What do you look for in language exchange partners?

[linguaphile]

For others here who do language exchanges, I'm wondering how you go about choosing the best exchange partners for you and for your learning situation. Do you prioritize finding someone who will correct your mistakes consistently? Do you prioritize finding someone who will be a good/interesting conversation partner? Are both of these factors essential for you? Does it evolve from the former to the latter as you improve your skills? Do you always try to find someone who speaks your language at about the same level you speak theirs? Or lower/higher? Someone around the same age as you? Or is there something else entirely that you look for in potential language exchange partners?

And on a related note, based on whatever you're looking for in a language exchange partner:
Are there certain key phrases or words that you look for in potential partners' profiles on language exchange websites? Certain things in profiles that are red flags? How do you personally wade through the sea of profiles that mostly seem to be a variation on "My interests are travel, movies, music, etc. and I'm learning X language [for my career / for travel / to move to country Y]"? What kind of profiles have worked out best for you in the past?

[eido]

Both my long-term language partners are within a year of me in age, one older, one younger. I honestly wasn’t looking for someone the same age as me in initial searches because I didn’t want to discriminate and say, “Well, all ‘old people’ are boring!” But I’ve had experiences as a young female that make me think twice, so nowadays I usually keep it within a certain range.

What both people I talk to share is that the two of us can talk casually, and we seem to be committed to excellence and communication despite the distance, time, and any other factors life throws at us. In other words, we’re serious. But we treat each other with just the right amount of respect and joking nature for us to sustain the relationship.

A lot of what keeps us together is common interest, but when that doesn’t work, it’s the ability to relax around one another and treat each other with dignity and to talk to one another about almost anything that really cinches it all. We treat each other with kindness, can tease, but don’t step on toes. We’re curious, but always apologize when we’ve hurt the other person—usually that’s by accident.

In other words, I think it’s the attitude that brings it together. Trusting your instincts is good. If you have a good character limit on the profile of your chosen exchange site, be specific in what you like and what you don’t. Introduce yourself with detail. You want people to get a feel for you. And in the first few chats, make sure to discuss naturally— and lay out your terms, if you’re more business. I recommend friend.

I always look for people with higher levels than me if I suck in a language. If not, I look for someone who has about the same level as me in my native tongue as I do in theirs. Consistent mistake checking is my jam.

[linguaphile]

If you have a good character limit on the profile of your chosen exchange site, be specific in what you like and what you don’t. Introduce yourself with detail. You want people to get a feel for you...

Thanks for your reply – this line of yours actually gets to part of what was behind my post, I think. I want to get a feel for people before messaging them, and I want people to get a feel for me before messaging me – but I find the character limits on most sites are about 100 words short of what I'd like. And that goes in both directions. I find I lack enough space to properly describe myself and what I'm seeking, particularly when I'm seeking different things for different languages (I've gotten around this by changing my profile occasionally to focus on different things at different times) – and also that most other profiles are too short for me to really get a good feel for them and decide whether I want to message them.

So I've ended up with a hodgepodge of five exchange partners. There's a mix of people who happened to message me first and people whom I messaged first (basically just because they spoke my target language natively, were around my age, and had no obvious red flags). And for the most part those I've messaged first turned out to be good (consistent, decent conversation, some mistake correction, etc.) – while with some of those who messaged me first, I continue speaking with them every few weeks just because it's an opportunity to converse in my target language, but I don't get much out of the exchanges otherwise. And now I'm thinking of seeking some new exchange partners, so I've been thinking a bit about how to ensure I find good ones...

[Cèid Donn]

Granted I'm not looking for a LEP, as these days I avoid language exchanges online, for a number of reasons. I find it much easier to do it in person, with small groups, which sadly, due to where I live and the pandemic, I can currently only do with Spanish, and not any of the other languages I study. But in the past these were things I generally were looking for:

1. Someone who is relatively the same level as me. It's suppose to be an exchange, not a lesson, which is what often happens, in my experience, when one person is at a much lower level than the other.

2. Someone who is respectful of my time and shows up at the agreed upon time and prepared, with reasonable flexibility, because life happens. Of course, asking this of someone means you must be willing and able to reciprocate in kind.

3. Someone who generally has the same degree of intensity and similar goals as myself regarding the language. Like when I was doing exchanges with Scottish Gaelic, I avoided people who were really more into Scottish genealogy and "Celtic culture" and that sort of thing and looked for people who were more down-to-earth and focused on learning the language. At the same time, I didn't want the super-anal types who nitpicked over "authentic" word choice and were otherwise just prescriptionist snobs. Sadly that did make it hard to continue once the last guy I used to meet up with had to stop because of family obligations, as there's not a very big pool of Gaelic learners out there, especially at my level. But in hindsight, I have no regrets about being so picky--it spared me a lot of dreadful interactions and wasted time.

4. Find someone who'll agree to some sort of planned activity or structure to your language exchange. One of the easiest things for me with my past LEPs was to read something aloud, like one reads a paragraph and then translating it, and then the other person does the next paragraph, while trying to keep any other conversation in the target language (like for example, if you don't how to translate something, you ask your LEP for help in the target language). This was especially good if both of us could find a novel that interested us both, so we could spend weeks on that, reading through it, picking out new vocabulary, digging deeper into grammar and idioms and the like. That's just one example, but in general, some structure that both of you can agree on is really very helpful.

[TeoLanguages]

I always try to find a person who's patient and with whom I can share a wide range of topics. In my opinion, there's no worst language partner than someone you don't share interests with. Furthermore, I also look for someone able and willing to correct my mistakes (with a different degree of frequency depending on my level).

[Voytek]

I always try to find a person who's patient and with whom I can share a wide range of topics. In my opinion, there's no worst language partner than someone you don't share interests with. Furthermore, I also look for someone able and willing to correct my mistakes (with a different degree of frequency depending on my level).

Here you go; no worse.

Sorry, I'm a teacher and just couldn't help it.

But yes, patience is no.1 and a bit of sense of humor doesn't do any harm.

[rdearman]

For me the important things are:

1. Breathing - They must be breathing because I can't see dead people.
2. Native - They must be able to speak their own language.
3. Hate sports - I can't stand sports or people who constantly knatter on about it.

That is pretty much my criteria. I have even spent an entire day text chatting with spammers, just because they were speaking to me in French. You want to speak, then speak to as many people as you can and don't be so picky.

[linguaphile]

That's kinda like someone asking for a textbook recommendation and hearing the suggestion to "just use everything that's available, don't be so picky". The more, the better – of course, no one will dispute that. But it doesn't change the fact that most people have a finite amount of time available for conversing (or any other activity) in a given language – and there simply are better and worse uses of that time. Unless someone's focusing entirely on one language and has tons and tons of free time for it, the ROI on one's time is a huge factor.

Since you bring up French, I'll share my first two experiences with French language exchange partners – both of whom wrote to me first, in case that matters. Note that French is not a language I'm focusing on now – I reached a C1 level many years ago, and just want to occasionally have a regular conversation and make sure I'm moving forward rather than backward. Call it "maintenance" or whatever.

• With my first French partner, it's maybe something like your experience with the spammers – I keep going just because it's in French. She's a bit older and the conversations are like talking to an aunt, plus her microphone doesn't really work well. So she'll ask me a quick question about something (my wife, my travels, whatever), either by audio or text, and then I'll just talk about that until I run of things to say, and then she'll ask something else. A bit one-sided and generally quite repetitive with regard to the topics. Is it better than no French conversation at all? Absolutely, I'm speaking in French the whole time after all. Would it be great if I had unlimited time for French and this was just one more occasional convo? Sure. But... would my currently limited time be better spent on the type of conversations that I actually want to improve (two-sided conversations with peers about a wide range of topics, constantly responding to the other at a normal conversational pace, and training my French listening as well)? Again, no doubt, it absolutely would.
• With the second one, we spoke once and then scheduled a second conversation. She forgot about it. We did end up managing to speak though, and scheduled a third conversation. Again, she forgot about it. Was all this time well-spent (scheduling and rescheduling, showing up when the other didn't show, etc.), for a grand total of 1 hour of conversation in a language that I'm not even actively studying now? Absolutely not.

I've got regular exchanges going for 4 languages now (including multiple for German), will add another language before the end of the year, and probably 2 more next year. French is a relatively low priority – for now, when I add new partners, German's the priority. And my experiences with partners in my other languages besides French have mostly been quite good (despite the conversations/partners themselves all being very different) – so the solution for French can't simply be to spend more time on it. I need better ROI on the limited time I have available for French – so I definitely do need to be more picky about how I'm spending that time...

[rdearman]

The title is what do YOU look for, not what should I look for.

But regardless, you are going to have to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to do that you just need to power on through. Try to find the people who suit you and dump the rest. I don't know what advice would be helpful.

You don't pick employees just by the CV, you also do an interview. Same issue here, they might tick all the boxes in the written profile, but until you actually do an exchange you won't know for sure. And you might deselect an ideal candidate by being too focused on finding the "perfect" person.

I think you need to take my advice, don't be picky, spend a month focusing on finding X number of partners which suit you, then keep those. I am not telling you to buy every textbook. I am saying shop around for the best textbook and buy the one or two you want. Time spent on selection is not time wasted on ROI.

So time up front is a problem but it works out. I have been speaking to the same two french people for almost 2 years, but I separated a lot of chaff to get the wheat. I did over 500 exchanges in 4 months. Those are the only two that made the cut.

Your mileage may vary.

[Tristano]

I looked for an attractive woman. It worked. I now have two daughters with her and my Dutch skyrocketed. Her Italian got worse though.