To change that, I had to realise it wasn't part of my identity. So Penny, what I have to help someone like yourself are nice pictures, that I've taken and you can describe them or ask questions. In a conversation, there's a back and forth. When someone mentions grammar issues before, I try and address them in written form, rather than explain "live", if you do that it means you spend a good part of the hour, doing almost all the talking. Teachers & Tutors all say they want the student talking!

Alicia and Robert, Thanks a lot for your suggestions! They help a lot!

Good topic! As a beginner I found a tutor who was taking a teacher qualification and had an excellent track record. She gave me a test to assess level, but there was some misunderstanding about a task which suggested the great level in my language wasn't necessarily avoiding misunderstandings. The real issue was the time of the lessons, wasn't going to suit as much. Then I realised that there are experienced teachers, new in Italki who actually began by charging less, so I gave them a go. They were saying similar things, wanting me to chill and let the speaking come little by little. My first real Italki teacher unfortunately whacked her prices up, without warning after a few months. So I cut her hours down and gave another a try. Beatriz has taught me for nearly 18 months now and 113 lessons. I have found conversation with tutors good, but I worked using online lessons and apps for vocabulary and seem to be just chatting with the teachers I book. This works for me, but perhaps won't for everyone. I don't know if Beatriz has been subtly influencing me in a skilled way teaching me without me noticing, as I feel like I have been pretty lazy just enjoying our conversations and working on a few things she has mentioned, drawing my attention to. More recently I've had tutor sessions with Cristina and Marián, they give correctional feedback and we have a conversation, I can ask them about issues and their opinions. It's just like meeting an intelligent friend having a discussion and you enjoy the humour that pops up! If you've been working on your target language, you'll have some literature/song or technical questions, they just arise. Or from Intercambio, some word or cultural issue crops up and lets you ask the tutor about that. And some are pretty ruthless about sitting there, just silent waiting for you to come up with a topic, if you run dry in the hour.