Study / Cost of Polish lessons, courses (private) [34]

Hi all,

Not sure I can quite agree about some of the comments made re Skype. As some have mentioned, the quality depends on many factors but, overall, Skype is easy to use/set up and widely available. I find that the build in audio solutions available in many web conferencing programs are inferior in terms of sound quality/delays/echos etc.

Skype certainly has its faults and can be a bit of a memory hog – e.g. when playing games and speaking to teammates – but, for the purpose of online learning, I still rate it quite highly.

Best,

Monika

Study / Cost of Polish lessons, courses (private) [34]

While you are entitled to your opinion, I find the tone and inflammatory nature of your remarks unnecessarily hostile .e.g. your use of ‘ridiculous’.

Other posters have mentioned similar amounts for an hour of tuition and, indeed, some online schools/private teachers charge considerably more.

Perhaps a less superficial judgment is in order – surely the quality of the tuition/materials are of more relevance than the method of delivery? Just sitting in the same room as the teacher does not, in itself, make the lesson superior.

Food for thought before another overly vicious post perhaps?

Study / Cost of Polish lessons, courses (private) [34]

Clearly you have an axe to grind about VOIP but I simply cannot agree – sound quality is very much relative to one’s bandwidth, hardware, ram etc.

Many well established companies use business VOIP and SMEs use Skype. An ever increasing number of schools offer traditional and virtual online learning using such technologies.

Are we to understand that you have tested all the variables (connection speed, sound card, memory) and can confidently claim that all these companies and organisations are wrong? Should we all bow down to your superior wisdom?

In fact, this boils down to little more than your personal preferences – just because you have an aversion to VOIP, it is rather shortsighted to assume that everyone’s experiences/PC set up are identical.

Study / Cost of Polish lessons, courses (private) [34]

I have to say that this level of hostility to newcomers seems very common on this forum – I note that other tutors have been carped at for supposedly 'overcharging, ripping off' etc. students as well.

The tone of the posts directed towards me is downright acrimonious and unpleasant – judgments, snide comments and criticism seem the norm. I could waste time defending myself – as it happens I don’t only rely on Skype/MSN – but it all rather begs the question of why should a newcomer be subjected to such derision by strangers?

By the way, the last aggressive poster should at least make a bit more effort with his insults: ‘sponge off’ and not sponge clients.

Quite how offering a professional service and being paid for it is ‘sponging’ is beyond me – according to one dictionary sponging off is to ‘obtain or accept money or food from other people without doing or intending to do anything in return’.

So illiterate as well as rude, eh?

Study / Cost of Polish lessons, courses (private) [34]

As I thought would be obvious from my posts, I am not a native English speaker either – hence my job as a (native) Polish tutor.

The difference between you and I is that I did not accuse anyone of basically stealing, cheating, or conning students i.e. taking money off people for services without intending to provide any service.


I am well within my rights to call you ‘rude’ given your accusations – you, on the other hand, have and had no right to accuse me of anything since you know nothing of me.

The posts have not been of a purely technical nature as you claim but rather have suggested that tutors like me are ripping off students, offering a poor or overly expensive service, conning guidable foreigners in Poland etc.

Rather than ask questions people here prefer to jump down people’s throats/make unfounded assumptions/accusations and attempt to blacken newcomer's names without any facts or details. Very low.

Clearly a waste of my time – I see from the replies I have received and the way other newcomers are treated, from what I have seen, that this forum is incredibly hostile and dominated by a clique of rude, narrow minded, bigoted trolls.

Monika