You found the right teacher and scheduled your lesson, now it’s time to get ready for your lesson. The task may seem straightforward, but paying attention to some small details can increase the success of your lesson and how much you get out of it.
Start with the obvious, your lesson area. Find a private place where there aren’t any distractions. You don’t have to create any special area, just look to be in an environment where neither you nor your teacher will be distracted by the life around you. You should avoid the idea of taking a class in a public area. The background noise and visual distractions are real detractors from what might otherwise be a successful class. Making the teacher work through distractions in your surroundings is unfair to the process. Try to situate yourself with a wall to your back so you have a consistent uninterrupted and non-distracting background.
Use a high quality headset with a microphone whenever possible. Cheap earphones, or the speakers built in to your computer or cell phone can make it hard for you to hear the language nuances of your teacher, and using your computer’s microphone, or another substandard microphone will make it difficult for the teacher to hear you. Test your headset and microphone in advance by making a test call on Skype, or whatever video calling platform you will be using. Open an Excel spreadsheet, or some other electronic manner of taking notes during your session.
Prepare yourself mentally. This may sound a bit esoteric, but the more prepared you are, the less likely it is that you will freeze up or get frustrated during the session, and the more you will get out of your time with the teacher. Take a few deep breaths, Relax as much as possible, and accept the fact that you are about to make a bunch of mistakes. Learning to speak another language is all about making mistakes, lots of mistakes. The more comfortable you are with that reality, the easier it will be to process those mistakes and learn how to speak your new language. Keep in mind that you are paying for this, and the outcome is whatever you want it to be. You aren’t being graded for this class time, so it doesn’t matter how “well” you do.
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