I hope this is okay to post here. I’ve been using Preply for about a month and I wanted to share my thoughts (good and bad).
I lost the motivation to grind on my own after taking N3 in December. I got annoyed at myself for not studying and decided that having a teacher to report to might help my cause. I researched online tutoring and found Preply.
Each tutor has a profile listing their interests and what they usually teach. The tutors have different rates per hour (the highest I saw was around 4000 yen/hour). You can book one trial lesson per tutor. These lessons are paid but there is an option when you pay to ask for your money back if you aren’t satisfied. Each tutor messaged me before our lesson together to ask about my level, my goals, etc. I think finding the right tutor on the site can be tricky (I scheduled lessons with like 8 people).
After one trial lesson, you can’t book single lessons anymore. You have to sign up for a subscription (i.e. 4 lessons/month, 8 lessons/month). You don’t have to spread these lessons out over 28 days but you do have to book the lessons within that period of time from my understanding. I don’t love this feature. I wish I was able to just buy a pack of lessons to be used when I want.
I was looking for support studying grammar and reading but a lot of the tutors that I spoke to did more conversation based classes. I’ve finally settled on two tutors that I really like. I’m going through a textbook with one of them (Quartet II) and I’m reading Japanese literature with the other. They assign me hw outside of our lessons (which I like). I plan to continue to use the service because I’m actually studying and enjoying it again.
**tl;dr Not the best resource for the JLPT, good for conversation based learning, best for beginners, possibly expensive depending on your tutor**
1 comment
italki: What you can buy depends completely on the teacher. Mostly you can buy single lessons and one type of package (like 5 or 10 in bulk which then get a small discount, like up to 5-10%). You will have to schedule all lessons of a package within half a year. Most teachers have 30min and 60min lessons, some also 45min or 90min lessons. There are also some kind of 30min trials which can be cheaper, but must not be, as also that depends on the teacher. You can only spend 3 actual trials at all, but of course do as much “real” 30min lessons as you want.