Finding a Japanese Tutor – Near Me or Online?
Before starting to look for a Japanese tutor, you might come upon a choice between an in-person tutor and an online tutor. Besides the old fashioned face to face tutoring, online tutoring have also become increasing popular due to the fact that it is more convenient and often costs less. So, which one should you go for? What are the pros and cons?
Japanese tutor near me – pros and cons
Hiring an in-person tutor remains a common choice for language learners. Many prefer it because of the interactions you are able to have with a real person instead of talking to a computer screen. Face to face tutoring also lets you have easier and more instant feedbacks on your work or output. However, it is limited to your location and requires traveling time for the tutor and you. It also usually cost more than an online session and it less flexible.
Pros:
- More interactions in class
- Better feedback on your works
- No connection or network issues
Cons:
- Less flexible schedule
- Requires travel
- Limited to your location
- Often cost more
Japanese tutor online – pros and cons
Study with a Japanese tutor online is much more convenient, in many people’s opinion. There is no need to travel far to get Japanese lessons. Also, you are not limited to your country or location and can find high-quality or native teachers far more easier. Not to mention the price is often cheaper than in-person tutoring. However, it could get boring talking into a microphone and therefore requires more concentration. You might also have a bad learning experience if the internet connection is not stable.
Pros:
- Flexible schedule
- No need to travel
- Easier to find native tutors
- Not limited to the tutor pool near you
- Rates are often cheaper
Cons:
- Some people don’t like the lack of human interaction
- Might get interrupted if network connection is not stable
- Harder to concentrate
With that being said, let’s focus on some of the best platforms for you to find the perfect Japanese tutor!
Find Online Japanese Tutor – Italki
What is special about Italki?
Prices from: $10
Payment options: Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Alipay, Skrill eWallet and Bank Transfer
Flexibility of lesson plans ★★★★★
You can add any amount of credits to your account. Then you can use your credits to buy either one or multiple lessons. Usually the more you buy, the more discounts you get (depends on the tutor).
User Experience ★★★★✩
Italki has a much better user experience after its redesign, making it more elegant and more intuitive. All the functions you’ll need is on your dashboard and you can learn to navigate pretty easily.
Customer Support ★★★✩✩
There’s only one support center on Italki. If you can’t solve your problems by browsing the faq materials. You’ll need to wait a long time before being contacted by email.
Overall Verdict ★★★★✩
Great interface, good teacher quality and active community makes iTalki a great choice to get a Japanese tutor and start your language learning journey. However, slow customer support and little discount are a few of its downsides.
Get free Japanese lessons and discounts
Due to its leading position in the market, Italki barely gives any discounts. Though some teachers offer discounts if a student buys more lessons, popular teachers usually don’t provide such discounts. Teachers can decide their price and how many discounts they would like to give.
Boost your Japanese language learning
Apart from paid lessons, Italki also provides a community where you can find language exchange partners. By picking a good partner you can get additional practices with native Japanese speakers.What’s more, you can write essays, ask questions, and let other native Japanese speakers correct your writing or answer your questions in the community. The whole community is quite active and most posts get responses.
Find Japanese Tutors – Preply
What is special about Preply?
Price from: $10
Payment options: Visa, Mastercard and PayPal
Flexibility of lesson plans ★★★✩✩
After your first free trial hour, you have to buy at least 5 hours for your next purchase. Preply offers discounts for packages of 10 and 20 hours.
User Experience ★★★✩✩
In general, Preply offers an intuitive user interface. It’s easy to find a teacher, easy to add hours and easy to monitor all your learning progress. However its tutor pages contain quite a lot of information and can sometimes be disorienting.
Customer Support ★★★★★
You can check the customer support at the bottom right corner. FAQs are well organized to help you book lessons with tutors. You can also find instant help by contacting online customer support. Business hours — 6 am – 11 pm on weekdays, 8 am – 6 pm on weekends.
Final verdict: ★★★✩✩
Preply is by all standards a decent platform to find a Japanese tutor. Nice interface, detailed information on tutors and great customer support. However they don’t treat their tutors very well and you can see a lot of them complaining on third-party websites.
Get free Japanese lessons and discounts
Preply offers every new user a free first lesson, so you can try at least one teacher without risking spending money at the wrong place. If you’re not satisfied with the tutor after your first trial lesson, you can book another tutor’s trial lesson right away. But if you wait for 3 weeks and do not add any tutors into your cart, you’ll get another free lesson. Usually, Preply offers a free lesson after 30 days to users who do not book any lessons when they have remaining hours with a tutor or after 20 days to a user who do not purchase any hours. Although it might be a good way to get free lessons, changing tutors constantly does not help languages learning at all. (In fact, the cost is on the tutor and not Preply. Preply force tutors to give free trial lessons which I don’t quite agree with.)Preply also has a referral system. You can give your friends your referral link and ss soon as they use the discount, they’ll get a 30% off their first payment and the same amount will be credited to your account.
Find Japanese teachers – Verbling
What is special about Verbling?
Price From: $6
Payment options: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Paypal, Alipay, Wechat and many other forms (depends on country)
Flexibility of lesson plans ★★★★✩
Verbling offers 1, 5, 10, 20 and 50 lesson packages. You can get discounts when buying more than 5 lessons at a time, but the amount of discounts also depends on each tutor.
User Experience ★★★★★
Verbling’s user interface is not the most beautiful, but it offers virtual classrooms and vocabulary decks to help your Japanese language learning. We really like it since it’s quite unique among other platforms and very useful.
Customer Support ★★★★★
You can get instant help at the bottom right corner of the page. The Verbling support team usually replies within an hour. You can search for FAQs in the chat box as well.
Overall Verdict ★★★★★
Verbling is a really great website to find online tutors. Not much to complain about and it comes with many thoughtful small features to make learning a whole lot easier. However it does a poor job at marketing so the brand awareness is quite low.
Get free Japanese lessons and discounts
Verbling provides a one-third price off the first trial lesson which takes half of the normal lesson time.Verbling occasionally offers some marketing activity, but not that often.Sometimes they give 10% to 15% discounts and sometimes a free lesson if you buy a 20 lesson package. The discounts are quite random so you might need some luck to use them. But most of the time you can expect tutors to give 10% to 25% discounts if you buy more than 5 lessons.
Boost your Japanese language learning
The most appealing feature on Verbling must be the vocabulary deck. You can add any new words you don’t know to your deck and review them in your free time. The repetition system is quite like Duolingo or Quizlet. Moreover, you can explore decks created by other learners.
Find Japanese tutor online – AmazingTalker
What is special about AmazingTalker?
Price From: $5
Payment options: VISA, Mastercard and JCB
Flexibility of lesson plans ★★★★★
You can buy 1 to 100 lessons according to your needs. AmazingTalker offers discounts for packages of 5, 10, 20 lessons. You can also discuss with your tutors to see if they offer more discounts on buying more than 20 lessons.
User Experience ★★★★✩
The general user experience is really nice on AmazingTalker, easy to look for a new tutor, easy to book your first lesson and easy to navigate through the whole site. However, some users complain about not able to manage their lesson history neatly.
Customer Support ★★★★★
The customer service support is located at the bottom right corner. You can contact the support team if you came upon any problems. The average response time on AmazingTalker is within an hour on weekdays and a few hours on weekends.
Overall Verdict ★★★★★
AmazingTalker is one of the best platforms to find and “be” a tutor. It attracts a lot of high-quality tutors by treating them nicely and generously, which makes it a lot easier to get a good tutor. Coupled with its advanced AI matching system, you are sure to find just the right tutor for yourself.
Get free Japanese lessons and discounts
AmazingTalk is giving out an incredible amount of discounts to students. You have a 5% off discount on a 5 lesson package, 10% off on a 10 lesson package, 15% off on a 20 lesson package. Check their Japanese Tutor page for more details.Moreover, right after you finish your trial lesson with a tutor, you’ll get a $10 discount to buy the tutor’s lessons.The most important of all, they have crazy sales every February and August. You can expect discounts like buy one and get one free during that time.
Boost your Japanese language learning
Though not having a customized classroom system like Verbling, the tutors are well trained to use Zoom, a video chat app that offers better lesson experience than Skype.Also, most tutors make use of Google Docs to manage all the teaching materials that students can review or complete their homework.
Find Japanese tutors near me – HeyTutor
What is special about HeyTutor?
Price From: $20
Payment options: Visa, Mastercard
Flexibility of lesson plans ★★★✩✩
You can buy 10, 20 or 30 hours of tutoring. All lessons are pre-paid with a one-time purchase. You can renew your package plan if you need more hours.
User Experience ★★✩✩✩
The general user experience is OK. However, you only get limited information when you are not logged in. You can’t preview tutors and if you want to know more about a tutor, you have to contact the tutor.
Customer Support ★★★✩✩
There’s not much information in the FAQs, but they offer phone customer support. Though not as convenient as online support. You can give a call to solve the problems you meet.
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