Has anyone used Italki or a similar platform to aid in their studies?
I’m considering taking weekly lessons with a tutor, the main goal in specifically improving my speaking.
I’ve lived in Japan for a few years and work in a Japanese company and while my comprehension is okay, my output is terrible and I always hesitate to speak.
I’m hoping a tutor would give me some real-time feedback on my speaking and help build my confidence.
I don’t need a professional teacher / structured lessons and I guess my budget would be around ¥2000 for the hour (is it reasonable?)
Please let me know your experiences.
I did italki for around 2 years between the stints when I lived in Japan, and I found that it improved my comfort level with speaking dramatically. My tutor did not provide me with highly structured lessons; each weekly conversation was simply free dialogue, so it really was just to exercise my speaking muscle, rather than rigorously learn vocabulary or grammar structures.
If you are in a spot where you feel like your passive vocabulary is significantly larger than your active vocabulary, it might be worth giving it a try. I would describe my experience with italki as mostly positive, and I have recommended it to my friends.
Thanks for sharing, did you stick with the same tutor throughout the 2 years?
I think I had three or four tutors, but one in particular I stuck with for about 18 months straight.
Have been on italki for two years. My teacher uses tprs and I’ve found it very valuable. It gives me a great opportunity to catch new things and explore nuances.
As an example, the other day we came across そっくり and used it as an opportunity to explore when to use that or -よう or -見たい.
Its also nice to be able to try out constgucts that seem correct from immersion, but end up sounding weird
