r/iTalki

I’m A2 but I want to push myself to speak more so I reached out to a tutor to ask about 30 minute conversational “lessons”. She said A2 is too early for conversational lessons as I need more comprehensible input in order to acquire enough language to actually hold a conversation.

Part of me understands where she is coming from, but the other part of me wants to stumble my way through so I can practice.

Thoughts?

Question for both sides. My tutors have all used Zoom/Meet + a shared Google Doc for notes rather than italki's built-in classroom or note features, and I'm wondering how universal that is.

Students: does your tutor keep notes somewhere, and do you ever actually review them? After 6+ months with a tutor, do you have any real record of what you've learned, or is it scattered?

Tutors: how do you keep track of what each student knows — what vocab you've covered, mistakes they keep repeating? Do you re-read old notes before lessons, keep some system, or mostly work from memory? Has anyone tried italki's built-in tools and stuck with them (or not — why)?

I messaged my tutor today and expressed that I didn’t have the money to book more lessons right now, apologized, and said that they were a great teacher. They responded and said if I’m not interested in improving then they don’t care and that they only take on serious students anyway. I was so embarrassed and shocked to get that reply. We had 16 lessons together and I honestly can say I tried my best each time. Now every time I even read the language my brain gets embarrassed again remembering the interaction and it’s completely turned me off from wanting to any sort of independent study. Has anyone else had a similar experience? It honestly ruined my day lol.

I checked out iTalki after almost 2 years since I had 40 bucks in my iTalki account and wanted to try to learn French (again). I immediately left because of the HORRIBLE new website design. I cannot find basic things like my favourite/saved teachers and it is a chore to navigate the website!

hi all had a 45 min first session with a tutor from italki. Right off the bat she started calling me 帅… and complimenting my tattoos and ”我觉得你的笑声很可爱

basically we were conversating, she pushed me

to use as much Chinese I know to string up setences. And I said something wrong then she said “ 不是哦，宝贝，那是不对的“

im american born chinese 25M and she was similar age. I’ve heard that in China currently bao and pet names are used in customer service pretty frequently but I was rlly caught off guard by this cus I’m paying her to learn Chinese.. not for a rent a gf service…

so was bao bei good appropriate or what?

Started browsing through italki tutors for German but finding it overwhelming to select between the vast selection of teachers and community tutors - also what is the difference? Does anyone have any recommendations for their favourites, that also are not too expensive? And why choose italki over preply or Lingoda? Curious to hear what’s worked best for you, starting from a pretty basic level

I find this fascinating because of how language shapes our perception of the world/our perception of the world shapes our language.

I've found so many specific words that exist in English and don't exist in Spanish, that I finally Googled how many words there are in each language, and when I saw that English has 30 to 50% more words than Spanish, it all made sense.

For example, there's no word for murder vs assassinate in Spanish (when it comes to verbs). The word "drown" and "choke" are the same in Spanish. There's no verb for "ache" when specifying that type of pain - the opposite of a sharp pain. Like, in Spanish you can say, "it's burning" but you can't say, "it's aching" - you just generalize with "it's hurting". There isn't one word for "smirk" and many other very specific verbs (you just have to say that you smiled in a particular way) To glower at someone? Nope. To gaze? Nope. Each of these words has a very specific feeling for me, which feels much different than saying, "he looked at him with his brow furrowed" or "she looked at him in a fixed way / she looked at him contemplatively / she observed him - none of those ways of saying it in Spanish feel equivalent to "gaze".

However, Spanish does have a lot of specific nouns for making fun of people/describing a particular physical characteristic of a person hahaha. "Chimuelo" is a guy who's missing teeth, frentón is a person with a big forehead, etc. And I like that the word apapachar both means to literally "cuddle" with someone, and also to "comfort" someone through acts of service. So then, making chicken soup for my sick friend is "cuddling" them. It gives me a physical sensation of affection when I talk about comforting a friend...I don't actually think I'd even use the word "comfort someone" in everyday conversation - like, "Oh, Sara's sick? Make sure to comfort her." And "take care of" doesn't feel as affectionate to me as "apapachar".

I remember 20 years ago when I learned the term "me da pena ajena", we didn't have a common expression for that in English. But now we've created, "that's so cringe/cringey". I think it's because of how tiktok and instagram culture has made us so hyper conscious about how we're perceived and whether or not what we're doing will be accepted by everyone, whereas before we were culturally a bit more individualistic - there wasn't as much importance placed on having everyone else's approval the way there often is in communal cultures.

The only other language 'discovery' that comes to mind is that I remember once I was telling a story to my ESL class about how my roommate had so little "presence" in a room, that I once walked into 'our' tiny 5 table cafe around the corner from our apartment, sat and had a coffee, and only as I was leaving did I notice that he had been there, sitting at a table the whole time! A Japanese student immediately said, "ah, ghost person!" Hahaha, I was like, oh wow, that's the perfect way to describe it!

What have you all come across?

Seasoned students, when working with a single tutor for a while do you start sounding like them with time?

Hi,

Any tips on finding a LGBT friendly tutor?

There is no filter feature for this. And I have had homophobic tutors in the past. It’s super unsettling and makes me not want to go to class Especially ones living in nations with higher rates of homophobia. I would ten times rather higher someone who actually is LGBT but can settle for an ally.

I am learning Spanish and (African) French

I could reach out and message each tutor individually but A) that’s incredibly time-consuming and B: they could just lie bc they want the money

I’ve reached out to italki so they could make this a filter feature on their website but they don’t seem to care. We should feel safe so it’s rather unfortunate but maybe you guys have some ideas

I've paid for 10 lessons with a tutor, and the first 3 went fine (for me, at any rate). Lesson 4 this morning and she didn't appear and didn't message me. What's weird is that she was shown as "online" at the top of the iTalki page. Is this normal, and what happens now? I've had a Spanish tutor (not iTalki) for a year, and she has never failed to let me know if she is going to be late or has to cancel.

I’m an italki teacher, and reviews really help with attracting new students. I never want to pressure anyone, though.
Would you find it weird or inappropriate if your teacher asked you to leave a review after a few lessons? If you’re a teacher, do you ever ask your students for reviews? How do you usually do it without making students feel uncomfortable?

Anyone else get the issue of when you join a class within the first minute it says that the student is in the classroom but they don't appear until you reload the page a couple times?

I usually ask and they say that they have been in the class for a solid minute, but for me I was the only one in the class.

Hi everyone

I’m pretty new to italki and tutor English. I started in January, got a little bit of initial traction which was good, kept prices low (12?ish). I just offer conversational classes and also reading articles together. I’m a native speaker and fluent in Spanish too but live in Australia so not really in the best time zone for Latin students.

I stopped using italki for around 3 months and since I started back up again, with around 5-6 hours free in my calendar per day (10+ on Sundays), I’ve only really had students who I assume are searching for tutors from my particular country. My daily search stats are way lower than they were before. Obviously I knew the algorithm wouldn’t push me very hard after a long break, so I lowered my prices to $10usd per hour, that’s the lowest I’m willing to go I think, but still very minimal traction. I’ve also improved my thumbnail.

Any ideas on how to get a bit more traction? Reviews from current students maybe? Any help appreciated :))

I've been using italki for a few months and I'm curious how others measure progress, especially when it comes to actual speaking fluency. I take lessons about twice a week and while I can feel myself improving slowly, I still struggle to hold a natural back and forth conversation without pausing a lot to search for words.

Would love to hear from people who've been at this longer than me. How many total lessons did it take before conversation actually started flowing? Did you notice a sudden jump at some point, or was it more of a gradual thing that crept up on you?

Hi everyone! I have a question about Italki's policies.
I'm an Italian community tutor on Italki. I taught on the platform for about two years, then took a six-month break.
Now that I'm back, I've noticed that most of my previous students are gone, and it seems like this is a fairly common experience.

I'm thinking about starting an Italian podcast focused on art and culture, since I have a background in art.

Do you think it's a good idea to mention the podcast on my Italki profile or during lessons, or could that be against Italki's policies?
The podcast would be free, but in the future, I'd like to build my own website, create more content and develop an italian course.

If I eventually decide to stop teaching on Italki and close my profile, would it be a problem if some of my former Italki students later found my website on their own and decided to book lessons with me there?
I'm not talking about actively encouraging students to leave Italki or contacting them outside the platform.

I just want to understand whether there's any issue if they choose to find me independently after I've left the platform.

I'd love to hear if anyone has experience with this

I’ve just started teaching on iTalki and was wondering how to end the lesson? I told a student today well if you want to book another lesson with me you’re welcome to. But now I’m wondering if I was too pushy

Hi everyone! I´m not sure if this is a suitable post for this community, but I have to share my joy with you! I started learning German with Vesna, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Thanks to her, I passed the Goethe C1 exam earlier this year, and yesterday I successfully passed the medical Fachsprachprüfung (FSP).

If you need help with German, I can recommend her 100%. She is simply the best tutor on italki!

https://preview.redd.it/rmdmn95k699h1.png?width=1208&format=png&auto=webp&s=e6810b75723473f1fa5989803ed73f1b8df04b68

I hope everyone's great! Just a quick rant... I've been teaching on italki for 8 years and I still haven't quite figured out the algorithm. It's been difficult for me to fill up my schedule since January. For context, I teach on the platform full-time, usually between 30-35 hours a week and have been doing this fairly consistently for all 8 years. And then today, I got 4 trial lesson requests within the span of 3 hours. Obviously my profile got boosted for some reason, but I wonder if other teachers out there have had similar experiences.