Italy was the first country I travelled to on my first trip abroad, and eventually, it will be the country where I settle. Over the past few years, I have started thinking more and more about where I would really like to live. Which country ticks all the boxes for me? Somewhere with four seasons, where the food is healthy and delicious, where the produce proudly comes from the land, even in the big supermarkets, and where the nature is outstanding, from the seaside to the top of the mountains. And eventually, somewhere where my heart feels like it belongs every time I visit.
For me, that place is Italy.
I have been drawn to Italy since I was a child, when I got my hands on a book about Ancient Rome and its magnificent temples and monuments. I started learning Italian by watching TV, especially Rai 1. Every evening, I would watch L’Eredità, a game show where contestants played different word games to win a cash prize. On another channel, we had a foreign language lesson every day of the week, and if I remember correctly, Thursdays were dedicated to Italian. That’s where I got my grammar knowledge from. The rest? Movies. A lot of movies.
This year, I’ve been to Italy five times so far. And the more I go, the more I know, deep down, that it is the country where I belong. But I have an issue. Whilst I can understand pretty much everything, I find it quite difficult to speak beyond basic conversations in restaurants, cafes, or my hotel.
I had been contemplating taking Italian lessons to improve my speaking and conversation skills, but until now, I never found the time. Don’t get me wrong, I still have an incredibly busy schedule, which I am grateful for, as being self-employed is not easy. But I really wanted to do something for myself as well. This summer, I found an email in my inbox from Preply asking if I wanted to review their platform. It came right after I returned from my latest trip to Rome, where I went to see Gladiator in Concert at Circus Maximus. I was still buzzing from the trip and decided to find the time for it.
Whilst Preply gave me some credit to experience the platform for myself, once that finished, I continued paying for the lessons myself because I enjoyed them so much.
But let me tell you about how it all started and how it’s going.
Table of Contents
What is Preply
Preply is an online platform that connects students with teachers from all over the world. You can choose a teacher based on the skill you want to learn, their experience, availability, and, of course, whether you feel like you would get along with them.
If you are reading this Preply review because you are considering using the platform yourself, one of the things I think is worth knowing is how much flexibility you have when choosing your lessons and teacher.
One thing I really like about Preply is that the lesson timings are fully customisable. You don’t have to commit to the same day and the same hour every week. This is very important to me, given my chaotic freelance schedule.
I signed up for one lesson a week, but you can choose as many lessons as you’d like. Preply charges you every 28 days for the block of lessons you have chosen, and you have until the end of that billing cycle to schedule them. The lessons don’t have to take place at the same time each week, which gives you quite a lot of flexibility.
Your teacher opens up available time slots, which you can then book based on your own schedule. My teacher has also told me that if my preferred time isn’t available, I can let him know and he will do his best to open a slot around that time if he is free.
For me, this flexibility is one of the biggest advantages of using Preply. With my schedule constantly changing, being able to move my lessons around rather than having a fixed weekly appointment makes it much easier to actually stick with learning Italian. Fancy Giving Preply a Try? Get 70% Off Your Trial Lesson.
Signing Up to the Platform
The first step, after signing up with your email address, is to answer a series of questions that help Preply understand what you are looking for. The first question is what you want to learn. You can choose a foreign language, but you can also learn maths, science, arts, business and even hobbies such as cooking and baking. For the purpose of this review and my personal needs, I went with Italian.
The second question is what your goal is. You can choose from hobby learning, business, exams and coursework, or learning for kids.
Next, you choose what kind of topics you would like to focus on. In my case, the options included Italian fundamentals, daily situations, travel, media and culture.
The platform then asks which areas you would like to improve – in my case, this was conversation. You also have to set a goal and choose how much time you are planning to spend working towards it.
Next, you choose your current Italian level and whether you have any special or additional needs. After that, you can choose the attributes of your perfect teacher, but I’ll tell you more about this in the section below.
Then comes the schedule. You are asked when you are most likely to take your lessons, but don’t worry, these times are not set in stone. I’ve done lessons on a Monday around lunchtime, but also on a Saturday morning, with my coffee.
Finally, you set your budget, and the platform will show you a selection of tutors who match the criteria you have chosen. From there, you can look through the available teachers and decide who you would like to book a lesson with.
Finding the Right Teacher
The initial questionnaire has a section about finding the right teacher for you and you get to choose what kind of teaching style works best for you. You can select up to three different attributes, such as adaptable, patient, structured, engaging, goal-focused and so on.
You can also choose whether you want your teacher to be a native speaker or not. If English is not your first language, you can also select whether you would like your teacher to speak other languages.
This was my first time taking online lessons and, I am not going to lie, I felt a little bit anxious. After I made my selections, I got a list of teachers who matched my requirements. It took me a while to scroll through all the profiles and try to pick the right teacher for me. I didn’t know if I would feel more comfortable with a man or a woman, or with someone older or younger.
In the end, I ended up on Marco’s profile, a teacher from Milan. His profile caught my eye because he seemed very approachable from his photo, with a big smile, and he had 15 years of teaching experience.
So I booked a half-hour introductory session with Marco, to get to know each other and see if we are a match.
It’s good to note that if your first choice of tutor is not a match for some reason, you can try two more tutors for free. I was lucky that I clicked with Marco straight away.
The First Contact with the Teacher on Preply
Soon after my booking, I received an email from Marco, both in English and Italian, asking what I was looking to achieve, why I was learning Italian and what my level was. I decided to reply in Italian and explained that I wanted to develop my conversation skills because, whilst I can understand Italian thanks to my years of watching Italian television, I was having difficulty holding a more advanced conversation. I wanted to be able to talk about more than just the weather, order in a restaurant, or be polite in the market.
We had a few back-and-forth messages, and then we finally met online. Marco was just as approachable as he looked in his photo and greeted me with the same big smile.
He led the conversation in Italian, which I really appreciated, and didn’t switch to English unless I didn’t know a particular word. During our initial half-hour session, Marco analysed the message I had written to him and highlighted the mistakes. He also identified the mistakes I tended to repeat, which he would later include in my lesson plan.
I really enjoyed my first session with Marco, and by the end of it, I knew I wanted to continue with him. So I booked my next block of lessons.
The Lesson Plan
After using the platform for several weeks, this part of my Preply review is probably the most important one for me, because it is where I can actually talk about my experience learning Italian rather than simply explaining how the platform works.
After our introductory call, Marco sent me a 10-lesson plan based on my needs. The main focus was improving my conversation skills and helping me speak more correctly. We decided that we wouldn’t focus on the theoretical side of grammar, but that we would talk about grammar whenever it made sense to explain why something is said or spoken in a certain way.
And I liked that because I did 12 years of grammar at school and, honestly, I remember none of the rules, even though I apply them when I speak.
The lessons are also based on the issues Marco identified during our first conversation. He explained that I can understand pretty much everything in Italian, but I still struggle to say what I want to say. So, rather than going back to basic grammar, the aim of the first ten lessons is to bridge the gap between what I understand and what I can actually say.
Each lesson is focused on speaking, with me doing most of the talking. Marco also built the lessons around things I had told him about during our first conversation, including my travels around Italy, the month I spent in Tuscany, my plans of visiting Puglia and Matera, and my dream of having a house near Rome.
I really like this approach because the lessons are based on things I actually want to talk about, rather than being built around random textbook topics. It also means I have a reason to learn the vocabulary and expressions because they are relevant to my life.
The plan is to have one lesson a week. As I work on a changing schedule, we decide on the day and time each week rather than having a fixed appointment.
Marco also asked me to spend time between lessons on homework. This could be sending him a short voice message or writing a short text. It doesn’t sound like much, but he explained that doing this every week would make a difference and would also help him adapt the following lessons to what I need.
The final lesson of the first ten is particularly interesting. I will have ten minutes to talk about my plans for the house near Rome without any notes, and we will compare it with how I speak during my initial assessment. I think this will be a good way to see how much I have actually improved over the ten lessons.
Learning Italian with Marco on Preply
I am really enjoying learning and developing my Italian with Marco. He compliments my skills all the time and even calls me a “poetessa” when I go beyond the script and introduce new scenarios into our conversations. I think I have already made a lot of progress in just a few lessons.
According to Marco, I am a very fast learner, which makes sense to me because I do have years of watching Rai 1 in my background!
I have already started noticing a difference in how confident I feel when speaking Italian outside my lessons. Recently, I was in Bristol and ended up in a bar for a nightcap after having dinner at the restaurant upstairs. The bar was quite empty as it was relatively early, so I got chatting to the bartender. It turned out he was from Milan.
I mentioned that I was learning Italian, so we switched the conversation to Italian. And I think I did quite well! We went beyond the basics and talked about his trips to China and my plans for what to see in Bristol the following day. It might not sound like a big thing, but for me it was. This is exactly the kind of conversation I wanted to be able to have when I started taking lessons with Marco.
Is Preply a Good Platform?
After several lessons with Marco, I can say that Preply has been a really good fit for me. I like the flexibility of being able to choose when I have my lessons, especially with my unpredictable freelance schedule, and I also like that the lessons are tailored to what I actually want to achieve.
The fact that I can understand Italian quite well but struggle to speak it has always frustrated me. Having a teacher who recognised this from our first conversation and built a lesson plan around it has made a big difference.
As for whether Preply is good value for money, I think so because you can choose from a pool of great teachers on your own budget. For me, being able to have one-to-one lessons with a teacher who adapts the lessons to my level, interests and specific weaknesses makes it worth it. I also like that I am not tied to a fixed weekly schedule, which means I can fit the lessons around my work rather than the other way around.
This is my personal experience of the platform, and I will continue updating this Preply review as I work through my ten lessons with Marco. I am particularly curious to see how much my speaking improves by the time I get to that final ten-minute conversation about my plans for a house near Rome.
If you decide to try Preply, you can get 70% off your trial lesson when you sign up using my link. This is the same platform I have been using to learn Italian with Marco, and I think having that first lesson is a good way to see if online language learning is right for you before committing to regular lessons.
Get 70% off your Preply trial lesson by clicking here.
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