Virtual Conversations – Taking Your Language Practice Online

Covid-19 Lockdown Special: Online Language Practice Partners

As of early April 2020, the COVID-19 virus has socially restricted about a third of the world’s population.

Life has changed temporarily. Millions stay home, schools close, and work is canceled.

With all the changes, your language studies may suffer. Technology lets you practice speaking on the Internet!

Online language practice partners: our guide.

Why Learn Languages Online?

Simply, for the same reasons you practice speaking in person!

Language learning requires speaking.

Perfect practice. Speaking memorizes words and phrases. It strengthens neuronal networks and improves word recall.

Being understood by a native speaker is encouraging. Speaking practice is ideal forlesson materials.

Free Lessons in over 50 languages are available for Pimsleur beginners. Try a free weeklong course. After that, $14.95–$19.95/month.

Millions practice languages online. They may do this for convenience because they learn niche or minority languages and find partners hard, or they may reside in isolated places without city practice possibilities.

It is also for non-native speakers. Virtual language practice benefits all learners.
Online Language Practice 1. Practice speaking around your schedule

You can practice anytime your schedule matches your partner’s! Morning person? No issue. Night owl? Easy. You can speak to a European partner at 7am or an Asian pal at 10pm thanks to time zones.

You learn anywhere.

Virtual language exchange lets you meet your language partner from your kitchen table without waiting for the café to open!

You will learn diverse accents and cultures.

Online communication makes it easy to communicate with anybody, wherever.

Meet native speakers from around the world to discover new places. You will learn about your language’s accent, local customs, and daily life.

Lockdown is a great time to try online speaking practice.
I agree. How Can I Find a Language Practice Partner?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most face-to-face dating methods are banned. We shall highlight them since they will be important after the crisis. These are:

Meetup groups 
Language classes at local cafes and eateries 
Local Facebook language groups 
Study groups 
University drop-ins 
Local ads 

Low-commitment drop-in sessions are ideal. These seminars tend to attract learners of the main European languages, so it may be worth contacting the organizers to see if your language is supported.

Let us explore the greatest online language partner resources.
Best Language Exchange Sites for Virtual Conversation Partners

Pimsleur encourages safe online behavior, therefore do not share personal information like phone numbers, email addresses, or physical addresses. If you do not want to reveal your email or Skype, create a new account.
iTalki

iTalki offers a free language exchange community. Pimsleur is popular, has an easy-to-use website, and has native speakers for all languages.

To collaborate with someone, send a message or friend request on iTalki and plan sessions via Skype, Zoom, or another teleconferencing application.

Facebook Language Learning Groups

Facebook has public language partner groups. Join your community on Facebook by searching for your language and posting. Facebook profiles contain a lot of personal information, so be careful while posting in public groups.
Language exchange

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” applies to My Language Exchange (MLE). The website is outdated, but there is a great group of language learners ready to practice!

The site automatically sorts by “last online” and offers an easy-to-use filter to locate language pairs. Over 300,000 Spanish speakers were on the site, with 400 logging in in the preceding 48 hours. Everyone is using My Language Exchange throughout the pandemic!

MLE does not have a chat platform, thus you will need to exchange Skype or other conferencing details to schedule sessions.

Language Learning Reddit.

Reddit offers two language-learning communities.

You can post and react to adverts on r/language_exchange for languages you want and ones you can offer.

r/languagelearning is a less formal Reddit. Most Pimsleur languages include Discord servers for online voice and text chat.

You join these servers, communicate with others, and remain as long as you wish. It is ideal for practicing when you have free time because you do not need to schedule it. You can practice with someone 24/7 on these servers.
The Common European Language Framework

Many of these resources use alphanumeric references like A1, B1, C2, etc.

The Common European Language Framework measures language proficiency.