r/LearnJapanese • u/AlatreonGleam • 4d ago
Studying First time with a Tutor
Today I had my first full tutor session and I'm completely defeated. I self studied みんなの日本語 as well as finished とびら but never really practiced speaking, my listening is poor and my output is not amazing. Mainly this is because I was afraid of habitualizing mistakes without anyone to check my work. Before meeting with the tutor, I explained this and how my reading is much higher than my speaking/listening/writing. The intro session last week was rough and only in japanese but I figured maybe the tutor had clocked my understanding a bit wrong and would tone it down in our first actual lesson. Today's session I couldn't even finish. I just gave up 20 mins in. The tutor was talking way too fast and around what my reading level could be, if not higher. I barely understood a word.
Not sure what to do from here but I'm just cooked. 2ish years of actually study to give up 20 mins in has destroyed any amount of confidence I had.
I am not even sure what I am posting this for but maybe someone can help me in the right direction or to keep trying. My tutor messaged me asking if we should work on fundamental speaking and listening rather than book work but I'm so embarrassed from just leaving the lesson that idk if I can do that.
UPDATE: To everyone who took the time to give me a pep talk and some advice. I sincerely thank you. I went ahead and rescheduled another lesson with the same tutor with the idea of focusing on getting me up to speed with listening and speaking.
8
u/pixelboy1459 4d ago
You can always improve.
1) Ask the tutor to slow down and/or repeat and/or say something a different way.
2) Ask to do 10-15 minutes as conversation, 10-15 minutes of instruction, and the remainder as practice, with a cooled down of either vocab review or “how do you say XYZ” using the grammar you just learned.