Language exchanges can help you improve your English. But what is it exactly? Simply, you meet up with a native English speaker and have a chat, half in your native language, and half in English. It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes and you can also explore vocabulary without annoying the listener, as the whole purpose of meeting up is to improve your language skills. You can meet up in a coffee shop, a pub or at your school and the amount of time you spend talking is completely up to you.
How do you find language exchange partners? You can meet people in real life, or you can do a language exchange over the Internet. If you are studying in an English speaking country, it’s really easy to find native English speakers, but you can find expats living in your home country as well.
You can find language learning groups on Facebook or on www.meetup.com. Search for ‘conversation club’ or ‘language exchange’, ‘conversation exchange’. You can also try www.mylanguageexchange.com, www.livemocha.com, www.languageexchange.org, www.conversationexchange.com and www.italki.com.
If for some reason none of the above tickle your fancy, there’s another way! Try Universities teaching your native language and ask about language exchanges with their students, and put notes up on the notice boards. Do the same with language schools that teach your native language!
We hope you find this useful. Let us know how you get on!
Happy Learning!
