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Finding language partners with Twitter? | ||
Tags: Tandem/Language Exchange | Internet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 9 of 11 07 May 2011 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
Okay, I will be more detailed. Twitter's advantages: * Widely-used... but it's hard teaching people specific syntax, as the 6 Week Challenge showed, and most current Twitter users won't use it for language exchange postings. * Readable / searchable for people who aren't registered... an advantage shared with almost all forums and websites. * Usually stores posts long enough for this purpose... but nobody can predict when his post will disappear as it depends on how much someone posts and Twitter's idiosyncracies, so it's unclear when re-posts are necessary. Twitter's disadvantages * Unknown to immigrants / not attracting many non-English-speaking users / virtually unknown in South America, Africa, Asia (& blocked in China)... a disadvantage shared with most but not all other websites. * No way to post without registering... a disadvantage shared with most but not all other websites. * No way to distinguish between people searching and offering languages - as a non- foreigner, you're condemned to wade through tons of fellow locals' postings to find the handful of foreign native speakers. * Bad display options makes it unsuitable for serious use... for example the University of Bochum is organizing language exchanges and their list of unmatched partners - only currently unmatched ones, not successful matches! - already includes several cases of 100+ people and even 200+ people interested in the same language. Bochum is nothing compared to Berlin. * No easy way of telling which listings are still active, that would require a separate search or a browse through possibly hundreds of the user's other messages * Twitter's message length restriction provides extremely little room for introducing one's interests and needs, encouraging unhelpful communication like "Hi, u want to exchange?" It all comes down to the fact that Twitter wasn't designed for anything remotely resembling this, not even to be a message board, while more than a dozen distinct websites were built for the exact purpose of finding language exchange partners (even local ones), and even using a simple forum has clear advantages over using Twitter (such as being able to indicate that you're no longer searching, or writing more detailed messages). A wiki would be better than a forum (better overview), and a dedicated website would be better than wiki. A dedicated website could for example allow people to find partners by distance from them, which is particularly crucial for those of us not living in big cities. It could also allow people to post their requests without registering, either completely anonymously or by allowing people to log in using their existing OpenID, Facebook, Twitter or Google account (or any of these). Edited by Sprachprofi on 07 May 2011 at 12:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 11 07 May 2011 at 4:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your detailed input, sprachprofi. I will think about it some more. However, there appears to be
one big difference in our respective alternatives. It sounds like there are many other options available where you are for anyone looking for a partner, and Europeans can easily travel to neighbouring countries to study. Where I live, there are virtually no other options, and newcomers tend to remain rather isolated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5192 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 11 of 11 07 May 2011 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, why doesn't Kijiji set up a twitter robot that responds to any tweets having to do with language exchange? That could then route users out of twitter to a place that has the proper functionality to connect two learners of each other's language. I remember a climate change scientist did this because he got tired of personally refuting global warming denial myths over and over again. So he set up the robot on twitter, and away it went dispelling myths as fast as they got tweeted.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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