You finish your italki lesson feeling good, because you spoke French for 45 minutes and your tutor was kind and patient with you. Then, a few hours later, you try to remember what you got wrong, and you realize that you can only think of 2 or 3 corrections out of the 30 your tutor probably made.
This is the part of conversation lessons that nobody talks about. The lesson itself is useful, but the feedback mostly disappears, because you can’t speak, listen and take notes at the same time.
Why the corrections don’t stick
When your tutor corrects you in the middle of a sentence, your brain is busy with what you want to say next. You repeat the right form, you say “ah oui, merci”, and you move on with your story. The correction never has the chance to settle, so you make the same mistake again the following week.
Some tutors type corrections in the chat, which helps a little, but it depends a lot on the tutor and it also slows the conversation down. A tutor who writes down everything can’t really stay in the conversation with you.
What italki gives you
italki’s classroom lets you record the audio of a lesson, and italki also has an AI lesson summary feature, so check what is available on your account. A summary is a nice reminder of what you talked about, but it is not the same thing as a line by line look at what you said and how a French person would have said it.
What works better: use the transcript
The most complete record of your lesson is the transcript, because it contains every sentence you said, including the mistakes your tutor chose not to correct so the conversation could keep going.
Here is a simple routine you can follow after each lesson:
- Ask your tutor if you can record the lesson, and get a transcript from the recording.
- Paste the transcript into LanguageMate App, which analyzes it for you.
- Study the mistakes that come up again and again before your next lesson.
Where LanguageMate App comes in
I built LanguageMate App for exactly this situation. You paste the transcript of the part of the lesson where you spoke French, and about 2 minutes later you have a complete analysis of what you said.
The analysis doesn’t start with your mistakes. It starts with what you did well, with your own sentences quoted, because you need to know what is already working. Then it gives you your 3 priorities for the week, which are the patterns that came up most often. For each one you see how many times it appeared, one of your sentences next to the corrected version, and a short rule you can remember. Here is a typical one for an intermediate learner. You say “j’ai visité mes amis à Lyon”, and the app gives you “j’ai rendu visite à mes amis à Lyon”, with the rule that in French you use “visiter” for a place and “rendre visite à” for a person.
Below that, every remark is sorted by category, such as word for word translations from English, verb tenses or vocabulary. There is also a separate section called “Correct, but a native would rather say”, for sentences that aren’t wrong and could simply sound more natural.
You also get your whole conversation rewritten the way 2 native speakers would have said it, and flashcards made of full sentences from your conversation, each with a small reminder of the context, so you are reviewing things you really wanted to say and not a list of random words. You uncheck the cards you already know, and you review the rest in the app or in Brainscape with a CSV file.
A realistic way to use it
You don’t need more lessons, you need to get more out of the ones you already pay for. One 45 minute lesson, properly analyzed, gives you enough material to work on for a whole week.
If you already take lessons on italki, try it with your next one: paste your transcript into LanguageMate App and look at what you would have missed. The 7 day trial includes 1 free analysis. After the trial, it is 29 € per month for 4 full conversation analyses or 39 € per month for 8.
