How to prepare for your first italki lesson

According to italki's help centre, a trial "usually involves the discussion of your learning needs, the demo of the teaching style, the teaching materials and the suggested frequency of learning." Four jobs in half an hour. If the tutor has to dig out your needs, the teaching demo gets whatever is left. Send them in advance.

italki lists more than 30,000 teachers. Three things on a profile matter more than the star rating.

1. Professional Teacher or Community Tutor. Professional Teachers have training as educators and/or extensive professional teaching experience and can provide materials and structured lesson plans. Community Tutors provide conversation practice. Plenty of input and no speaking: a Community Tutor may be enough. No clear order to your study: look for structure.
2. The lesson description. Professional Teachers normally have materials such as textbooks, PDFs and slides. If the description is vague, ask.
3. The "Smart Lesson" label, if you want italki's automatic lesson summary. It only works with teachers who allow audio recording.

Browse the teachers for your language and compare three profiles. At booking, choose italki Classroom over the Teams, FaceTime or Zoom options some teachers offer. The summary and recording are Classroom features, and the platform cannot be changed once booked. Slot times are shown in your italki timezone, so check that setting first. Pick a slot more than a day away, so your message gets read and you can still reschedule.

The correction you are least likely to notice is the most natural one. You say "Ayer voy al mercado." The tutor replies "Ah, ¿ayer fuiste al mercado? ¿Qué compraste?" Your verb has been fixed, inside a question that sounds like agreement. That is a recast: your sentence repeated correctly, and the conversation moves on.

In Lyster and Ranta's 1997 study of 18.3 hours of lessons in four primary-level French immersion classrooms, teachers showed "an overwhelming tendency" to use recasts despite their "ineffectiveness at eliciting student-generated repair". Elicitation, metalinguistic feedback, clarification requests and repetition got students fixing their own errors more often. Those were children in classrooms, so treat it as a reason to ask, not as proof.

• "Stop me and let me try again." Elicitation: the tutor signals, you produce the fix.
• "Type the correct version in the chat." The Classroom has a chat panel. What is typed survives the lesson; what is said mostly does not.
• "Keep a list for the last five minutes." For fluency practice.

To ask in the language itself:

• Spanish: Cuando me equivoque, pare y déjeme intentarlo otra vez.
• French: Quand je fais une erreur, arrêtez-moi et laissez-moi réessayer.
• Korean: 제가 틀리면 바로 알려 주시고, 다시 말해 볼 기회를 주세요.

Within the hour, spend 15 minutes on this:

Date / tutor / Lesson ID:
Corrections (up to 5): I said … → better: …
New words (up to 5), each in a sentence from the lesson:
One pattern the tutor noticed:
Change for next time:
Tutor, 0–3 each: corrected as I asked __ / let me talk __ / proposed a plan __

Keep the Lesson ID: a guarantee claim needs it. Corrections go on the mistakes page of your notebook, and the new words become flashcards with sentences.

italki's Lesson Summary does part of this automatically after lessons in italki Classroom: topics, vocabulary and grammar, in Spanish, French and Korean among other languages. Both you and the teacher must allow lesson audio recording, which happens only in the web version of the Classroom; italki keeps the audio and may use third-party AI tools on its transcript to produce the notes. Error corrections are for italki Plus subscribers only, so treat the summary as a check on your notes, not a replacement.

Video recording is separate: it works in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, both people must agree, and the WEBM file stays on your own computer. The community guidelines say to get written consent before recording anyone, which is why the question is in the message.

• Compare like with like. Same message and notes template for all three trials. Compare the scores out of 3, not how pleasant it felt.
• If it went badly or the teacher did not show up, claim the guarantee within 48 hours with the Lesson ID and your reasons, before confirming the lesson. Trials bought with vouchers are not covered. Either side can also file a "Lesson incomplete" request within 72 hours.
• Rating and review differ. The star rating is anonymous; the written review is public and cannot be edited, so write it once you have decided.
• One regular lesson before a package. Packages of 5, 10 or 20 lessons are prepaid and valid for six months, and the teacher and lesson length cannot be changed once scheduled. A trial shows the tutor's opening; a regular lesson shows an ordinary week. Every teacher offers 60-minute single lessons, and some also offer 30, 45 or 90.

When one tutor clearly scores higher, book one regular lesson with them and fill in the same notes afterwards.

Regular lessons go better with a set task. Language Hacking Spanish and Language Hacking French tie into italki: according to the publisher (Spanish, French), each of the 10 units ends in a speaking mission you can share on italki's Language Hacking community, and the audio is free in the Teach Yourself Library app. Ask the tutor to run that week's mission as the lesson.

• Complete beginners. The A1 spoken-interaction line in Sheet 1 describes someone ready for a lesson, provided the tutor slows down and helps. One learner on italki's forum: "I waited until I felt I could have a basic conversation before I contacted a teacher. I regret this massively."
• Korean. Learn Hangul first (a weekend is enough) so you can read corrections in the chat. italki's language test has no Korean, so your message is the tutor's only advance guide to your level.
• Exams. Look for the Test Preparation lesson category, and put the exam and date in the goal line.