How much would you pay for German lessons?

Question

I just checked around yahoo answers and saw an interesting question. Somebody offers german clases over the internet. But I don´t know what would be a realistic payment for the teacher? First I want to make counts and then I will write to this guy, you know, investigate about this kind of srevices and so on before contacting him. So, how much would you like to pay for one hour?

Answer 1

here in greece, we pay at an institute for about 4hours/week for 8 months, in general 1000 euros, a bit less than 1000 usa$.
private lessons are quite more expensive, a logical price is about 20 usa$ per hour.

Answer 2

These days you can learn how to speak German over the internet. Check out this online course, it's voted as the best German online course of all time: http://www.rocketlanguages.link/german The course is very easy to follow, I was able to learn German in just 3 months.

I live in New York City, I wanted to go to a German language teacher but that would have cost me over $800 per month. Good thing with this internet, $800 it's a lot of money for me.

Answer 3

It depends on a lot of stuff that you haven't mentioned.

First of all, you said that the classes are over the Internet. Does that mean you simply read things that this person has written? I wouldn't pay anything for that kind of class, because you can read in German on your own for free. If the person is talking to you over webcam, or chatting, or something, it depends.

Secondly, it depends on the person's qualifications and methodology. Does this person have a college degree in language teaching? Is is a bachelor's or a master's degree? How much experience does the person have? What is this person's methodology and so forth? There is a lot of missing information here.

Here's my two cents: You want a teacher who has a Master's degree and has dedicated him/herself to teaching German as a career. Many people who speak German think they know how to teach it, but teaching language isn't just about knowing how to use that language. You not only have to be a good teacher, but also know about current language teaching methods and practice. Your best bet is to find a person at a community college; they usually have a combination of training and experience. A university would be a second choice. A person with a Master's degree but not at a college or university would be your third choice. Stay away from people who don't have training specifically about how to be a language teacher. It's different from other kinds of teaching, and you can do better.

If I were working with a person with a Master's degree and teaching experience in person, I think it would be worth somewhere around $15 an hour. Internet would be less, of course, since it's not like in person.

Answer 4

Hmmm... Well, I honestly wouldn't pay much personally because I have other options available to me. For example, if you are enrolled at a university, like me, you can audit classes for free. You just pay for the textbook. Other than that, it would depend on how intense the lessons are going to be. You'd obviously pay more for a more serious lesson. If he's got credentials, definitely be willing to pay more. If it's just a German speaker without any training in teaching who's just offering to casually help you out with the language, I'd pay very little or nothing at all. I'd possibly offer to help him with a language that I speak in return for lessons. There are also many available resources online to help you learn German. Plus, you can buy audio books to teach you for as low as $20. So, unless this guy is offering you some serious lessons, I wouldn't pay very much. I wish I could be more specific, but I guess I'd say my reserve price would be about maybe $30/hour from a credentialed teacher (but maybe up to about $50), and nothing for someone who's just a speaker of the language. If it were a harder language, or one that speakers are hard to come by (like Basque or something), I'd be willing to go higher.