LingWorld.com is a growing online marketplace where foreign language
students find foreign language teachers for learning or practicing the
language of their choice.
The lessons will be given online through the Internet and a webcam, so
you will need broadband for a better quality communication. You can
also use cybercafés which all have broadband connections,
and most of the time have computers equipped with webcams and headsets.
LingWorld.com is free to join, and there is no monthly fee.
Absolutely. A lot of us have already taken a language course, and just
need a weekly conversation practice in order not to lose their skills.
You can do that through LingWorld, and teachers will charge less for it.
You are the one to choose your tutor using the “Search
Teacher” function. You can search and select language
teachers according to many criteria, especially academic background and
foreign language teaching qualifications.
Yes that is the principle of LingWorld.com; teachers are actually
located everywhere in the world. This gives you access to native
speakers for whichever foreign language you would like to study or
practice.
After you have found the teacher(s) you are interested in, you just
need to send them an internal message to establish a first contact;
once you have exchanged a couple of messages, you can book a lesson
with the one you feel most comfortable with.
Teachers are all free to decide of their hourly fee, so it depends on
which teacher you will choose.
No. You pay the teacher for their hourly fee, that’s it.
Because most people give up when they try to learn a foreign language
by themselves from free services. Why? Because 1/a language is live and
needs to be heard from and spoken to a real person and 2/you need
discipline and follow-up to learn a foreign language, just like for
anything else. Learning by yourself from a website or a book has a high
chance of not succeeding, as there will quickly be good excuses for not
doing your daily/weekly lesson, and most people end up giving up. It is
different when you know that you are accountable to your teacher with
the next lesson coming a few days later.
We believe you won’t be able to learn by yourself using these
services, but combining them with a teacher from LingWorld.com, or
asking you teacher to use some of the resources on the net as a base
for the course is actually a good idea.
It depends on your teacher. You and your teacher will establish some
work habits. For example, he could email you the lesson outline a few
days before each online class. Or he could send you an mp3 recording or
recommend a podcast that will be the topic of the next lesson. Or you
can request him/her to use a book/method which you know and feel
comfortable with.
You need a broadband Internet connection, a webcam, a headset, and
Skype installed on your computer. We recommend Skype, which you can
download for free at www.skype.com as this is the most popular free
Internet video system, and your teacher will probably have it. Although
there are alternatives like MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, Google talk
and plenty of others, it makes things easier if all members of our
community use the same software.
They are all free software to make video calls online. You can download
any of these software from http://www.skype.com , http://www.msn.com ,
http://www.yahoo.com respectively, but there is a good chance you will
need to install Skype in the end, as most of our language teachers will
probably be using Skype.
You make your payment through the LingWorld platform. You can either do
repeated payments for each and every lesson, or top-up your account in
advance, so you only have to use your LingWorld credit to pay for the
subsequent language classes. You can top-up your LingWorld account with
a credit card or Paypal.
We highly recommend opening a Paypal account if you don’t
have one, as it is the easiest way to pay for anything online.
Nevertheless, if for some reason, it is not possible in your country,
please contact us at support@lingworld.com so we can suggest
alternative ways of payment.
Our language teachers’ profiles include very detailed
information, not only on their general academic background, but also on
the specific qualifications for the foreign language they teach. On top
of that, if you really want proofs, you can ask the teacher you are
interested in to email you a scanned copy of their qualifications. But
in the end the best way to know about a teacher is to take a trial
class.
You do not have to commit to any number of lessons. Nevertheless once
you have found a language teacher you like to learn from, it is in your
own interest to continue with this teacher.
For the sake of our language students, we ask our teachers to be kind
enough to grant a free trial lesson when it is the first time they get
approached by a new student. To be fair, the lesson can’t be
an hour long, and we recommend 20min. There can only be one trial
lesson with one teacher.
Once you are happy with the free trial class, you will book the
following class using LingWorld.com booking system. You will have to
pay the teacher for the next class as it will not be free anymore!
With an Internet connection, a webcam and a headset, you are basically
in front of your teacher, and you interact with him/her almost the same
way as if you were physically in the same room. Language tuition on the
phone was already quite common even before the Internet era. Also, any
document can be exchanged by email before the class or in real time
from computer to computer.
Definitely. You can study from the comfort of your home or at your
office during your lunch break, without having to go to a faraway
school or tutor, and save on commuting time and cost; corporations have
replaced 80% of their business trips by videoconference.
You can also record your live webcam session and replay it after your
language class for revision, to hear your teacher again and practice.
You and the teacher decide on that. In any case, if you want to be
extra cautious about payment, we offer an escrow system where your
funds are taken from your account and not yet credited to the
teacher’s account. You can then release the funds after the
language class. Note that in any case only small amounts of money are
involved, in the 10 or 20 US$ range, and LingWorld will resolve any
payment issue.
We do not see or keep any of your bank details. Account top-up
processing is done by Paypal, and you get redirected to the Paypal
website during payment. Paypal, the leader of online payment, uses the
highest commercially available encryption system (SSL 3.0 128 bits key)
for communications between your computer and their server, and is
completely safe.
Various language teachers will use various foreign language teaching
methods. In some cases, you can also suggest a method which you like
and has a good reputation and ask your teacher to use it as a framework
for the course.
You can learn any language on LingWorld, and the list will grow with
new teachers joining us. If for some reason we do not have the teacher
for the foreign language you would like to learn, just write to use at
support@lingworld.com and we will find the right language tutor for you.
For two reasons: 1/ Thanks to the Internet, you can reach native
language teachers in countries where the cost of living is lower, and
language tuition fees are lower. And 2/ even in your own country,
LingWorld.com teachers will be able to teach from their home, therefore
spending less time and money on commuting, which in turns allows them
to charge less.
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