- – - – -
We just wanted to note that italki now accepts JCB credit cards. JCB (Japan Credit Bureau) is similar to Visa or Mastercard, and is widely used in Japan and other countries, including South Korea, China, Taiwan, and the United States. You’ll see the JCB option when you go to purchase italki Credits (ITC). We hope this makes it easier to purchase language products and services on italki.

Click on Language Teachers in the left-hand navigation box.

First, choose your search criteria:

Teaches: Choose the language you’re looking to study. This lists the language the teacher will teach you.

Professional Teacher / Language Tutor: Do you need a teacher with professional teaching experience, or is a language tutor more suitable for your learning? More explanation of this here.

Native Speaker: Do you wish to learn from someone who speaks that language as their mother tongue? If you’re an advanced learner of the language, this may be more important to you than for beginners. Check this to find native speaking teachers of the language you’re learning.

Free Trial Available: If you want to have a trial session with the teacher before you pay for lessons, mark this option and you will only be shown teachers who offer Free Trial.  (You must have ITC in your account to be a Free Trial.)

Price (ITC per hour): If you only want to be shown teachers who fit within your budget, you may select it here. ITC are italki’s internal currency, known as italki Credits or ITCs.  US$1 = 10ITC.

Then click Browse to search by your specified criteria.

Second, after your new personalized list has loaded, choose which order in which you want to view the matching teachers.

Ratings: Sorts from highest to lowest (none) the level of positive feedback ratings the teacher has received from other italki students.  Shown by 1-5 Gold Stars.  More details here in our FAQ.

Price: Sorts from lowest to highest price in ITC per hour.  ITC are not US$.  1 ITC equals US$0.1

Once you find a few teachers that match your criteria and interests, click on their picture or name to few their profile.  Here you can learn more about them, check their availability schedule, and book a session with them.

Learning online is very quick, easy, and affordable.  Get started today!

So this is your last chance to purchase the 1-Year SpeakENG Online Course for $16 USD!

If you know anyone who is studying English, please tell them to join italki and purchase it soon! The price for the same package starting in October will be $40 USD! Don’t miss out on this great opportunity!

If you don’t know much about the SpeakENG Online Course, you can read the description here. It’s important to remember that SpeakENG has two main parts:
1) Online Course: Multimedia lessons, English exercises, grammar explanations, roleplaying games, and much more. The courses run from beginner levels to advanced.
2) One-on-One Tutoring with a professional American teacher: Included with the 1-year online course is a 15 minute session with a professional US teacher. The teacher can answer any questions the student may have, in addition to structuring a one-on-one live teaching course. Students are encouraged to purchase additional teaching sessions.

Here is a sample video of what a SpeakENG online course looks like:

You can also view a short sample of a one-on-one tutoring session here.

We hope people studying English will take advantage of this promotional pricing! It is really a tremendous value that is hard to compare with.

Also, it’s the last chance to register for our sweepstakes the Great English Giveaway. We’re giving away 20 SpeakENG 1-month Online Courses, and all you have to do is post in that group. We’ll be choosing the winners on Monday. Go post now, and if you don’t win next week — make sure you purchase SpeakENG by the end of the month!

The italki team

SpeakENG is an online course for learning English, and any italki member can win a 1-Month Subscription just by replying to this group post! The SpeakENG program includes access to the Online Course for a full month, plus a 15 minute session with Eleutian’s certified ESL teachers.

—————————————————————————————————

What you need to do to enter the sweepstakes:

1) Log on to italki.com or join if you’re not already a member.

2) Go to The Great English Giveaway group post

3) Read the rules, and then reply to the post with three things:

• How you found out about italki
• Why you’re learning English
• A funny or embarrassing English mistake you have made

4) That’s it!

The contest will begin on September 8, 2009 at 12:01 am China Standard Time, and will end on September 20, 2009 at 11:59 pm China Standard Time.  italki will choose the winner before September 30th.  Full contest details are available here.

If you’re looking for other products to help you learn English, check out the italki Marketplace.

Good luck!

cashU from Maktoob

We’re excited to announce that we’ve now started accepting payments through cashU. cashU is a popular payment service that is used in many countries where credit card payments are not accepted. In the Middle East, for example, credit cards are not often used online due to fraud and security concerns. However, cashU has payment options such as prepaid scratch cards that are a secure method for handling online payments.

Roughly 15% of italki users come from the Middle East, and we hope that by expanding their payment options that more users will be able to participate in the language marketplace.

Prepaid Cards

cashU is part of the Maktoob Group, which operates one of the Arabic region’s leading portals (Maktoob.com). cashU is offered in 28 countries around the world, including the Middle East, China and some European countries.

We’re planning to add more payment options in the near future, and we’ll let you know about those here on the blog.

Arabic Press Release (PDF)

The italki team

Alipay

Learning English is the primary goal of most users on italki, which is natural given that the majority of users are not native speakers of English. Our largest group of users come from China (20% of total users). We’ve just started a marketing partnership with Alipay to make it easier for Chinese users to purchase italki credits.
Alipay is a payment platform owned by the global e-commerce company Alibaba. Alipay works similarly to Paypal, and is very popular in China. For the month of August, we are offering a 10% bonus to purchases of italki credits over $30 USD through Alipay.

Learning English in China

Alipay - italki page

We hope that by making it easier for Chinese users to pay online, this will lead to more transactions on the italki marketplace. There is certainly an immense demand for learning English in China. Chinese students start learning English at an early age (depends regionally, but average age of 10-13). However, after studying English for five years or more, many students graduate with “哑巴英文” (mute English). They often have not had any opportunity to use their English, and the vast majority are taught by Chinese teachers with varying levels of proficiency.

Given the demand for English, English training centers in China are a huge industry. These centers often are very expensive (10,000 – 20,000 RMB or ~$1500-$3000 USD). This amount of money also needs to be viewed in an economic context where the average monthly salary is roughly between $200 – $600 USD (depends on the city and region).

Anecdotally, we’ve been told that many Chinese find their experiences at these teaching centers to be disappointing. The centers are strong at marketing, but weak at delivering real improvement for students. Students have very limited access to teachers and are stuck listening in large classes.

Naturally, we believe that online learning can change this equation radically. italki partners, like Eleutian, can deliver an online product (SpeakENG), direct to students at an incredibly low costs. Students can get Eleutian’s certified teachers or find independent teachers which they can schedule according to their own time needs. In addition, student tuition doesn’t go into supporting building rents in expensive city districts, massive marketing campaigns, or large school administrations. Given the natural benefits of online learning, we think this will become a major alternative to offline learning in the near future.

View the English press release (PDF)
View the Chinese press release (PDF)

The italki Team

Eleutian is based in Wyoming, USA, in a little town called Ten Sleep (google map).  Their mission is to teach the world English, using online courses and US-based teachers.  In a time when much of the US is in recession, Eleutian has been hiring certified teachers to satisfy the global demand for learning English.  Eleutian is an interesting globalization story in that English teaching is being “in-sourced” to the US. Another intriguing aspect about Eleutian is its surprising technology infrastructure (news report).

click for detailed explanation page of SpeakENG

The other part of Eleutian’s SpeakENG product is online courses that are powered by Pearson’s English Language Learning and Instruction System (ELLIS).  SpeakENG (Pearson ELLIS) has an impressive amount of English content for online self-study. There are video lessons, scripts, recordings, skill drills, in-depth explanations of grammar points, and much more.  We’ve been told the package normally retails at a very expensive rate, and that the pricing on italki reflects Eleutian’s desire to grow aggressively in this market (this pricing might not last).

If you want to find out more information (pictures and walkthrough), take a look at our in-depth explanation on Eleutian SpeakENG.

Eleutian SpeakENG is offering to italki users:

• 8- minute trial tutoring session – $1.50
• 1 month subscription to SpeakENG with 15-minute tutoring session – $6.00
• 1 year subscription to SpeakENG with 15-minute tutoring session – $16.00
• 4 x 15-minute tutoring sessions – $20.00
• 24 x 15-minute tutoring sesions – $110.00

You can see the full list here.

If you’re learning English, we really can’t recommend trying SpeakENG enough. It’s an amazing product for self-study and combined with tutoring from US certified teachers, we’re sure this is something that you shouldn’t miss out on.

View the press release (PDF)

The italki Team

Our first partner company, Eleutian Technology, targets the largest language learning market in the world: Learning English.  Eleutian uses American certified-school teachers and the highly-regarded Pearson English Language Learning Instruction System (ELLIS) to teach English online.

click to go to marketplace

Language Learning Ecosystem

Our plan is to expand the marketplace to include every language, and to support a variety of services.  By creating an ecosystem for language learning, we believe everyone benefits:  students, independent teachers, language training companies, and application developers.

Students benefit by having more choices.  They can pay for premium services, or use the free community generated ones.  Students are able to share information about different service providers and make informed choices.  Students are also able to pick and choose a combination of services that may be useful to them.  Most of all, a central location helps students find online providers of language education.

Teachers and companies benefit by having an active market with demand for their service.  Companies and teachers can reach out to students around the world, and transact without having to deal with individual payment issues.  Quality teachers and companies also benefit by having their reputation socially confirmed by their customers.

Again, we’re thrilled to be opening our expanded marketplace, and to have Eleutian join us as our first partner.  If you’re not learning English, just be patient — we’re planning to add more companies and services for other languages soon. If you represent a company that might be interested in partnering with italki, please contact us at business at italki dot com.

View the press release （PDF)

The italki Team

Through looking at our marketplace, we’ve also learned a lot about paying students. It’s not a surprise that English is the most popular language to study. Over 50% of the sessions taught have been for learning English. Given that most non-native speakers have a general desire to learn English, we think this is a sign of how much unmet demand there is for English language teachers. Interestingly, learning Chinese Mandarin is the second most popular choice, followed by learning Spanish. As Chinese Mandarin grows in importance, we believe more and more people will look online to find a teacher. In many areas around the world, Chinese teachers may not be available, and online teaching rates seem very reasonable.

We’ve also found that many students are using the Free Trial feature to find the right teacher for them. This is a great way for students to test out a couple of teachers and find the one that has the most compatible learning style. It’s also a good opportunity for teachers to get a better understanding of how the system works, and a student’s particular needs and ability level.

Overall, we think the growth in the number of students purchasing italki credits and bookings sessions with language teachers is a sign that people are getting more comfortable with the idea of learning online. This should be good news for all the internet startups in this space (Edufire, WizIQ, ForteMall, Sclipo, and Moontoast) who have a similar vision that education will eventually come from many sources.

Keep telling us what you think about the site and our Language Marketplace. And keep following the blog — we’ll keep you updated as we put up new features. The italki team