After 264 days of studying French on DuoLingo, I realised I wanted to take it up a notch, so today I did my first lesson on iTalki. iTalki is a platform that allows language learners to connect with teachers from across the world, and for $7, I was able to do a 30 minute trial lesson with Chloé, and boy, it was good value!
Duo is a good tool for vocab, and a handy way to improve your reading and writing. However, it’s not great for listening, and useless for talking. Since my goals are more oriented around ordering some nice cheeses than reading Le Petit Prince, it made sense to focus on that.
My lesson with Chloe was very well organised. She asked me to speak as much French as I could, and as I did so, she furiously tapped away at her keyboard. What she was doing was transcribing everything I was saying, and after three minutes of struggling through, we went through the transcript together.
It was great to see the mistakes I had made in real time, and each mistake usually became a mini-lesson. When to use “de”. How to pronounce “un”. What better ways to say I come from Australia.
I have already booked my next lesson.