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tastyonions Team PAX [French / Spanish] | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5035 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 89 of 329 11 January 2013 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That must have been frustrating, Tastyonions, especially as you'd been looking forward to it so much too.
Perhaps it was just a one-time problem. (Or not; who knows?) I'm not familiar with Italki; how does the site itself handle situations like this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4491 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 90 of 329 11 January 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, the payment doesn't go through until you confirm that the session has taken place successfully. If one of the parties doesn't show up, they give you a form in which you can state as much. But I didn't need to bother with that this time, because the tutor simply marked the session as "cancelled" sometime this morning and refunded my credits to me, which I will use to try out another tutor. :-P
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| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5708 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 91 of 329 11 January 2013 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Let's hope that you'll have no problems next time. Indeed, it would be very good to know reliable places where we could find this and other kind of language studies possibilities in the Internet. Edited by Flarioca on 11 January 2013 at 3:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5358 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 92 of 329 11 January 2013 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I know of two good solutions, and one thing that usually works. 1. Find a really reliable and awesome paid tutor. I got really lucky with Verbal Planet and found a marvelous French tutor who helped my prepare for the DELF (contact information is available upon request). The trick to using sites like Verbal Planet is to read the customer reviews and not to choose the absolute cheapest tutor. 2. Make a bunch of friends and add them to your Skype buddies list. The nice thing about this is that you never have to wait around for a scheduled exchange (which almost inevitably results in the new partner not showing up). Instead, you can just strike up a conversation with whoever is online. Of course, finding friends is the tricky bit. 3. Try a site where you can connect to whichever strangers are currently online. I've had good luck with SharedTalk, which has an awful interface but fairly serious students, and Verbling, where 80% of the people have broken sound or video, but the remaining 20% have been pretty interesting. The protocol here is that if you have a really great conversation with somebody, you can offer them your Skype address, which makes it easier to get back in touch, and which will give you much better sound. In any case, it takes a while. Or as the princess said, "You've got to kiss an awful lot of frogs before you find a prince." 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4514 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 93 of 329 11 January 2013 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
So...which of these three is the thing that works? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4491 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 94 of 329 11 January 2013 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, emk helped me confirm that my Skype is working. Thanks for that! :-)
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| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5358 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 95 of 329 11 January 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sorry, I should have been more clear. :-) All three work. The first two work really well, when you can manage them, and the third is usually a decent way to meet people that you can later turn into Skype friends.
No problem! I really enjoyed our 10 minute chat in French, and you did amazingly well for somebody who has "never spoken French with a single soul in [his] life." Your accent is totally acceptable (even when you're under linguistic stress!), and you're way ahead of where I was at the same point in Assimil. When I first started speaking French at home, the first 10 or 20 conversations made a really big difference. At first, I felt like my brain was melting from sheer overload, but a little practice allowed me to automate all sorts of basic conversational stuff and free up some mental cycles. And it seems like you have a lot of the raw material already, so speaking practice should pay off well. Good luck finding a tutor and some friendly natives! It was a pleasure speaking with you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4491 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 96 of 329 11 January 2013 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks (for both the chat and the PMs). I definitely found it a bit stressful but it was also a pleasant kind of "rush," and it was good to meet you, too. It also really made me want to speak more! -- I am pretty confident now in my comprehension, certainly compared to where I was several months ago; I sometimes have multi-minute stretches of native interviews where I understand probably 90 - 95% of what is being said (though it's highly dependent on the topic and how clearly the speakers enunciate). I need to work on closing the big gap between the grammar and vocab I can comprehend and what I can produce. Edited by tastyonions on 11 January 2013 at 5:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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