More Language Exchange Sites

These sites function as virtual cities for language and culture sharing. Find a friend in another part of the world with whom you can practice your language skills. Teach this friend your native language. Learn a foreign language by speaking and/or writing to a native speaker of that language.

Visit these sites and choose the one that suits your needs (target language, written/oral exchange, number of tools that can be used, and so on):

• xlingo.com (also Language Exchange.org)
• sharedtalk.com
• zuiop.com
• eslbase.com
• atisba.com
• exhangelanguage.com
• flale.com
• inlinguapenpals.com
• phrasebase.com
• languagepenpals.com
• penpalparty.com
• tandemcity.com

Suggested Activities

1. Give tasks to your students to find specific information such as how something is said in different languages, what people from different cultures do in a particular situation or to solve a specific problem, and so on. Then ask them to report their findings to the class.
2. Ask student teachers to prepare a mini lesson to teach something a language partner has requested and then discuss the outcome of the lesson in class.
3. Ask students to analyze the pros and cons of the different services provided in these sites.
4. Ask students to come up with a specific language question and then report to the class the information they got from their language partners.