Has Anyone Use italki?

Yep definitely shop around for the right teacher. As for language exchange, I have found a language partner that I chat to weekly. I was upfront about saying I wanted to keep the language exchange to 15 mins English 15 mins Japanese, and now we do that every Sunday. The time limit (although it felt structured and formal to start with) means that I don’t feel reluctant to do it again the week after. I’m pretty short on time these days, so I’m looking for regular, not epic. If the convo turns into a long Skype session, I personally just groan at the thought of doing it every week. So we keep it short and snappy, pick a topic (like my dog, or I baked a cake) and its working well. So I say: don’t be shy to try connecting with a few diff peeps until you find someone that clicks. Worth the effort. And my Japanese speaking is fairly terrible, but the plan is to improve. However, I still love the occasional paid lesson for that intense focus on my learning. So would def encourage anyone to give it a try.

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I’ve used both iTalki and JapaTalk, but not much.
Both have a lot of good teachers, but JapaTalk is cheaper. Some teachers will give you 30 min lessons for $3, but that might change a little depending on your country’s currency. (It’s¥390 if you pay in yen, which is almost 4 USD) You also get 500 points free for signing up, which is enough to get you one free lesson with almost any of the teachers.

Someone also mentioned HelloTalk, which is an app that’s more like a language exchange. So it’s completely free, but the people you talk with will more than likely want to practice your native language with you, too.

Whatever you choose to do, good luck!

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I started using iTalki a month ago to supplement my Japanese lessons (more focused on grammar) and so far so good. I’ve only used one community teacher but we got on really well so I’ve used him ever since. It’s nice to be able to just practice listening and speaking without any particular goal in mind, and I find that in the hour I have I don’t speak English at all. We had one session where we spoke just about our cats too. :smiley_cat:

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I would suggest trying Hellotalk for a week since its free, and if its not your jive then move to italki.

I used hello talk to prepare for a trip to Japan, I like that it exposed me to people with varying levels of English comprehension just like you’d actually experience in Japan. I just posted whenever I needed a partner and usually received a ton of comments of people volunteering. also used it for Genki homework when I needed a partner.

HelloTalk Pros

  • free

  • making friends that you can learn natural dialogue from and possibly meet up with (as long as its safe) in the states or when you visit Japan

  • some people on hello talk have tutoring experience and are just as good as teachers

  • real interactions with strangers: speaking Japanese with a tutor or fellow student will never compare to the real deal, because socializing is hard even in your native language! ever meet a new person and struggle to keep the flow of conversation going? now imagine that you’re also trying to remember vocab, grammar, and pronunciation while you do it. its work!

HelloTalk Cons

  • extra time spent speaking in English with partner

  • disorganized and sometimes hard to maintain a specific schedule

  • if you end up with someone whose English is very good then you may not feel pressured to speaking Japanese. it usually evens out though, there are just as many people that also can’t speak much English at all and then you really have to know your stuff!

TLDR; hello talk provides an organic environment that is essential to being able to speak Japanese in a novel situation, but it lacks organization so you’ll need real discipline if your goals are high! Good luck!

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I recommend cafetalk too. I like that site better than Italki because I can search for new classes by lessons or tutor. And every month on the 29th (Japan time) they have a 30 percent discount on all lessons.

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I used iTalki for about two years. It took me several months and several different teachers until I found one I was comfortable with and then after about a year and a half she quit iTalki to go back to in school teaching. I spent another few months searching for a replacement with no luck, though I did find a teacher I’ve been studying with for a year but not from iTalki.

My suggestions:

  1. Know what it is you want to accomplish with the teacher so you can make that clear to them at the beginning: conversation, grammar, JLPT, etc.
  2. Do you want the teacher to lead the way, choose the texts, the assignments, etc or do you want to choose your own way.
  3. Make sure the teacher’s schedule works with yours.
  4. Make sure the teacher has a descent sound system and work space. Some of the teachers had such poor equipment I couldn’t hear them well, or couldn’t see them clealy.
  5. Beware of teachers (I had one) who want you to pay them outside of iTalki. At the least it’s unethical.
  6. As other’s suggested the professional teachers are preferable to the “amateurs” .
  7. I found you get what you pay for. You can pay $10 a lesson or $25 a lesson. If you can afford it, in my experience, the more you pay the better teacher you end up with, though I’m sure other’s experience may be different.
  8. Read the reviews from long term students.
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