Tips for learning english on vacation.

July 3, 2013 10:49 AM

Hi. I'm a Portuguese student and I'm going to spend two weeks of my summer vacations on Leeds, England since I have an aunt there that invited me. I would like to spend my time practicing my English but I don't know what to do or where to go. Where can I meet new people (of my age range preferably: 20's), have a good conversation, listen to other people talk, ...? Your help will be much appreciated!
posted by tsuwal to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

Google "Language Exchange Leeds". In a city the size of Leeds you should be able to find regular groups who meet to practice English and other languages. I didn't look closely at the Google results, but it seems like there are plenty.

You may even find a possible one-on-one (aka "tandem") partner looking to practice Portuguese for an hour in return for helping you by also chatting in English. If this is what you'd prefer, then perhaps drop the relevant department of Leeds University a line, as they will surely have students who would welcome the rare opportunity to practice Portuguese with a native speaker over coffee.
posted by caek at 11:29 AM on July 3, 2013

Leeds is a university town, it is filled with students the same age you are. A lot of the UK students will have vacated for the summer, but there will be tons of US, Canadian and Australian summer students there, as well as all of the locals. Go to pubs, go to coffee places, go to any Meetup you can get to!
posted by DarlingBri at 11:29 AM on July 3, 2013

I just googled "Leeds language exchange" and there's a meet up group also several Total Lingua posts for people wanting to meet up and talk English/Spanish/Swahili.
posted by jujulalia at 11:31 AM on July 3, 2013

Couchsurfing! Meeting up with people is a great opportunity through couchsurfing website, even if you are not hosting/being hosted. most cities of a decent size will have regular meetings as well as one-off events and forums dedicated to finding like-minded people and hanging out. Make a profile (complete) and go nuts! At CS events it is ALWAYS ok to show up alone and not knowing anyone, which is harder to do in other contexts.
posted by whatzit at 11:37 AM on July 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Came in here to say Couchsurfing. If you go to a meetup there will be a decent percentage of ESLers so people are used to talking slowly etc. Here's the page for Leeds (may only work if you're logged in). They even seem to have a weekly language exchange thing going on that you can probably just turn up at.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 2:40 PM on July 3, 2013