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An Ode to Language Partners | ||
Tags: Study Group | Tandem/Language Exchange | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 9 of 17 22 April 2010 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think a face-to-face meeting is more motivating than email. I also had email relationships (even met one partner in Japan once), but we all eventually lost interest. Then again, even in person, you need to find the right person and that can sometimes take a few attempts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ManicGenius Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 288 posts - 420 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French, Japanese | Message 10 of 17 22 April 2010 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
So... It's like marriage? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 11 of 17 22 April 2010 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
...except it's free. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ManicGenius Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 288 posts - 420 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French, Japanese | Message 12 of 17 22 April 2010 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And you can leave at any time with all your stuff intact? Sweet deal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Saif Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5612 days ago 122 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French | Message 13 of 17 22 April 2010 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I study Russian at least once a week with one of my good friends who's a second
generation Russian American. She regrets not learning it as a child since her grandparents were fluent speakers, but she's motivated to learn it now. I also have a friend who helps me with Farsi (in exchange I help him with Arabic). Usually I'm not a fan of study partners or groups, I'd rather learn things on my own. But with languages, I think it works well. It's important to share resources, practice the spoken language, go over the grammar with someone who's just as confused as you are, etc. Each person brings in their own perspective on how the language works. That's beneficial for those who are willing to learn. I don't think I would have been able to achieve fluency in German in college without my weekly language group meetings. I found German a difficult language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 14 of 17 22 April 2010 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I study Persian and Arabic every day with my study partner. We're both native English speakers who lived abroad many years ago, so we've basically been greatly improving the skills we already had. We've been doing Persian for five years and Arabic for almost a year now. We do our work separately, each reading whatever material we're working on, and then we consult by telephone each day for 30-60 minutes to check our efforts. Right now, for example, we read a bit of the Shahnameh, the Persian epic, and 1001 Nights, in Arabic, each day. One night a week we meet and work on other material, usually several pages of a book-length poem that we've each read during the week, plus various shorter poems that we just read on the spot. We've started adding a bit of Biblical Hebrew during this weekly meeting just for a bit of spice. I work on other languages on my own, but all of my study habits and my general approach to learning languages have come from our mutually supportive study relationship. I'm sure it's hard to find such a reliable partner with the right sort of knowledge, but if you're lucky enough to have one, it can be fantastic.
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| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5553 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 15 of 17 23 April 2010 at 12:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I used to have a Finnish language partner but our friendship ended rather sadly. I don't want to go into too much detail but I ended up finding out that she was sexually attracted to me, but the feeling was not mutual. I didn't want to lead her on, so I cut off the friendship. I regret it a lot. Not only was she a nice girl, and I know I must have hurt her by ending the friendship so abruptly, but now that I've moved out of Finland and back to my home country, I have no native speakers to practice with. Such is the life, I suppose.
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| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6678 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 16 of 17 23 April 2010 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have had a couple (4 to be more precise) of language partners that I have found through universities or schools in the places I have lived. My latest language partner arrangement turned out very successful. We meet twice a week for Norwegian and Russian (since last October or something like that) and not very long ago we spent the weekend in Paris together! We also go shopping together or meet at each other's places to cook or do crafty stuff. Needless to say, our meetings aren't very formal anymore, they are mostly about chatting.
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