Qualcuno che sta monitorando Italki da un po', mi sa dire se la lingua italiana è stata sbloccata recentemente? O è bloccata da un po'?

Hello iTalki teachers on Reddit, I would love to get some of your insight on this.

Last December I booked 5 classes with a teacher and we really clicked and I enjoyed learning a new language. I went on vacation in December where I was actually able to use the language I started studying. After Christmas I felt really unmotivated to study due to personal reasons.

I haven't taken any classes since then. Whenever I wanted to book new classes with this teacher I thought to myself that I should study and "catch up" again what we learned the last time. I have a hard time being disciplined when it comes to studying completely on my own.

This leads to me just postponing booking new classes but at the same time I feel like it would be really rude to come back without having studied? At the same time I just want to get back to learning this language.

Would you guys be annoyed or find it rude if a student came back after 8 months, that hasn't really made any new progress since the last lesson and where you might've to repeat some topics again?

Thanks for your insight!

I'm working as a tutor on Italki. I wanted to use my girlfriends Paypal account to withdraw my pay. Does anyone know if this is ok or does the paypal need to be in my name ? I work as a tutor on another platform and that is fine but not sure about Italki.

Hi everyone,
did anyone have any problem with booking lessons with your usual teacher?
I've been studying Japanese for several years on italki with the same teacher. We had a very friendly relationship and I always respected her very much. I was always paying correctly and immediately, always writing the best reviews of her lessons and yet today I found out I got blocked (allegedly by her).

The last communication we had was when she sent me happy birthday wishes in italki msgs. Which was 10th July. For some personal and work related issues I didn't have time for the usual lessons since the end of May, but I was always planning to return to learn with her. She knew that sometimes I am busy and I can book lessons only after a longer time. There was never problem about that.

Customer care of italki didn't help me in any way about this matter and I don't have any way how to reach out to my teacher to clarify the situation. I am really convinced that this must be just some misunderstanding and maybe Hirono-san (my teacher) doesn't even know that I cannot reach out to her.

Italki said they cannot communicate with the teachers, which seems weird to me ...

Did anyone have the same issue? Does anyone know how to solve this?

Thank you

Michaela

Hey everyone!

I’ve been a Community Teacher for Spanish for over a year. A student recently reached out to me and asked if there would be a possibility of doing group lessons.

I had a more in depth look at the italki options and I saw that some teachers offer “Group Sessions”.

How can I offer group sessions?? Thank you

I am a native hindi speaker and a day before applying for hindi, it was open

Now it's almost 2 months, when will it open again??

I'm thinking about trying to teach Arabic online through italki as a side income (i'm a student). I'm Moroccan, so I could potentially teach both Moroccan Darija and Arabic, and I'm wondering if anyone here has actually tried it.

I'm particularly curious about teaching:

• Moroccan diaspora who want to improve/relearn Darija or Arabic
• People in the West who are learning Arabic, including new Muslims

Has anyone here taught on italki (or a similar platform)?

If so, is it actually worth the time? I'm not expecting to make a full-time income, but could someone realistically make a few hundred dollars a month doing it part-time?

I'd especially appreciate hearing from Moroccans who have actually tried it and what their experience was.

Hey guys, it's been just over a week that I have started on iTalki, I feel like this sub is part of my process now, so here's are some updates:

I currently have a solidarity tarif. My thinking is, that I, from Canada, benefit in a lot of ways with the Canadian dollar, when I travel, or even booking classes through iTalki. So, I decided to have a tarif that would be more affordable to people around the world wanting to learn but with maybe a weaker currency, or a lower monthly salary.

My second reason is to help any immigrant that's been here for a year or less, because they can have free classes but maybe they want to study and practice more or whatever reason. It's my way to pay it forward. On that class, I wrote that I was leaving it up to everyone's good faith to book the class that they think most fits their reality. I feel comfortable doing this, because iTalki goes straight to my travel funds (or will go when I cash out the first time lol), so I feel it's congruent.

Well, I am happy to say, and grateful, that I have had a good start with bookings, and surprisingly, not one person took the solidarity tarif yet. Not only that, but only one took the trial session, everyone else went straight to the regular price. 🫣

It could be a couple of things:

• My prices are reasonable to start with
• The public that would benefit from this tarif, may not know about iTalki, or be on the platform

The other thing tho, I asked my Brazilian tutor to match my price, if my time is worth X for 45-60mins, I want to pay him the same thing.

It's been lots of fun so far, every student has such an interesting life story. It's been a running gag at my work place that I looove to ask questions, and that I'm a bit too "curious", so this is working for me very well in a conversation class context.

As always, I'm available if you guys have any question about any part of the process. Cheers :)

Hello,

I have been taking lessons for about 5 weeks with a very kind older tutor. The problem is that she is often late and a bit unorganized. My last scheduled lesson is this week. She always gives homework at the end of each lesson. What is the best way to tell her that I have decided to not take her classes anymore? I don’t want her to go through the effort of assigning homework and then ghost her. I’m horrible with confrontations like this.

I had to learn Luxembourgish for work starting in September and I took a few iTalki lessons here and there to practice speaking in a situation of conversation. There are like four "real" luxembourgish speakers, all being natives because it is a language that's really well spoken only by the native people of Luxembourg. But now there seems to be new cheap teachers (compared to the average prices of Lux lessons), who don't even introduce themselves in Luxembourgish, and they say one or two sentences at the end of their presentation, with a really bad pronounciation, and you can clearly hear they're not native speakers. So iTalki is really letting random people pretend they're Luxembourgish speakers while they aren't ??? Does this also happen with other "more specific" languages ?

Life long teacher or music and languages. Also life long learner of languages and want to begin teaching English since.. well it’s my native language lol (eventually teach Norwegian, which I know is always open haha)

Just wondering how often English is open to more teachers? Have you ever seen English open?

Recently, I've had a slight problem that I've been getting more adult students for conversation classes than I really want. I don't offer a conversation class and I don't teach many adults but I seem to have had a majority of adults wanting conversation classes of late. It's my job, so I don't want to remove all classes aimed at adults, but I also want to discourage too many from booking. Any pro tips?

A couple of days ago, I was sharing the process of getting accepted as a tutor https://www.reddit.com/r/iTalki/comments/1vrs1hs/got_approved_as_a_french_canadian_tutor_on_italki/. Today, I post from the perspective of the student: How to not book one.

I like to go to the very end of the list, or choose teachers with few classes, or even people that don't have 5 stars (I don't know why), so I booked with this lady (eta: she has 5 stars but I had to scroll a couple of pages to find her). An hour before the class, she cancels the class, apologizes, and says we can reschedule. Perfect! A couple of days go by, and one morning I ask her if that night she has availability. She answers the next day by saying, "Yes, sorry, I offer evenings, but that day I had an emergency." Even then, it's all fine. I'm not expecting a teacher to answer me for a same-day booking.

I tell her, "Thank you, I was actually wondering for yesterday, but good to know." She answered " :)".

My thing is, she made no effort to reschedule on her end, and I feel like I'm running after her, so I just decided to book with my current teacher. I have one I see every week to every 2 weeks, and I wanted to have 2 teachers, alternating each week from one to the other (4 classes a month). My quest to find a second teacher continues...

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

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 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'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.

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?

UPDATE: what is the general concenus about inviting students off the platform? (Guess what - the next day after that fist lesson I got and offer based on teacher's personal platform and payed via Sstripe service)

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..

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

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?