Hi @JimLeu_italki, Do you have any recommendations for Japanese tutors?
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Your Japanese is probably at a much higher level than mine. I’ve only been learning for a year now. I’ll PM you
It depended of what I wanted to do with my languages. If I wanted to learn a language, I booked teachers. If I wanted speaking practice and corrections, I booked a tutor.
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I’d like to know more about the ethics around changing tutors. There are 4 main aspects I’m interested in:
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We don’t always know how effective the session will turn out to be, and we shouldn’t really judge the tutor from our first impression. How soon will you realize it’s time to change the tutor and what exactly would you expect from the tutor during the first session?
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Who decides on the agenda and how do you agree what the session will be about? As beginners we don’t always know what we need to start with.
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Many Italki tutors are not professional teachers, some are just native speakers with or without teaching experience. Would you recommend trying out italki tutors to someone who has friends among native speakers and doesn’t really need a paid “video chat”?
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Do you get the feedback from abandoned tutors asking what went wrong and why you stopped booking them? How do you announce the departure if at all? Is it really an issue or it’s pretty common to have one time students at italki?
Thanks!
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To answer your questions:
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I would always book a trial lesson and afterwards a couple of single lessons to really be able to see if the teacher and I match. Only when I’m certain of this, I will book a package eventually. For me the first trial lesson is just to get to know each other, get to know the program of the teacher and tell them my goals etc.
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I always decide this together with the teacher. Especially with languages I already know to some degree we usually talk about what I want to work on in the first (trial) lesson.
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That depends on what you want. For example I’m studying French and Arabic on italki right now. For each language I have a professional teacher for normal lessons and a community tutor for conversation practice. While I do have friends who speak those languages, we haven’t got nearly enough time to meet often enough for it to count as real conversation practice.
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Well, I never abandoned a tutor because we didn’t match or anything like that. I did do a couple of on time lessons now during the language challenge, but I told each teacher and tutor in advance that I booked this lesson only because of the language challenge and that it would most likely be a one time lesson as I wanted to practice speaking with as many different persons as possible during this time. They all accepted my lesson requests and had no problem with this being a one time lesson.
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Hi, I had a lot of Italki lessons this year. I made a video about how to get the most out of your Italki teacher. I think Italki is good but you have to choose the right teacher for you and let them know exactly what you want. Some teachers are not qualified and are just there for conversation. Others are not very experienced and try to teach you the traditional way like in the school classroom.
Best wishes, and I’d be interested to find out how you get on.
Andy
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@Andy That’s great that you made a video of your experiences! Would you be interested in sharing your video with the rest of our Community?
If so, PM me and I can embed your video in a article that you can write around the video. In return, italki can help promote your video to our Community and even link to your YouTube channel. It would be similar to what Melissa Fallin did - she recorded a great YouTube italki FAQ so she wrote some content around her original YouTube video (summarizing her video)
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There was a similar discussion about etiquette for leaving teachers on Reddit:
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Hi Jim,
Yes, that would be great. I’ll write something up and get back to you.
Many thanks,
Andy
To find a teacher you really like and whom you’ll stick with, you will likely have to go through several trial lessons. Even then, I’ve taken lessons with people who I liked for the first few lessons, but then I hit a wall and felt like I did not get anything from them anymore. But that could have been me.
As an intermediate in Italian, I found someone I connected well with. Somehow my weekly lessons evolved into watching the Netflix series “Baby”. Each week I would watch an episode, and I focused on several things. 1) I wrote down vocabulary and expressions which I found unusual, useful, couldn’t find in the dictionary, or if they were common expressions 2) On a shared Google doc, I wrote a summary of what the episode was about (4-5 paragraphs) using many of those expressions, and stretching above my level 3) During the lesson, I would read it to her, and then she went over it making corrections on grammar, and correcting my awkward sentence structure 4) The following week, I did the same, but incorporated the corrections from the week before. After 3 months of this, I made a lot of progress. The side effect was that I talked like a teenager.
Unfortunately, she had raised her prices so much I could not afford them anymore. Now that I’m learning Spanish, I’m incorporating similar tactics with my current teacher. I’m watching Elite and Puerta 7, although I’m not writing down my summaries. Plus, she gives me material to look at as well.
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That’s so cool. I love hearing about the different and unusual ways that students come up with to learn with their teachers. I’ve watched TV shows too but never thought of making it a learning exercise. TV Show language learning sounds like a lot of fun.
P.S. Found this part especially funny:
“The side effect was that I talked like a teenager.”
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It’s totally true. If you watch cooking shows, sports, police crime dramas, medical or law dramas, you definitely hear more vocabulary of that genre. In this case, they are Telenovelas for a young adult audience, so you hear more slang which older adults don’t use. Some of the expressions are not on Google, so I have to use the ‘urban dictionary’ of that country to find out what they mean.
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Your video and article are up!
Thanks for the quick turnaround Andy. Actually if there is anyone here in the Polyglot Conference who has created italki Videos about learning or teaching… I’m more than happy to put up your content in our Community to test it out.
One of the things that I want to do with the italki Community is have the content actually be written by our actual italki Teachers and Students.
My biggest concerns are that (1) they are real and (2) they can help other italki users / language learners learn a language.
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Does anyone have any recommendations for Mexican Spanish teachers on iTalki? I am thinking of starting Spanish lessons but there are just too many teachers out there and I have only 1 more trial class left so I’m thinking of getting recommendations here. Thank you 
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I have been using italki for over a year now and tried 40+ teachers. I take between 2-5 one-hour classes a week in general. I rarely ever look at grammar rules or “study” and I’ve been able to go from A2 to B2 in Spanish mostly through italki and self “study” (watching movies, reading, podcasts, etc). I only take conversation classes for the most part, with community tutors. But sometimes I book a more expensive lesson with a professional to ask about some nagging grammar questions. It’s been great!
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I’ve been using italki for five years (on and off) and I love it! But you really have to find teachers who are good. I had one French teacher who kept eating during our class - that’s a no-go! Thought it’s only a one-time thing but she actually did it in all 5 lessons (booked a package). I think it’s clear that I’ll not take any more lessons with her 
But I’m really happy with my other teachers. When I start with a new language, I usually try out several teachers until I find 1 or 2 to stick with. I’ve made great progress in my languages. Sure, sometimes I ask myself if all the money is well spent as I also take grammar and vocabulary classes (which are not really needed as I could have learned all of this with books … but you know, it’s sometimes just more convenient to tell the teacher what you want and have them make the work).
I’m extremely happy to have found italki. It’s a gem!
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