Are you considering learning a foreign language? Congratulations on possibly making one of the best decisions you have ever made. To help you get quickly and effectively to your goal of learning a new language, you should consider getting involved in a language exchange.
A language exchange is when you help someone with another language, for instance English or another language. And in exchange, they help you with the language you’re interested in.
You WIll Develop an Element of Consistency and You Will Eventually Learn the Language
A reason a lot of people never completely learn a language is that they give up. They try for a couple of months or even a year, but give it up quickly. Sometimes people even study a foreign language while going to school or take local classes somewhere, but because they don’t use the language, they never progress and forget most of what they learn.
By doing a language exchange, you will create an element of consistency because you will receive support from your language buddy on continuing and the consistent meetings will keep you on schedule so that you will eventually learn a new language.
You Will Learn Quicker
Reading a language and listening to audio recordings in one thing. It’s a completely different thing to actually use it and to put it into practice. Unless you use the language in a conversation context, you won’t know what you need to improve. Engage yourself in a language exchange, and one day you will surprise yourself when you start actually understanding entire conversations.
You Will Complement and Re-Review What You’re Already Studying
If you’re currently studying a language through a class or on your own pace, you can use a language exchange to clarify points you didn’t understand or to review them to make sure you solidify them in your mind.
Want to expand your vocabulary? The best way is to learn new words is to use them immediatly. Take your new vocabulary to a language exchange session and put them to work.
You’ll Learn About a New Culture and Deepen Your Understanding
If you’re speaking with a native speaker or someone who has spent significant time living in the culture of the language you’re learning, you will learn cultural nuances you wouldn’t have otherwise picked up.
It’s important to know that to really understand a language, you need to understand how the people that speak that language think. A language is often customized to fit their way of existence and of thinking. If you understand the people, you will understand the language. If you want to really understand Swedish, you will have to learn to think like a Swede.
You Can Learn A New Language On Your Own Time
Unlike taking classes and courses that help you learn a foreign language, you can schedule when you do your language exchange sessions. Even if you can’t physically meet someone in your city, you can do a language exchange with someone half way across the world with Skype. Skype has its own language exchange groups that you can look into, so you can do this without having to leave your house.
You Will Make New Friends
As an added bonus, you will make new friends you would not have otherwise met while you learn a foreign language. How could this get any better?
