How much do you pay your tutor (U.S.)

[新墨西哥人]

I've been looking for a local tutor. My inclination is to use the person who teaches my 3-year-old Chinese. But she charges $50 an hour! I'm not totally against spending this, but it seems pricey to me. I also imagine I could negotiate a little. 

 

I guess I was a bit surprised because my current Skype tutor charges me about $20 an hour (she used to be in Shenzhen, now in NY state, which may be why prices are lower.) I would like start taking in-person lessons though.

 

I have the names of a few other tutors. I'm thinking maybe I should try doing a lesson with a couple, and see who I like best, and just pay whatever it is they charge. 

 

and if you don't mind me asking what do you pay?

 

 

[新墨西哥人]

And now I'm looking at the email I have with other tutors, and most charge $15 an hour! So I should definitely try them out. Maybe the $50 an hour is super amazing but I could do 3 hours vs 1 hour for the same price.

[Lu]

I'm not a tutor and not in the US, but $15 per hour seems very cheap, and $50 a bit pricey but not to the point that it's unreasonable. If I'm not mistaken, a reasonable low wage for, say, a cleaner is about $10. Teaching requires specialist knowledge, it's intensive work, and the teacher needs to prepare, perhaps even an hour of preparation per hour of class. Taken all that into account, something like $40 per hour seems not unreasonable.

I think your plan to try a few teachers out is good. For the expensive teacher, perhaps you can make some kind of arrangement, such as that you get the first tryout class for cheap and you pay her the difference if you decide to go with her (so, say, 20 for the first class, and if she's 50 dollar great, 70 for the second, and then 50, 50, etc). If she's confident she's worth it, this might work for both of you. And of course you can always try negotiating.

Good luck, I hope you find someone with good quality for a reasonable price!

PS I looked into a tutor here in Holland at some point, she asked 20 euros per hour. I think that was without taxes.

[renzhe]

Yeah, 30 Euro is perfectly reasonable for one-on-one tuition in many parts of Europe. Here in Portugal, good music teachers will charge at least that per hour.

It depends on what you expect from a tutor. If you are looking for a student with no teaching experience, who might give you a few tips, talk to you, or explain some things that confuse you, then you can get it quite cheaply. But then you are gambling -- you might get someone who thinks that "Chinese has no grammar", or made up etymologies, or explanations like "Oh, I don't know, we just say it like that" every time you ask a question.

If you want a teacher, somebody with language teaching experience, who understands grammar, understands problem spots, and knows how to explain things to a non-native, it will probably cost more. But if you're a beginner, then it is important to learn from somebody who knows how to teach. I was lucky that my teacher in Germany ran a small informal advanced class with 3 other people, so we split the cost, or it would have been quite expensive. I don't remember the price anymore, but I think it was 15 Euro per person, so 60 per hour, but you always earn more with groups, and she had a really long commute both ways.

I don't think that there's any way to know without trying and seeing whose teaching style you prefer. I'd recommend a better teacher once a week over a bad teacher three times a week. Keep in mind that some people make good teachers even without teaching certificates because they have a good grasp of grammar and a talent for explaining, and some experienced teachers are rubbish and will simply regurgitate from textbooks over and over with each student -- you have to try and see. Just make sure that you use your time with the tutor wisely, and that you follow a structured programme, then make up the difference by studying harder on your own.

[Nathan Mao]

My wife charged $40/hour in West Texas.  Metro areas should be a little more expensive than that.

[SiMaKe]

From a Google search, Omniglot turned up as one place to look for tutors. E.g., a list of tutors in Connecticut showed 5 individuals with prices from $30-60 per hour. You could try this site to get similar information for your area. 

http://www.omniglot.com/hartford_ct_chinese_tutors.htm

[Tamu]

A lot of the prices discussed here seem high to me. If you're looking to meet in your area (USA?) with an experienced tutor, I understand that prices will be higher. But for on-line tutoring, I think it should be much lower.

 

I've met in person with about 20 tutors in Taiwan in the last few months for a total of about 500 hours of private, one-on-one tutoring. In the process of finding and interviewing, I probably ended up talking to at least 50 people in total about tutoring. Some are professional Chinese tutors, some are just native speakers with no experience. I wrote a review here which includes the prices I found for tutors.

 

As two reference points (in US dollars):

• the minimum wage in Taiwan is a bit under $4/hour
• a local university offers private (in-person) Chinese tutoring at $15/hour.

The rate at which independent tutors initially quoted me ranged from $4 to $16 per hour, with most initial quotes from $5-10. The more experienced/professional tutors usually quoted initial fees toward the high end of the range, but always dropped their rate when they realized how many hours I want to study and that I didn't want them to do any preparation outside "class" hours.

The average rate I actually paid tutors over the period worked out to about $5 per hour of actual "class" time.

 

Those are all for in-person tutoring in Taiwan where they come to meet me in a location I choose. I wasn't interested in on-line tutoring, but the professional tutors all mentioned to me that they have done it. They can charge less because they don't have travel time or expenses.

 

Also, fyi, one woman who teaches Chinese professionally at a local university told me she would do private, on-line tutoring at $12/hour if it's not associated with the university, i.e. I pay her directly and not through her uni. I didn't pursue it, but I'd imagine she would have lowered her rate if I actually had been serious about it.

 

When I first started out, I was overseas, so I looked into on-line tutoring a bit. I was quoted rates in the roughly the same range of $5-$15. Italki has many tutors from both China and Taiwan. You can get a decent feel for them: some have videos, some offer free 10-minute "trial lessons". Also, many include contact details (skype, qq, email, etc), so you can just get in touch directly if you don't want to be locked into the italki system. There are a few other sites with tutors; I didn't spend much time on them, but they seemed to have similar ranges.

 

Good luck!