Language Exchange Calls
It’s been over a year since we last talked about language learning, and I never finished explaining how to find a partner. Let’s pick that back up now. But first, here are the prior articles:
How to Learn a Foreign Language – Part 1
How to Learn a Foreign Language – Part 2
How to Learn a Foreign Language – Part 3
We are well into the new year now. If you haven’t kept up with your resolution, feel free to join me on mine to learn/improve a new language. Read the above 3 articles first, as they form a foundation for this one. Especially part 3, which has a section on how to search for a partner on a Conversation Exchange.
But What Now?
Let’s say you ran a search on that website, and now a long wall of foreigners are staring back at you, their Instagram-filtered profile photos begging for an English speaker to whisk them off to fluency. Are you the speaker they seek? Maybe. Are they the partner you need? An even bigger maybe. You won’t know until you try a few calls. But how do you start? Let’s look at one of my search results in Conversation Exchange:
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Step 1: Click the envelop button to send a private message to the user.
Step 2: Tell this person a little about yourself. I’d type part of your message in your target language and part of it in English. If you can’t type in your target language yet, copy it from Google Translate. Here are two kinds of messages I’ve seen:
Bad: “Hey there. How are you?”
–this is too short and tells the recipient nothing about you. It provokes no interest and feels lazy.
Better: “Hi. My name is Dylan, and I’m from Virginia. I’ve been a web developer for over 18 years. Before that, I was a nuclear operator in the US Navy. I’m 44 years old. What about you? Please tell me about yourself.”
Here’s roughly how that message looks in Arabic in the Tandem iPhone app:
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That may look intimidating, but remember, you can type your statement into Google Translate and copy the translation from there. Eventually, you’ll want to learn to write it yourself. It’s good practice, and will prepare you for your first call. Now this information may already be in your profile. Including it into a private message may feel redundant. Do it anyway. Don’t count on this person to actually read your profile.
If you’re still very new to your language, try to pick partners who have an intermediate or advanced level of English, as shown in their profile. They can help you when you get stuck.
Step 3: Send the same message to as many other profiles as you can. At least 30. Seriously. The more you send out, the more likely you are to get solid replies. Some of these people aren’t actively looking for practice any more (maybe they set up this profile long ago and have lost motivation.) Some are too busy/scared/distracted to reply. Just keep messaging new people until you find someone who’s serious.
Step 4: While you wait for replies, prepare for your first call.
Preparing For the Call
This is where the first 3 parts of this series comes in handy. Like I said in part 1, you’ll want to make a list of basic conversational phrases. Stuff you’re actually going to say on a call. And that message you’ve been sending out? You’ll want to practice it so it becomes familiar. Don’t worry about memorizing it yet, unless you know there aren’t glaring flaws with the translation. And don’t stress if you don’t know how good your translation is. Your partner will help you fix them.
If you haven’t started doing Pimsleur audio lessons yet, start them now. If you haven’t been watching Comprehensible Input videos on YouTube, start those, too.
If you’re truly too scared to try a call at this point, no problem. Just tell your partner(s) you want to exchange written messages for now. Ask them to correct your phrases. Don’t send a giant list at first–limit it to the 5 most important ones. Memorize the corrected versions they reply with. Then send the next 5 phrases. Memorize the corrected version of those. Repeat until you’ve stockpiled enough phrases to confidently introduce yourself.
Worried about pronunciation? Record yourself reading these phrases and send that audio file to your new partner. Ask for feedback on your pronunciation. It’s best if they send you a voice recording of their pronunciation so you can mimic that.
After you’ve memorized a decent number of phrases and can speak them with reasonable pronunciation, you should schedule your first call. You’re readier than you think. 
By this point, you’re more familiar with your partner, too, so it shouldn’t be quite as scary.
How to Schedule
When calling people on the opposite side of the planet, time zones and daylight savings time can make it tricky.
1. Find out what country and time zone your partner lives in. (look at their profile or ask in a private message) Then do a google search: “What time is it now in [name of country]?” The result you get back should be smart enough to account for 3 factors:
-the number of time zones between you and that country
-whether your country is observing daylight savings time right now
-whether that country is observing daylight savings time right now
Different countries handle DST differently. One of my partners lives in Egypt, and his DST doesn’t start until April 24 this year. Ours started on March 8th. My other partner lives in Iraq, which doesn’t observe DST anymore. (It stopped back in 2007.)
2. Let your partner know what days and time ranges work for you, specifying both time zones. Be careful when talking about days of the week. Your Wednesday night might be their Thursday morning.
3. Ask your partner what days and time ranges work for them. If your partner observes daily prayers with strict start times, find out when those prayers happen and whether they shift in time throughout the year. One of my partners prays the Fajr every morning. Because this starts at dawn, his prayer starts earlier in the summer and later in the winter. This affects our call schedule.
4. Agree on a call method. While you could exchange phone numbers, it’s better to use some video call software. Popular choices are Google Meet, Zoom, Instagram, Discord, Whatsapp, and Facetime.
5. Decide on a swap pattern. You might meet each Saturday for one hour, swapping between languages on each call. For example, you may talk mostly in English on your first call and mostly in your target language on the second call, and so forth. Or you may split the hour each time. Try both ways and see which one you prefer.
With all of that done, you are ready to do your first call. This is a lot of up-front work, but most of it is one-time setup. Once you start doing your calls, you’ll fall into a routine that gets easier. And your grasp of the language will transform from something you study to something you use. You’ll make memories in your new language. Eventually, once you’ve used it long enough, you’ll have your first dream in that language!
But… how do you actually do these calls? What do you talk about? How do you handle not knowing how to say things in your new language? We’ll cover that next month. Things are about to get fun. 
Writing update: I’m done with the first draft of Emolecipation chapter 2 and am working on the second draft.
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