Language clubs / associations

[hp230]

Hi,
After the thread about language communities where many of you have given various and valuable information. I thought about making this thread about language clubs where people learning languages can meet, share their experiences and help each other in their learning process.
I think it's very interesting when a group of persons who have common interests, decides to make a club and meet on regular basis in a private premises. Such an idea can grow, as we see robotics and music clubs for exemple, participating in national and international competitions.

In the university where I study, we have an English club where students meet to converse in english and improve their vocabulary especially. Last year, an american was invited several times to those meetings and students were very excited and motivated to learn more about the language, and particularly to improve their speaking skills (which aren't developped enough with school programs).
There is also a Japaneese Club (club Nippon) where japaneese lovers can meet and do many activites.
Such an idea is very easy to realise, since it would be a non-profit-making club, and in my case, the university is the one who provides the premises. The problem is that, people going for such clubs are rare (compared to robotics or music clubs at least).

So have you guys ever been in such clubs/associations?
And are there any world-known language clubs and language competitions?

[CarlyD]

Here there's a website called MeetUp where you can find like-minded people for anything from rock climbing to chess to languages. We have current groups for both language learners and for people who speak the language and want to practice. Great help if there's a group in the local area.

I've been to the Spanish one--intimidating as most people were at a much higher level than me--but lots of fun and I did learn from listening.

[astromule]

Hi hp230! There are not such clubs in Argentina, as far as I know. There are other members from my country here, so perhaps they have more info on that.

I've thought about the idea of language competitions, in the line of "memory competitions": http://mt.artofmemory.com/competitions
And why not? We already have a Polyglot Conference, don't we?

The "clubs" that I know of are mostly organized randomly, for example, through http://www.polyglot-learn-language.com/, but I have never attended one of such meetings.

MundoLingo was created by an Englishman here in Argentina: http://mundolingo.org/, although the idea is more gathering with random people to talk in bars. I've attended several meetings, and although it's interesting, is more "meeting people" focused than learning languages. For example, only one other person there (from a total of 100/150 per night) knew of Assimil and he was also a member of HTLAL.

Perhaps we could start something here, as the MundoLingo franchise: we could establish some guidelines, name some "ambassadors" that could open polyglot clubs at Universities, sponsored by HTLALNG. The first principle that I can think is "no fees of any kind".

Hi,
After the thread about language communities where many of you have given various and valuable information. I thought about making this thread about language clubs where people learning languages can meet, share their experiences and help each other in their learning process.
I think it's very interesting when a group of persons who have common interests, decides to make a club and meet on regular basis in a private premesis. Such an idea can grow, as we see robotics and music clubs for exemple, participating in national and international competitions.

In the university where I study, we have an English club where students meet to converse in english and improve their vocabulary especially. Last year, an american was invited several times to those meetings and students were very excited and motivated to learn more about the language, and particularly to improve their speaking skills (which aren't developped enough with school programs).
There is also a Japaneese Club (club Nippon) where japaneese lovers can meet and do many activites.
Such an idea is very easy to realise, since it would be a non-profit-making club, and in my case, the university is the one who provides the premesis. The problem is that, people going for such clubs are rare (compared to robotics or music clubs at least).

So have you guys ever been in such clubs/associations?
And are there any world-known language clubs and language competitions?

[brilliantyears]

My university has a Japanese conversation club to practice conversational skills outside the official classes. Anyone can join even if you're no longer a student. Sadly meetings are generally planned during normal work hours, so I've never participated.
I did by accident find another Japanese conversation club in my province that meets at random times (evenings at bars, for special events, etc) and I've joined that. There are all kinds of members, from alumni from the university, to people who have never formally studied Japanese, to Japanese people working in the Netherlands. I think it's extremely useful, since my conversation skills have really gone downhill ever since I returned from my year in Japan (5 years ago, so imagine that).

[zenmonkey]

internations.org - the expat / global minds community - probably active in your town.
events with lots of multi-culti people. I go to a local event once or twice a month.

[neofight78]

I've tried a couple of Russian groups via meetup.com. To be honest I've been a bit disappointed. Other non-natives tend to have such a low level that sustaining a conversation in Russian is not really possible. Any native speakers see you as someone to be taught, whereas I would prefer to just chat in Russian and be treated as a peer. I've not really found it's added anything for me, the internet is much more convenient and useful for practicing Russian.

I suspect the situation would be better for more popular languages, especially those taught in school. However, I'm only studying Russian so I've no real world experience to back up that theory.

[pir]

I've not had particularly much success with language clubs in the past, and so I haven't been to one in a long time. But in the interest of speaking better French, I am about to check out the local Association des francophones. I am expecting that to go rather better, because there is a common interest for the members beyond that of just speaking a language -- it's a heritage thing, and while I don't share that, I am interested in it. If I just meet with people to speak a language, we have to speak ABOUT something, and we might not share any interests.

In general I've always had better luck with clubs that had a strong, direct common interest as compared to a meta interest. I've noticed the same thing as with languages within the newly developing "maker" community -- we might all like making stuff, but what each of us is making might be very different; somebody who wants to build their own loom doesn't have much in common with somebody who likes to build arduino gadgets. To keep a meta interest club going you need a lot more people, and probably even some form of artificial focus to keep the members connected outside of small cliques that will form around similar interests -- putting on an exhibition, working on the club space itself if the club has one, organizing workshops for cross fertilization.

A language club might also have to do some extra work to be interesting to all comers, which I've never experienced one doing. The ones I went to all just had people sit/stand around and try to have conversations. Fun for extraverts, not an easy feat for an introvert; I like to have something to do while I talk, or at least have some focus for the conversation. Even dinner would have been ok; I can talk about food, and that's actually an easy entry point for beginners. I can see this sort of thing succeeding if people all agreed to do something language-related together, like watch a foreign movie, a documentary about foreign culture, read a book, etc. Maybe individuals could give short presentations about something they know. The language practice would come in talking about the experiences. Conceivably such a club could also organize small workshops for language skill improvement, form study groups for test prep, or just to help motivate each other.

Now if I could only put my money where my mouth is...

[Spoonary]

I go to a fortnightly language café but I must admit that I either end up speaking a ton of English or intimidating people with my Spanish, because they generally have a lower level than me (and I find it hard to deliberately speak more simply, because I spend most of my time trying to use more complex language ). My plan last time I went was to speak my weaker languages (Italian and Esperanto), but that didn't work. I like going to the café because everyone is friendly and interesting but I generally don't get a lot of useful practice in.

I was also part of the language society at my university, but studying and other commitments kept me from enjoying many of the cultural events they organised.

[aokoye]

I've had really bad luck with Meetups but that could be an issue of me being shy. The main German meetup here is also at a restaurant that I don't have the money to go to (if the food were better I'd be more amenable to going) and the times I went it seemed rather cliquish. At one point my university had a really great German conversation group Stammtisch) that would meet once every few weeks. What was nice is that it was really relaxed and pretty welcoming as well. People would also correct each other's German but in a non judgmental way.

[garyb]

I used to go a lot of Meetup events but I gave up. I've written about them a few times on the old forum but not on this one, so I'll indulge myself this time!

There's quite a popular French meetup in my city. I found it useful to an extent, I think it helped me get my spoken French from bad to decent, as it was the only regular speaking opportunity available to me. But it had some drawbacks:

- Usually the majority of people were non-native speakers, beginner to intermediate. Often there were either no native speakers, or a minority and everyone was fighting for their attention. Especially as I started to aim for a more advanced level, hearing other learners' mistakes and accents was doing me more harm than good, and of course I'm sure that my own mistakes and accent weren't helping them!
- Some of the native speakers who did attend had bad attitudes, including one of the organisers. Refusing to speak French with learners, or avoiding speaking at all with learners: at times there would be one table with all learners and one with all natives.
- One of the events they did was a "language exchange", but it didn't tend to be a fair exchange. English natives only wanted to speak French, and French natives only wanted to speak English.

For these reasons I eventually decided it wasn't worth the time and effort to mostly speak with other learners whose level was the same or lower than mine. If I want speaking practice I might as well pay an online tutor, it doesn't cost much more than the pint of beer I usually bought at the meetups and I don't even need to leave the house. I did enjoy the social aspect of meetups, but even for that there are better places to socialise and meet people (on that note, I've found that Couchsurfing meetings can be a better bet both for meeting people and for practising languages, although again hit or miss).

There's also an Italian meetup, and I used to go quite a lot. It was a small group and often I was the only non-native. However, more recently it too seems to have gotten bigger and been overrun by beginners.

There's a weekly "language café" for all languages, although in practice it tends to mostly be Spanish, English, and French. It's in a noisy bar where it's hard to hear what people are saying in any language. I again gave up on it because it was too hit-or-miss and wasn't the best use of my time.

As usual, Spanish learners get the best deal. The Spanish meetups here work pretty well. A majority of native speakers who are willing to help, and the learners either tend to be quite serious or not serious at all; the latter group keep the Spanish who want to practise English happy!