How to get the best out of a language tutor to improve your retour

Hi! Welcome to the Complete Interpreter podcast by the Interpreting Coach.

Why 'Complete Interpreter'? Because you're not just a translation machine, you're also a person and a business owner, and I hope to help you take a 360 view of yourself and share some great tried-and-tested strategies to improve your interpreting skills, mindset, use of target language, and marketing.

In this episode, I talk about how conversation classes or 'language enhancement' can help you improve your B language, and the sorts of exercises you could do with your tutor, e.g. :
- preparing a speech in advance, and incorporating 4-5 phrases and one or two useful idioms
- watching a video or listening to a podcast, then giving an oral summary
- chatting about everyday stuff, e.g. an item you saw on the news
- role plays
- describing a picture, going from the more concrete to an abstract discussion
- listening to your tutor giving a rather informal speech, and turning it into a more formal register
gap filling exercises

Here's the link to my blog post (for interpreting students) about working constructively with a tutor.

Let me know what you'd like me to talk about next!
 
Sophie (aka The Interpreting Coach)

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:37 Why conversation classes or tuition are useful
• 12:06 Why get a tutor rather than working by yourself?
• 15:42 Disadvantages of a language tutor
• 27:19 Possible exercises for language enhancement sessions
• 39:05 Where to find a tutor?