  With the rise of the gig economy, online language tutoring platforms are
becoming increasingly popular. They provide temporary and flexible jobs for
native speakers as tutors and allow language learners to have one-on-one
speaking practices on demand. However, the lack of stable relationships hinders
tutors and learners from building long-term trust. "Distributed tutorship" --
temporally discontinuous learning experience with different tutors -- has been
underexplored yet has many implications for modern learning platforms. In this
paper, we analyzed tutorship sequences of 15,959 learners and found that around
40% of learners change to new tutors every session; 44% learners change to new
tutors while reverting to previous tutors sometimes; only 16% learners change
to new tutors and then fix on one tutor. We also found suggestive evidence that
higher distributedness -- higher diversity and lower continuity in tutorship --
is correlated to slower improvements in speaking performance scores with a
similar number of sessions. We further surveyed 519 and interviewed 40 learners
and found that more learners preferred fixed tutorship while some do not have
it due to various reasons. Finally, we conducted semi-structured interviews
with three tutors and one product manager to discuss the implications for
improving the continuity in learning under distributed tutorship.
