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Conversation Questions, Language Exchange | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| gwyner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5951 days ago 23 posts - 75 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchC1, GermanC1, ItalianB1, Russian Studies: Hungarian | Message 1 of 11 04 May 2013 at 9:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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An article that might help out when you're in a language exchange and have no idea what to talk about after the first
few "What do you do for a living" and "How's the weather in Moscow" Enjoy! 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| solero Triglot Newbie SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4239 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Danish Studies: French | Message 2 of 11 04 May 2013 at 11:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, will be helpful for the language exchanges :)
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| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4874 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 3 of 11 04 May 2013 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cheers. :) Perhaps I might actually try doing a language exchange sometime...
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 4 of 11 04 May 2013 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
One of the (many) things that I tend to be sceptical about, is psychological experiments, or rather, how the results of such experiments are generalised as applying to people/society in general. People have conflicting needs for privacy and intimacy. In certain circumstances, it can be very liberating to tell a complete stranger (e.g. your therapist or your partner in a psychological experiment) the most intimate and personal details of your life, but at other times, being asked such questions would be quite alienating. In the framework of an organised language exchange, I suspect those questions would be pretty useful. In terms of building a friendship (or simply a working relationship) with an individual language partner that you bumped into on the internet, I suspect some of them are too personal. The final list (from reddit) seemed like more natural and appropriate questions for tentative relationship or friendship-building.
Edited by schoenewaelder on 04 May 2013 at 1:22pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| solero Triglot Newbie SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4239 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Danish Studies: French | Message 5 of 11 04 May 2013 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I would not try to use this list (or any list for that matter) to try to scientifically gain a new friendship. That
would be just plain strange. However, having a list of topics or things to talk about is quite nice at language exchange meets. I often find myself talking about the same thing over and over again, and having some fresh ideas helps. In fact, I might bring a list like this one to a meet, put it on the table for everyone to see and we could do an "around-the-table" of it. Really anything goes, as long as we have something to talk about. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 6 of 11 04 May 2013 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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People like to talk about where they live. If you are doing an online exchange, find some good online maps of where you live and where your partner lives. Both of you look at the same online map and talk about the various places near where each other lives. Works wonders. You can supplement the maps with photos of sites, attractions, etc. A photo and/or a map is worth a 1000 words.
You could do something similar for face-to-face exchanges with printed maps/photos. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 11 04 May 2013 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with schoenewaelder. The thing about the participants in that experiment is that both of the conversation partners came from the same culture. That means both of them have a relatively similar idea of what the other person will think of as appropriate in a given setting. Speeding up the process of exchanging increasingly personal information is something that might only work when it's a task set by an outside authority. In the -very interesting book- I am reading, Forgas' 'Interpersonal Behaviour. The Psychology of Social Interaction', the author cites an experiment which indicates that if newly acquainted conversation partners are advised talk about the level of intimicy in their personal revelations, they will cooperate and agree on a level that works for both partners. When they aren't aware of the possibility of talking about it, one of them takes the lead. And if that partner tends to be much more open about topics the other person deems intimate, the other one easily feels threatened or disgusted by such behaviour.
My point is that when you interact with somebody from a different culture, it's not easy to know which topics are appropriate at a given time with a given conversation partner, and you might not even be able to tell when the other person starts feeling uncomfortable but not so much as to complain - yet. What I personally find much more useful when talking to speakers of my target languages is anything related to differences and similarities in our cultural experiences. Especially being understanding of how difficult it is to deal with differences and using similarities to strengthen your connection can make it easier to get along with another person; at the same time such topics can help you gauge your conversation partner's idea of whether a certain topic or a certain way of talking about a topic might be appropriate or welcome. In case you wonder - I don't use such strategies to manipulate other people, but to make myself like them better and make it easier for me to get along with them. 2 persons have 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 8 of 11 06 May 2013 at 5:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Let's not forget Sprachprofi's list as well. Edited by Arekkusu on 06 May 2013 at 5:34pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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