in my opinion, anyone who wants to form a partnership with others who they don't new each other is difficult. my suggestion is to know and learn more about your partner's culture,economic,technological,receational background. in a word,to let your partner feel that you are knowledgable and i can learn something from you.

yeah,i have 2 students now^_^

Hello, Bill Your question is rather a sceptic's challenge, so let me tell you about my own case. I have been a member of Italki for only about 48 hours. I have asked four questions about Mandarin grammar and all have been answered by several people within minutes. The quality of the answers has varied greatly, of course, but my impression is that people are doing what they can, and some members are very generous indeed. (One of the replies I got to my very first question was about three hundred words long! Several others were shorter, but rather careful. I call that interest and generosity). Also, in two days I have been asked as a friend by about a dozen people; doesn't that prove that the Italki environment is alive and teeming with opportunities for contact? There may be spongers here, of course, but aren't there also thousands of people who want to help, as well as being helped, or, at worst, who are ready to stick to the give-and-take rule? It seems to me that if you take, but always give more than you are given, you motivate people to respond more and more generously and exchanges get better and better, and more useful. I call that "sucess", and, in response to your challenge, I see no reason why it should be difficult at all to establish quite successful language-learning partnerships here (as anywhere else), rather the opposite. The recipe I could recommend you , if I may, is simple: 1) Be generous ( = always give more than you receive, :-) , and of course, 2) be relevant (= ask genuine questions and give quality answers) or keep quiet and just learn from what others are doing. From my admittedly very short experience, I think that in the second respect Italki still has to improve a lot, there is a lot of junk, but it is up to us, isn´t it? The more serious among us must 'educate' others as to generosity and relevance. So, let's just try to be professional and cooperative. Being just sceptical will not do any good! :-) Best Luis

Yes,I got some friends from italki.

yes,i had