
Calling in the Experts
My calls with professional teachers
Artie Duncanson
7/8/20231 min read

I have done over 6 hours of calls with professional tutors, each who have thousands and thousands of hours of teaching foreign languages under their belts. Even for them, deciding which of my mistakes are worth correcting with climbs, and which should just be noted (like when I misgender a noun by saying "la" instead of "el," for example) is proving difficult. I'm beginning to lean more and more towards STUDENTS being the ones who initiate their lessons instead of Guides, with the Guides being there to simply help the students along in their own language journey, which must be lead by the students themselves. (this would fit well with the use of the word "Guide" instead of a "teacher," who I believe takes on the leadership role in the learning process)
One of the tutors suggested having pre-planned lessons, which bothered me a bit because if Viglo does that, then isn't Viglo just turning itself into every other program? I want Viglo to advance language learning to the next level, while I got the sense that she wanted to bring it back to what she was familiar with.
The other tutor though did something that I liked. When I would do Viglo calls with my girlfriend, we would be waiting and ready to pounce on whatever error I committed that could be turned into a climb. Instead, the tutor let me just chat away for 5 minutes, making notes whenever I made mistakes. Then he would share the list with me and I could review it. Some of the items, individually, didn't warrant a climb. But in the course of 5 minutes, we saw a pattern emerging that we realized should be corrected.



Artie Duncanson - Viglo Cofounder
artie.duncanson@gmail.com
+1.860.574.5143

