Mwalimu Tina

Mwalimu Tina is the best Swahili teacher on italki, and I’ve worked with multiple teachers just to confirm. The major difference is that she has learned Kiswahili as an adult!Most others instructors that learned as children cannot relate to being an adult learner. She uses lots of different learning aids to teach with. Other people are just trying to have a conversation with you, or worse, asking you to lead the sessions… That’s what the teacher is for! They aren’t proactively providing teaching plans customized to your level like she is. Mwalimu Tina gives textbooks, reading assignments, recordings for pronunciation practice and even chats in between sessions to help make sure you have all parts of the language learning toolkit at your disposal. The materials really aid study and enable the student to be self empowered between sessions. That really gives you a sense of control as a student so you can feel like you’re actually making progress and not just randomly chatting.

I am not getting another teacher in Kiswahili because I've found the best...and that's Tina! I'm too lazy to write reviews sometimes but Tina really injects a lot of fun in learning a foreign language. You REALLY get stuff done in 1 hour. I feel like if I keep having lessons with Tina, in just 1 year I can get people to believe that my 100% Asian self grew up speaking Kiswahili 😄

Tina is a great teacher/tutor. She has an incredible understanding of Swahilli and for native English speakers, she can unlock the language by providing them with the right materials and conversations to help the student quickly focus on learning th things that drives fluency. Tina is a great resource to build towards my first goal which is to achive fluency. For those considering getting help in the language journey, I would highly recommend Tina.

Another great lesson with Mwalimu Tina! She has been extremely patient with me while also helping to push me to work on my weaknesses with Swahili. I am so thankful to have found her! :)

I love learning with Mwalimu Tina because our learning together is engaging & relevant for how natives speak colloquial Kiswahili. She’s helped me learn the language in context by using fun stories! When Tina sees a concept that I need more reinforcement with such as prepositional phrases or negating, she’ll assign exercises that target those skills directly. Tina adapts her instruction effortlessly during the lesson by slowing down, jumping ahead, or referencing previous examples as needed. She makes a plan with her learners of how they’d like to approach their language journey & helped me find other tools to practice my Kiswahili. She’s also checked in between our lessons & invited me to try fun little challenges such as recording myself in Kiswahili on various topics! Tina is incredibly kind & she relates to how I’ve felt being surrounded at home by an unfamiliar language— all this is why mpenzi wangu (my Tanzanian partner) & I both think Tina is the best Kiswahili teacher for me!🇹🇿💛

Mwalimu Tina is back after illness. She is the perfect teacher for English speakers because she can explain the nuances between formal Kiswahili and everyday spoken Kiswahili. Her enthusiasm is infectious. Thank you