A language learners’ forum

mentecuerpo wrote:Leo Smith, thank you for your feedback on my blog.
I have signed for the LT site and I will book a conversation session with one of your Italian teachers.
I will give you feedback on the session, once completed.

Thank you kindly mentecuerpo!

Buon Giorno,

I just booked my first Italian lesson via skype with the LT site.

I selected teacher Guiliana S.
The price is competitive and the booking was very intuitive and hassle free.

I am in Arizona and I imagine my teacher is in Europe. Despite time zone differences, I book my lesson to 7:00 AM on a weekday, just before going to work. I like the convenience to start my day with a small talk with my teacher.

If the teacher agrees, I will record the audio of the lesson to continue reviewing it during the week.
It has been months since I last had a conversation in Italian.

I just have very few minutes when I go to my local Italian restaurants so I am looking forward for this lesson that I want it more to be a conversation.

I am not even close to have a conversation in German but maybe in two or three years I will be able to have skype lessons in German too.

This morning, I had my first Skype Italian lesson using a "Language tool" teacher.

I had a one-hour session, minus a few minutes, related to the technical difficulties inherent with Skype.

It has been a few years since I had an hour's conversation in Italian, since my last visit to Italy. I have been doing tons of input by listening to audiobooks in my car and reading e-books at night, but not much-producing speech. Today, that changed, I am so glad I did, I can see how much I need to practice this skill.

The Italian teacher is an Italian language teacher, during our conversation she told me that she has international experience teaching Italian in a school in Lima Peru for one year, which means, she was in tune with my Spanish accent and the frequent mistakes Latinos make when producing the Italian language.

The session went well, I spoke Italian fluently, and she agreed that my conversation levels is B1-B2. She was interested to know how I achieved this level, I told her that mainly via self-studying.

During our conversation I made several mistakes, that she quickly helped me correct, for example, when I said that from Phoenix to Rocky Point Mexico there is a two-hour drive, I made a mistake in the content, and she showed me the solution:

It takes two hours to drive from Phoenix, AZ to Rocky Point Mexico.

I said: Ci prende due ore per guidare a Porto Penasco.

Correction: Ci vogliono due ore per arrivare a Porto Penasco.

Adesso so como dirlo, "Ci vogliono"

But then, my pronunciation was wrong, she pointed out that it is not "gl" but "volliono"

So, I noticed my mistake in selecting the wrong word then, once corrected, to mistake pronouncing it, and that was corrected, so learning took place here.

Then I learned a bit about the Italian culture, and I also learned about an African country, "Togo" where the Italian teacher is currently teaching Italian, I learned that French is one of the official languages and that it is a pretty safe country to travel with political stability.

The hour went fast, I should not neglect conversation to continue making progress.

I just wish I could have recorded the session, I did not, due to messing up the audio of the recording.

mentecuerpo wrote:The session went well, I spoke Italian fluently, and she agreed that my conversation levels is B1-B2. She was interested to know how I achieved this level, I told her that mainly via self-studying.

Glad to hear that - congrats!

ロータス wrote:Saw your post in the other thread and tried to log in to the site but it seems you guys got rid of logging in with Google so now I can't log in.

Get: Error - please try to login using : GOOGLE, instead of EMAIL

Thanks for bringing this up. We didn't get rid of it, it got rid of us. We are working the problem, but meanwhile we're offering to convert accounts to email logins upon request. Didn't you get an email? I'm now wondering if the tech team only sent the email to fb logins (also disabled).

ロータス wrote:

leosmith wrote:

ロータス wrote:Saw your post in the other thread and tried to log in to the site but it seems you guys got rid of logging in with Google so now I can't log in.

Get: Error - please try to login using : GOOGLE, instead of EMAIL

Thanks for bringing this up. We didn't get rid of it, it got rid of us. We are working the problem, but meanwhile we're offering to convert accounts to email logins upon request. Didn't you get an email? I'm now wondering if the tech team only sent the email to fb logins (also disabled).

Last email I got was about 'Tagalog Grammar Lite' course back in November.

Hi ロータス, my apologies - I didn't read your message carefully. This is the error message one gets when they created their logon using the "sign in with google" button, but then try to log in using their plain email.

leosmith wrote: Didn't you get an email? I'm now wondering if the tech team only sent the email to fb logins (also disabled).

I also didn't get an email as far as I'm aware. Just tried password recovery, but it doesn't seem to work. Perhaps there's just a delay, but otherwise I'd also need an account reset

Christi wrote:

leosmith wrote: Didn't you get an email? I'm now wondering if the tech team only sent the email to fb logins (also disabled).

I also didn't get an email as far as I'm aware. Just tried password recovery, but it doesn't seem to work. Perhaps there's just a delay, but otherwise I'd also need an account reset

Sorry about that Christi. If you pm me your email address I'll make sure you get a password recovery email message.

leosmith wrote:

Christi wrote:

leosmith wrote: Didn't you get an email? I'm now wondering if the tech team only sent the email to fb logins (also disabled).

I also didn't get an email as far as I'm aware. Just tried password recovery, but it doesn't seem to work. Perhaps there's just a delay, but otherwise I'd also need an account reset

Sorry about that Christi. If you pm me your email address I'll make sure you get a password recovery email message.

Sent you a message

I really like the recent addition of the intermediate conversations for Tagalog and the plan to offer this for more learners of the less popular languages. It is great to see these gaps on the market being filled with high quality tools.

But there is one thing I am still missing and nobody does it: could there be writing tutoring, please? I don't mean the tool that is already there. It is nice for beginners, for informal short writing. But I would like to pay for higher level assignments and corrections by professionals. You know, the sort of writing for DALF or other high level exams, or for the real life, perhaps even bits of creative writing. Tutors willing and capable of that are rare and hard to find.

I simply dislike the idea of having to pay for a skype session, during which the tutor will do the correction on spot. I have already experienced this during face to face tutoring, and it is not that great. And having to make time for skype is not always that easy.

Could there be an option to pay per page or per assignment, send it to the tutor, and get a written high quality feedback sent back within a certain time frame? That way, I could just write and send in the assignment whenever I want, and the tutor would do the work whenever they want. It would be very convenient for example for my night shifts, during which I can never predict when or whether I'll have an hour of time. Writing or reading can be interrupted. A videocall cannot.