iTalki Site Review

italki was reviewed by Turkan, Quanya and Randy. 

italki is a language learning social network site. One of the distinguishing features of this site is how it links professional teachers or informal tutors with learners of a particular language. Professional teachers are expected to conduct courses similar to classroom-based language classes and are paid for their service. The method of payment is through the italki credits. It is worth pointing out that iTalki takes 15% commission on the money earned by teachers. The classes are offered online through Skype and must be arranged to fit to the instructor's schedule. Informal tutors are "near-native speakers" in the target language. Both of these teaching roles require an online application.

There is also a language partners section of the site where you can link up with speakers of the language and practice the language. You can view the participants levels in the language, which helps you make decisions about your choice in language partner. Once your are language partners, then you follow one another to respond to messages.

In addition to Skype, site participants also interact through the "notebook," "answers," and "discussions" tabs where you can read posts by users from a specific language group. This way you can see the types of questions and comments that have been posted by users. This seems to be the asynchronous section of the site.

In general there seems to be a lack of professional teachers featured on the site. We looked at Turkish teachers and found only one professional teacher. What is nice about the message boards is that it seems users are fairly responsive in making corrections to postings in a timely manner.