How do I become an English tutor?

What could help me become a good informal tutor of English to Spaniards?

• While helping care for a friend I've been at home a lot, and it has been a real lifeline to the outside world buying informal tutoring in Spanish from the web site www.italki.com . When my friend has carers all set up I will be moving and will have more free time. I'd like to improve my communication skills by doing some language exchanges with Spanish people. How can I best do my part so that my intercambio partners actually progress with their English? After a long period not working I want to learn some Spanish both for pleasure and as a confidence-builder so that I can able to learn other things with more of a vocational element. I will continue buying lessons as my budget permits, but I'd like to have free language exchanges with Spaniards ( I don't want to be practising a mix of Castellano and Latin American Spanish as I would get very confused!). As well as just offering conversation practice I'd like to know a little about teaching English as a second language so that I could offer little tidbits of advice. At the moment as a native British English speaker I could say "That doesn't sound right - we usually say x" but lack the knowledge of grammer concepts to say why that is. I am on disability so this would not be for pay, if it was I would only earn pocket money anyway which would be more trouble than it's worth for the hassle of declaring it. It would just be a way to add value to the language exchanges for the language partners I got on well with. In the past I seemed to have good luck with people studying to teach children, where they have motivation as they need to reach the B1 level as a condition of being awarded their degree. Is anyone here an informal tutor or "conversation coach" who can share books or web resources to help me help them? Thanks

• Answer:

  Whenever I've had questions of why something doesn't sound right, I've usually found an answer that made sense (to me) with a quick google search, and that answer has often been by GrammarGirl (for http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/starting-a-sentence-with-however-right-or-wrong), so take a phone/tablet with you and do a quick search if you can't answer their question. While it might sound as if they wouldn't need your help if they could just google it, you really will be helping. It's the kind of thing that you'll skim a paragraph of the explanation and be able to explain it immediately, whereas it might be more difficult for a non-native speaker to google and more difficult to parse the answer without your help.