1. Discuss your plan at the beginning

If you want to make sure that both of you get to practice, and both languages get the same amount of attention, you can use a online timer, like this one.

If you have a particular topic in mind, announce it as soon as you start talking (prepare your announcement in advance; a machine translation program, such as Google Translate, might help with that).

For example, if you are practicing German, and your partner is practicing English, say something like this: “For my German practice, can we talk about job resumes today? I’m applying for a job in Germany, and I need to brush up on my vocabulary. And what do you want to focus on for English practice?” Or: “I’d like to practice the past tense of German verbs. Can I tell you what I did yesterday, and you correct me? Then we can do some grammar practice in English if you like.”

Also, agree on the ways you are going to correct each other. You can enter corrections in your chat as soon as your partner makes a mistake. For example, on SharedTalk.org people usually put an asterisk (*) before a sentence if it’s a correction. Or you can open a text file or an email editor, save all corrections in there, and send them to your partner at the end of the session. (And ask them to do the same for you.) This may be preferable if you feel that correcting each other all the time interrupts the flow.

2. Go for depth, as well as breadth.

It’s great to chat to many different people, so you get exposed to all the different ways that people use your practice language. In those short unplanned chat sessions, you and your partner will most likely be talking two languages at once, each trying to get some practice.

But once you get a couple of steady partners, try doing longer sessions in only one language at a time, to get a more focused experience.

3. Use word lists for language practice.

Search for “French word lists” or “<your practice language> word lists”, and you’ll find plenty of words to discuss with your partner.

Or, better yet, make a customized word list from your favorite text. Search for “online word list maker”, and you will find great utilities like this one, which can generate word lists from articles you just read or chapters of your favorite book.

Then translate the word list using a machine translation program, and ask your partner to correct your translations and give you examples of how each word is used. (Or you can enter the words in a search engine, and look at the results together.)

4. Use grammar topics for language practice.

You can search for “German grammar topics” or “<any language> grammar topics” and come up with a list of grammar points to practice.

Or you can make a customized list of grammar topics that you really need to brush up on.

Your word processor might have a grammar checker for the language you are learning. If not, just look up “online Spanish grammar checker” or “online <any language> grammar checker”, get something you recently wrote and look at the corrections. Then ask your partner to give you more examples of each grammatical construction that you’re having trouble with. Or search the web for examples and go through them with your partner. http://www.languagetool.org LanguageTool.org is one great free tool you can use, with support for over 20 languages.

5. Use role-plays.

“Pretend we are in a bank…”, “Pretend we are in a restaurant..”, etc. etc. There’s nothing like role-playing to make you laugh! And laughing, like any emotional behavior, will help you remember more. (See, e.g., this Wikipedia article on how emotions improve memorization.)

It works better if you use situations that you experienced recently or will experience soon.

Are you preparing for a trip where you are going to use your practice language? Make a list of situations you are likely to find yourself in and role-play them (airplane, customs, hotel, and all the rest; you can get a list from a phrasebook website like Lingvozone.com and edit it to suit your needs).

If travel is not in your plans, think of all the places close to home where you might be able to use your practice language. See a movie at a local French club and stay for a discussion with the French expats? Visit a Chinese herbal doctor and speak Mandarin? Speak Spanish to the clerk at the grocery store? (Yes, I’m lucky to live in a place where all those things are possible and easy, and I don’t take advantage of them as much as I should!)

To prepare for real life encounters, role-play all those situations with your online partner.

Pictures of objects will help you make role-play feel more real. So use Google Earth to role-play asking for directions, or Amazon.com to role-play shopping!

For more ideas, search the web for “ESL role play”. ESL means “English as a Second Language”, and right now there are more lesson plans for English online than for any other language, so adapt them for use with your own practice language.

6. Use real online tasks.

Another great thing you can do with your partner is do some real work online, and talk about it. Language is, above all, a tool that people use to accomplish real life tasks, and now there’s no shortage of real tasks you can do on the web.

Have your chat partner join you while you do some of your everyday online tasks: shopping, home improvement research, hotel reservations, whatever it might be. Send your partner links of the pages you’re looking at, and discuss what you see. Then ask him to do the same for you.

If you have a blog or a website, consider adding translations to some of your posts and ask your partners to help you out, then help them with their blog or website.

Consider volunteering together with your partner as translators or editors for some website such as Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikihow or any other site than needs language volunteers (e.g., one of the language exchange websites, such as Verbling or Italki).

For even more fun, record a short play or a poem in two languages together with your partner (use Skype recording software), and upload it to Librivox.org (an open source audiobook collection) or Archive.org (open source library). Sign up for an account at Airbnb.com (a great travel website), record a bilingual video introduction for yourself, and ask your partner to comment on it. Volunteer to add multilingual captions to YouTube videos, and ask your partner to review them.

Got more ideas? Post them here!

So here you are, on a language exchange website like SharedTalk or Verbling, where some speakers of your favorite foreign language are hanging out, just waiting for you to talk to them. Go ahead, talk! Brrrr, scary… I know.

I find it easier to listen (or read) for a bit first. So on SharedTalk (and other sites with group chat options), you can go to a chat room where people are already speaking French or Spanish or your favorite language, scroll back the chat window and read what they have just said, and then keep reading until you feel confident enough to say something. And on Verbling you can first listen to a few recorded classes and then work up enough chutzpah to talk to someone (that is, click on Community, then scroll  to the bottom page to Find Practice Partners and click Connect).

2. Talk to different people every day

It’s easier, of course, to stick to one or two people that you find first. But do make an effort and talk to one new person every week (at least). You’ll learn a lot more about your chosen language that way. Every language has a number of dialects and varieties that depend on age, profession, gender, and of course, location, so make sure that you are not learning only your friend Anita’s version of Spanish.

3. Use machine translation!

While you are chatting, open a machine translation tool in another window. It can be Google Translate, Babelfish, Paralink or another tool of your choice (see this Wikipedia article for more options). When you are at a loss for words, just type something in your native language, get the machine translation, edit it a little if you can, or simply paste it in and let your partner correct it.

4. Be prepared! Follow a script!

If you come to your chat window with a script in hand, your fear will dis-ap-pear!… well, it’ll take the edge off, anyway. And this way, it will be easier to practice different topics every time, instead of rehashing what you have said to other people before. So write a script for yourself, a “lesson plan”, as it were, at least a basic one. Say, for example, you want to improve your political vocabulary. Then something like this will work (translate it into the language you are studying):

You: Hi! I’d like to learn how to talk about politics better. Can we talk about politics?

Partner: Sure, why not! (If they refuse, suggest another script.)

You: Well, I just read on my favorite news website that Obama will seek a third presidential term. What do you think about that?

……

You can also role play a situation, for example, like this.

You: Hi! I need to learn how to talk to a customs officer. Can we role-play going through customs? Can you play a customs officer? Can you ask me questions?

Partner: Ok. Well, sir, do you have anything to declare today?

…..

If your practice language is English (and even if it isn’t), use sites like ESL Gold or ESL Library for inspiration. Both of those have great collections of lesson plans. MyLanguageExchange.com has lesson plans in several languages that can get you going (Lesson Plans is one of the options on the left of their home page).

5. Build a long-term strategy

Quantity will, no doubt, translate into quality, so it’s great if you can do a lot of listening, chatting, and reading in your favorite language without any particular plan in mind. But if you strategize, you’ll get there a lot faster. So make an online partner study plan for yourself.

A sample French online partner study plan I wrote for myself one day

Find at least 3 French penpals, and write them at least 5 lines every day. Send them machine translation results to edit. Ask them to correct letters I write to them and send me back the corrected versions.

Spend 15 minutes every day chatting to someone in French.

Once a week, prepare a script and meet with a partner for a long scripted session, 30 minutes in French alone.

Ok, stop reading now and make a plan for yourself if you don’t have one yet!

And if you have any questions or any other tips on getting the most out of language exchange websites, can you please share them? Thanks a bunch!

This is a review of some of the most active and interesting language exchange websites.

LiveMocha, Babbel and Busuu are a few of the best established ones, with many thousands of users (even millions, in the case of LiveMocha). They provide extensive help for people exploring the website, they got great learning materials, free chat and nice mobile apps.

But the other sites also have a lot to offer. Every one of them has very special useful features.

SharedTalk (based in the US, one of Rosetta Stone projects) has group chatrooms that you can join any time of day or night to practice your favorite language. Someone is always there, usually a dozen people or more. Their built-in voice chat is a great feature as well.

Italki (based in China) allows anyone to become a “community tutor” and earn credits that can be used for lessons from professional tutors and other kinds of language help.

Lang-8 (based in Japan) encourages users to write journal entries and provide corrections for each other.

Polyglot Club (based in France) allows people to upload video tutorials, hosts a translation exchange service and schedules live events for language learners in France and many other countries. I wish more sites would do that!

Mixxer is an instructional website based at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and it doesn’t have the fancier features of other sites, but it has a very informative FAQ on how to do language exchanges on Skype and gives advice on the types of software to use in addition to Skype.

MyLanguageExchange (based in Canada) provides a bounty of “lesson plans” that suggest activities for language exchange, and links to a partner called Friendship Force International, which helps people start language clubs and host cultural exchanges (http://thefriendshipforce.org).

Unilang (based in the Netherlands) has a treasure trove of links to resources for language learning, and hosts a wonderful Translation and Development Center, where members submit and edit resources.

LingQ (based in Canada) is different from the rest because it started out as a huge library of texts and MP3 audiofiles that go with them, and just recently added an exchange area. Definitely worth checking out.

Palabea (based in Germany) is set up as a way for people to make money teaching languages (and other things) through videochat. Cool idea! And a lot of videos have already been uploaded. Unfortunately, there isn’t much editing being done, so a lot of the “palabeas” (video lessons) are not very informative, or simply look like spam.

Verbling (based in the US) is one of the newer sites, but it looks amazing and is adding new stuff all the time. They have the easiest to use videochat and a pretty full schedule of interactive group videoclasses (implemented through Google Hangouts). You can start your own free practice sessions (with Google Hangouts) or join other people’s sessions. Some of the classes are free, while the others you have to pay for with “tickets” that you purchase on the site ($3 a ticket).

A few of these websites, such as LiveMocha, Italki, and Busuu, use “virtual money” to reward you for helping out other users. How do you use it? Well, for example, Busuu gives you “berries” if you are an active user, but for now, all you can do with them is purchase virtual items for your garden. However, on LiveMocha and Italki, if you have earned some coins or credits, you get access to extra learning materials!

Some sites, such as SharedTalk, MyLanguageExchange and Palabea, provide you with a mail inbox, and help you find and keep track of your penpals.

Most of these sites also have user forums where you can post your language questions for other users to answer, and ask for translations or sentence corrections.

Sites with a lot of user-created content, like Busuu and LingQ, often have unedited material that looks pretty odd (e.g., I wouldn’t trust the quality of their Russian texts, judging by what I have seen), but it’s usually clearly marked as unedited, so if you ask several native speakers for corrections, you’ll probably arrive at something acceptable.

I created a few comparison tables that should help you find your perfect linguistic playground! Give these websites a try, you’ll be amazed at your progress.

Disclaimer: these websites are adding new features all the time, so this information won’t stay accurate for long. I’ll be doing my best to keep it up to date, and I will appreciate it very much if you tell me about any mistakes you have noticed.

So, what have they got there? Feature comparison: part 1

Anything else useful? Feature comparison: part 2

What languages can I learn there?

Are those websites really free?

If you can’t do that, then set up your environment so that your chosen language — be it French, Farsi, or Quechua — is everywhere, all around you, and is allowed to saturate your brain.

Yes, with some languages it’s a lot easier than others. And yes, if you spend a lot of your time on the computer, it might be easier to come up with immersion tricks. Even though they might not be as thrilling as real-life immersion.

Say, for example, you are studying French. What you can do is:

* Change your computer system language to French, so all menus and system messages are displayed in French.

* Listen to French all the time even if you understand very little (no shortage of sources for songs, podcasts and audiobooks these days). Let your brain be filled with the music of the language.

* Put lots of French stuff on your homepage. If your homepage is Yahoo or Google, make sure it’s Yahoo.fr or Google.fr.

* If you like to relax online, do it in French: with French computer games, chat, YouTube videos, etc.

* Join several language exchange websites, find at least one French speaker who wants to learn your language, and send him an email or chat invitation, in both your language and French.

* Get a Skype or Google Hangouts account so you can do voice chat with your French buddies. SharedTalk and some other language exchange websites also have voice chat.

* Get lots of French videos and watch them (Netflix is great, but don’t forget your library and the interlibrary loan option). Especially useful are French videos with French subtitles — check the cover to see if a video has subtitles in French.

* When you watch French videos on Youtube, remember to check if French captions are available, and turn them on.

* Get French voice synthesis software and have it read French webpages when you run out of other audio sources. You can also have it read a list of difficult words, to make sure you pronounce them correctly.

Of course, if you are working at some big company, there’s a chance some of your coworkers speak that language you are learning, and you can find them on the intranet and meet with them for lunch.

And if you work from your home office, you can look for conversation partners on Craigslist or Couchsurfers, and meet with them for lunch — and then maybe a trip to a Spanish concert, or a Russian grocery store, or a German movie night, or another similar gathering. Look up “German New York”, or “Korean San Francisco”, or “<your practice language> <your area>” on Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, Meetup.org, and as many other community websites as you can think of. If you live in or near a big city, you’ll find plenty of places for practice.

If you can’t find anyone to practice with where you live, you’re sure to find them on one of the numerous language exchange websites. Please include them in your study plan as soon as you can.

Do you have any other tips on how to create a language immersion environment at your home or office? Can you post some of them here? Thanks!!!

One huge and amazing part of the program was field linguistics, which means gathering information about a language from its native speakers, and then writing up whatever you gathered and publishing it, so everyone can learn about that language. I went on three linguistic expeditions to Dagestan, a Russian republic in the Caucasus. With a bunch of eager 20-year-olds and one wonderful professor (Aleksandr Kibrik), I traveled to three tiny villages high up in the mountains (called Itsari, Megeb, and Godoberi), camped on village school floors for weeks, and every day went to people’s houses with a notebook, trying to learn their language. Stunning nature views! Incredible brainy fun!

So, here is one great online resource for field language learning that I keep telling everyone about.

Greg Thompson’s Essays on Field Language Learning. If anyone can help you learn Spanish from your Latino neighbors, Greg Thompson can! He’ll tell you how to get a Language Resource Person (LRP), that is, any native speaker willing to spend time with you, and exactly how to ferret out every bit of language that you need. A few words from Greg:

Come back to all those people who say, “I want to learn language X; where can I find a textbook?” What would be a better first question for them to ask? Try “I want to learn language X; where can I find some speakers of language X?” How rarely people ask that. How odd…

…You need someone who will talk to you in such a way that you can understand her, and who will help you along as you struggle to put your own thoughts into words. That’s all you need. 

…Learning a language is exciting. When you are first exposed to the new language, it is like a movie that is so out of focus that it is a meaningless gray blur. As you keep learning, it is as though someone is turning the lens, and the pictures start to appear and be recognizable, until you are able to follow everything going on in the movie. It really is fun. You just can’t do it by yourself. You don’t just learn a language. You become part of a human social organism for which the language is the life blood, and then you live as part of that social organism by means of that language.

And then Greg gives you the actual ‘lesson plans’ (that is, plans for visits with your Spanish/French/Chinese/Russian etc. friends), with so many great ideas and activities, it’ll take you months to use them all. Two months for starters (here’s his two-month plan), and the rest of your life for advanced enjoyment.

Greg Thompson’s papers, and a bunch of other resources, are found on the Language Learning Bookshelf of the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

By the way, WHEN and HOW will only apply to small individual steps, not to language learning as a whole. “WHEN will I finally learn Cantonese?” — that question has no answer, sorry. “WHEN will I learn to recite Ou Daren’s poems with proper enunciation?” is a hard, but reasonable question. “HOW can I learn Finnish?” — well, any language is an assortment of skills, and you need a different tool to improve each skill, so no single answer here, either.

1. So, first ask yourself, WHY?

“WHY am I learning Swedish (or Japanese, or Estonian)?”. If there’s more than one reason, write down ALL of them. If you can only think of one reason at first — “because it’s fun”, — that’s fine. And that reason should always be on your list, no matter how long it gets!

But the more specific you are, the more useful your study plan will be. So, add more reasons to your list. Some examples: 1. I want to learn French so I can stick a phrase or two into my conversation and impress my friends. 2. I want to learn Japanese to read manga and watch anime. 3. I want to learn Russian because my grandparents came from Russia. 4. I want to learn Hungarian because it’s a hard language, and I need a challenge.

2. TO WHAT END?

Now, for the second question. To What End? What exactly is it that I want to achieve? How will I know when I’m done? If you said, “learn Russian because my grandparents came from Russia”, it doesn’t tell you when you are done. But it points in the right direction. You can use it to set your goals. Just brainstorm on related ideas: “grandparents” – “ancestors” – “genealogy” – “history” – “family”. Now brainstorm your possible goals. Friends can really help with this step, and also can other language learners on forums such as the LingQ language learners’ forum.

If your Russian grandparents are still alive, then one obvious goal would be to talk or write to them in Russian. Or maybe interview them about their youth, record the interview and add captions in Russian and English. Or ask them for old photos or mementos, and make an album with comments in Russian and English on every page. You could also research your family history by yourself and make a blog or a webpage about it (in both Russian and English), or a genealogy tree (just look up “online genealogy tree maker”). You could go further, and research Russian history of that period. As a first step to that goal, you could join an online Russian history forum (such as the Soviet Empire forum), and ask for recommendations for books and websites. Another great thing to do is connect with other people of Russian ancestry in your community. If there isn’t a Russian club in your town, you can start one!

3. WHEN?

Now, to make that study plan really work, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. WHEN exactly will you be done with your first step?

If your reason for studying is “learn Hungarian because it’s hard”, one general goal might be “read difficult books in Hungarian”, and your first step might be “find a good book in Hungarian and read the first chapter by the end of the month”.

4. HOW?

Well, how do you find a good book in Hungarian and read it? Lots of possibilities, online and offline.

Some things you can do online: post on language exchange websites and find Hungarians there who will help you find books and start reading; look up “foreign language books” at Amazon.com and other online bookstores, and see what they got for Hungarian; search for “free online Hungarian texts”, go to one of the websites (such as the Gutenberg Project Hungarian bookshelf), and use machine translation software, such as Google Translate, to start reading.

Offline: go to your public library, or, better yet, a nearby college library and ask the reference librarians for help, or post an ad for Hungarian speakers and experts at local libraries, bookstores and coffee shops.

By the way, some language learning reasons are easier to translate into goals than others. If your reason for learning French is to master a few impressive phrases, then your study plan is easy to come up with.

Just tell yourself how many French phrases you want to learn next month, do a web search for “French phrases used in English”, take one of those phrase lists (e.g., this Wikipedia French phrase list), then find some native French speakers on a language exchange website, and get them to read or record the phrases for you. Bingo! Your plan for next month is ready!

If your reason for learning Japanese is “to be able to watch and understand anime without subtitles”, then make a list of the titles to watch, run a search for “japanese through anime”, and check out some of these excellent top results (like “Japanese through Anime”, or this rich thread on how other people are actually doing it or this collection of anime subtitles in Japanese). After that, find some Japanese speakers on a language exchange website, and get them to read those anime subtitles with you. Another bingo!

Just remember, you will learn faster if every little goal on your way to fluency is yours, and not your teacher’s, your textbook’s or your well-wishing friends’. You can do lots of things with language, so do what you enjoy, and don’t get sucked into projects that are a drag.

Remember this: LANGUAGE IS ONLY A TOOL, NOT AN END IN ITSELF. Those steps on the way to your goal will be more useful if they don’t sound like this: “learn 200 verbs”, “finish part one of the intermediate Pimsleur course”, etc. Come up with meaningful personal goals, such as “read some Wikipedia articles on Thai art history” (or some other deep interest of yours), “record a Latvian short story for Librivox.org (an open source audiobook collection)“, or “learn some lyrics of my favorite songs in Hindi”.

To research this topic in more depth, try looking up “second or foreign language needs analysis” or “ESL needs analysis”. You’ll find some great study plans, such as this ESL in Canada study plan.

By the way, ESL means “English as a Second Language”. There’s more stuff on the web for learners of English than for any other language, and a lot of it can be easily applied to the language you are learning.

One superb (and rarely mentioned) resource for language learners is available at Summer Institute of Linguistics. It’s a book titled “Managing your language learning program”, by Carol J. Orwig.

It includes sections on “How to do a Language Needs Analysis”, “How to make a photo book for language learning”, “How to make a language learning kit”, and other useful stuff.

Finally, for general help with setting and achieving goals, I recommend my favorite self-help author Barbara Sher, and especially her first bestselling book, “Wishcraft” (now 30 years old), freely available online. Barbara Sher’s website has a forum, where you can share your problems, help other people with theirs, and find a “success buddy”. That’s where I found mine, and she helps me a lot! Thanks, A.!

Are you struggling with your language learning goals? Do you have any tips to share? Please post them here, I would love to see them!