Are you using language exchange websites? You should! It’s one of the greatest resources for online language immersion.

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?