Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

General discussion about learning languages
greatSchism
Yellow Belt
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
x 209

Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby greatSchism » Sat Sep 04, 2021 2:40 pm

I love the concept of "language exchange" apps, but it is difficult finding quality people. The process of browsing profiles, looking at videos and photos, and deciding whether you want to contact people is similar to using a dating app/website. Not sure that there is a better option. I have chatted with a few interesting people on a Tandem, but I have concluded that the process of finding the right people to chat with is not worth the time. In the past, I would use this app when I had free time for a short chat. Right now, I would rather pay someone for lessons than try to find someone on a "language exchange."

Some issues I ran into language exchange apps (Tandem):
Finding people with the same availability and interest in contact frequency.
People looking for a date/daddy/money.
People who want to dominate the conversation.

At the moment, I have a great tutor on iTalki, but finding them still took some effort. The process of finding a tutor on iTalki is pretty much the same as the "language exchange" apps. You filter through the tutor's profiles, watch their videos, and decide if you want to hire them for an hour. Aside from how well the video is edited and the price, you decide if you want to hire this person based on their looks, non-verbal communication, the sound of their voice, and the general vibe you get.

Some issues I ran into on iTalki:
Video connection issues.
Personalities didn't mesh.
I had 1 tutor, after a few weekly lessons, who asked me to give her 5000$ dollars. She gave me a sob story about her husband needing ear surgery. It was awkward.
Last edited by greatSchism on Sun Sep 05, 2021 8:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
9 x

User avatar
ryanheise
Green Belt
Posts: 459
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2019 3:13 pm
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Japanese (beginner)
x 1681
Contact:

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby ryanheise » Sat Sep 04, 2021 3:46 pm

You might get some interesting ideas from George Trombley's video below. He is basically demonstrating some approaches he uses on HelloTalk to easily find exchange partners as a 44 year old:



He admits you may need to go through a few people, but it also helps that he's casting a wider net to then filter down.

What does he recommend?

1) Introduce yourself in a public area of the app, 2) make an intentional, simple mistake (which will encourage people to want to help you), and 3) ask a simple question about Japanese (which will also encourage people to help you).
3 x

greatSchism
Yellow Belt
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
x 209

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby greatSchism » Sat Sep 04, 2021 4:18 pm

ryanheise wrote:You might get some interesting ideas from George Trombley's video below. He is basically demonstrating some approaches he uses on HelloTalk to easily find exchange partners as a 44 year old


Thanks for sharing, I will have to checkout Hellotalk. I watched a few minutes of the video and I can see they have an unacceptable behavior warning, which includes dating. It would be nice to have the ability to narrow down potential chat partners based on your availability. For example, looking to chat Thursday nights from 6-7 pm New York time.
1 x

User avatar
Sonjaconjota
Green Belt
Posts: 271
Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:12 am
Location: Barcelona
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Turkish (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 24#p192024
x 1094

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Sonjaconjota » Mon Sep 06, 2021 6:35 pm

Last year I tried Tandem, Leeve and HelloTalk and settled for HelloTalk for a while.
To me, Tandem felt like Instagram, Levee like Tinder (you have to swipe left or right) and HelloTalk like Facebook.
I had tried Leeve because they are offering to pair you up with language buddies in your area, but, of course, there have to be people in the area. In my case, “nearby” often meant at a distance of 300 or 400 kilometers.
Tandem generally felt too young and hip to me. I also disliked the way conversations were displayed: After publishing a question, every answer was presented in a different conversation thread.
With HelloTalk, you can both comment on publications and send personal messages. I found that less stressful, although, in the end, I stopped using the app because I did not want to get any more messages from new members.
I’m not interested in superficial small talk with different people, so I deleted the app after having found some people for regular chatting. By the way, I have found some for Turkish and French, but I didn’t find anybody I really clicked with for Italian and Dutch, so of course, there are no guaranties.
To sum up: I prefer HelloTalk out of the three, and I think you can adopt different strategies. Either use one of these apps for regular chatting with lots of different people or to find a couple of reliable language buddies and move on to other ways of communication outside the app.
5 x

jackb
Orange Belt
Posts: 243
Joined: Thu Jun 06, 2019 2:04 pm
Languages: English (N), French (Intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12251
x 789

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby jackb » Tue Sep 07, 2021 12:35 pm

There was a presentation rdearman did for a polyglot gathering on language exchanges. He did 500 of them in a short period. Here's the link to the presentation:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMgRMfUJKg[/youtube]

He says something like 'phone apps are essentially just tinder' at some point. At the end, he mentions a couple of sites that don't allow profile pictures and seem to be a bit more for actual language learners. You might want to take a look.

Personally, I don't like language exchanges because even in the best of situations, you can only spend 50% of your time on the target language. When you factor in the difficulty of getting into the best of situations, they haven't been worth it for me.
8 x

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
x 17566

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Cavesa » Tue Sep 07, 2021 1:18 pm

No.

I have no doubts language exchange can be very valuable, some members of this community have shared their experience together with tips on how to make it happen. But for me, the problems prevail and the time wasted looking for not totally worthless language exchange opportunity is better spent on something else. LE is not necessary, and pretending otherwise is harming the LL community.

The main problems, as I see them:

1.Mismatch between the offer and demand. I am a Czech native. I have high level only in languages with tons of natives (so why would anyone want me?). I am extremely unlikely to ever find equal language exchange, there are simply too few (serious) Czech learners that would be native of my target languages. A lot of people are in the same situation, natives of the less popular languages are at a huge disadvantage. But the natives of the huge ones sometimes face being used unilateraly.

2.Confusion of these apps with Tinder. But it is not just honest confusion. I was disgusted to read a few websites basically recommending LE sites to people looking for women to drag/date/harass (pick one or more options). It's a huge problem and it is not easy to solve even if these sites considered it a priority. It can really grow into very unpleasant harassment.

3.Too few serious learners. I blame the youtube polyglots and the "speak from day 1" hype. No, you don't need to practice your "hello, how are you" a billion times. If I try LE, I am not your free basics tutor, and I find this to be a waste of time for both sides. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying beginners cannot be serious. But a serious beginner, which might be ok for one Unit 1 chat and would improve, gets easily lost in the crowd of the people, who don't touch any resource except for a dumb app and LE.

4.Ethical problems, such as censorship and data sharing with third parties. HelloTalk, as a Chinese company, is known to censor the written part of the site. A few learners shared their stories on reddit, about how their posts with some probable keywords had been hidden from the rest of the users even without any controversial or rule breaking content. They had not been notified about being censored or having broken the rules, they were just finding lack of responses weird and dug a bit into it. Not sure whether this can happen in the video or audio calls in some way. But companies in countries like China have to follow the local laws, such as to share info on the users. Companies in other countries often use a small print (when you click the "I agree" button) and sell your data for marketing. Companies not respecting some ethical minimum (out of legal obligation or for profit, doesn't matter) are a big problem for the LE phenomenon and the users.

Don't get me wrong, I m not calling for some sort of boycott, that would be stupid and totally without any chance of success. But such stuff is a reason for me to not use a site, and I think language learners should be well informed on such issues, so that each one of us can make the right decision following our values and priorities.
12 x

User avatar
einzelne
Blue Belt
Posts: 804
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:33 pm
Languages: Russan (N), English (Working knowledge), French (Reading), German (Reading), Italian (Reading on Kindle)
x 2882

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby einzelne » Tue Sep 07, 2021 1:34 pm

Cavesa wrote: Confusion of these apps with Tinder.


Yes, but on the other hand, I know a story of my friend who happed to discover a Wittgenstein expert on Tinder. She was a PhD candidate at that time, so, instead of flirting, she spend the whole evening discussing her dissertation on Tinder.

(The situation you describe is horrible, esp for women, but I just couldn't help sharing this anecdote.)
3 x

Cavesa
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4960
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:46 am
Languages: Czech (N), French (C2) English (C1), Italian (C1), Spanish, German (C1)
x 17566

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Cavesa » Tue Sep 07, 2021 1:38 pm

einzelne wrote:
Cavesa wrote: Confusion of these apps with Tinder.


Yes, but on the other hand, I know a story of my friend who happed to discover a Wittgenstein expert on Tinder. She was a PhD candidate at that time, so, instead of flirting, she spend the whole evening discussing her dissertation on Tinder.

(The situation you describe is horrible, esp for women, but I just couldn't help sharing this anecdote.)


I'm sure some people consider a Witgenstein discussion to be a form of flirting :-) It looks like just a mismatch of interests and flirting styles :-D

(Partially joking. Of course it looks like simply had no energy and thoughts left for other stuff, which happens. But you never know. Perhaps she found another Witgenstein lover or opponent later, and a passionate philosophy discussion lead to a relationship)
2 x

greatSchism
Yellow Belt
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
x 209

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby greatSchism » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:18 pm

Sonjaconjota wrote:To sum up: I prefer HelloTalk out of the three, and I think you can adopt different strategies. Either use one of these apps for regular chatting with lots of different people or to find a couple of reliable language buddies and move on to other ways of communication outside the app.


When I have some free time I'm going to give Hellotalk a try.
0 x

greatSchism
Yellow Belt
Posts: 78
Joined: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (B1)
Studied but inactive: German (A2), Hungarian (A2), and French (A1)
x 209

Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby greatSchism » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:28 pm

jackb wrote:There was a presentation rdearman did for a polyglot gathering on language exchanges. He did 500 of them in a short period. Here's the link to the presentation:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMgRMfUJKg[/youtube]

He says something like 'phone apps are essentially just tinder' at some point. In the end, he mentions a couple of sites that don't allow profile pictures and seem to be a bit more for actual language learners. You might want to take a look.

Personally, I don't like language exchanges because even in the best of situations, you can only spend 50% of your time on the target language. When you factor in the difficulty of getting into the best of situations, they haven't been worth it for me.


I just watched the video, and this guy's presentation pretty much sums up my experience exactly. It is more productive for people with busy schedules to spend $10 on iTalki for an hour chat than spend 1 hour in exchange for only practicing for 30 minutes. It cost less than a value meal at Mcdonald's.
3 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests