Cathy Fink on beginning guitar, 2000

If you really want to learn stuff, get together with someone who just learned what you want to learn. They are not so far advanced that it's below them to show you, and usually they are so excited that they just learned something that they love the idea that somebody else wants to find out what it is....

It really works, and we see it happening at the [summer music] camps all the time. Sometimes we’ll specifically pair up one of our beginners with one of our intermediate players, so they can learn a little bit from each other. The intermediate players learns something just from the process of slowing down what they just learned how to play, and then the beginner has somebody just a little bit ahead of them to give them some encouragement.

From the Beginning Guitarist's Handbook.

For more on Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer's CDs and instructional books/videos, for kids and adults, see their home page.