CadentiaGuide · For learners with a tutor
One lesson a week. Make the other six days count.
A good tutor is the best thing you can have for a language. But an hour a week is not much speaking, and most of the week goes quiet. The learners who get the most from their tutor arrive having spoken every day, with their mistakes already collected.
Free speaking check first, no account needed. Invite your tutor once you have a plan.
The arithmetic
Why one hour a week stalls, and why it is still worth it
In a one-hour lesson you might speak for twenty or thirty minutes. Spread over a week, that is a few minutes a day, and speaking is a skill that fades between uses. So learners often spend the first part of each lesson getting back to where they were last week.
Meanwhile your tutor has to find your mistakes from scratch every lesson, by listening for them live. They will catch some, remember a few, and the rest disappear. That is not a failing of the tutor; it is the limit of one hour.
Fix the six days in between and the hour gets much better: you arrive warmed up, and the time goes on the patterns that keep coming back instead of finding them.
The loop
How practice between lessons works with Cadentia
Speak most days
A few minutes with Cadi, about your life or the topic from your last lesson.
Mistakes are collected
Each fix is saved with what you said, the better version and the rule, and comes back for review.
Your tutor sees them
Invite your tutor and we will set them up to see your mistakes. It is free for them.
The lesson goes deeper
Your tutor spends the hour on the patterns that keep coming back, and can give you practice for the week ahead.
Who does what
Your tutor and Cadi do different jobs
Your tutor
- Knows you, your goals and why you are learning
- Explains the hard things in a way that clicks for you
- Decides what to work on next
- Is the real conversation you are working towards
Cadi, between lessons
- Is there every day, at any hour, for as long as you want
- Gives you volume: many more minutes of speaking
- Writes down every mistake so nothing is lost
- Brings the fixes back until they stick
Cadentia does not replace your tutor. One tutor told us the most useful part was simply seeing what their learner had practised during the week.
Before each lesson
What to bring to your lesson
Bring the three mistakes that came up most this week, not every mistake. A tutor can do a lot with a pattern (you keep using the wrong past tense when you tell stories) and very little with a list of forty unrelated slips.
Bring one thing you tried to say and could not. The gaps where you switched to English are often more useful than the errors, because they show what you want to talk about and do not have the words for yet.
And bring a question. Learners who arrive with “why do I keep saying this?” get a better lesson than learners who arrive with “what should we do today?”.
If you are a tutor
What this gives a tutor
A week of evidence
See what your learner said between lessons and what they got wrong, instead of guessing from one hour.
Better-prepared learners
They arrive having spoken, so less of the lesson goes on warming up.
Practice you can point to
Suggest what to practise next, and see whether it happened before the next lesson.
Questions
Is one lesson a week enough to learn to speak a language?
It is enough to make steady progress if you also speak between lessons. On its own, one hour a week usually means slow progress, because speaking fades between uses.
Does my tutor have to use Cadentia?
No. You can practise on your own and bring your list of mistakes to the lesson. If you invite your tutor, we will set them up to see your mistakes, free for them.
Will this replace my tutor?
No, and it is not meant to. It covers the days in between, so your time with your tutor goes further.
What should I practise between lessons?
Whatever you covered in the last lesson, plus your own life: your week, your plans, your opinions. Speaking about real things brings out the mistakes worth fixing.
I am a tutor or run a tutoring agency. Can we work with you?
Yes. Write to hello@cadentialearning.com and tell us about your learners.