Italki.com
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 Italki.com mainpage |
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| URL | www.italki.com |
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| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Social Networking Site |
| Registration | Required for contacting members |
| Available language(s) | English, Spanish (Castellano), Arabic, Korean, Swedish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Bahasa (Indonesian), Polish, Hindi, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Chinese (Traditional and Simplified) |
| Owner | italki Inc. |
| Launched | December 2006 |
| Current status | active |
italki is an online destination for language learning, comprising a social network and marketplace. The company is based in Shanghai, China.[1] italki was founded by American and Chinese entrepreneurs.
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[edit] Features
italki has a variety of features to support language learners: social learning, self-study, and paid professional lessons.
Social Learning
- Language Partners - Search for people who are native speakers of the target language and practice through language exchange
- Q & A[[2]] - Ask language related questions and get answers from the community
- Groups - Study together in groups. Discuss topics surrounding culture, language acquisition, topics of interest. Work together to get help from people studying the same language.
Self-study
- Podcasts & videos - Listen to or watch videos about different cultural and linguistic aspects to improve language ability.
- Files, Wikis[3] (Knowledge[4]), PPT - Share valuable resources with other members of the community. Read documents and study from text sources, just like using a traditional textbook.
- Resources - Find other resources on the web, including flashcards, self-progressed lessons, news broadcasts, test prep, etc.
Paid Learning
- Independent teachers/tutors - Find qualified teachers. "The new feature connects teachers and students for paid teaching of foreign languages. Teachers create a profile and set their own rates," writes Ryan McLaughlin at CNet Asia[5]. Students give ratings and feedback to the teachers to help potential students identify the best teachers [6].
- Language teaching providers - Online schools, podcast companies, materials developers, and any language teaching products and services will be available on the italki Marketplace. The first company, Eleutian joined the Marketplace in July 2009 [7].
Membership on italki is free. Members can engage in social learning or self-study for free as well.
[edit] Community
The website currently has over 700,000 registered members, from over 200 different countries. The South China Morning Post revealed italki's user traffic:
About 20 percent of its users are from the mainland [China] and the rest spread across the globe, including 7 percent from the United States, 4 percent in India and 2 per cent in France[8].
[edit] References
- ^ italki - Language Exchange and Learning Community
- ^ http://www.italki.com/answers/
- ^ "italki, Building The Largest Community And Wiki For Language Learning", Gang Lu, Mobinode, http://www.mobinode.com/?p=370, May 18, 2008
- ^ "Italki Launches Socially Built Language Textbooks", Sean P. Aune, Mashable, http://mashable.com/2008/05/06/italki-language-textbooks/, May 6, 2008
- ^ "italki.com brings language teaching to market," Ryan McLaughlin, CNet Asia, http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/thetechdynasty/post.htm?id=63009740, March 24, 2009
- ^ "italki launches marketplace for language tutors," Camille Ricketts, VentureBeat, http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/25/italki-launches-marketplace-for-language-tutors/, March 25th, 2009
- ^ "Eleutian partners with Chinese social network," Tim Monroe, Wyoming Business Report, http://www.wyomingbusinessreport.com/article.asp?id=101246, July 21, 2009
- ^ "Social networking sites take language learning out of classroom", Sherman So, South China Morning Post, http://www.scmp.com/, July 8, 2008.
