<aside> ⚠️ I will mention the tutors by name, and link to their profile on iTalki. Just keep in mind that a tutor who didn’t or did work for me doesn’t have to be the same for you!
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I started learning Korean at the start of August 2022 with Talk To Me In Korean (TTMIK), and while following their curriculum I was also on their discord server. I have seen a few people talking about iTalki and language tutors which peeked my interest. Also because I felt like TTMIK didn’t really offer me enough.
Besides that, I felt like I wanted to speak from the start as well. I think at that time I thought you had to do everything in order to progress. This was before I found out about refold. However, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because I think I had a lot of benefit from these lessons so far.
Before setting on one or more tutors I did some trial lessons. iTalki gives you 3 trial lessons for a cheaper price, and after that you have to just pay full price yourself. There are two kind of teachers on the platform “professional” and “community”. The difference is in that professional teacher have actual certification or graduation diplomas uploaded and verified, whereas a community teacher has not.
So I started with the following tutors;
My personal opinion as that you can’t decide with 1 trial lesson of 30 minutes if this tutor is the right fit for you. Because most of the times the first 30 minutes is to gauge the level you are, explaining how they work, etc. So you don’t get a lot of teaching in that time, and it might be awkward the first time anyway.
What I did was book at least 5-10 lessons (depended on the package they offered) with said tutors, just to get a feeling for their teaching style. The prices for the tutors differ a lot community teachers are often cheaper then professional teachers for example.
So with Shinnie and Morning I booked 10 lessons each, and for Sohyeon I booked 5 because of the package she offered. Now I finished all lessons besides the ones of Sohyeon (more about that later).