Ultimate Guide: How To Find Language Conversation Partners?

By Ivy do Carmo

Mimic Method held a live Youtube stream to discuss how to find a conversation partner. Language students from different parts of the world shared their experience and told what they think it is the best language exchange site.

Idahosa covered mainly three different aspects of the challenge of finding a good language partner:

• Where to find a good conversation partner;
• How to make the best out of the conversation with them and
• What to talk about.

In this article, we’ll summarize what was discussed and share with you some great tips and ideas presented on the live streaming.

First of all, let’s understand why is this subject so important. Do you know the 3 Ps of learning any skill, including a new language? They are Perception, Practice and Performance.

1) Perception. It involves watching other people doing what you want to learn to do as well. For example, if you want to speak Spanish, you watch Spanish native speakers talking, their facial expressions, gestures and body movement. This step can be compared to taking a piece of food and putting it into your mouth.

2) Practice. After watching other people doing something, you now try to imitate or mimic them. At first, your mimicry may be very different from the original, but you keep practicing and practicing until you can imitate them at a decent level. This step can be compared to chewing the food you’ve put in your mouth.

3) The last and most important step is Performance. Once you’ve practice enough and you feel confident, you go out and use what you’ve learned to communicate and interact with other people. This last step can be compared to digesting the food so it can become part of your body mass. Since Performance is so important, where can you find people to communicate with?

Where Are The Best Places To Find a Conversation Partner?

In order to really excel in the Performance point, you have to find good language partners. This can be a little tricky because you want to learn a new language to connect with people and in order to do so, you have to engage in conversations with them. However, how will you do that if you don’t know how to speak the language yet?

You can’t do one without the other and neither do the other without the one. It’s like that analogy of what came first, the chicken or the egg.

Fortunately, the Internet shorten distances and on it you can find some great websites to try language exchanges. Let’s describe some of the most popular ones and highlight their pros and cons:

Baselang – This is a great website for Spanish language exchange, since it offers unlimited Spanish tutoring. You pay $149 per month and can have as much one-on-one classes with native teachers as you like. Baselang has a great curriculum but you are not obligated to follow it; you can talk about anything you like with your teachers. You can schedule classes in advance or just five minutes before, but it is best to do it in advance because the best teachers will obviously be booked. Forbes said that “BaseLang’s unlimited tutoring is the closest thing to immersion you can get without moving to a Spanish-speaking country.”

My Language Exchange – It is a website where you can do language exchanges for free. You can either make video calls or enter on chat rooms and use lesson plans if you don’t know what to talk about. You can be a Gold Member for $24 per year, which allows you to initiate contact with any member instead of having to be contacted first. The website also has word games like hangman, quizzes and word match. The Wall Street Journal says that My Language Exchange is “one of the best ways to learn a foreign language.”

Italki – It is a website where you can schedule online classes with over 10,000 native teachers of all the major languages and also find a conversation partner. The hourly rate of the professional teachers range between $4 and $80 and you can see a video introduction of them and the students’ review before scheduling a class. For a smaller price, you can have a class with a tutor, which is a native speaker who is not a professional teacher. This option is a good choice if you simply want to practice your conversation skills, but not so good if you want to learn grammar and the language structure. The third and last option is to find a conversation partner to practice your speaking for free. The downside to this option is that you have to spend half of the time helping the other person to practice English. Another good thing about Italki is that you can get a $20 credit for every $40 spent by those you have personally referred.

Hellotalk – It is an language learning app that gives you access to millions of native speakers from all over the world. You can text and make video calls with them directly from the app, without having to use Skype or other software. With a friendly interface, you can choose your language partner and engage in a conversation sharing your camera or your screen, if you want to write or doodle something for the other person to understand you better. The app still features options like translation and voice recognition.

Meetup – It is a website where you can find people near you that share the same interests and hobbies. Those people form online groups and usually hold weekly or monthly in-person events to talk about their passions or to practice their skills, like learning a new language. The website counts with more than 35 million members from 180 countries and there are groups about pretty much anything. It is a user that organizes the group and you have to pay a fee to participate.

How To Make The Best Out Of The Conversation With Your New Partner?

Remember the 3 Ps of learning? Perception, Practice and Performance. The three steps are important, but we can say that the last one is the most important one.

Why can we say that Performance is the most important step? Let’s illustrate the 3 Ps in the context of a classroom. When you watch lectures and you listen to the explanation of your teachers, this is Perception. When you do exercises and tests in the classroom, this is Practice. When you go outside and you use what you’ve learned in real life situations, that’s Performance.

If you just learn and practice a new language, it will never become familiar and natural to you. It is not enough to learn a language just in class or in books. You have to use it in real life contexts, otherwise it will be just like the chemistry classes you had in high school. Do you remember the things you learned back then? Didn’t think so.

What I am trying to say here is that, since Performance is the most important step to really learn a new language, you have to take advantage of every single opportunity to talk to a native speaker. It doesn’t matter if he’s the owner of a store you’re shopping in or if he’s waiting for the bus next to you, fight the fear of talking to strangers and don’t miss any chance of speaking the language you’re learning.

There is no doubt that online language exchanges have their merit, but since Performance is about using what you’ve learned in real life situations, in-person language exchanges are even better than the online ones. That’s because you can sense the environment around you, better watch the facial expressions and body movements of the other person and better listen to the tone and variations of his voice.

Because of this, why not try to schedule an in-person language exchange with someone who lives next to you, using one of the websites listed above? Of course that you have to be careful with who you choose since there are a lot of malicious people out there. Fortunately, the websites normally provide reviews of the users so you can choose well and be safe. Also, you can text or make a video call with the person before arranging a meeting.

Once you’ve schedule an in-person encounter to practice the language you’re learning, keep in mind that both you and the other person are investing time and money (transportation expenses, for example). So it is very important to really commit, being punctual, keeping a positive attitude and using the time you have in the best possible way. Do your best to help the other person to learn your mother tongue the same way you want him to do with you. Don’t waste any time with distractions, focus on what you’re there to do.

If you follow these suggestions, you will hopefully find yourself a good conversation partner to practice your speaking skills on a regular basis. However, what if you’re lacking things to talk about?

What To Talk About With Your Conversation Partner?

If you get very nervous to speak the language you are learning, especially if you are a beginner, a good tip is to write a script. Think about what do you want to say to the next native speaker you find. Practice these few lines over and over and use them several times to talk to people.

When you feel comfortable saying the things of your script to others and you don’t feel nervous anymore, level up. Think about other things you could talk about and questions you can ask to keep the conversation flowing, this way building a more complex script bit by bit. By doing so, you’ll get a positive feedback from the native speakers, you won’t feel so nervous anymore and that will boost your confidence to push your limits and try to talk about more complex subjects.

Regardless of the method you choose to find a good conversation partner, it is very important to maintain a positive attitude and really put an effort to understand how the website or the app works with all of its features. It may be a little difficult at first, but you’ll get use to it in no time and it will become easier each day.

Do you know any other good website or app to find language partners? Leave a comment telling us a little about it. If you liked the tips from these article, you will love the Mimic Method’s Youtube Channel. Subscribe and don’t miss other great tips to boost your conversation skills!