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Language exchange websites | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| morprussell Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6950 days ago 272 posts - 285 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 9 of 26 18 May 2005 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
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I use Polyglot-learn-language and Friends Abroad to find Spanish speakers. I haven't had much success finding exchange partners on Polyglot, but I have had overwhelming success with Friends Abroad.
I agree that the use of photos in the profiles probably encourages some people to use Friends Abroad as a dating service, but I think if you are clear about your intentions (in your profile) you will find the right kind of people. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 6922 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 10 of 26 09 June 2005 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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I've been studying Japanese for the last 10 months or so. Living in a small midwestern US city, I have very little opportunity to meet any native speakers on a regular basis, so I have recently become intrigued by the possibility of using Skype for conversational practice with native speakers. Unfortunately I never seemed to be able to get any response from native speakers at the Skype forums.
A few weeks ago I read about a new language exchange site called The Mixxer, which is aimed both at individual learners and at language classes. You register your email address, fill out a brief profile, specify your native language and indicate which languages you are seeking to practice. You can then search for native speakers who are interested in practicing your own native language. It worked for me. I've been emailing and Skyping a nice Japanese guy over the last week or two. I corresponded a bit with the creator of the site, who told me that a lot of Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese were looking for English speakers. If you're interested in finding a Skype language partner, this may be a good site to try. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7163 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 26 17 June 2005 at 1:16am | IP Logged |
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Qbe, how good is the quality of this Skype system? How does a typical exchange with one of your correspondent proceed?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 6922 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 12 of 26 17 June 2005 at 9:28am | IP Logged |
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I've heard that Skype quality can vary, but I'm very pleased with it. I'm using an older computer (800 MHz, Windows 98) with a DSL connection (I've heard that Skype works over a 56K phone line, but I can't vouch for its quality). For me, using Skype is like talking on the telephone most of the time. The only exception is when I have a lot of other network traffic; the sound quality can degrade a bit at those times. However, even then I can hear my exchange partner clearly.
So far we don't have a "typical" exchange in the sense of structure. I'd like to change that. Currently we speak a lot of English because his English is better than my Japanese. We discuss our jobs, family and previous days' activities for a bit. My partner is trying to improve his English because that's the common language between the foreigners in his office, so we practice some words and phrases he finds useful. I'll interject Japanese when I'm able, ask about words or phrases I need to understand better, and try out some of the new vocabulary and grammar I've studied. Often he even understands me, and he's kind enough to correct my mistakes. We both spend a lot of time trying to understand each other and help each other with pronunciation and vocabulary. We both spend a lot of time looking up words in dictionaries in order to express the things we want to say. All in all, it's a lot of fun. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Valentin1402 Newbie Belgium sharedtalk.com Joined 6887 days ago 2 posts - 1 votes | Message 13 of 26 17 June 2005 at 7:39pm | IP Logged |
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I would like to add this site to the list of language exchange website. I created it, so I'll try to be the most pragmatic possible :
www.sharedtalk.com Pros : - Totally Free - User interface (very very different from what the Internet usually offers) - Integrated multiple chat rooms - notify members of new messages, no wait for members to log in (as MylanguageExchange) - Spam filtering - No adverts Cons: - Very new (40 days), the community is still small - French + translation in english (other languages are planned) - Lack of some features (no forum for example, but it is planned too) I'm really doing my best to have this site better and better everyday. Tell me what you think about my website (and not only what's good, I also want to know what's bad). Try it please. Otherwise, here are two others websites for language exchange : - Lingup : a black box, pay before and then see what's inside (I didn't pay) - Inlingua : Seems very basics, don't know if it's free (I didn't try) Valentin Edited by administrator on 24 July 2005 at 3:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 6939 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 14 of 26 27 June 2005 at 7:10am | IP Logged |
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I have something to add about Polylglot-learn-language.com: Lately, as the number of members has grown, and as new features are added to the site, the loading time of this site is starting to get annoyingly slow, and on some rare occasions, it doesn't load at all.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 1204grandine Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 6974 days ago 88 posts - 78 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, Catalan Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Greek | Message 15 of 26 10 July 2005 at 7:22am | IP Logged |
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I use both polyglot-learn-language.com and friendsabroad.com
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| stephenr Newbie United States Joined 6846 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 16 of 26 29 July 2005 at 12:27pm | IP Logged |
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Another site you might want to try is www.meetup.com. It has a lot of different groups that meet up for a whole bunch of different reasons. Most of their groups are for other activities, but they still have a wide range of language groups available. The groups will meet up about once a month and practice speaking in the target language. If you have the benefit of living near a large city, you'll get quite a few native speakers who attend these events too.
It seems to me that most of the groups on meetup.com are in the U.S., but I know that they do offer groups around the world. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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