Language exchange partners are an excellent resource, why? With them you can improve your spoken abilities, you're written abilities as well as learning more colloquial terms and casual ways of speech to make you sound more like a native, rather than a formal robot. As well as begin a great way of improving your Japanese (or any other language for that matter), you may also make a valuble friend and might even be able to send things over to each other from your home land, things like magazines, books, even food are fun things to send over that can actually help your language learning.
However finding a language exchange partner is not always easy, first where do you find one? Then how do you get people to accept you? Well to find one I recommend going here or here. Both are great ways to find, language exchange partners, foreign friends or pen pals.
Ok so now you're on the site you might have found a few people you would like to approach but now what? Simple, explain a little about yourself, but don't go into too much detail, include your name, your age, your country of residence and basic interests and likes. Try to sound friendly and inviting but not obsessive or like your looking for a relationship. I have heard that Japanese girls in particular are afraid of western males adding them and looking for romance, I have actually seen on some of their profiles specifically stating "no romance". Not I'm not sure why you would want to go on a penpal website looking for a girlfriend anyway, but regardless it seems to have become an assumption about western men, so try to sound like a friend and not a pervert (not that that will get you anywhere with any girl anyway, but y'know what I mean). After you have sent a message all you can do is wait, don't pester them, just wait for a reply, if they don't reply move on, you should send out quite a few messages to increase your chances of getting a reply. Good luck :)
However finding a language exchange partner is not always easy, first where do you find one? Then how do you get people to accept you? Well to find one I recommend going here or here. Both are great ways to find, language exchange partners, foreign friends or pen pals.
Ok so now you're on the site you might have found a few people you would like to approach but now what? Simple, explain a little about yourself, but don't go into too much detail, include your name, your age, your country of residence and basic interests and likes. Try to sound friendly and inviting but not obsessive or like your looking for a relationship. I have heard that Japanese girls in particular are afraid of western males adding them and looking for romance, I have actually seen on some of their profiles specifically stating "no romance". Not I'm not sure why you would want to go on a penpal website looking for a girlfriend anyway, but regardless it seems to have become an assumption about western men, so try to sound like a friend and not a pervert (not that that will get you anywhere with any girl anyway, but y'know what I mean). After you have sent a message all you can do is wait, don't pester them, just wait for a reply, if they don't reply move on, you should send out quite a few messages to increase your chances of getting a reply. Good luck :)
Comments (1)
Language Exchange with a partner is the best way to gain confidence and really speak the new language.
I try it a couple of time using some of the sites - communities described on this article, but unfortunately it works easily, only for popular languages such as English, French, Spanish etc.
In my case it is almost impossible to find a language partner interested to learn my native language (Greek) in exchange of the languages i learn (Portuguese and Spanish).