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Michelle
QUESTION FOR FELLOW TEACHERS ON HERE

Hello fellow teaching professionals,

I'm new to this platform and have a quick query that I'd love you to help me out with.

Actually, I'm not even sure this is the right spot to post this, but here goes...

I am receiving friend requests from people I do not know at all, and I am wondering what is the implication and impact of accepting them?

On social media I only accept those I actually know, but anyone else can follow my public page. How does it work on here?

Thanks in advance :)

Michelle

댓글 · 3

4
You can turn off all friend requests. That's what I did. I've sent out friend requests to people that I find interesting and connected with one or two people who commented on a discussion post I wrote. You can still message with students without being friends, so why would you need to "be friends"?

Unfortunately language learning has always been asymmetric. Some languages are in high demand (such as English) while other languages are in lower demand in general or low demand relative to that language. In my case, I'm studying Chinese. It's easier for me to find a Chinese language partner who wants to learn English than vis versa.

On a side note, some language pairs are more or less common. Many of the tutors for the indigenous language of the Americas only speak Spanish and their native language meaning a Chinese person might need to learn Spanish to study them.

tl;dr - You can block all requests. That's what I recommend.
3

I am not a teacher here on italki, but italki is the worst of all the language sites I know for that particular abuse.Every day in the discussions or student question section called "notebook" you will see many females complaining about it. There is a mechanism for you to block or report such people. I am sure you will get many responses telling you what to do. You can see how long a person has been here and how many lessons they have booked, this may be an indication of their seriousness. There are teachers who will not accept students who do not have a natural photo. I.E they will not entertainment any students with an ICON and not a photograph. In their profile.

I am sure many friend requests are from eager students, many potentially coming from poorer countries or circumstances that does not allow them to pay for tuition. Unfortunately there are a few very suspect people who abuse language learning sites like this and teachers have to protect themselves. The net result can be that many genuine people make requests with intention of learning. And get very frustrated. Forcing them to post discussions like "why nobody wanna be a language partner". Unfortunately the scammers and the idiots of the internet also know about these "why nobody wanna be a language partner" discussions. 

1

Thanks so much John and Spence for taking the time to respond.

Very much appreciated.

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