Making the Most of Your Contacts

Making the Most of Your Contacts
There is no substitute for working with a native speaker of the language you are learning. Some towns are twinned with ones in other countries. This can provide a really useful way of finding a friend who shares your interests. There will be plenty of opportunities to visit the other town and play host to people from there.
When I was in full-time teaching, I often took my students on exchange visits. It was probably one of the most important aspects of my work. Even those students who didn’t go on the visit benefited form the renewed enthusiasm of this who had been. The students were so motivated to learn, I hardly had to teach them. They lapped up new language.
If you work with a native speaker, you have a constant accurate pattern of language. If you build up the right relationship, your exchange partner can correct your attempts without you feeling in adequate.
A system called tandem learning takes this a step further. You work with a native speaker who is learning your language. You work on agreed tasks and also agree how much you will correct each other’s work. You should work about 50% of the time in your on language and 50% of the time in your target language. Thus, you mix practice with learning new patterns.
These days, all of this becomes much easier and cheaper with email, Skype and mobile phones. There is no end to the possibilities.
(See The Complete Guide to Learning a Language, “Go Native”)