Best teacher paradox I started to use Italki 4 years ago when I needed to prepare myself to a job-interview in Spanish. This is how I met Auri, a brilliant teacher, that became my friend and came to visit me in Moscow. It has been already for 3 years that I don’t take her lessons but we still keep in touch and a couple of months ago she came to my place in Rome and I show her my new life. Last years I had a lot of teachers that were very nice and interesting people, we shared and discussed some life situations and many other topics and I got to know plenty of stuff about their jobs, traveling and point of view. But sometimes I felt like wasting my time a little bit, because to be honest, I didn’t really need practice listening and was rather to speak more expecting corrections and advices about better rephrasing. My teachers used to tell a lot of funny stories, and I enjoyed listening to them but as I said, listening wasn’t on the top of my needs, especially taking into consideration that there are plenty other ways to practice this concrete skill - Ted talks, Coursera lectures, series. Another habit that annoyed me in some of my teacher was long grammatical explanations. If I make a mistake, I expect my teacher would finger it and tell me the name of the rule I need to repeat or even send me a link where I can read about it. Instead some of them could spend 10-15 minutes explaining me the grammar without paying attention to the fact that I said “I understand” several times. So, what I was talking about… Oh, ye, Chris. I find my perfect teacher. He lets me speak a lot and make notes about my mistakes revealing them in the end of session. He makes short remarks to maintain the conversation but he never stopped me saying “something similar happened to me, listen...” (usually a long story follows this introduction). I talk 95% of the session and I happy about it. But at the same time I feel kind of bad because I don’t ask him anything and, honestly, don’t know the first thing about him. It is a pity because I like him a lot, I can see he is very prudent and kind. Today I felt shame as I understood that I even hadn’t ask him how his day was. Of course, I want to practice more, but the fact that I talk most of the time, makes me feel an egoist. It seems like you always have to choose between being friends or remaining a student and a teacher.