To teach is to learn twice

"To teach is to learn twice" is a saying that i frequently hear from friends who are used to giving private tutorial. It is true because before we teach the other people, we have to prepare the material. Being a teacher or tutor means we have to know more about the material that we are going to teach. Thus, when we prepare the material  , we are actually learning for the second time.

Several days ago i got an offer from my friend to give her private English tutorial because she's going to Thailand next Month for student exchange. This is not my first tutorial. I've ever been a tutor both for class and private before. She said that she wanted to improve her writing skills. Honestly, i've never taught english specifically for writing  because my friend says that writing is a hard phase in English learning since it has a lot of rules apply. But i guess i can still handle it because my friend who offered me the job said that i just have to teach her non advance material so she can speak english for daily use and make proper writing.

First thing first i have to know the student's proficiency level. If she has no problem with basic grammar then i can directly continue to writing session. After having conversation with her, i can see that she still needs a lot of improvement in basic grammar. I mean, she does a lot of common fallacies either when she speaks or writes. To fix her basic grammar is my first lesson plan. On the first day, i gave her all basic grammar such as tenses and so forth. She wrote all i said and paid attention to me but when i gave her an exercise, she still did a common mistakes. So i thought that for the next day i will still give her grammar material. How can she make a good writing if her grammar is messy anyway. I know that my grammar is not that perfect either, but at least i can handle common mistakes.

On the next day, she seemed don't really want to learn about grammar. She said "i know this Jar" but when i tested her, she still did the mistakes. In the end of the session, she told me "Jar, i will go to Thailand. So i need something advance. not basic". Okay, i tried to figure out what my respond would be and i said "Yeah, but how can we move to the advance material if you haven't mastered the basic things ? Advance english is when someone can use english independently without doing basic mistakes. But you still need to fix the basic things." 


She whined "i want to speak like you Jar"

"and it takes me years to be able to speak like this, not four days" , i said.

She finally gave up to me and i asked her to do some exercise. I promised her if on the next meeting she has mastered all materials that i gave to her then we can continue to the higher level and start to be more specific in writing.

Thus, now i'm preparing for the material. I'm doing research about writing skills material and before i teach her tomorrow i should be able to master these materials. That explains " To teach is to learn twice".