Timeline

10 Years before italki

Move to China after living in Japan for 3 years, to a rural area in Hunan.

10 days before

Friend says he has a great teacher to buff his Chinese from Sichuan, and they have really interesting political conversations. My level is about A2 - lived in Beijing for years but never worked at it for more than a few months at a time, and knew a lot of Japanese previously which interferes.

1 day before

Was browsing Chinese teachers on here: https://www.italki.com/teachers/chinese. Suddenly decide to sign up for 10 lessons with an older professional teacher

First lesson

Somewhat suffer through it - it's standard unoptimized government school style, and I haven't spoken or studied in about 5 years. My earlier level was about A2 on the EU scale.

+3 days

Still feel enthusiastic about having someone to fix all my grammar mistakes, but realize I should get a younger teacher who I have more in common with and who would be more flexible.

+1 month

Have signed up for a bunch of trial lessons with much better teachers. I'm up to 2 classes in the morning, 2 in the evening, to match China time. Interesting people here - a funny girl who lives in Malta with her bf who likes teaching me very detailed written grammar. An expat Chinese living in Japan who wanted to teach glamorous, sophisticated sounding words and expressions like “搁浅 - stranded”.

+2 months

Getting into the swing of it now. All lessons are freeform by this point. And I have a few new things I like to do:

My lesson plan: I think of an old movie, and come up with a list of words to explain it. What movie is this?

• nazi
• resistance
• peace
• police
• arrest
• restaurant owner
• love
• resistance
• visa

Then I write out a few sentences and try to tell the story.

I have 3-4 classes/day and every day I tell the same story in ever class, getting corrections. Some teachers are strict on pronunciation, others focus on grammar, etc. By trying to tell the same long, emotional story, and really trying to get them to understand it, I get super motivated and also get tons of practice. (Doing this at age 42).

+3 months

Have kept doing this and moved comfortably into B2-B1 range. Now I also tell short stories from my scifi reading group - get to learn lots of words that I care about - alien, ship, floating, space, etc. And because the stories all have a hook, the key scientific element they have to understand to really get the story, I have strong motivation. Memorable stories I told in Chinese: "9 Lives" by Ursula Le Guin - the story of 8 identical genius clones, raised together, and what happens to them when 7 are killed and one is left alone. Another successful but very tough story to tell was Song for Lya, by George R R Martin.

Covering tons of grammar in classes, and getting lots of repetition. There is another level of really knowing a language beyond "being able to remember the anki card" - it's when you know a word because you've used it 20 times in class.

My favorite teachers now:

• From Guangdong, used to own her own logistic business in mexico, loves mexican food. As a teacher she's very sharp and confrontational - but it's just because she has high standards. I loved how she corrected everything. She later got very good at giving little capsule summaries of grammar or pronunciation areas I was still having problem with; she also loved to be told stories and would not just listen, but fight back for clarifications, making me explain the reasons things happened and asking why, why, why? And not letting any gaps through.
• Chinese stewardess who lives in Dubai - lots of interesting cultural discussion about her life overseas. Good stories, nice slightly cantonese style way of storytelling talking.
• Chinese - Shanghainese Yoga teacher who moved to guadalajara to do Yoga there and live overseas indefinitely. Very political, historical debates, close reading of articles, etc.
• Young woman who travels around europe with her bf, working as an italki teacher; met her when she was in Estonia, later moved to Latvia. Extremely smart, curious, a reader of Steven Pinker and familiar with western intellectualism. Very considerate, helpful, and persistent.

My daily routine at this point:

Morning classes from 8-10. Then an hour or two of anki before it gets too late. Then 3-4 classes in the evening. I would also do some preparation with docs, mining the skype chats & shared google docs for useful words, and doing story preparation.

Summary

So overall italki was awesome. In 5 months I did 360 lessons. I eventually found some teachers I stuck with for 30-40+ classes, usually meeting each one 2-3 times a week. Cost: about 10-15$/hour per class. Why did I stop? Work got busy and I no longer had any time in the evening.

Thoughts

Will I do it again?

Definitely; as soon as I have that kind of free time.

Would it work with less time invested?

I think brain-wise there is a threshold of 2-3 classes a day where your resistance to just "being" in a language gives up. So I think returns are higher above that level. But it may still be linear for all I know.

How did learning work at that many classes/day?

I'd build up hundreds of words in a sort of "intermediate" state where I'd kind of know the definition, but not really know the usage. I'd try to use them, and every once in a while I'd hit one and could feel it crystalize into a word I know. And it really felt like a single point in time this would happen. And from then on, the word would come out whenever without "reaching".

Around this point there would be so many words in flux, I would identify clusters of 5-10 related words, all in that state at the same time, and would feel pressure write them all down in groups and spend a lesson going over them, making examples with the teacher. That was great fun - talking about every possible way to break/crack/shred/destroy/demolish/bust/ something. There are actually tons of such classes of words in Chinese - feels like as many as in English.

Fun of browsing profiles

It is super fun to browse Italki teacher profiles and watch videos here: https://www.italki.com/teachers/chinese while just thinking that these are all people who've made it. They got through the drudgery of setting this all up, and are on track to expand their worlds. My part in this will be to just try to listen to them, show them my way of thinking, and be grateful for their sincere patience and desire to help.

Thoughts on the relationship with a teacher.

Relationships with teachers in this way is interesting. The new teachers talk about everything; ones farther in keep it professional, and I adopted this method too. Early teacher relationships can be intense because you literally talk and look at each other continuously, while feeling very strong emotions and trying to express yourself as hard as you can; while they're trying to understand you sincerely and with a sense of forgiveness.

Culture variation observations

Asian language teachers often have really well-produced videos - is this the influence of TikTok? I've watched italki teacher intros from all around the world and it's interesting how much local culture comes out. Finnish teachers - embody Finn stereotypes.

How much should you judge people based their video? Sound quality definitely is important. Is there a real correlation between intro video sound quality, and their internet/mic setup & usage during a real lesson? Hard for there not to be, on average. Towards the end I became extremely picky about sound quality - no matter how good a teacher is, if sound sucks then it's no good.

Thoughts on teacher age

What is the value of experience? Older teachers set in their ways? But young ones inexperienced? Pretty big cultural gradient between 25 and 40+. I found teachers < 25 were a bit lazy and loose, very tolerant but without enough fiber or propriety to push me to do things right. And older say >50 were harder to communicate with; typically had worse internet connections; harder to interrupt or derail.

What I look forward to about the lessons?

• They're immersive; time seems to just pass. Slight anxiety beforehand, but once the lesson block stops I'm just on and it is over before I know it (even 2-3 hour blocks).
• Seeing the teacher and making her giggle/smile/impressing her by saying something correctly, or saying something interesting or creative, is really rewarding.

How student-teacher relationships change over time.

• Getting too personal, and sharing information about your family, can make it harder to maintain proper distance so that she can correct you, or you can give guidance But, for early lessons, telling your detailed family history is interesting. They often don't know as much about theirs, or are not willing to share.
• The skill a teacher displays in understanding, gently correcting, etc. the student is one of their most important traits. Some are really unclear when you are wrong, or repeat what you said but subtly differently, so you can't tell whether they're correcting you or offering alternatives.

Further thoughts on student-teacher relationships

Depending on the software used by the teacher, sometimes you have a full screen rather close up view of the teacher's face. This is a really intimate connection - you can see how everything you say effects them and their reaction, little twinges of emotion. Because you don't feel as "watched" as in a real life conversation, I think you can look even more closely. So it feels really intimate.

Because there is a break in the line of eyesight, you also can't be sure where they are looking. You can both be staring into the image of each other's eyes, but the line of sight doesn't line up, so you both feel the other person is looking down a little bit (assuming the cameras are mounted on top of the monitor).

Another interesting experience

I signed up for a class with a teacher who's basically a professional dancer / glamour/beauty girl, who is also proud of her contact with the world through italki (which I think is great;). she didn't have much experience and it was a bit tough to get through the first class, although she was nice. Second class: I asked if she knew what improv was (即兴) and she did! So I started a scene just trading off sentences... "I went into the office for the first day of a new job..." etc. and the story kept going and going for 45 minutes. I couldn't believe we kept it up that long, and it was really great. This is a further stage of learning a language - not just words + grammar but how to say things in various ways, and which ones were good - not proficient at all with it yet.

Software used for lessons

Every teacher has their own setup.

• Some (slowly) type pinyin into skype chat, for review later.
• Some type into special software which automatically adds pinyin - this is okay.
• Some type into a shared google doc, which is the best, because you can leave questions there for next class and easily have a shared space to review.

Interesting media I've found out about from this

• There are multiple Chinese language channels where people describe the entire plot of a movie, in large amounts of detail, played over clips from the movie with muted sound. This is pretty useful for learning, and just a cool type of media. From what the tutors said, you feel like you've seen an entire movie in just 10 or 15 minutes. Example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChgCVolsF6L7DWmOpWKSkMA - this guy speaks really quickly and somewhat strangely - but:

How to make yourself nearly cry in a lesson

• Pick a movie you care about - for me it was "The Talented Mr Ripley". Then prepare how to tell the whole story, focusing on various parts - his bad neighborhood, his relationship with the therapist, his relationship with the girl, his progress, how it ends. Tell that many times, really trying deeply to express the frustration he felt, his understanding and the empathy the therapist showed him, and his own pain deep inside, and how Ripley nearly didn't make it through. Movie summary (mandarin) of talented mr ripley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZKorWNw8Is

A semi-transcendent related experience

Once I took the subtitles for an entire 40 minutes Japanese tv show (Terrace House) and made them all into flashcards. My Japanese level is such that I'd only understand about 40% of what they're saying on this show normally. So I memorized all ~700 of those flash cards over a few days. These were full sentences - not just words, some colloquial things too.

Then I watched the show, and it was totally amazing. I could understand literally every single complex thing - it wasn't just vocab, but grammar that I wouldn't naturally get. It was a period of time when I kind of felt what it'd be like to have fluent hearing ability. But it was also like they just so happened to have chosen phrases and words I knew well; when the next episode came on, I suddenly couldn't understand anymore.

Should you arrange one lesson first, or many?

This is risky. With just one lesson, the teacher has a lot of doubt that you will stick to it, and won't prepare or commit very much. But jumping in with 5 is risky too. I generally would do 1, and if the teacher seemed nice and willing to talk about interesting things, I'd reserve 5 or 10 and keep going at the end of that if it was going well.

How quickly can you tell what a teacher is going to be like?

Within a few minutes - but booking very short lessons is weird so I'd usually go for 45. Speaking of which, 45 min lessons are much better than an hour; space them every hour so you have time to grab a bite, do a quick review, etc. I would only do 60 min lessons for teachers I really liked.

Do teachers prep?

No, not really, and it doesn't matter much. You should take control of what you are doing in class and direct them; they're native so good ones can prepare summaries of issues you want to know about on the fly. For certain subjects, it helps to give warning though - For earlier lessons you will need to do reading and have lots of practice sentences set up; for listening classes (rare but worth doing at least once if not more) they need to prepare audio.

Have I actually measured my learning rates? How to judge which teacher is actually good beyond just feeling?

This is tough. But I got to really know some of my teachers and I felt like even at the end of a month, I had made massive progress. Confidence wise I went from completely unwilling to use it at work, to willing but not especially effective.

Important agreements to come to with a teacher

• Does she believe you when you say "I understand?" Is there a way to derail an explanatory diversion? Does she look at your face / is the video refresh speed fast enough for them to notice that you have really got something? Some teachers don't accept "I get it" to cut them off and move to the next thing. Others don't notice when you don't get things, or get too accustomed to your mistakes.
• Is she tolerant of you rephrasing everything? Seems valuable at my level that after reading a sentence from the book, to be able to rephrase it or describe why such a situation must have come about? I would frequently stop an explanation or a description and suggest another way to say it. There should be paying attention to your thought process.
• Will she strictly correct you on things that matter, while avoiding going into extreme written / grammatical detail? It's so hard for teachers to correct foreigners the 1000 times they need to be corrected on how to say 日本 or 自由。But the best teachers will repeatedly not let you get through the sentence until you say it right. And you'll anticipate getting corrected, and build up a little monitor around certain words and tones, that will guide you to say it right.
• Will she do improv off of dialogues? If you are clarifying a situation for politeness/grammar levels, and you come up with an example, will she create a counter-example to illustrate the point?

Summary of the experience

Absolutely loved it; made great progress, got to know 5 or so of my 20+ teachers pretty well, had many people know me very well, was a great way to spend early quarantine, total cost ~3.5k.