This was a very successful lesson—this time the video link worked well, and using earbuds helped me in clearly hearing the tutor. This was my second lesson and I am still getting to know and understand Alberto, my tutor, and the thing I want to achieve next is a better balance between talking and listening… and to get a better feeling about how each theme of discussion is initiated. At the moment I think I am probably talking too much (because I want to practise) and I need to let Alberto lead the discussion more. We are talking at the moment about the places we live, and their differences, and subjects such as participation in sports activities. There have been a number of opportunities for laughter as my growing vocabulary is comically incorrect in places, but Alberto always helps me find the correct words and constructions. Much of this early phase in the learning is about trying to manage the stress of actually THINKING in Spanish… something I am working on. Overall, very enjoyable

We had a fun casual lesson talking about weather, geography & travel. I got to practice putting my thoughts in to longer sentences which Alberto helped to correct when I struggled.

Alberto helped me with improve my understanding of the uses of ser and estar a lot. He also helped more improve pronunciation of longer words in more difficult sentences.

It was a pleasure to meet Alberto, who was a kind and patient teacher. Unfortunately there were connection problems –– i received the message “USER CONNECTION IS NOT STABLE” several times. This was my first lesson with Alberto, so I was nervous and I couldn’t see him talking; I could hear him, but the quality of the audio was poor in places and several times I had to ask him to repeat what he had said to me. Of course it is important when learning a language that you can SEE the other person, and this didn’t happen for the whole lesson—not a satisfactory experience at all, but it was no reflection on Alberto himself, who tried hard to solve the connection problems. I certainly hope that italki can make this problem go away, because it does not make me want to book more lessons if the situation continues. I would be grateful to hear from italki what can be done to correct this situation. Also, Alberto could not see me in video at his end, so it must have been frustrating for him too.

Alberto was very helpful going over a text with new phrases. He was patient & helpful with helping me read the texts out loud.

Alberto was very helpful patient when I was conversing about my week & offered advise on vocabulary I was stuck on.