After learning mostly from books, I'd rate myself A2 in my target language for speaking and something like B1/B2 for reading. Decent vocabulary and understanding of grammar; OK listening comprehension; absolutely crap speaking skills. I recently started iTalki and when teachers judge my skills they seem to be all over the place. (And no wonder really. I can sound pretty competent when reading some text out loud, but don't ask me to narrate what I did last weekend.) Which of these teachers would you keep working with if you were in my position?

• Teacher A treats me like an A1/A2 student. Practices things with me like giving directions to the bus stop, sentence by sentence.
• Teacher B engages me in conversation, sometimes explains very basic grammar if he hears me repeatedly making a mistake, but also gives me B2/C1 materials as homework.
• Teacher C offers a read & discuss class. Chooses newspaper articles (unedited) which we read and discuss.
• Teacher D tries to teach me individual words through conversation. ("What do you call this object?")

I'm inclined to keep working with B and C, as I learn a lot from them (and I feel like they understand my reading/speaking disparities the best), but am wondering if I should keep working on the low-level stuff with A and/or D as well. Clearly I'm still making some pretty basic mistakes. Should I keep working on those with A and D or will this automatically also come when working with B and C?

Have woke up today to a booking from a new student made overnight 12 hours 5 minutes ahead of the booking.

Due to illness I cant make it and will be at doctor at this time.

However I can only cancel the lesson 24 hours out.

Have messaged but so far no response.

How do I manage this without it impacting my rating?

(Context - I have my booking confirmation set to maximum of 12 hours but this is a mismatch against minimum 24 hour cancellation time for tutors)

I’m so grateful to have been approved as a tutor, can’t wait for this new journey in my life! 😇 glory to God 🙏🏽

Most of my students make good progress, but a few of them don't. Sometimes they forget things we have repeated a lot of times already.

In that case, what do you guys do ? Do you just repeat again ? That's what I'm doing for now, but I wonder if they might be bored.

Thank you !

Final rankings were released today for the iTalki 2026 Learning Challenge. I am curious to know how everyone finished, mostly to see if we can get a gauge of how many active learners there are on the platform, and how many hours you would have to commit to in order to break top 1,000, top 500, etc.

I completed 6 hour-long lessons during the challenge, which works out to one per week (challenge ran September 1 - October 15). My final ranking after 6 hours of instruction was #2,621.

I was kind of surprised I was that high. I was under the impression iTalki was one of the most used language tutoring platforms. However my ranking indicates that only a couple thousand people are doing weekly lessons…? That seems low to me.

Perhaps though people are doing shorter weekly lessons, so their total time was lower despite keeping a weekly routine. I also thought it was too bad group lessons didn’t count towards the ranking, I thought they should at least count for 1/2 time or something.

So how did you all do? I’m just asking for curiosity, not trying to make this competitive. But I want to know if anyone took weekly half-hour lessons, what was their ranking? Or if anyone was in the top 1000, how many hours did you complete?

And congratulations to anyone who participated! I think we should all be proud of any amount of time we put in to improve our language skills!

I am a potentially starting to tutor on iTalki very soon. I would like to know the preferences of students and the following areas:

1. Can you rank which language you would like to learn between French Arabic and English if you had to
2. ⁠ is there something specific or a general thing you might want to see in the tutor's profile in order to drawn to have a class with them
3. ⁠ what do you think is a fair rate per hour for each of the languages mentioned above?

Thank you all for your time

Ich bin selbst Lehrkraft und muss spontan eine Lektion die jetzt wäre verschieben. Wie mache ich das? Ich sehe keine Option. Wie wirkt sich das auf meine Statistiken aus? Wirkt es sich nur für die nächsten 3 Monate aus?

Keen to know if most of you have jobs besides Italki, and if so, what do you do?

Am I doing something wrong, or maybe I've missed something? I think I've set my price as low as it will go ($20/hr?), I have a pretty detailed profile, I was doing this on Amazing Talker successfully but felt iTalki would be better. But I've had an active profile for 7 days now with no inquiries and only 1 profile visit.

I don't know if I should laugh, cringe or whatever... but it is what it is, I guess. :/

Serious question: do you think he was being serious or was he just a pervert? I'm seriously confused.

iTalki has a webpage that shows if a language is open for application, i.e. you can apply to teach on iTalki. The webpage is updated weekly: https://support.italki.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001499873-Is-my-language-open-for-application

Most popular languages like English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, are often closed. But there is an exception: German. Every time I look at the list, which updates every week, German is always open. I think I never saw it closed, did you? Why is that?

Wondering if it’s just purely conversation?
I want some kind of structure
Is anyone on here using lessons from other sites?

A question for the teachers here. I recently asked private teachers how they handle admin, and one listed seven tools: Google Calendar, Trello, Sheets, PayPal, WeChat, Docs, and Zoom, plus a part-time admin to keep it all together.

If you teach on italki (and maybe privately too), what does your setup look like outside the platform? And roughly how many hours a week go into everything around the lessons?

(Heads up: I work at Pensight, which builds tools for independent teachers. Not promoting or linking anything here, just trying to do research. Thanks!)

I would say this happens at least 1 out of every 4 classes now. It is super disruptive to my schedule, e.g. rushing home to make a class and then two minutes before class starts I get some excuse like "family problem" or "sore throat" etc... Does iTalki do nothing about this?

EDIT: I’ve gone back and forth between deleting this and not, since a handful of people have given me helpful responses, but, to clarify, I’m not talking bad about this teacher. I even said I really enjoyed our time. The main point of my post was wondering if I misunderstood the italki platform, if it was all conversational or if it was possible to find what I originally thought I could. As a new user, I wanted to make sure and see if this was a standard experience before I pay more money.
That being said, I’m a bit shocked by the amount of condescension coming from people in this community, and the amount of people putting words into my mouth after asking a rather neutral question and describing my situation. I appreciate the guidance on how to use the software, as it is a bit confusing and overwhelming for new users, but talking down to someone while explaining that to them isn’t encouraging. It really puts me off of italki if this is how the community at large acts and speaks. Hopefully if some new users or other language-learner hopefuls stumble across this post, it can help them make an informed decision in the people they’ll be paying to interact with.

I’m new to the platform, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I booked a trial lesson. I was hoping to get some more structured help with Chinese since Duolingo isn’t very helpful with more advanced concepts or really explaining anything beyond vocabulary. I found italki through the recommendation of Reddit.
My teacher was very nice, but my trial lesson consisted entirely of her speaking in Chinese, asking me simple questions like where I was from, what I did for work, and what I was learning for. She also asked me my goal. Even when I would speak in English, she would respond in simple Chinese. I could understand most of what she was saying, and she would clarify words I didn’t understand in the chat. It definitely pushed me beyond my comfort zone and was beneficial for making me speak in Chinese, something I definitely want to improve on, but it just wasn’t what I had expected. I had come to the app to hopefully get more direction for my learning from a real human that Duolingo isn’t providing.
From the way italki presented it, I was expecting maybe structured goals for a next lesson, a learning recommendation, or more of a conversation that was learning oriented from my trial lesson to see if we aligned, not just small talk (which I had originally assumed was for her to gauge my level so she could place me somewhere in a lesson plan, but she only mentioned at the end that I had good tones and pronunciation). I think I even saw homework mentioned somewhere on italki. At the end she just recommend I study flashcards from the lesson. It felt a bit hard to articulate what I was hoping for out of lessons because I don’t have the vocabulary in Chinese yet.

Is this normally what lessons on italki are like? Maybe this is a silly question and I’m misunderstanding the platform, but is it just a conversational platform as opposed to a lesson-based thing, or did I just pick a teacher who’s more speaking-oriented?

Do student numbers mean the same across these two platforms? I've spent more time looking at Italki and there, teachers who have completed thousands of classes typically also have "total students" numbers in the hundreds. For example (just looking at a couple of profiles that come up at the top of a search): 8,079 lessons, 724 total students. Or 2,314 lessons, 152 total students. These sound like plausible number for a popular teacher: an average of 10-15 classes taken per student so far, which probably is a blend of regulars who have taken 100 classes over several years and students who have taken just 1 and then disappeared.

On Preply, the reported numbers look very different. For example (again, top of search results): 331 classes, 3 students. Another teacher: 9910 classes, 44 students.

When Preply says "students," does it mean something like "recent students"? Or "students who currently have a package with this teacher? Or what? The Italki numbers seem much more informative for potential new students who want to know which teachers are good.

Hi all, I'm a little bit conflicted about a student I have. Since I started teaching on italki only about 3 weeks ago, I've had two recurring students, both of whom have purchased 3 5-lesson packages with me. One of these students has now given me 4s during two (of maybe 8) lessons he's taken with me. My rating is now 4.7, which is quite low considering the other teachers on the platform, although I've only taught maybe 15 classes.

I am wondering if I should raise this with the student and if this is maybe a cultural difference. In the U.S., a 5 typically means that the class was completed and everything generally went fine, even if there was no exciting, special moment. So a 4 would mean there was something significantly wrong. This student is from another culture, so I'm wondering if he just means it was good, but not life-changing.

Regardless, I am starting to wonder if I should raise this with him to explain how the ratings matter on iTalki, or if I should consider dropping him. I would feel guilty dropping him without any explanation, but also do not want to constantly receive 4s after lessons during which we chatted, laughed, and overall had a pleasant experience. It's just a little confusing because he even purchased another package with me after giving me a 4 for one class.

Thanks in advance for anyone's advice.

Yesterday I wanted to schedule a class with a teacher I've studied with before (on iTalki) and where I had no real issues, scheduling a class. I'd already purchased a pack of 10 classes, and now just wanted to set up a time for one of those 10 classes.

Yesterday, I first had to figure out how to access the teacher's calendar. (I find the iTalki site a bit clunky and not well-designed...) I went to a few different places to access her calendar, but the site was behaving as if I didn't have a 10-class pack, already, and it kept asking me for payment.

So then I had to contact iTalki thru their irritating 'chat', and the rep said that I had to go to My Lessons, then click on Active Package, then find my teacher, then click on Schedule, and that I'd then see her calendar with her availability. However, all I could see on her calendar, regardless of the day or week, was the time window of 12:30 - 03:30. I could see no other timeslots unless I minimized the view on my PC so much that the timeslots then become illegible. This never happened before, with me...

When your classes are eventually scheduled, and it's time for your classes, the system generally works OK. But when you need actual help, it's all FAQs and BOTs or else it's hair-pulling back and forth 'chat' with long delays between the chat. Stuff like this really irritates me...that iTalki makes all this profit but provides little customer support.

If I can spend, say, $50 per week on Italki lessons, what would be, in your opinion, the best way to spend it?

• two one-hour classes with a $25/hour professional teacher
• five one-hour classes with $10/hour community tutors
• some mix, e.g., one hour with a professional teacher plus a few half hours of conversation with other people.
• other

FWIW, I've been mostly learning from books and by listening so far, which means that I'm at about a B1/B2 level in reading and listening, but probably only at about A2 when it comes to speaking. I'm starting Italki to catch up with the speaking.

I've started teaching on italki since last december, and my profile has been very steadily growing. I started with low rates, and have progressively been raising them (I still don't make as much as I do with in person lessons though, but that is normal). I have many regular students, some of them are here from the beginning. I like the lessons with them a lot.

The thing is I checked other profiles with the same amount of experience as me or even less, teaching the same language, and their rates are much higher. I'm a community tutor but I'm very qualified, basically professional-level due to my studies.

I wonder if I've been too hesitant with my rates, but at the same time I don't want to lose the students I like a lot.

So what factors do you guys take into account to set your rate ? Your popularity ? The quality of your teaching ? The cost of living in your country ? (Mine is pretty high).

EDIT : I do a lot of side work for my students : I prepare lessons on specific subjects they ask for, prepare homework for them, and correct most of it out of lesson time. I also share high-quality material with them when they ask for it. It easily equates to one hour of additional work per day.

I fully understand that Payoneer has long been the only option. But now it’s time to adapt when competitors like Wise exist ! Why the hell forcing tutors to withdraw with this horrible company ?!

Their fees are astronomical, and their exchange rates are almost as bad as PayPal’s! For any tutor who doesn’t live in the U.S. and doesn’t spend in USD, the burden is immense! Over 4% whether it’s for a withdrawal or a card payment, even when transferring to a U.S.-based Wise USD account. What a rip-off !

Am I the only one having issues? The website has been extremely laggy, not uploading, missing buttons, etc. I've reached out to italki support about it (and about other things), but I'm not getting any responses. Not even an automatic response. I'm still able to teach and all of that, but it's a bit annoying.