How to get the most from your iTalki session Over the years, I have taken over 350 classes on iTalki. I appreciate all my teachers' efforts to improve my understand of Chinese and have gradually formulated a proven method which I would like to share with you: 1) I select a media which has a spoken context. Movies, serial dramas and TV shows with normal dialogue is my favorite. Many of these have scripts which can be downloaded from the Internet. I watch them and learn the words I am unfamiliar. 2) NJStar is my learning program which has a built-in dictionary, to which I can add. Before each lesson, I prepare a section of text, which has the words or phrases which I am unfamiliar. 3) Usually, I look up examples of these words with nciku.com, Jukuu.com or Baidu.com. It sometimes helps to have dual translated sentences so I can see the breadth of the word's usage. Other times, pictures from Baidu are helpful to see the captions. 4) I send this lesson to my teacher 12-24 hours before class. It is my expectation the teacher has read over the lesson before class and is able to explain the word usage, as well as compare and contrast it with similar words. 5) The class session is recorded (mp3 Skype recorder). During class, I might ask the teacher to pronounce the word, go over the examples provided and correct any mistakes I might make in attempting to use the words myself. 6) During a portion of the class, I will have a freestyle discussion and ask the teacher to utilize the vocabulary words with me in a meaningful conversation. 7) After class, I edit the mp3 recording with Audacity, a free program. I delete my voice, compress the empty spaces of my teacher and edit the teacher's voice down. If they speak well, there is little need for me to edit out stuttering or incomplete thoughts. A distilled version yields between 20-30 minutes of tutorial review. 8) I load this edited mp3 and listen to it at first with the printed lesson. Thereafter, I listen to the mp3, mimic the teacher and make sure I can master the material. It generally takes 3-4 more times to get there. In this way, I've been able to make steady progress. Hope this gives you ideas!