Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

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

Postby Le Baron » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:36 pm

I would second Cavesa's post. LE apps seem to work for some people, but you can have your time wasted. Back when skype was new I tried skyping people and it worked out half the time. Probably because there wasn't an industry of people having the brass neck to ask for €15 for dull small-talk.
Some people I know swear by italki. some guy at the language cafe spent the lockdown doing Italian with people on italki and he is definitely more fluent. He introduced to one of his italki LE partners. I noticed that he spoke better to him than to other Italian speakers in the cafe. Just an observation. Maybe it's like when you feel better in your psychiatrist's chair, but go to pieces again when you go back to normal life.
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby rdearman » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:47 pm

greatSchism wrote:
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.

Yeah, he is pretty smart that guy. ;)
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby rdearman » Tue Sep 07, 2021 3:01 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. 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.


To be exact, I recommended:
https://www.language-exchanges.org/
https://www.conversationexchange.com/
They are heavily moderated to get rid of the flirts and the time wasters. While I agree with most people's comments in this thread, there are advantages to language exchanges which you cannot get from iTalki. The primary one is that I have made friends. I have speaking with an Italian friend who I met on a language exchange over 20 years ago now. She has visited me with her family in the UK and I visited her in Rome. I know her children, who speak with me in Italian, because their English isn't so great.

I have a French friend who I speak to every week and have done for the last eight years or so. We don't just skype, but we send messages and jokes over Signal (used to use WhatsApp but she doesn't like it). She visited me in the UK and I was supposed to visit her in France, but Covid. She sent me some French books for my birthday, and I've sent her English books and videos too.

You will get out of a language exchange what you are willing to put in. If you are looking for a basic transaction, then iTalki is much better value for money. If you want to make a friend(s) and use the language with them, learn about them and thier lives, help them with their language journey, then iTalki isn't such a good deal.

In that presentation I did mention that you have to separate a lot of chaff to get some wheat. But honestly I still have $35 left in my iTalki account and have had for a couple of years. My first point of call is a language exchange over a tutor session. If I'm looking for a tutor, I feel that I'm better off as Casava said and just doing the work with books, audio and films. But if I want to speak to a real, live human being and interact with them it will not be iTalki

Fixed the link.
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Sonjaconjota » Tue Sep 07, 2021 5:04 pm

greatSchism wrote: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.


I mean, it depends on what you want.
For my more advanced languages, I prefer italki, too. I book a class and tell the tutor beforehand that I do not want regular classes. If I like the teacher, I will come back at some point. If it didn't click, I won't. No need to give any explanations.
But I'm a beginner in Turkish. I have actually taken a couple of classes on italki for Turkish and stumbled through 20 minutes of painful "conversation". But I just don't have the level yet to talk comfortably. With my Turkish language buddies, it's mainly text and voice messages.
I practice listening, reading, transcription and translation. For my own messages, I look up words relevant for my daily life and I read things out loud, which means, I move my mouth and pronounce words in Turkish, but I don't have to stress about it.
Additionally, I can of course ask questions when I have any doubts, and the contact with native speakers makes the language and culture come alive to me.
So, for me personally, italki tutors and the language buddies I've found through HelloTalk just have different functions.
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby alaart » Tue Sep 07, 2021 8:04 pm

I heavily relied on real life language exchange for language practice and learning. I definitely prefer real life exchanges over apps. Pre-Covid I used apps as a supplement only. But since covid I also used them extensively. I can share the experience that it is hard to connect to anybody online, I'd say the ratio is like 5-10% - not exactly great. I made a couple of friends and also visited people and was visited, but for the amount of people I talked with this is the absolute minority. I tried mostly iTalki when it still had languages exchanges, and the tandem-app now. My experiences on iTalki where better.

If you can I'd recommend real life language exchange. They have given me much more in return, I made more friends and had greater experiences. I also learned quicker.

In Germany this kind of works well because we have a lot of migrants. It depends on the availability of your target language. Of course rarer languages are more difficult to find, but surprisingly if you find someone they are much more likely to be friendly and helpful and appreciate you learning their language much more.

Some ideas:
-go to public viewing places of soccer matches from your target country.
-Universities:
Just ask around, there are a lot of foreigners in various classes. I'm currently just asking if someone knows a Korean.
You hear different languages spoken in the cafeteria or the hallway. There are foreigner parties, language departments, culture events, sometimes there are lectures about certain countries.
-I attended events about human rights problems and political issues (Brazil, China etc.). Concerts of your target countries music. Restaurants. Culture institutes and groups (like Confucius institute, organization for cultural exchange between Germany and Japan etc.).
-If you meet one foreigner, ask them to introduce you to more of them. They usually have an intern group in the city and intern events, if you really are motivated you can come along and join them once in a while, and they usually are friendly and helpful and there are always people that need to improve the local language. I must admit that it also feels weird, because you are like the only non-member in a closed group, but it is the closest thing to immersion I know. If you are surrounded by Portuguese or Chinese speakers the whole event, it can be quite overwhelming but also enlightening.
-Speak to strangers that look foreign and ask them where they are from. You can force your luck if you go to tourist places or big train stations. Express train rides also have a high change of meeting someone from a foreign country.

I also went to events that didn't turn out to have foreigners. It's a bit of luck I guess.

Some things I haven't tried but considered: Go to the immigration office, or places where foreigners go to search for work. Also there are sometimes church services in your target language - I'm an atheist so I didn't really think of going. But for certain religions, Indian, christian etc. there would be places to go to.

In a bigger city like Berlin, it tends to be easier as the various foreigners have more organized events. I was in Berlin 2 weeks ago, went to a Filipino restaurant, and there were like 10 Filipinos. Now I don't speak Tagalog sadly, I just went for the food. But moving to a bigger city is an option.

I realize this whole kind of thinking might not be for everybody, and an app is just much more comfortable. But that is also the problem since the other people are also putting in less effort and are less engaged. On the contrary, searching for foreigners in your country you can be absolutely sure they are engaged into your language - otherwise they wouldn't have come here.

If you are not in your home country, or a country with little immigrants it can be tough.
In Japan I had a harder time finding exchanges (I searched for Chinese and Spanish speakers), but it worked to some extend offering English. I mainly searched on meetup, universities and foreigner groups - this was all pre-covid. I had to go to a different university, since my university didn't have many Chinese exchange students. In the events of the other university I found some Chinese students and a Chinese study club too, but in the end I was too busy to go there often and the study club was too hard for me (they were doing poetry in Chinese).

Well, now there are still some pandemic restrictions left, so there also are less foreigners everywhere. So maybe this is something for later. I recommend mixing in some of those real life experiences to the app-exchanges from time to time and see where it goes. I personally can't wait to reduce my dependency on language apps and meet real foreigners again.
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby greatSchism » Tue Sep 07, 2021 8:27 pm



Thanks for sharing these I am going to check them out.

rdearman wrote:

They are heavily moderated to get rid of the flirts and the time wasters. While I agree with most people's comments in this thread, there are advantages to language exchanges which you cannot get from iTalki. The primary one is that I have made friends. I have speaking with an Italian friend who I met on a language exchange over 20 years ago now. She has visited me with her family in the UK and I visited her in Rome. I know her children, who speak with me in Italian, because their English isn't so great.

I have a French friend who I speak to every week and have done for the last eight years or so. We don't just skype, but we send messages and jokes over Signal (used to use WhatsApp but she doesn't like it). She visited me in the UK and I was supposed to visit her in France, but Covid. She sent me some French books for my birthday, and I've sent her English books and videos too.

You will get out of a language exchange what you are willing to put in. If you are looking for a basic transaction, then iTalki is much better value for money. If you want to make a friend(s) and use the language with them, learn about them and thier lives, help them with their language journey, then iTalki isn't such a good deal.

In that presentation I did mention that you have to separate a lot of chaff to get some wheat. But honestly I still have $35 left in my iTalki account and have had for a couple of years. My first point of call is a language exchange over a tutor session. If I'm looking for a tutor, I feel that I'm better off as Casava said and just doing the work with books, audio and films. But if I want to speak to a real, live human being and interact with them it will not be iTalki

Fixed the link.


You are fortunate to have made good friends. I believe most people would prefer languages exchanges with people who they genuinely like, and who like them. I have been doing both language changes and iTalki for about a year. I have had video chats with about 20 people that met on Tandem, out of the lot there is only 1 I talk to on a semi-regular basis. As far as iTalki goes, you are right, it is a transactional friendship. You chat with them, you might like them and they like you, but at the end of the day, it ends with the transaction. The most important thing for me at the moment is chatting with reliable people during my preferred hours, even if I have to pay for it through iTalki.
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Le Baron » Tue Sep 07, 2021 10:02 pm

That said, it has to be appreciated that some people might not have quite as much opportunity to run into target language speakers in real life if they don't live near some metropolis. Some are more fortunate. I live near (previously lived in) a major city with a lot of diversity and a university that brings students from around the world, many who stay. It also houses several language and culture schools. So in that respect I can work less hard to find potential LE partners.

It doesn't mean it's child's play because you also need to devise some ruse for making contact, otherwise you just seem like a weirdo. But it's a lot better than having few/no real-life opportunities. Also the older you get the fewer opportunities you get for 'random' encounters. I don't spend my time these days sitting in cafes or at youthful parties, encountering Mexicans called 'Hector' (I did this). Or French speakers from Ivory Coast or the Swahili people I chanced upon in the University library where I still have a valid card. So for people a bit further away from all that where else can they go but online exchanges?

And that's the rub. Some apps have cornered the market on providing a conduit for meetings. I think there are other opportunities, that are perhaps not quite as omnipresent. Like the small and much larger zoom discussions organised via Duolingo (as mentioned by Tommus elsewhere). I had a skype chat with someone I met on a discussion board and have carried on talking to this person on and off. iTalki and the like are just the mini-corporate face of all that.
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Stefan » Wed Sep 08, 2021 1:17 am

I've said this in the past but I reckon it's better to find native people with similar interests as you and join them. Don't limit yourself to people on a LE site only interested in learning your language. Here is a list with 12500 public Discord servers in Spanish. You'll find everything from anime, to politics and philosophy. Then combine it with a proper teacher that can answer questions on the language that native speakers rarely consider (grammar).
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Blue Saka » Wed Sep 08, 2021 3:49 am

I like Hello Talk. It suited my purposes well. I was studying Turkish, and it took me some time to find a tutor I could relate to, but I eventually found one. He was a good teacher and I began to help him refine his spoken English. If I decide to start learning the language again, I'll likely look to him or someone else on there.
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Re: Are "language exchange" apps worth the effort?

Postby Fortheo » Wed Sep 08, 2021 2:30 pm

I know that in general, I haven't had much luck with language exchange apps, but without them I wouldn't have found one of my best friends.
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