A few weeks ago, I came across an article that claimed non-native speakers can’t get a job teaching English in Vietnam. As a Polish national currently teaching in Vietnam for a global language school, I’m a living proof that it’s […]
Foreign language mistakes can be caused by many things. But many of these mistakes are characteristic of a given nationality, or rather the student’s first language. In this post I write about the most common English mistakes made by Chinese […]
Let me start by saying that I don’t think it’s strictly necessary to know your students’ first language to be a good ESL teacher. In fact, I know a lot of excellent ESL teachers who don’t speak languages other than […]
It’s been over 6-months since we updated our blog’s homepage with the slogan: ‘We believe in meaningful travel’. Since that point, we’ve been asked numerous times on the road: But what actually is meaningful travel? So, we realised a blog […]
italki has been a part of my life for quite some time. According to my account, I’ve been a member since 2013. To be honest, I don’t really remember when and how I heard about it. But I started using […]
The Add1Challenge was one of the major factors in overcoming my shyness when it comes to speaking languages (known as speaking block). You see, there are some people that have zero problems when starting to speak in a foreign language. […]
I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to make friends abroad. But if you’re moving or have moved abroad, you probably have a good reason for doing so. Perhaps it’s because of a job, a relationship, or […]
Flashcard apps, for me, were revolutionary. You see, when I was a teenager, I really struggled with learning vocabulary in foreign languages. It was easy for me to pick up the basic stuff, but when it came to learning 100 […]
HSK stands for Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (汉语水平考试). It’s a standard Chinese language test with 6 levels. HSK 1 is the lowest and HSK 6 the highest. HSK 3 and HSK 4 are in the middle. According to Hanban these two levels […]
HSK stands for Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (汉语水平考试). It’s a standard Chinese language test with 6 levels. HSK 1 is the lowest and HSK 6 the highest. HSK 3 comes somewhere in the middle. In the post I explain what I […]