Hello! I’ve been on WaniKani for over a year now. I love it! I love Learning new kanji. I like that I hear the words I learn in the anime that I watch so that’s a good feeling! 
with that being texted, I have a question and need advice. I’ve been thinking about getting a tutor to teach me how to speak japanese. Of course, I’ll still be using wanikani and bunpro. But I feel that I’m ready to start speaking and pick up the speed here. I don’t like doing it on my own really cause I get lost and idk if I’m making enough progress. I recently signed up for a trail class with a teacher and it went well. Liked the guy and all. Thing is he charges around $450 for 20 50min lessons.
That’s around 1000 minutes japanese. I’m hesitant cause while I do want to do it, idk if that’ll be enough.
Might have to sign up for another 20 lessons lol anyways what do you all think? Or if you can point me to some other forms of learning also like discord or whatever
Small clarification: that sounds like it’s 1000 minutes, not hours, which would come to about 16-17 hours.
Might still be worth it, though, depending! I think it depends on what you want to get out of it.
I haven’t used a tutor myself, but I imagine it would make a big difference for getting comfortable speaking, and could address your concerns about not being sure what to do on your own. Having someone “in your corner” so to speak, and who you can ask questions to freely, can go a long way. But it’s unlikely to be the sole step needed to become fluent, for example, and I imagine the bulk of the practice is still going to be outside those 50 minute sessions, depending on your goals.
I’ll be curious too to hear experiences from people who have used a tutor and what they think though!
Assuming I’m doing the math right, that’s roughly $22 for about an hour lesson. Comparing that to the prices of a lot of iTalki professional teachers it’s a pretty good price for what you’re getting. If you look around the forums you can find a lot of threads with the myriad of resources, but I think what’s most important it finding whatever way is going to make you most likely to keep practicing. You could always try something like iTalki language exchange which is either free or extremely cheap, forget which. There’s also lang8 which is writing, but if you want to practice the sort of things you would say, you can write it down and get it corrected by a native speaker before you then try to use it while speaking.
I’d be wary of laying out $450 in a lump sum to an online teacher unless you have some way to claw that back if he ghosts you.
That said, $22 an hour sounds reasonable, but roughly 17 hours of instruction will get you nowhere near fluent. The oft-cited US State Department estimates more along the lines 2200 hours. Not all of those are in a classroom, or one on one, but 17 hours might get you a good way through みんあの日本語 if you do a lot of study outside of your tutor’s time.
I’ve used tutors on iTalki and you can get some super cheap ones 
I usually only use tutors for conversation practice. The “actual” teachers will cost you more.
From my experience it’s best to do a few classes with different tutors before you pick the one you want to do classes regularly with.
20-25 usd per hour is an expected price range. You could find cheaper lessons but it’s harder because most of the tutors in 10-15 usd range just do unstructured conversation practice.
In general, I think getting a tutor is a great idea! I’ve had regulat lessons with tutors on italki for 2+ years already and I’ve really improved. Tutors are good for motivation too. You know you have to do your homework because you have a class tomorrow 
I say “sign up!”. The more different kinds of input/practice you can get, the quicker you’ll learn. You could also try to find a swap partner; ie you offer English practice in exchange for Japanese. There are various things on the web that offer that kind of activity. The benefit of a teacher though is, if they’re good, they know how to speak with you at the level you’re at. So now, close to the beginning of your Japanese learning journey, is probably the best time to get a teacher. And that price seems pretty fair to me.
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