How to Get the Most Out of Your Online Lessons
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Table of Contents
Choose the right teacher
Record your lessons
Write down questions beforehand
Extract the most important things for later review
Online lessons have been an absolutely crucial part of my language development. Taking online lessons with native speakers is convenient and easy with services like iTalki (← get $10 extra credits to purchase lessons with) and LanguaTalk (← book a free trial lesson). With just a few clicks you can book a lesson with a native speaker at a time that suits you and with a teacher of your choice.
I’ve personally taken over 100 lessons combined in Cantonese, Finnish, and Spanish. I’ve also taught close to 600 lessons in Swedish & English at iTalki.
I’ve developed some effective ways to make the most out of these speaking sessions. To optimize your time and learning to improve as fast as possible.
Here are my tips for how to get the most out of your online language sessions
Choose the right teacher
This might seem obvious, but choosing the right teacher for you is super key. And sometimes you might need to try out a few to see who you jive with and like the most.
For me personally I don’t want to have formal lessons, but mainly just conversation practice. I also use these to help clear up questions I might have and maybe help decipher what is being said in certain parts of a an audio clip, youtube-clip etc.
For the most part, I just want to chat and have a conversation. I’m not there to be taught. Those things are better done by ourselves in-between lessons since a language is caught and not taught.
And speaking is the one thing that is kinda hard to do one your own (unless you speak to yourself, which might not be a bad idea actually… but of course not quite the same thing).
Look for a teacher who suggests the right words to express something, who listens patiently and ask lots of questions and lets you speak a lot. As well as someone who doesn’t correct every single mistake.
It very quickly starts to inhibit your ability and confidence to speak if you’re constantly being stopped and corrected. And confidence is a huge part of speaking and speaking well.
And it also just disrupts the flow of the conversation. A good teacher will be able to gauge this well and know when it’s time to correct or just let you speak.
I find its way better when the teacher corrects me on the things I’m myself trying to express but I lack the right words or capacity to say it in a natural way. So the corrections are mostly me asking for help from the teacher and him/her filling in the missing information for me.
Not being overly-corrected is also important for the simple reason that it’s way better for us to learn to self-correct ourselves rather than relying on others to do so. And that’s a skill that comes with time and just paying attention to the language and what other say as well as ourselves.
A sign of a good teacher
A sign of a good teacher is when they simply repeat back to you the correct way to say things in the form of a question. Like if I would say: ”I like jog”. And he or she would reply back: ”ooh you like to jog.”
That way I hear it mirrored back the correct way without having to actually be corrected. When you learn to correct yourself it makes you more aware and proactive in your learning. And you then no longer have to rely on your teacher or anyone else, but you can actually teach and correct yourself. Which is a powerful skill to have.
What’s more important than anything though is that you just like the teacher and that it feels easy to have a conversation with them. Speaking sessions should be enjoyable and a place where you can talk about all sorts of things and topics that relate to you and your teacher’s lives.
Record your lessons
90% or so of what you learned are gonna be completely forgotten after the lesson is over. So ever since my first iTalki lesson I’ve recorded them with either audio or video. If you’re a mac user like me then ECAMM Call Recorder for Skype works amazing. That’s what I’ve used since day one. For PC I’ve heard good things about Pamela, although I haven’t personally tried it.
Recording the lessons is a great way to get the most out of them and the most bang for your buck. You can then retain the most of what you’ve learn there. You can for example just listen through the whole lessons while driving to work or doing the dishes.
What I personally like to do though is to go through them and then write down new words and expressions that come up in the lesson. And I mostly write down whole sentences instead of separate words as I find it’s better to learn phrases in general.
Then you’ll get to learn how the language functions which you won’t if you just learn the words separately. Plus, we speak in sentences and phrases, not in separate words.
The self-correction part that I mentioned can also be honed more when recording your lesson. As you’ll listen to yourself you’ll pick up on things that you could improve on so it’s a very valuable tool for that reason.
Some of you might find it awkward to listen to yourself, and I get that. Especially in the beginning. But I honestly find it encouraging because in my experience we often think we’re worse in our heads than we actually are in reality. So I find listening to the recorded lessons very encouraging! I often find myself thinking: “I was actually better than I thought!”
Make sure to ask your teacher before the lessons starts if it’s ok to record it. In my experience most teachers have no problem with this.
Write down questions beforehand
If you have questions or things in the language you’d like explained it’s a good idea to write them down and bring to your lesson. Things you come across during your week in whatever material you’re using for your learning.
I’m personally not someone who likes to study grammar, but when taking online lessons I sometimes like the teacher to clarify things in the language.
Mostly because it just helps me be ”aware” of certain things. It can be anything that you’ve noticed people say but don’t understand what it means. Certain expressions, phrases or any part of the language that you don’t understand. Or how to use certain words correctly.
I like to take things from listening & reading that I’ve come across and I need a little help with. A teacher is a great resource to help me figure these things out.
I then write these questions down either on my phone in the notes app, or in a Google Document if I use that with the teacher (highly recommended!). A google doc is great because then it’s already there for when the lesson starts and the teacher sees it right away too.
Have everything organized before the lesson start so you won’t have to waste time during the lesson on finding that.
Extract the most important things for later review
When having a speaking session with a teacher there are going to be new words and phrases that come up.
How do you know which words and sentences to write down?
How much you write down is up to you. I like to write down quite a bit to get the most out of my lessons, but that’s just my personality. Some people I know only like to take 7-8 of the most important words and phrases.
The most important thing for me though is to write down sentences that I myself tried to say during the lesson but was unable to, and the teacher then helped me say it correctly.
Because if you tried to say something during the lesson but couldn’t - then chances are you’re going to want to say something similar in the future in other situations. We all have our ways of speaking and favorite words and expressions that we use. So I find it best to prioritize those things.
But if the teacher says something interesting that you’d like to remember than those are also good things to store for later review. Lessons are a great source of input too so feel free to record as much as you’d like. Increasing your vocabulary is only going to be beneficial for you.
Most good teachers will write down new words and phrases for you during the lessons. But sometimes they might not have written down something that you found important so recordings are great for this reason.
Storing the new words and phrases
Afterwards you can then either put them in some kind of a flashcard app like Anki, or just write them down in a document or a language journal/book that you have.
With Cantonese I put new sentences and words in Anki. It’s a great way to use the “Spaced Repetition” function to review them in a smart way. And it’s also a good way to have them all organized in one place for me.
With Finnish I’ve never used flashcards so I just write the sentences down in a document and then I copy them all over to my LingQ app just to store them there.
The main thing is just to have everything organized in one place.
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If you have these 4 things in order then you’re setting yourself up for success and you’ll get more out your language lessons. If you’ve never tried it, then I would suggest booking a trial lesson at either iTalki or LanguaTalk (LanguaTalk even offers free trial lessons) with someone.
It’s seriously so much fun and I have made some great friends with some of the teachers that I’ve had over the years.
What are your favorite tips, tricks, or habits that to get the most out of your online lessons? Comment below.
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