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Skype/iTalki Lessons | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| JohannaNYC Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4264 days ago 251 posts - 361 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, Italian Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 1 of 5 19 March 2013 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
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I'm thinking about taking Skype lessons with some teachers/tutors from iTalki. For those
of you who've done this before, is there an ideal time to start taking these lessons? As soon as you start learning the language? After you've finished the Colloquial, TY, FSI, etc textbook? In the middle? Do you let the teacher plan the lesson from scratch? Or are you an active participant in deciding where the lesson is going? Basically I just need tips on how to get the most out of each lesson (and what to avoid). I would be taking the lessons for Croatian and Egyptian Arabic, hoping to improve my understanding of popular media as much as possible. I also want to improve my speaking, but I think conversation exchanges will do the trick for that. Thanks in advance for your replies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 5 20 March 2013 at 11:25am | IP Logged |
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You can use informal tutoring for doing the conversational practice, it costs less generally too.
I personally only use speaking practice because I can study grammar by myself. A book or two will suffice. So I use it to practice with native speakers. But if you want to start from scratch or learn in an immersive environment, why not? The question is not, what can iTalki do for you? The question is, what do you WANT iTalki to do for you, formulate a goal you want to achieve (and make it a mini-goal that you actually can achieve, not learn to speak Croatian someday) and then take actions based on those mini-goals. What I let or do not let my teacher do is wholly dependent on what I am TRYING to learn. For example, I don't do grammar in Swedish classes at all. I practically know the rules but forget some word order details or screw up my prepositions. What I do is read novels and then recite the key points and use the new vocabulary. The reason is that I want to focus on expressing myself fluently sans hesitation or mistakes, and I have the grammar and vocabulary to do so, I just lack accuracy and definiteness. Focusing on details in a text forces me to pick up the minor things that polish a language; I understand Swedish in broad general terms and I don't ever have trouble understanding my teacher. In Russian I would be much more apt to focus on grammar because my grammar and use of tense is simply not as good. Then I'd focus on something else. I would also have to try to focus on speaking myself to express myself in one fluent swoop so that it doesn't sound terrible when I speak, and to produce stress correctly in Russian (the individual phonemes are one thing but how they combine in a phrase is more problematic). And in the beginning the trouble was just to understand spoken Russian at normal speed. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lietuva Newbie United States Joined 4065 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Norwegian, Lithuanian | Message 3 of 5 04 April 2013 at 12:39pm | IP Logged |
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iTalki is pretty expensive though after a while. I think once you grasp the basics of it,
you could continue on your own or do language exchanges for free. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4527 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 4 of 5 04 April 2013 at 3:27pm | IP Logged |
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It's always nice to have a teacher, and the good thing about Italki is that you can choose when you wanna have the lessons, as well as your teacher and the topics of the lesson.
I think I would prefer getting to an "intermediate" level like A2+ or B1 by myself before start taking classes there, maybe because I like the first weeks/months of learning a new languages, and it's doable. Then, use Italki to improve your listening and speaking skills, and also have grammar classes for more advanced topics. I think it's a good approach, and Italki tutor are usually WAY cheaper than private teachers in person (and in my experience so fast, just as good). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| JohannaNYC Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4264 days ago 251 posts - 361 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, Italian Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 5 of 5 06 April 2013 at 4:56am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the responses. I want to get to B2 this year in both Croatian and spoken
Egyptian Arabic. I have a lot of textbooks and reading books in Croatian so I might be fine with just that and practice partners, we'll see. I'm also pretty comfortable with the tenses in Croatian, it's those darn cases that trip me up. However, for Egyptian Arabic I will probably need the private lessons/tutoring once I'm done with the Colloquial book, as there's not enough material there to get me to B2. Luckily for Arabic there are tutors for $4 and $5 per hour, so hopefully cost won't be an issue. A tutor should be fine for me as I don't need them to come up with a lesson plan. I'm using the CEFRL self-assessment checklist to guide my progress, I just need the tutors to provide more material and help accelerate my learning once I get to high A2/low B1 level. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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