How to get the most benefit from tutors/language exchange?

[onebir]

What strategies have people used to get the most benefit from 'tuition'/language exchange? What materials/activities have people found useful for this?

I guess this also depends on whether you're in or out of china...

My own experience (mainly in London) is that there are quite a few chinese people in restaurants etc here who're quite happy to have an english speaking friend they can communicate with in chinese. They chat with me in chinese, and I sometimes help them out with bureaucracy etc.

But some kind of opportunity to speak chinese here would have been really useful before I got (somewhat) fluent...

[mlomker]

Well, I tried language exchange but didn't want to spend my limited time teaching English. I do chat with a couple people in China over Skype and mostly I have them help me check my homework for my weekend Chinese class.

I have hired a Chinese graduate student to tutor me. What I've found works best for me is to create lists of questions that arise during self-study during the week and go through them at the beginning of my session. Afterward we will go through a couple dialogues for pronunciation assistance (my greatest problem at this stage). Aftward he'll have me create sentences using whatever concepts or vocabulary we have covered in the dialogues. I've found that humour makes the process easier. I'll form sentences such as: 'Your bathroom is not very clean.'

Everyone's needs are going to be different, though. I've only been studying for 5 months and am still covering the basics.