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I got this new student not long ago and she was very happy and booked a package right away. I warned her that I would not be teaching for 12 days because of health issues (without developing much, I'm on some medicine that make me feel quite awful physically and I explained to her that I had set my schedule as unavailable for those 12 days because I didn't want people to book classes only for me to have to cancel later or teach in a horrible condition). My schedule is available right after those 12 days (and I told her the specific date too), 6 days a week

It hasn't even been a week and she sent me a long message today saying that she wanted to terminate the package because she'd like to study every day and that having to wait so long to book my classes was just not her style or what she was looking for. She said she planned to go ahead and try to find another tutor

I've never had any... extra thoughts when anyone requested to terminate her package. Everyone has their own situation, and she might've changed her mind too. Whether this is the actual reason or not, it's just made me feel so down today. It kinda made me feel like I'm not allowed to take a break, not even when I've explained to all of my students that this was happening (to those who were taking lessons with me since before, I let them know quite early in advance) and it's for health reasons too. It's not like I can help it

Sorry for the rant, I guess I'm just sad. Again, I don't mind her terminating the package, but I'm kinda upset at the reasoning behind it, as if I went missing every other week or had my calendar permanently unavailable. I'll be back to teaching normally in less than a week :/

Edit: The issue isn't them wanting to find someone else, it's the way they worded it (which I cannot and wouldn't show on here) as if I somehow had been disappointing them by suddenly disappearing for weeks every time. It's the first time I take a break because of health

Had my first lesson with a new teacher, a young British guy. Everything was OK until we slipped into discussing the political situation.

And now I don't even know whether I can take English lessons from somebody with such beliefs. Surely, I consider him to be in the wrong and myself to be in the right.

Question to the Redditors: will you explain your reasons for why you wouldn't go with the teacher, or is it better to just do the good old ghosting?

I have lost so much money through conversion, USD->EUR, withdrawal fees etc that I am not sure what the best way is to withdraw. The money is in USD but all my accounts are in EUR.

Is there a way I can get a USD account somewhere without living/working there or how are you handling it without losing even more money?

Appreciate your help!

I just got pre-approved on italki Saturday and now my profile is live, so I wanted to speak about the process because I'm the type to look everywhere when I'm doing it myself, so maybe it can help others.

So, the first part that everybody probably knows is to look up if the language you want to teach is open for applications. They update that list every Monday. I really suggest looking on Monday because they can close at any moment. In my case, it was open on Monday and closed by Wednesday. I was lucky because I actually checked on a Tuesday.

The process

I would not say it is an especially long process; it is a form to fill with your education, a description of yourself, and the type of tutoring you would like to offer. The part that I would account for in terms of time-consuming is the video. They ask for a 1-min video; it is basically the video they show on your profile. 

Note: You have to speak in your video in all the languages you want to teach. I spoke a bit of Spanish, not because I want to teach it, but just so Spanish speaking student know they can ask me anything if they need.

Once you have submitted your application

They say it can take up to 10 working days to hear something, and you don't receive a confirmation email. In my case, I applied on August 5th and got pre-approved on August 15th, so 7–8 working days later, but it was a Saturday, so that part surprised me.

Once you're pre-approved

Once you're pre-approved, they will ask you to confirm your identity and to pass a quiz.

About that quiz... You have to have 70% to pass, but thankfully you can try many times because some parts of the information are not updated. It is mostly to make sure you understand payment, fees, professional posture, etc.

Then you set up your prices and descriptions, including the trial lesson. Note that you can only have one type of session for the trial. Ex: You can't have a 30-min trial + a 45-min trial lesson; it's either or.

Then, you're approved!

It can take a moment for your profile to appear. They say your profile will have the mention "new" for the first 21 days.

What I think helped me

• I don't know if my language is popular, but I banked on my region: I am French Canadian. So maybe they were looking for more people from Canada, with this accent.
• I edited the video to make it a little more interesting. I used a microphone and acceptable lighting. I have read that sometimes they refuse people if their mic quality is not good, because it tells them that you will have that type of quality during lessons.
• I put captions, in my language and in Spanish, on my video.
• I take classes on italki: I'm learning Portuguese and I take classes. It is possible they give "points" for that (if they have a chart, I don't know, lol), because you can transfer the money from a student to a teacher (I mean by booking a class).

What I would've done differently (or will change)

• My classes are not for beginners from 0, but even then, I think I may be speaking too fast in my video. It is logical that I will speak slower with students, but it might discourage some. I know in my case, I chose teachers from the region I was interested in learning the accent from, and they were not necessarily speaking slower.

I have no idea if I can link my profile as I don't want to self-promote, but there you go :-)

As my profile has only been live since yesterday, I have no students lol, so I can update in 21 days maybe, after the "new" mention is over.

I'm available for any questions.

I'm kind of confused. I have two iTalki informal (= not professional) tutors for a language since more than five weeks, and took lessons with both tutors basically every day until now (since it's summer break and I have time before college starts again). I kind of assumed until now that they knew I had another tutor. I do conversation practive the whole time since it's what I need.

Well today I joked with one tutor that the conversation topics with her and the other tutors are completely different.

She was completely surprised and immediately asked me how often I take lessons with the other tutor, where she is from, etc. Like she was polite and it wasn't a big deal, but it was obvious she was surprised. Apparently she thought until now that I only take daily lessons with her.

Can't tutors see how often and with who I take lesson? The other tutor leaves a feedback after every lesson, don't those feedbacks appear on a student profile, similarly to how a student review appears on a tutor's profile and is publicly visible?

For tutors that do Preply and othe online platforms as a fulltime job, how do you cover all expenseses? Particularly if you live in a "high cost" country like the US, Canada, UK, Germany, etc.

There is a tutor i have taken a break from because literally every lesson the lesson starts with "how was your weekend" in my target language and ends with "any planes for the weekend.

He is great in the actual lesson but we spend 15 minutes each lesson discussing my weekend despite the fact he knows I work literally every single weekend !!

I\nWill take a class with him next week.And this time , I was on vacation african , so I have something else to say besides , I worked..

Anyone else here that question?? But of course , then also asking my plans for this weekend..

Notifying the student within 24 hours

How many times could a reschedule happen before getting kicked off the platform ?

I have been on italki for 11 months. i have two consistent students who am really grateful for. But i want more students because this is like the only thing i'm doing right now. ( I'm a uni student)
I have participated in the community, changed my video several times, my headline and nothing seems to work. I tutor Swahili.
Are there any more tips i can use?

Hey all, curious if you've ever studied & practiced two different languages simultaneously, and how your experience went.

I'm considering using italki for Spanish and French at the same time. I'm intermediate in both at the moment. Not sure if it's a terrible idea & that I'll end up mixing them up or harming my learning journey, or if it would be fine? (Knowing ofc it depends on the person, context, etc.)

Any experiences to share? Thank you!

Today I had another lesson with a teacher for my target language. I’ve been learning for about 2 months and making slow progress. Before the session I felt optimistic about my learning and that I can eventually end up learning the language. However today when I had a lesson everything felt really hard and I couldn’t really answer any of their questions. They explained a word to me in my previous session however I forgot what it has meant since this lesson. They also seemed really annoyed when I kept asking them what it meant. Now I feel less motivated after. Has anyone had this feeling? I have one lesson left in the package however I want to use this with a different teacher, is this possible? Thanks

Hi everyone, so I have a B.A. in Primary Education, a TESOL certification, and over 18 years of teaching experience. I also teach on Preply, where I've completed over 4,000 lessons with more than 50 five-star reviews.

I was wondering: what starting price did you all use in the beginning to attract your first students on Italki? My main focus right now is filling my schedule with students, but I don't want to price myself out of the market. Apologies if this has been asked before!

Would you recommend starting at $15/hour, or should I go higher or lower? Thanks so much!

Hi guys! Community tutor here. A new student booked a trial with me, asked me to reschedule 10 minutes before the lesson starting time. I told him that italki's policy does not allow me to reschedule lessons with less than 24 hours notice. I am now in the lesson and taking screenshots every 5 minutes. My question is, if I state there was a problem and that the student didn't show up, can he leave a review or not? A bad review could really hurt my profile. Also, since he was being rude, at what time am I supposed to block him? Should I wait for the lesson to be refunded?

Edit: I reported the lesson was incomplete and Italki sided with me. I was later able to block the student.
Thank you for your support:)

Edit 2: I always give the students who ask me to reschedule (even last minute) a second change. I know life happens. In this case not only the student showed completely no remorse, no apologies nothing. He was also arrogant and felt entitled to reschedule really last minute ( even after I explained him Italki’s policy) and got angry I couldn’t do it.

I met with a tutor once and she was nice BUT she was a motor boat the whole time 😭

Like no pause, no room for me to share my opinions, thoughts, personal stories, etc. I’m not a timid student as I am very confident, outspoken and excited to utilize my language skills but I couldn’t really interrupt her. I REALLY tried several times.

I sent her a message stating that I didn’t get a chance to talk and suggesting that in our next class could I ask some questions or could you ask me questions so that she could see what I’m lacking at. I didn’t get a reply but of course she looked at it.

The reason (possibly) for blocking me: She saw the message and I guess she got salty and nervous that I was honest with her and that she had a chance of getting a bad review? I don’t sugar coat but I’m also not rude.

Is there a way to leave a review although she blocked me or is it too late?

Does anyone who uses italki use the lesson reviews generated by italki? I never look at them once. It always auto generated after my spanish lessons.

Hi everybody!

So, I am Argentinian and I have been teaching Spanish and English (99% of my lessons have been Spanish ones) since February. I have had moderate success, and these have been my stats in the last 30 days (I also updated my description):

https://preview.redd.it/1avkaz6lt5jh1.png?width=912&format=png&auto=webp&s=2406732ea265bb931ec2d93ced4dca4b2293edcf

The thing is that my video, while correct, has a lot of things that could be improved, especially when taking into account that it used to have lower views compared to other teachers. So, I started considering re-recording it, especially because I have changed my approach to teaching, but I am not sure if this would backfire. Would it do more harm than good?

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone! I’m a non-native English teacher with a few years of online teaching experience, but I’m struggling to attract new students consistently.

For other non-native teachers, what strategies have worked for you? How did you stand out from native speakers and build a steady student base?

I’d especially appreciate tips on profile optimization, niche selection, pricing, and getting more trial lessons.

Thanks! 😊

I have a new student that sent me a message asking if we could reschedule 1 hour before the lesson time. This particular lesson took a decent amount of preparation time.

I'm wondering what other tutors would do in this situation? I don't mind rescheduling, for example through my own calender, however, I don't really like the idea of losing the lesson cost since it did take preparation time and it is past the italki 24 policy for cancelling the lesson.

Hello, i dont normally write reviews, but i want to tell you about the american tutor i had when trying to learn english.

Initially i looked at the reviews and was really interested as they were overwhelmingly positive. During the lesson, instead of teaching me he kept complaining about politics and asking me uncomfortable questions. I'm from russia but one half of my family is from ukraine and so i can only wish for end of war. When i tried to explain that to him he interrupted me and asked questions like "Why don't you leave," "Why did you vote for putin" (I was 17 at the time by the way).

At the end of the lesson i felt like i wanted to cry, but i didnt show that and we had 3 more lessons. I told him i wanted to work on my pronunciation but he said that i needed to "work on my mentality" And that i was too stiff, too unfriendly looking, too cold.

I am a shy,introverted person and so this made me feel really insecure and self-conscious. When i told him that i was hurt he laughed and said that he "was just being honest"

I didnt have any more lessons with him but i felt very guilty and that i was the problem. I had to see a therapist to talk about this, but i still very sad when thinking about it

I don't think i can write a review on the italki website since it's been more than 6 months, but i just wanted to share it with you :(