How to Tutor Spanish

Spanish flag

If you are fluent in Spanish, you should consider becoming a tutor. Both high school and college offer Spanish courses, and there are always going to be some students in those classes that will need some extra help. You can charge a fee and tutor them in Spanish. This is a great way for you to earn a few extra dollars toward your own courses or toward some of your bills.

Things You'll Need

• Calendar
• Textbook
• Notebook
• Pencil
• Notecards
• Meeting place

Instructions

1. Take a look at your calendar and pick out the hours that you are willing to work. Ten to 20 hours a week is a good amount of time to set aside for your tutoring career. This is the average amount of hours for a part-time job. Consider times when your clients will be available to be tutored. If they are in school until 3 p.m., then it would not be realistic for you to open up your tutoring from 12 to 2 p.m. Consider tutoring on Saturday mornings or afternoons or Sunday after church.

2. Create some flyers that you can hand out to Spanish teachers. These Spanish teachers can hand out the flyers to the students they feel can benefit from your service. They will help you get clients. Some colleges will allow you to post your tutoring services up on the bulletin boards throughout the school. Make sure you get permission first.

3. Once you have a client, begin tutoring them by showing them how to have good study habits. Help them know what to highlight in their textbooks and give them some study techniques. One great study technique for Spanish is flash cards. It is the same concept that the students used back in grade school to learn their spelling words. Write the Spanish word on one side with the English equivalent on the other. Students can quiz themselves when they have these handy flash cards. Encourage the students to buy index cards for this purpose.

4. Get information from the student. Each student will have a different area of weakness. Some may not understand verbs and their tenses, and others may just be have trouble with putting together common phrases. Discover your client's weakness and prepare extra materials to remedy it.

5. Make up your own materials for tutoring, or print out some online. There are so many great resources available online for teachers and tutors, it would be silly not to take advantage of them. If you don't have a computer or a printer, use the computer lab on campus or the computers at the library. One way to get some great materials to use with your clients is to type "Spanish printables" in to your favorite search engine. There is also a link to materials for Spanish tutors in the Resources section below.

6. Make sure the student is progressing and that his grades are improving. If he is not, you may want to refer him to another tutor. Sometimes a client may require a different teaching strategy. There is nothing wrong with that, but you would be wrong to continue taking their money if he is not getting any positive results. If he is improving, you will need to do an evaluation to see if he still needs to learn some things from you or if he is ready to move on and become more independent.

Tips & Warnings

• Set your fee ahead of time. Tutors usually get between $10 to $20 per hour.

• Offer every fourth or fifth lesson free. This is a great way to get customers and to keep them for several sessions.

Resources

• Materials for Tutors