I have completed 540 hours of English lessons on Preply and 499 hours on Verbling, as well as classroom study. That is more than 1,000 hours of one-to-one online tutoring before counting anything else. You can see the full background in the about the author section.
Many of those lessons were valuable. I met committed teachers, practised speaking when I would otherwise have stayed silent, and learned a great deal. This article is not an argument that human teachers are bad or that every student has the same experience. It is a record of problems that happened often enough to influence how I built CluckMate.
01
The paid hour can quietly shrink
A teacher joining two minutes late and ending one minute early may sound minor. Across regular lessons, it is not. Three lost minutes are five per cent of a 60-minute lesson. I experienced this pattern often enough that I began noticing the clock before I noticed the learning.
There is also a basic comparison problem. Some services sell a 50-minute lesson as their standard unit. That is perfectly fair when it is clearly disclosed, but a learner comparing hourly prices may assume that every “lesson” contains the same amount of time. Ten minutes missing from every session becomes five hours after 30 lessons.
The important number is therefore not only price per booking. It is price per minute of useful, active learning. CluckMate's price is stated for a full 60 minutes of active lesson time.
02
A pleasant conversation can produce no corrections
Speaking freely matters, but a paid lesson should do more than reproduce a conversation you could have with a friend. There were sessions in which I received no correction at all, even when the lesson cost around 30 EUR for 60 minutes. This was not a single exceptional event.
Correction does not mean interrupting every sentence. Too much correction can destroy fluency. A strong lesson notices patterns, selects the mistakes that matter, explains them clearly, and gives the learner something to review afterwards. Without that feedback loop, the student may become more fluent at repeating the same errors.
03
The same small talk fills the opening again
“What did you do before the lesson?” “What will you do after it?” These are reasonable warm-up questions once. When they return in almost every session, they become an expensive routine. The student speaks, but often uses the same safe vocabulary and the same sentence shapes.
Good practice needs a new reason to speak: a fresh text, a difficult idea, a useful expression, an argument to develop, or an exam-style question. Familiarity can reduce anxiety, but endless repetition without new language reduces progress.
04
The tutor's personality can become the lesson
A human relationship brings warmth and spontaneity. It also brings opinions, moods, assumptions, and personal boundaries. I have been in lessons where strong political views — including anti-immigration opinions — made the conversation uncomfortable. As a migrant, I then had to decide which facts about my own life felt safe to share. That mental calculation did nothing for my English.
The same problem can appear in less political forms. A tutor may judge a student's business, criticise a private decision, or become more interested in the learner's lifestyle than in the IELTS task they were hired to practise. Even friendly curiosity can become a distraction when the student is paying for a clear academic goal.
The issue is not that teachers should have no personality. It is that the learner should not have to manage the teacher's emotions or worldview in order to receive the lesson they booked.
05
Technical problems consume scheduled time
Calls disconnect. A microphone sounds distant. One side cannot hear the other. The screen freezes while both people repeat, “Can you hear me now?” A human teacher is not responsible for every connection problem, but the student's scheduled hour still keeps moving while both sides troubleshoot.
AI does not make laptops, headsets, or internet connections infallible. The practical advantage is control: the learner can test the headset before the lesson and pause CluckMate when an interruption needs attention, then resume rather than spending booked conversation time fixing it.
06
Memorable vocabulary is not always useful vocabulary
Unusual English words are fun. A lively collection might include all of these:
- cattywampus
- scatter-brained
- willy-nilly
- hodgepodge
- smorgasbord
- scrumptious
- malarkey
- brouhaha
- nincompoop
- discombobulated
- flummoxed
- gobbledygook
- lackadaisical
- poppycock
- ragamuffin
- whippersnapper
- curmudgeon
- woebegone
- cantankerous
- lollygag
- kerfuffle
- indefatigable
- verbose
- hullabaloo
- loquacious
These are legitimate, expressive words, and knowing some of them can be enjoyable. The problem is opportunity cost. If an entire paid lesson concentrates on novelty vocabulary that the learner will almost never hear or use, what useful material was pushed aside? For a student preparing for IELTS or trying to function confidently at work, frequency and relevance usually matter more than how amusing a word sounds.
A better test for lesson vocabulary is simple: Will the learner meet it again? Does it help express an idea they actually need? Will the lesson make them retrieve and use it, rather than merely admire it on a slide?
07
You cannot pause a person when the doorbell rings
Online lessons happen inside real homes. A courier arrives, somebody knocks on the apartment door, a child needs help, or an urgent call comes in. With a human teacher, the appointment keeps running. The student either ignores real life or loses paid time.
Pause and resume may sound like a small product feature. For daily learning, it changes the relationship with the clock. An interruption no longer has to turn into wasted minutes or an awkward apology.
08
The method changes with the teacher — and the day
Human expertise varies. One tutor plans carefully, records corrections, and returns to the learner's goals. Another relies on spontaneous conversation. Even a very good teacher can have an unfocused day. Finding the right match takes trial lessons, scheduling, and the confidence to leave when the fit is wrong.
Consistency is especially valuable for daily practice. A repeatable lesson structure makes progress easier to notice: read, work on pronunciation, activate vocabulary, discuss ideas, practise grammar, and finish with longer speaking. The content can change while the learning purpose remains clear.
09
Daily human lessons become expensive very quickly
The financial difference matters because speaking improves through repetition. Using 30 EUR as an illustrative human-tutor price, 30 daily lessons cost 900 EUR. At 8 EUR per 60-minute CluckMate lesson, the same number costs 240 EUR — a difference of 660 EUR. Human-teacher prices vary, but the multiplication is what makes regular one-to-one learning difficult to sustain.
A BALANCED VIEW
When a human teacher may still be the better choice
None of this removes the strengths of an excellent teacher. A person may be the better choice when you want a long-term human relationship, cultural insight from a particular place, specialist coaching for one high-stakes event, or the unpredictability of a truly spontaneous conversation. Accountability to another person can also motivate learners who struggle to practise alone.
The most useful conclusion is not “human or AI forever.” A learner can use AI for affordable, consistent, high-frequency speaking and add a carefully chosen human specialist when human judgement has a clear purpose. The tool should follow the need — not habit.
THE DESIGN RESPONSE
What CluckMate was built to keep
CluckMate keeps the parts of one-to-one learning that helped me: a full hour centred on the learner, a clear sequence, sustained speaking, useful corrections, new material, and a record to review. It removes the need to navigate somebody else's mood, politics, schedule, or personal agenda. It also lets the learner pause and return when real life intervenes.
After more than 1,000 hours with human tutors, my view is that a well-designed CluckMate lesson is fully comparable with a well-run human lesson for structured speaking practice — at 8 EUR for 60 minutes. That is the standard the application is designed to meet.