General tips for finding good language partners

1. First, offer to help other users

Many users ask other users to become friends by demanding that they help them learn a language.  This isn’t wrong exactly, but it’s always important to think from the other person’s perspective.  Ask yourself why this person would want to become your italki friend?

* Person A:  Hi

* Person B:  Teach me English I wan learn English very mch

* Person C:  Salut, I see that you are learning French.   I was born in Paris, and I am native speaker of French.   I was wondering if you could help me with English for practice in French?

bad introduction

In order to receive help, you must be willing to give it. Especially at the start, it’s important to let other users know that you’re interested in helping them too.

2. Show something real about yourself

Profile pictures
When you’re online, it is harder to build trust, so it’s important to try to be real. Not having a picture or using fake pictures makes it harder to connect with other users.

Which one of these is a real person?

Audrey Hepburn did not join italki

Profile information

Likewise, profiles with no information makes it harder for other users to know if they should be friends with you. The more you’re willing to share about yourself, the more likely other people will be willing to share their time with you.  Again, always offer to help people in your profile.

3. Answer questions, ask questions

Answering questions is a great way to show other people that you are interested in sharing your knowledge. In addition, other users who have similar questions may view your answer and find you that way.

Asking good questions also shows potential language partners that you’re serious about learning a language. Some users are looking for longer-term study partners, and showing that you know something about the language helps the community understand who you are.

4. Having discussions in groups

Groups is another place to be seen and to participate in a dialogue.

In particular, if you are a teacher or tutor and want to let other language learners know that you are available to teach, definitely go to the help offered / schools and teachers group to post an introduction. If you are student looking for help, you should post here.

Likewise, if you’re a student, go post in a group like learning the language or in the help wanted / tests and exams area.

5. Don’t give up

It isn’t easy to find good long-term language partners, so don’t assume after sending five invitations that there is nobody who wants to work with you. It’s also important to know there are many reasons why people don’t reply or aren’t interested. Some users already have many friends, and don’t want to add new ones. Some users are just too busy.

Our main recommendation is just to keep on trying, and keep on coming back to the site. The language partner search results are generally filtered by who was last online — so don’t wait to be found. Stay online, and get involved!

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If you have other suggestions or ideas about how to get the most out of italki, please let us know in the comments below! You can also always send us feedback or email at feedback at italki dot com.

The italki team

Whiteboard – twiddla.com

• Twiddla has a great whiteboard that lets you write and share ideas with multiple participants.  It is free, and incredibly easy to use.  You can start typing or drawing on it immediately, and all you need to do to share is to send someone a URL.  The whiteboard also comes with a text and audio chat, and you can also import pictures and documents .
• You can try marking up this page right here:
  

Documents – scribd.com

• We’ve been long-time fans of Scribd.  With Scribd, you can upload and share word documents, powerpoints, PDF, and other types of files with students and other italki users.  We’ve integrated Scribd into the italki Resources section, so when you upload files to italki, all your students need to view it is just a link.  This avoids clogging up everyone’s mailboxes, and is a great way to spread the word about your services.
• Note:  scribd.com has been blocked in mainland China.

Powerpoint / Slideshows – slideshare.com

• Slideshows or powerpoints can be great tools for teaching or sharing information.  Slideshare has a nice way interface for flipping through different pictures and for full screen views.  If you like to teach with powerpoints, uploading to slideshare might be a nice option to have.

Communication Tools – Skype.com

• We continue to think Skype is one of the best tools for teachers.  Skype continues to have some of the best
• Microphone and webcam.  There are numerous options for this, and we haven’t actually made — if your connection can support it, we recommend doing video chats as well.

italki resources (documents, wiki, and more.)

• italki resources are still in a very early stage, but we also want to recommend taking a look in there.  For example, there are many handouts and study guides in italki documents (this links is for learning Chinese, but you can switch the language).  Wealso  encourage to contribute to the community by uploading files or helping to improve the wiki.

These are just a few of our favorite tools that we are recommending teachers use.  If you have other suggestions for useful teaching tools that have helped you teach or learn, please leave a  comment here to let us know.  There are so many excellent free web-based tools that are being developed for teachers and students, that it is hard to keep up!

The italki Team