I've been meeting with a language exchange partner/tutor twice a week since I started studying Japanese seriously about 4-5 months back. We meet for two hours at a time (one hour for English and one hour for Japanese) and, for the Japanese portion, follow a typical classroom approach using a beginner book (published in Korea(n)) which has a dialogue, a few grammar points, and then some practice exercises for each lesson. My tutor goes over the new vocabulary, reads the dialogue with me a couple of times, explains the grammar points, and then has me complete practice exercises aloud. It's been helpful, but in my mind, not optimal. However, my tutor suggested the book series/approach and, without knowing a better way of doing things, I didn't want to offend her by complaining.

Fortunately, though, we're just about to finish the second and, as far as I know, final book of the series and my tutor has asked me what I would like to do next. My initial thought was that I would like to split the time between conversation (which we don't do any of now) and reading. For the former, I wouldn't want it to be just free talking, of course; I'd like to have a topic for each class and cover vocabulary related to that topic at the beginning. For the latter, I was thinking I could bring in whatever I was reading (manga, etc.) and ask questions about the grammar, expressions, etc. My chief concern, however, is that my Japanese level is too low for this to a) be beneficial and b) fill up an hour of class time.

What do y'all think? How would you organize things if you were studying with tutor but had a relatively low level of Japanese?

You could try something along the lines of "story time" maybe, where you find something along the lines of a graded reader and read it aloud, trying to keep a decent pace, tone, and pronunciation. The benefit I see with this is that you don't have to spend an hour trying to force out a conversation that just isnt coming since you have no idea how to say what you want to say.
What might be more useful is to prepare a list of conversation topics beforehand that can fill up an hour and that can be used with your limited language knowledge. Look up and learn some vocab. for the topics beforehand maybe so that you have something to say. And maybe email this list to your tutor so that they have an idea of what you are trying to talk about beforehand and so can maybe steer the conversation along with their own higher level language skills.

If you run out of stuff to say then you can do what everyone does when they don't know what to say, talk about random and pointless things like the weather or the color of the walls. You could memorize a bunch of weather-related words fairly quickly. Shiritori is also a good game to pass the time and work on your vocab., you can write down all the words she uses and try and memorize the useful looking ones.

I personally think a tutor is more useful at a higher level when you have the basic building blocks out of the way so that you can polish them one-on-one. But that's my own philisophy, as someone who actually likes his language classes

I work with a tutor regularly. In my case, we're reading a novel at the moment, and we're going to add some work on listening, using a TV show. I read from the novel, and my tutor helps with pronunciation and vocabulary, along with cultural references I might miss. If you're reading through manga, I think spending some time on it with the tutor should be productive.

Working on listening is pretty much a requirement, IMO, but I don't know level you're at, so I can't make recommendations. I'll see how that works for my tutorial sessions.

Honestly, I'd also look for a grammar book and work on that, too. Your tutor should be able to help there, too, if you get confused.

Conversation and reading materials would be great but I wouldn't drop the systematic approach with a lesson one and a lesson six and a lesson twenty. I'd look around for a suitable book.

I do a mix of free conversation with my tutor correcting and advising me along the way, and JLPT problem study. I found a really good teacher on italki who has been helping me in fundamental 読解 skills such as finding the subject in a complex sentence, and breaking complicated sentences down to their 骨組み.

I wouldn't leave out conversation practice, even if it's only 15 minutes of the lesson. Speak early and often.

While we're on the topic...

Has anyone used tutoring to practice listening - i.e., listen to something in Japanese, then try and discuss what you heard with your teacher, and then get tips and feedback on listening skills? Was this effective? I can see the value of using a tutor for understanding grammar, and assisting with reading and conversation skills. But listening just seems like a matter of "do it until your ears bleed".

Thanks for the ideas, everyone. I'm still going to suggest spending more time on conversation (probably following a format similar to the one mc962 suggested) and bring in some reading materials like manga to read together, but I'll follow y'all's advice and keep working with a grammar book/textbook as well. Would Genki work well for something like this? Tae Kim doesn't seem like he'd be very classroom-friendly... I'd also be interested in hearing what people have done with listening and any other ideas they might have for working with a tutor.

If you're going to focus on conversation, I highly recommend you master the patterns in JSPEC. http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Sentence-...1568364202

After JSPEC - not sure about Tae Kim, as I never really used it. My go-tos have been Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar, and the Kanzen Master JLPT grammar books.

Have you asked your tutor? She likely has some books on hand that would prove useful. My tutors on italki have been using various JLPT study books with me, for instance, and sharing out the pages at each lesson as PDF scans.

Thanks for the recommendations. JSPEC looks quite good; I'll see if I can get a hold of a copy of it here in Korea. (It can often be difficult to get a hold of these types of books in English, especially at a reasonable price.) My tutor seems to be out of ideas in regard to books since she was asking me for ideas. Anyway, if I can't find JSPEC or one of the other books you mention online, I'll just head down to the bookstore to see what they have in Korean. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Genki is a good book for classroom type instruction of grammar/vocab/kanji. There might be better ones out there, but I found it reltatively enjoyable / useful for a textbook, and the lessons are a good size: enough to give you info. but not so much that you feel overloaded

Thanks, I'll see if I can find a preview of it online a little later today. I stopped by the bookstore last Friday and was pretty disappointed with the quality of the Japanese textbooks, etc., they had available.

Turtor is not essential, IMO. Learn by ourself is enough. Something that I don't know, can go to the website in which I can ask question, and answers come quickly.

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weatherman Wrote:Thanks, I'll see if I can find a preview of it online a little later today. I stopped by the bookstore last Friday and was pretty disappointed with the quality of the Japanese textbooks, etc., they had available.

If it's anything like in the major bookstore near me I wouldn't be surprised -- the internet is your bookstore!

It shouldn't be hard to preview Genki or Minna no Nihongo online. Both have a second book at a higher level, which may be of use if you have already covered most of Genki/Minna 1.

I can also recommend JSPfEC There's a deck on ankiweb if that's your sort of thing.

Yeah, I ended up ordering Genki I via the internet and am hoping for it to arrive sometime next week.

I added JSPEC to my Amazon wishlist for later as well. Thanks for the tip on the Anki deck, by the way--I'll try to remember there's one available when I start using JSPEC.

In response to fxlle's post, I agree that tutoring isn't that helpful for someone at my level. However, it's something that kind of just fell into my lap, and I'd feel bad about backing out now. And who knows, I might get more out of it once we start using a decent textbook (the one we're using now is just...brutal...).

Exactly, let nature take its course.