During my time on italki it has become quite evident that, when choosing a tutor or teacher, students tend to favor the opposite sex. Most of my students are men, most of their tutors are women, and so on.
I'm not saying this happens every single time, for every single student and tutor. It just seems like the general way things go.
I would love to know if this your case as well (students and tutors!), and why you think this happens.
Cheers
Actually, for some languages like Japanese, where female and male speech is quite different, it is better to choose a teacher from the same gender.
Hmm... interesting! Me, personally, I have students of both gender. But as a student, depending on the language, I will have some preferences and I will tell you why and maybe that's their reason as well.
When I am a beginner or not confident yet in my target language I prefer women teachers because they tend to have softer and clearer voices and there's this stereotype that women will be more patient. So when I was starting to learn Russian, I tried some male teachers and it was terrible, their strong male voice would make the words not clear to my ears so that's why I went for female teachers. But now that I'm comfortable with Russian, I just look for a teacher with great teaching skills, not paying attention to the gender.
Also, many students when they want have more informal or a relaxing conversation class they tend to go to for the same-sex teachers because some of them like to talk about things that it's easier for both to relate to.
I have male students that talk about their experience in dating women and probably they would not feel comfortable talking about this topic with a female teacher.. but that's what I have experienced so far!
