How Do I Become a German Tutor?

There are several steps involved and various routes available to pursue if you want to become a German tutor. Becoming a successful tutor in any subject area involves considerable academic preparation as well as professional experience and competence. This line of work also involves the ability to relate well with people and, above all, advanced fluency in reading, writing and speaking the German language.

The first and most important step you must take to become a German tutor is to develop fluency in the German language. It is impossible to tutor students in a foreign language if you are not extremely competent with that language. Fluency can be developed naturally if German is your native language. If it is not, then you might take several years of German classes at a university and earn a degree in the language or immerse yourself in the language by living and working in Germany. Once you have developed proficiency in all aspects of the German language, you will be in a position to help others understand the complexities and nuances of the language through tutoring.

It is not a requirement to have a teaching license or experience to become a German tutor, but it can help. Having experience teaching German as a foreign language to students who are going through the struggles and challenges inherent to learning a new language would go far toward helping you to become a successful tutor. Teaching German to students at the secondary or university level involves both working with groups of students and with individual students and helping them learn the fundamentals and advanced concepts of speaking, reading and writing the language. Methods, techniques and educational strategies that you learn through teaching would be easily transferable to your role as a tutor. You would likely even gain experience tutoring students who were having difficulty learning German.

One final but vital step you must take if you want to become a German tutor is to decide how to find and retain students to tutor. You must decide if you want to tutor high school or university students, adults, young children or all of the above. Advertising your services and developing long-term relationships with satisfied clients who could recommend your tutoring expertise to others would play a part in becoming and remaining a German tutor. You might decide to work independently or for a company that provides tutoring. Tutoring also can be done in person or online, so you would have to decide whether to use one or both of these mediums.