Sites to do a language exchange

Many of my students are very worried about their speaking skills. Before internet appeared in our lives, the only possibility that we had, was to find a native speaker to do a language exchange. When I was a child and a teenager, I was always eager to find any British or Irish girl on the beaches of Gran Canaria to practise my English. I even found some penpals with my elaborated methods: smiling a lot and trying to speak with anybody who spoke English. Later, at university, it was easier because we always had some Erasmus students around.

Nowadays you don’t have to run after a native speaker, you have many sites that enable the possibility of language exchanges between students. Let’s see some of them:

• My language exchange offers both voice and text exchange.
• Conversation exchange offers the possibility of finding a conversation partner for live practice, pen-pals and voice and text chats.
• Shared Talk is a Language Exchange Community that allows voice and text exchanges.
• The Language Exchange is a place that also allows finding partners to share voice and text exchanges.
• xLingo is a Language Exchange Community that help students to find conversation partners. Conversations take place using Skype.
• Busuu is a community that, among other things, allows languages exchanges based on tasks. You can read our previous post, which is a thorough explanation of Busuu.

As you have seen, there are many possibilities (many more than the listed here), and if you want to practise a bit, you can just click on one of the links given and start practising.