Life In 19x19

I'm wondering if any of you have taken lessons and gotten any forms of homework assignments from your teacher.

This topic has a lot to do with general study practice but depending on a teacher, it could be more or less structured. By myself I tend to study theory, solve problems and watch Dan-level games (I'm about 4k). I play when I can isolate good 1-2 hours of peace and quiet.

I know it also depends on what your lessons compose of. I am a big fan of playing even games with my teacher and doing a quick review afterwords.

Some ideas I have for what teachers could do for homework:

* go through a particular joseki and try to explain motivation behind every move
* similar analysis could be applied for opening patterns although this is a bit harder for kyu players
* solve particular set of problems (life & death, tesujis, openings, whatever)
* play a very slow game and bring it to the next lesson with questions
* try to review somebody else's game (maybe one where the two players are 1-2 stones stronger)

What has been your experience and how has it worked out for you?

My format has been generally (having reduced to 90 minute lessons):

1) Review a game played by the student, including focusing on 2 or 3 mistakes that are either big or consistently made.
2) Play a game with student, then review that the same way.
3) Write up both in detail, with comments on all variations.

I've had a very similar thought recently, and am changing 3 (which normally takes as long as the lesson) to be a short write up of the key important points with the variations left in "as is", and setting additional homework.

I have a very hard to find collection of 30 tsumego, all Black to move, which I set without discussing what Black's aiming for, other than "to get the best result". I try to have two of these on the go per student at any one time, and often do additional questions if they get them right, with poor first moves and "White to punish".

I'm also intending on doing a few new problems for homework - also, 2 on the go at any one time, as follows:

a) Whole board assessments, normally mid opening or just out of the opening - task is to assess the groups, interesting points, and priorities for whoever it is to play next.
b) Actual tactical situations, such as a group left weak, with the task of finding a good direction of play and actual sequence of moves to take advantage of the position.

I'll let you know how they seem to go

topazg wrote: 3) Write up both in detail, with comments on all variations.
I've had a very similar thought recently, and am changing 3 (which normally takes as long as the lesson)

I agree. For me, trying to take any notes during a lesson proves to be a waste of time (for both me and my teacher) and I don't even note down enough information anyway.

Using just keyboard to communicate any points and questions is very slow and ineffective. On many occasions my teachers would miss my questions and just plow through whatever they wanted to talk about.

Hence I started using a desktop and audio recording software instead. After the lesson is over I transcribe everything into the SGFs which also helps me memorize the lesson better. So I highly recommend this method.

On Mac I used software called "screenium" (http://www.syniumsoftware.com/screenium/) to record both the audio and video streams. It costs $29. For audio-communication I use Skype but I guess you can use KGS voice-chat as well. For PC there should be some free software out there.

BTW: what I found is that the final video files are not actually that big (especially if you optimize on size and encoding quality). They can be shared easily if needed. Go board view compresses well (especially if you use simple 2D KGS board/stones style). Majority of the file size is taken up by the audio-stream (so aim to optimize on quality-vs-size there).

Thank you for your thoughts!

pete0877 wrote:I'm wondering if any of you have taken lessons and gotten any forms of homework assignments from your teacher.

For her group class, Guo Juan formally assigns 20 tsumego each week. Informally, we're supposed to be doing at least 10 problems per day, but those 20 are the ones that she quizzes us on.