I've been teaching on Italki about 1.5 years. During this time I've dealt with different types of students - from beginners to advanced learners. Some of them were quite diligent, while some reminded me of children with delusive, unrealistic dreams. In fact, learning languages requires lots of patience and work, as well as motivation and the ability to turn practicing into real fun. As soon as one of these conditions is absent or disappears, it becomes hard to continue learning. Not long ago an American girl, who had just returned to the United States from Russia, asked me to maintsin her conversational proficiency in Russian. She had spent half a year in Russia and had improved her Russian quite well. So she was concerned about losing what she'd already achieved. We had a few lessons, which actually weren't hard for me, because her Russian wasn't bad, and it was quite easy to correct her mistakes. She also was glad. However, I noticed that gradually her motivation became lower and lower, just because she didn't know what to do with her Russian further. Eventually, she stopped practicing. Another woman, who was my student for a long time, and who actually was a teacher herself, didn't want to acknowledge that, even if you have already mastered a few languages, you have to work hard on the new languages you learn. We conversed a lot, but she kept making the same mistakes all the time. Finally it led us to conflict. Any teacher would like to see the results of their work. I lost my patience and since we had been quite close friends, we couldn't forgive each other. I could give some more examples of how important it is to follow those four conditions to succeed in learning a foreign language, but I expect your experience is more or less the same. Nothing can be done long term without work, patience, motivation and fun. If you can add any other reasonable requirements to this list, you're welcome!
Great job! Just a few minor tweaks Hugh
