Has anyone studied a foreign language with a native speaker? How does it compare to our usual teache…

My daughter studied [Chinese] with [the teacher], and her progress was good, especially for conversational skills. If you need to study theory, grammar, etc., it's better to learn with our educators. My daughter's goal was HSK and conversational fluency, and [the teacher] met all those goals.

We had teachers from America (I studied in Ukraine). Honestly, it was night and day. Two men taught at different times with different accents. When they came, they knew only a few words in Russian. It was a very good experience; we had purely foreign concerts at school, but the school itself had a foreign language focus. Many later went to study in America, those who were aiming for a gold medal from school.

Only pros, no cons.

Great for chatting and getting to know each other, but not helpful for understanding language systems.

I was just wondering about this myself, as my daughter wants to learn the language from scratch. For me, I've decided that a teacher will provide the foundation (grammar in particular) – I found a teacher from a gymnasium who has a higher education and lived in the target language country for 5 years. Then, pronunciation (if needed) and conversational skills will be improved with a native speaker. During my search, I spoke with native speakers, and not all of them are willing to work with teenagers from scratch.

Nadezhda Zuevich What is HSK?

Irina Why

Olga I sent my son to classes for now, the teacher is a native speaker and doesn't speak much Russian, but surprisingly, he's going on his own. I'm afraid to breathe))) and he did his homework himself!

Olga It's intriguing and engaging. Many of us started learning better when we had a native speaker as a teacher in high school. It was really interesting; he didn't really teach, but just talked and showed us how grammar is built visually, so to speak. It was interesting

Irina This is a classic in any learning process, the combination of theory with practice.
Practice is the carrier.
Theory requires someone who can explain it clearly.

Up to a certain level, from my experience, it's difficult and sometimes even ineffective, especially if the teacher doesn't speak Russian—important points easily get missed because they're unclear, slip past unnoticed, or are misunderstood, which is even worse. If the teacher is adapted to your needs, you can start earlier. If you need advanced language skills, conversational fluency, specific accents, complex phrasing, and so on, it's best to learn from a native speaker.

Nadezhda Zuevich qualifying exam

This is a great idea only if you already have a good level of the language. It's better with our teacher in the initial stages.

A native speaker is far better than any regular teacher.

I thought that while living in Russia, my English was good—the teacher at school was very good compared to others. At university, the language course wasn't taught by a teacher but by a professional translator—so again, luck was on my side. She had extensive practical experience and made us speak a lot, not just translate and memorize texts. I even defended my master's thesis partially in English.

But then I met native speakers and realized how mistaken I had been.

In short, you need a native speaker and a well-structured grammar guide for support and better understanding.

Nadezhda Zuevich 🤗