OK, I am clueless about this, so please break it down into words of one syllable etc! 
When I was living in London, I had an amazing hairdresser. When she cut my hair, she sort of combed it one way and then cut it, then combed it another way and cut again, and then another way. I don't really understand what she was doing - it went beyond putting in layers - but I loved the end result. It took quite a while to do the cutting this way, maybe 20 minutes? She really took time over it.
Now I live elsewhere and my hairdresser literally takes a pair of scissors and cuts along the bottom of my hair. Then she might add layers in the front, but the whole cut takes less than 5 minutes, and the rest of the time is spent blow-drying it. The end result is nowhere near as good, especially after a wash.
There must be a difference in the way that these two people have been taught? I would like to have my hair done in the first way again, but I can only find people where I live now that do the second? I don't even know what to ask for! Please help!