Italki VS Quizlet: A Timely Battle Of 2 Apps

Do you prefer learning on your own or with a teacher? In this Italki vs. Quizlet review, we will discuss the basic features and the pros/cons of both applications so that language learners like you can choose the best app for their learning style. At the end of the day, we all have our unique requirements and preferences for learning. So if you are ready for that, then let’s get started!

If you can learn any language magically, what would it be? Isn’t it amazing if we can learn a language we want without having a hard time? Unfortunately, learning a language doesn’t work that way. Learning a language doesn’t magically happen overnight. It’s a long learning process but with very satisfying and priceless results. So, to effectively learn a language, we have to use some tools. But, what do you think will work better, learning with a teacher or learning by yourself with a tutor?

Today, we will discover two great apps of this modern time -Italki and Quizlet. This will not be a short blog, but you’ll learn a lot.

 

Italki VS Quizlet: Which App Is Best?

Let’s start comparing Italki and Quizlet to discover the pros and cons.

Italki Overview

italki VS Quizlet: italki Overview

Think about an online marketplace where you can find the things you need. That’s how Italki works. Italki is one of the largest language learning marketplaces for language learners, teachers, and even simple native speakers with millions of users. It connects language learners to teachers worldwide.

Through Italki, it will be easier for a language learner to find a language teacher that can help them learn a foreign language. They can also find a language exchange partner to practice their target language. With language exchanges, learning languages is more exciting and challenging at the same time.

Today, Italki is one of the language learning apps that has been on top of its game. It has been part of the language journey of millions of users and even career opportunities for language professionals and native speakers. This app, founded by Kevin Chen and Yongyue Jiang in 2007, continues to grow and becomes bigger over time. It’s popular for language learners and professionals and some big authoritative sites like the New Your Times, Business Insider, Investopedia, and The Washington Post.

In Italki, you can develop your language skills by connecting with others. It will take your learning journey beyond the classroom. Think about a social media platform, but in Italki, you can learn so many languages. Want to learn more about this platform? Read our in-depth review here.

Italki Pros

Now that you already have a background about Italki, here are some things that you need to know to decide it’s a good app for you to learn languages.

1. Good User Interface

The user interface is the first thing that the users, bot students, and teachers enjoy in Italki. The Italki platform is well-developed and easy to use. Unlike other platforms, Italki doesn’t look like a language platform at first glance. It looks like your typical social media platform; that’s why users can easily understand how it works. Since it has been around for quite a while, Italki developed its user-friendly interface.

2. Large Numbers Of Language Teachers

The heart of Italki is the teachers and tutors. There are two kinds of teachers in the app- Professional Teachers and Community Tutors. There are many language teachers and tutors that you can find in Italki. You can explore and find the teacher that fits you. They will be the ones who will build a meaningful learning experience, so it’s important to determine if you want a professional or a community tutor. Here is the difference between the two:

Professional Teachers

Professional teachers have teaching experience in school or a language institute. They have a university degree in education or teaching certificate. With professional teachers, expect some technicalities in the language learning process and language resources. Since they have a degree, they are educated on assessing students and designing learning experiences and activities according to students’ needs.

Community Tutors

Community tutors are native speakers of your target language or tutors who have advanced proficiency in the language that they are teaching. It’s a language exchange learning language because students communicate with the tutors using their target language. Community tutors can share their knowledge about their native language with people who wants to learn a foreign language.

italki VS Quizlet: italki Community

3. Large Community And Language Exchange Partners

Another free feature that the app offers in the community. You’ll find a lot of stuff provided by other members of the Italki community, both teachers and learners, under the Discover option of the app.

Several posts are classified into subjects in the “For You” area that you might be interested in. These posts are literally about anything. You can post about any topic using the language you are learning, and people from the community who are proficient with that language will read your post, leave feedback, or do some corrections.

General language talk, chats about more particular topics like food or books, people asking specific questions about languages, and a lot of learners looking for language partners to practice with are all included in these entries. This will help you improve your writing skills.

If you don’t have enough budget to avail of Italki services, you can just connect with a language exchange partner. You can find language partners using filters such as language, origin country, gender, and more. This feature used to be easy to use, but after a big change, you’ll have to make a post where you state that you’re looking for someone to connect with.

4. Multiple Languages Available

Since we are talking about language learning, let’s see what Italki offers. Since Italki is basically a marketplace for language teachers and tutors, almost any language can be learned on this platform.

The number of teachers varies based on the language they are teaching. There are many available teachers for most popular languages like English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, and German. But for the least common languages, Belarusian and Sinhala, teachers are relatively few.

5. Free Trial Classes

Another favorite feature of Italki users is the free trial classes. Aside from viewing their profiles and reading reviews, trial classes are a way to find out if the teacher/tutor can help you. This is an advantage for the users to experience how teachers teach and make comparisons before booking a class.

Every student has a unique learning style as teachers have their teaching styles. Free trial classes will enable learners to determine if the teacher fits their learning styles and needs. Some teachers offer a free 30-minute trial class.

6. italki Classroom

To make one-on-one lessons more effective, Italki has an Italki classroom, a video chat feature that allows students and teachers to communicate with each other. It’s available on the latest versions of modern browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer doesn’t support this feature.

To enter the Italki classroom, just click “Enter Classroom.” There’s a video tutorial on how to use it for first-time users. Once you’re done with the tutorial, the video and audio settings will appear. The platform will also ask permission from your browser to access your camera and microphone.

Once you have entered the classroom, you’ll see the profile picture of your teacher and the chat history. There are many more features in the Italki classroom that you and your teachers can use in the whole learning process. This feature helps learners develop language skills like speaking and listening skills. With the Italki classroom, students and teachers can communicate wherever they are. Aside from the Italki classroom, other video conferencing platforms can be used like Skype, Hangouts, and FaceTime.

7. Flexible

One of the reasons why many people want to learn a foreign language but haven’t started yet is the conflict with time and schedule. With this app, you can book anytime you want. Although it’s much better to book lessons 12hrs before, some teachers are available on short notice.

As a student, you can determine the days you want to learn. This also works for teachers. They can teach whenever they want to as long as there are students who will book lessons with them. Teachers can also set up their rates and hours, and they don’t need to accept all the lesson requests from students if they can no longer accommodate them.

The flexibility of Italki does not only revolve around scheduling. It can also be about the learning strategies and activities. Since Italki does not have built-in lessons like other language learning apps, teachers and students can freely discuss the whole process. They can talk about what learning activities and lessons to use and tackle to address the needs of the learners.

8. Affordable Rate

For a successful language journey, you have to invest time, commitment, and of course, money. In this app, you can find tutors or teachers ranging from low rates to high rates. You can easily find a teacher or a tutor that suits your budget. Typically, professional teachers have higher rates than community teachers, which makes sense because they have an actual degree in teaching.

But, it is not always that way. There are community teachers that have high rates too because they are already advanced in teaching the language, or there are only a few teachers for the language they are teaching. Community tutors are more skilled than professional teachers who will bring surprising and unexpected results. It all depends on different factors.

After all, these are just labels, and the true meaning of becoming a great teacher or tutor is the quality of the language learning experience they give students.

9. Short And Simple Application Process

This advantage is for teachers and tutors who want to teach in Italki. Other platforms have longer and more complicated application processes before they can teach. Some even require having a nice background and teaching attire.

Of course, teachers need to adhere to requirements and qualifications, especially for professional teachers. A Community Tutor must be 18 years old or above, native speaker or very proficient in the language, and should enjoy teaching informally.

A Professional Teacher must also be 18 years old and above. They should be a native speaker or very proficient in the language. Most importantly, they should be professionally certified or experienced in teaching a foreign language or second language. Evidence that a professional teacher should be scanned and uploaded to the platform.

10. Online Teachers Can Use Their Own Teaching Styles

Lastly, which also concerns teachers, they can teach however and whenever they want to. Other language learning apps have built-in lessons that teachers can use, but this app does not have those. The teachers are responsible for creating learning materials, lessons, and activities. They can explore different teaching styles and strategies that address the needs of learners. Teachers have control over the content and tools to use to make language learning effective and fun at the same time.

italki Cons

After learning the advantages of Italki, let’s now talk about the juicy stuff or the platform areas that need improvements.

1. Finding A Teacher Or Tutor Perfect For You Takes Time

Choosing a teacher or tutor is a process that requires patience. You might wonder why given that there are a lot of teachers. But remember that you are diving into a pool of people teaching languages, all with varying skills and capacities. Finding the best tutor that fits you with limited free trial classes is challenging. The reviews might help you, but it’s not always accurate. You can also watch short videos about the tutors.

So, in finding a teacher, make sure to maximize all the ways you can to find out what teachers can offer. It might be better for the app to offer more free trials, but that won’t seem too fair for teachers and users.

2. Does Not Have Built-In-Lessons And Language Resources

While this may be an advantage for many teachers and students, some might find this as a disadvantage, especially for beginners. Most of the beginners don’t know where to start. Other teachers might also struggle to assess student’s skills so that a few lessons might be helpful for beginners or assessment purposes.

3. Reviews For Teachers Isn’t Anonymous

When you finish a lesson in Italki with a teacher or tutor, you’ll have to leave a review and share your experience. The thing is, it is not anonymous, so there’s a big chance that people don’t always tell the whole truth and just reside on leaving high reviews even if the session is not actually that effective.

italki VS Quizlet: italki Teachers

4. Inconsistency For Community Tutors

Some users also experience learning with tutors and suddenly become unavailable. Since this is a marketplace for tutors, one can easily navigate or change their schedule when they want to teach. Some are permanent Italki tutors, but some just wanted to earn extra during vacations or free time. So when a student already likes a certain tutor and the tutor suddenly becomes unavailable, the student will undergo the same process of finding the tutor all over again.

5. High Commission Fee For Language Teachers

Professionals, native or near-native language speakers can apply in Italki as tutors or teachers. It’s a great sideline to earn some money, but Italki takes 15% commission on lesson bookings with 0% on trials lessons.

Another downside of Italki when it comes to payment is the withdrawal process. Withdrawals requested between the 1st and 15th of the month will be paid between the 16th and 26th. Withdrawals made between the 16th and 31st of the month are paid between the 1st and 10th of the following month. So, if you withdraw your money late, it will be processed on the next cut-off payment.

6. Credit System And Currency

This problem is for users with a different currency. The Italki app uses US Dollars only. This can be a disadvantage for learners that currency is not doing well against the US dollars. The app uses USD as payment for lessons and buying credits. But, how does Italki’s credit system works?

You can either pay for lessons with a specific teacher or acquire Italki credits to take classes on the app. Credits have the same worth as dollars and can be used to pay for classes with any Italki instructor.

You’ll see a processing charge (ugh) when paying for a lesson, lesson package, or credits, depending on the payment method you choose. It’s 69 cents for a $10 debit card payment. If you pay via bank transfer, the charge jumps to $8.40! If you buy more credits, the proportion decreases slightly. If you pay with a debit or credit card, buying $100 worth of credits will cost you $4.44 more.

Quizlet Overview

Quizlet is one of the leading flashcard apps today, along with Anki App. Quizlet is a study tool that includes flashcards, quizzes, and games. With highly-developed AI, Quizlet offers a wide variety of user-experience to address their learning needs.

Quizlet was first released in 2005 as a language study software. At the start, it was only a study aid that helped Andrew Sutherland, the company’s founder, ace his French exam. Instead of looking up learning tools online, he made his own tool and is now much bigger than any platform like it. His vision is to create an easy-to-use and efficient tool to help users achieve their learning goals.

Today, Quizlet has already helped millions of users, and this number continues to grow. As innovations and new features were being developed, it’s no surprise that Quizlet can give users the learning experience they need. Ready to learn more about this app? Check our detailed review here.

Quizlet Pros

Quizlet has been around since 2005, and it has been helping learners since then. It was initially launched solely for language learning, but it had also opened its doors to other subjects and disciplines. Here are some advantages that Quizlet offers:

1. Easy To Use And Amazing AI

When Quizlet was created, technology was not as developed as it is today. What’s amazing about Quizlet is that it managed to adapt to the changes and needs of the learners. Although it dropped an important feature for language learning, the spaced repetition system, Quizlet has developed other features. It has a user-friendly interface that learners of all ages can easily learn. The platform is highly intuitive, so navigating across features became easier.

2. Variety Of Study Modes

Quizlet offers a variety of study modes, but the most famous one is flashcards. You just have to create one study set and learn it in varying modes. But fun fact, the founder did not think of Quizlet as a flashcard when it was created. He mentioned in an interview that he had never used a flashcard before. He believed that it was a lot more than just a flashcard.

According to him, you can’t tell that you master the material you are learning by just looking at a card and telling yourself you know what’s on it. With Quizlet, users are forced to type in content, and the proof that you have learned and mastered your material is to be able to handle it in different ways and study modes. They aim to present the materials in different ways, where a variety of study modes come in. Here are the study modes offered by Quizlet:

  1. Flashcards
  2. Learn mode
  3. Write mode
  4. Spell mode
  5. Test mode

Each mode is pretty self-explanatory. You’ll be able to master learning vocabulary words and phrases using these modes. You can also practice reading to improve how you speak.

italki VS Quizlet: Quizlet Flashcards

3. Game Modes

Games are undoubtedly one of the best ways to engage and motivate learning. Gamifying your learning is a trend in different language learning apps because it catches the learners’ interests. Quizlet has two game modes – Gravity and Match. This is a more fun way of learning your material, and I think learners are digging it.

4. Enough Free Version

If you ask the users why they continue to use Quizlet, the free version can go a long way. They don’t have to pay a huge amount of money just to learn. The free version is enough and can be easily accessed using the site’s mobile app (Apple and Android App).

Many are wondering how Quizlet managed to be successful without extensive marketing. Many also wonder why Quizlet offers a pretty generous enough version. The answer to these questions goes back to the developers’ goal – for Quizlet to be loved and used by most people. Having a free product is already a strong marketing strategy that beats other marketing strategies such as email outreach. He also pointed out that the cost of running the Quizlet is pretty low, so they didn’t see the need to charge a lot of money from the users.

5. Quizlet Plus Is A Game-Changer

While the free version is enough, Quizlet also offers Quizlet Plus, a game-changer for users. It has all the features developed and improved throughout the years. Here are some features of Quizlet Plus that you can get from a free version.

  1. Easy formatting of flashcard texts
  2. Photos
  3. Diagrams and Audios
  4. It can be used offline
  5. Track progress
  6. Personalized study paths
  7. Smart grading

These are just a few, and if you want to know the other features, go ahead and try it for yourself. But, as you can see, there are not many features for teachers. According to the founder, they did not develop many features for teachers because they want learners to use them and not be forced to use them because of academic requirements. Of course, many learners will choose the free plan, but I’m pretty sure that Quizlet Plus is all worth it.

Quizlet Cons

Quizlet still has a lot more to improve. Here are some disadvantages or areas for improvement for this platform:

1. Not Entirely For Language Learning

Based on the history of how Quizlet was created, you can simply see that it was first launched as a language learning app. But through the years, it became a tool for learning not just languages but also other subjects.

But, what’s more, interesting about Quizlet is that the founder did not give up the idea of Quizlet as a language learning platform. It is already good in learning vocabulary but grammar and other language skills, not so much. This is what the founder and developers are working on. Many volunteers also translated Quizlet into different languages, which the founder cannot understand, but he thinks it’s a great idea.

2. Do Not Develop Other Language Skills

As mentioned above, Quizlet is not just entirely for language learning anymore, but they have visions of making it better. They envision Quizlet to be a one-stop-shop for language learners’ needs. They still believe that to learn a language effectively. They should develop writing, speaking, listening, and reading skills. For now, as they are developing it, users can enjoy the variety of subjects it offers.

italki VS Quizlet: Quizlet Ads

3. Distracted By Ads

The free version of Quizlet is distracted by ads. But, with the generous free version of Quizlet, I think this is not a huge disadvantage, and it’s really reasonable. To keep the free version of Quizlet running, they made use of ads.

4. Some Contents Were Not Verified

Anyone can create a study set and can be shared publicly. Because of this, not all content in Quizlet that you can see for free is reliable and verified. In this issue, you’ll have to do your part to fact-check information before using the material, especially if you’re a teacher.

 

italki VS Quizlet: Which Will Help Language Learners?

Now that you have learned about the two apps let’s compare them further.

Features And User Experience

In comparing Italki VS Quizlet, you have to know that these apps work entirely differently from one another. Quizlet is a learning platform, while Italki is a marketplace for teachers and tutors. In short, you can’t directly learn languages from Italki. The teachers and tutors will make the learning possible.

So, to answer the question of which between Italki VS Quizlet is better in terms of features for learning languages and user experience, I say it all depends on your level and goal as a language learner. Here’s why.

If you’re a total beginner, you may start with essential vocabulary words then work your way up. Quizlet has a lot of dedicated features for that that you can use for free. You should first build your motivation and love for the language you learn before making serious decisions like paying money.

On the other hand, Italki also offers a free feature to master vocabulary, but it works differently. It’s immersive because the community is involved. The other features for learning a language are in the hands of the teachers and tutors.

Languages Available

Italki has a broader range of languages offered for this area because anyone can teach their native language. The only problem about this is that there are few teachers for languages that are not too popular. Quizlet offers English, French, German, Latin, and Spanish. But of course, you can create your study set in your target language.

Convenience And Availability

One of the reasons people dig language learning apps is the convenience. Since it can be downloaded in your mobile app for both Apple and Android or accessed on the site, anyone who has a gadget can use it anytime and anywhere. Quizlet has a small disadvantage for this area because it has an offline version, but these apps work way different from one another.

Pricing

Users have always loved Quizlet because of its very generous free version. You don’t have to pay a huge amount of money just to succeed in your learning journey. But, they also have the Quizlet Plus, which costs US$35.99/year, where more developed features are included.

On the other hand, Italki has different rates depending on the teacher or tutor. The rates of Italki teachers range from US$5-$80 per hour. Professional teachers usually have higher rates than community tutors, but it’s not always that way.

 

Final Thoughts

Learning a new language with Italki VS Quizlet is incredibly different. The app themselves works differently from one another; that’s why I think there’s not much to compare. It’s like comparing teachers to technology. Both apps have been doing great, being the platform they envisioned. But since we are talking about language learning, Italki can make language learning more achievable in record time as a teacher.

Having one-on-one lessons or courses will work better than just using tools. Teachers or tutors will assess what you need as a language learner. These needs include learning activities, tools, strategies, and learning approaches. You’ll have an individualized and established set of lessons that you need for your level as a language learner. Teachers can also give you immediate feedback, track your progress, and make lessons flexible to your needs.

With this, I’m not saying that learning languages using platforms like Quizlet will never work. Nowadays, many learning platforms have intuitive platforms and highly-developed AI that can make assessments, track progress, and give feedback. Some can also make an individualized road map, but the contents are still generalized.

For me, Italki and Quizlet can work hand-in-hand, meaning, Italki students or teachers can use Quizlet for drills and reviews while learning. Remember, technology can never replace teachers in the teaching and learning process.

 

Explore Beyond Your Native Language!

Knowing just your native language is so ancient. With technology and globalization, it’s impossible not to aspire to learn a second language. If you are still looking for alternatives for Italki and Quizlet, Ling App is worth considering. With millions of users, Ling App has many people achieve their language learning success. Real language experts developed this app, so you’ll know you’re in good hands.

There’s no harm in trying something new. Start your language lesson with Ling App now.

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