Job Discussion Forums

[daodejing]

I'm new at the private tutoring thing so I didn't really know what I was doing when I got into it. I've put up some advertisements and had people call me. I have one gig trying to get a 14-year-old boy to improve his oral English once a week (or less)--trying to get him to say a sentence in English is like pulling teeth btw. There's no book or preparation to do, just a free talk. Anyway, his mother sits there in the room a few feet away from us while we're talking, and maybe twice in the hour we include her in the conversation.

The first time I went over there I thought I was just having a meeting with the 2 of them to see if I got along with the kid, if he liked me, if it would work out, etc. but it turned into an hour lesson which the mother then paid me for. Now she's there everytime.

1) Has anyone else experienced this? Would the mother sitting in on the lessons violate one of your rules that you have for private lessons?

2) Also, any advice on how to get the kid to talk would be appreciated, too, although Dave's has a whole list of ideas I could try.

3) Do you normally tutor at the student's house, your house, or a neutral place? What are the advantages of one over the other? Travel time is certainly a concern, but I'm advertising with my neighbors so it won't be a big deal. At another gig I have teaching 4 adults, one of them picks me up in his car and we have class in a posh apartment, which is nice.

4) How much would your fee go up for 2, 3, 4, or 5 people? I'm in Shanghai and I think most people here charge 200-300 per hour, but I could see charging 150 for one person with no preparation work.

5) Do you tell other people how much you charge? By "other people" I mean old people that are not interested in learning English but are just being nosy. I was talking to a security guard and a couple other people outside my building about how I was doing private lessons and they asked me how much I would charge, and I said 200 per hour. The security guard got really p**sed off, probably because it takes him close to a week to earn that money, and I tried to use my fledgling Chinese to say that China is now a market economy. Anyway, the guy now refuses to say hello to me or anything. If I lied and said I charged less money, then someone would find out and say "yeah, but you told those people this amount of money so I want lessons for that much".

Thanks in advance for any comments related to my questions above or any other guidelines for private lessons that I haven't thought of.