Italki: 3 Ways to Get Started

Welcome to The Five-Week Linguist Show. We are going to talk about three ways to get talking on Italki.

(0:54) – There’s a range of language teachers from all over the world giving lessons on Italki. And there are native speakers or very proficient non-native speakers, professional language teachers.

(1:31) – Italki allows you to find people who want to do language lessons with you. Log in and put money on Italki wallet.

(02:16)- When you filter out, it shows you who’s available at what time, what country they’re from, what language you want to learn, etc., they available on Skype, FaceTime, etc so you can connect with these people.

Tips in learning new language via Italki.

(04:01) Teachers of Italki will lead the conversation if they have the language skills to do it. They’re going to speak slowly to make sure that the things that they’re saying are in this new language are understandable to you. The teacher is leading the conversation, not you.

(04:41) We learn through comprehensible input. It aims to train teachers on how to communicate with native speakers.

(05:38) If you’re a beginner or an intermediate, you can chat to strangers in the chat box. You can even open up some other apps to help you write down what you’re thinking and feeling.

(06:37) Ask a question, get an answer and base it on that. Just draft out a list of questions, and then create your own answers to the questions you’ve asked in the past.

(08:55) You’re getting so much language from their input right from their output, write what they’re saying to you. You’re going to get a lot of confidence in your communicative skills. The power of it is you’re learning from the questions and answers.

(10:14) Your theme questions can be anything. We talked about family. You can talk about weather and seasons, sports, you could talk about foods.

(11:50) If you have a group of people who want to learn with, italki could be your guest speaker. You record the session, and you all have a fantastic learning experience together. The idea is that it helps enhance whatever theme it could be a particular country.

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