Sumito

I had some technical issues before the class, but Sumito Sensei was incredibly understanding and kindly added the lost time back once everything was up and running. Today's lesson was excellent. I shared a story about recent events, and Sumito Sensei listened attentively, taking notes without interrupting, which really helped maintain the flow of the conversation. At the end of the session, he asked me to reflect on my own performance before going over his notes. I really appreciate how Sumito Sensei allows me to speak freely and provides corrections afterwards. This approach boosts my confidence and encourages me to engage more in conversations.

Yet another incredible session! Sumito sensei challenges me, pushing me to explore and articulate situations in detail, a skill crucial for enriching conversations. He guided me in crafting sentences that flow more naturally. It was super fun and challenging today! ありがとう！

Sumito-sensei does a phenomenal job locating general areas in my language usage that need improvement, and also pinpointing specifics I need to focus on to be able to competently use Japanese in my everyday life. As a teacher myself, I understand that I'm a difficult student because I have no formal Japanese language schooling so my knowledge base/ability level is extremely inconsistent. I've taken a fair amount of classes on Italki (at this time, more than 100), and I can honestly say that while every teacher has been helpful in their own way, Sumito-sensei's lessons have given me the most tangible/usable progress in the shortest amount of time. Learning Japanese on your own is overwhelming for a number of reasons, one of them being that it's difficult to find honest feedback on your Japanese that's not basic text-book Japanese based. Sumito-Sensei's feedback is honest, practical, and very helpful. I highly recommend Sumito-sensei's lessons if you want to be able to speak naturally.

Great lesson. We worked on improving reading, listening, and shadowing skills with effective techniques. I really appreciate the dynamic approach. Makes every session engaging.

スミト先生 was very polite and understanding, corrected my mistakes and it was overall an amazing trial, I will be continuing lessons with him 100% :)

For this lesson, I discussed what I've done over the past month and talked about a few things in the pictures I took from Japan. We also went over how to practice shadowing audio conversations. This is a new approach for me, and I'm excited to see how it will help improve my listening and speaking skills.