Conversation topics for a language exchange.

[astromule]

Hi! Could we start a list of topics to discuss, for present or future language exchanges, here or somewhere else?

I'll start with a short paragraph from Gabriel Wyner's book:

If you’re looking for conversation topics, try:
• Fluent-Forever.com/conversation-questions (a handy list of conversation topics)
• ConversationStarters.com (What is one thing you miss about being a kid?)
• YouRather.com (Would you rather always be naked or always be itchy?)
• Gregory Stock’s Book of Questions (Do you tend to listen or talk more in conversations?)
• Smith and Doe’s Book of Horrible Questions (For one million dollars, would you eat a human foot [with the bone removed]?)

I can add that it's useful to always end your mails (if you're practicing writing) with one or more question, that way the other one will always have to something to reply to.

In the past I made a list of short dialogs to talk about with my Swedish language partner. The subjects were airport, hotel, coffee shop, simcard (he needed to buy a simcard), profession dialog: words that you'd use in a normal day at work, barbecue dialog (important if you're coming to Argentina), job interview.

Something that I haven't tried but perhaps it's useful it to tell an anecdote in your target language.

Do you have other ideas?

[astromule]

Idea: you take one newspaper of that day, on your native or on your target language, and you comment it on the language that you're practicing. This could be called the "South Park method", as the series has been running forever, because they take one resonating event of the world and build an episode after it.

[Ruan]

Idea: you take one newspaper of that day, on your native or on your target language, and you comment it on the language that you're practicing. This could be called the "South Park method", as the series has been running forever, because they take one resonating event of the world and build an episode after it.

I've been doing this for a while now. I google for news from my parters' city, I read a paragraph out loud and get them to judge my accent. After that I usually just start asking questions about some detail from the paragraph I've just read, and as it's probably something the person can relate to very easily, that's enough to get started.