Practice Spanish/English online with a real person

November 26, 2019 8:01 PM

Does online language practice exchange still exist for Spanish/English?

I used to use Livemocha to find a buddy and take turns - me (native English speaker) practicing Spanish, they (a native Spanish speaker) practicing English. Does such a service still exist? Do you use it?

posted by latkes to Education (6 answers total)

Duolingo keeps trying to sell me this service, but my Spanish is still so rudimentary I haven't reached the "pay a nice person to help" level yet.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:02 PM on November 26, 2019

Response by poster: Oh weird, I'm a paid Duolingo customer but they haven't offered.... Maybe my Spanish is still too crap.
posted by latkes at 8:04 PM on November 26, 2019

I’ve used italki with some success, but it’s a paid service. On the plus side it’s known for promptly paying its instructors, which is always a concern with this type of thing.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:17 PM on November 26, 2019

Yes, it is very possible. Spanish and English are a good combination because they both have a lot of people who want to learn each others languages.

The two apps I have successfully used to connect with people are Tandem and HelloTalk. These both have features like being able to record and send messages to each other so you can use them to repeat pronunciation.

There are many other apps to match language partners that I haven't tried.

Also r/language_exchange on reddit
posted by Melsky at 1:24 AM on November 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

I had good luck with Italki and got much more value from a hour that it was worthwhile even though it was a paid service - the teachers were very good at facilitating conversations even from an introvert like me. If money is an issue sometimes there are countries where your currency exchange rate is more favourable and not much per hour for you is a decent amount to them - I had a good teacher with a wonderful accent from Colombia for less than my teachers in Spain. I did try informal buddy services such as www.mylanguageexchange.com but often people said they would be online at a certain time and just weren't - I'm assuming they got an offer to go for a beer and never bothered to tell me but instead stood me up, which wore thin pretty soon. With Italki the financial incentive gives the other person a good reason to show. During a time in my life when I was a caregiver and unable to go to evening classes at college I think I took about 100 classes this way and my confidence in holding a conversation drastically improved.
posted by AuroraSky at 4:51 AM on November 27, 2019

Italki is fantastic! You can book sessions with language tutors and teachers over skype or other video chat platforms for very reasonable rates. You can also find conversation partners for (free) language exchanges as well.
posted by Shadow Boxer at 5:01 AM on November 27, 2019