Hi there! I am Vas from Russia. I love learning languages, and I often practice language exchange. I want my learning sessions to be productive both for me and for my partners. Below, I’ve summarized my thoughts about the practice.
- Everyone has their own way of learning. I am happy to teach you Russian/English using the approach of your choice. Please teach me Mandarin/Japanese using the approach which works for me. We might learn differently and that’s ok.
- I want to learn how to speak. That’s why I ask to make audio or video calls. If you want to learn from me by chatting, I’ll be happy to spend time chatting. But please spend the same amount of time talking to me.
- Strait to action. If you are interested let’s schedule a call. I am in GMT+8 and I am available from 7 am till 9 pm. My village has a poor Internet connection, sorry for that. There are occasional disconnections, but most of the time audio quality is good enough to practice.
- Chatting doesn’t work for me. Chatting makes me constantly switching from one activity to another. This makes me less focused and more anxious. Doing 1 activity at a time makes me less anxious, more focused, easy-going, and happy. Better let’s have 20min conversation than chatting for 2 hours.
My belief is that we should concentrate on having a positive experience. Practice should be easy, so that you want to practice again and again.
First of all, we need to remove abstractions:
- scheduling
I am very flexible and it’s easy to reach me out. It’s better to have short calls every other day than once per week. No need to prepare.
- fear of failure
Language learning takes a lot of time and I understand it. I am ok repeating things 40 times. You don’t need to record words on paper, I am ok repeating it for you. You also don’t need to prepare.
Then you need to find a reward. It’s hard to track your progress especially with language which has “tricky” pronunciation. It’s really hard to measure how much better your comprehension is today compared to yesterday.
I would say, you should find reward in practice itself. Find songs and listen to them regularly. Discuss topics that are interesting for you. Find a movie and watch your favorite episodes again and again. Notice how your comprehension improves over time.
This mainly depends on your current language level. People often fear that “there will be no things to discuss and there will be a moment of awkward silence”. I’ll give a few strategies for different levels of proficiency:
- Pointing at things in the environment and naming them.
I can point at my hand and say “Рука” in Russian. For sure you will understand. There are many objects around which I can show and name. I can introduce some concepts like “color” or “shape”. I can show some actions. Frankly speaking, we can spend weeks training like this.
- Making requests. Asking questions.
I can ask Yes/No questions about things I’ve just shown. It’s easy to understand and answer such questions. Eventually, I can ask you to do something. Like “show your hand”, “close the window”, etc. We can practice like this and with enough repetition, you’ll learn the basics of languages.
- Discussing pictures.
My room doesn’t have all the objects you might encounter in your daily life. But I can show you pictures. I’ll point at a person and say “This is a person”. Easy to understand. I’ll ask questions as well.
- Discussing stories.
Pictures don’t capture much interaction. But stories do. Stories introduce concepts of time and causality, hypothetical reasoning, and other abstract concepts.
You can discuss movies/cartoons, children picture books, you can create your own stories. I like to draw pictures and telling a story at the same time.
- Discussing certain topics
We can just agree ahead of time to discuss a given topic. Because we agreed on the topic in advance, we can research information before the session.
I learn Mandarin and Japanese. I can speak English and Russian.
Most people gave me positive feedback about my English skills and I have several language exchange partners who practice English with me.
- My speaking is good enough
I’ve been living abroad for 2 years and I use English for everyday communication. I am fairly comfortable using English for almost everything.
- It’s not perfect though
I speak with a Russian accent and occasionally I wave hands to explain things.
- My grammar sucks
Sorry for that :(
- My speaking is good.
Russian is my mother tongue and I speak very well. I can’t say the same about my writing: I write with mistakes.
- My grammar is ok.
If you are just starting out and you want to ask me questions about grammar, I’ll probably be able to answer.
- I am patient enough to teach people from 0.
I have some experience helping people to start learning Russian from 0. It takes patience, but you can learn it and I can help you.
Any video conference app will work. I personally prefer zoom, but we can use meet.jit.si, weechat or even Tandem app. The reason why I prefer zoom is that it seems to work better with my poor Internet connection and I can use it from my PC.
Q. Can we just send a voice message in Weechat? A. Chatting doesn’t work well for me. Voice messages are good and they help you to hear your own speech. But the difficulty with chatting is that it requires me to switch from one activity to another. This is time-consuming and it makes me more distracted. I prefer doing 1 activity at a time.
Q. We don’t know each other, I am shy to do audio/video calls. A. Chances are, we will never meet. We are practicing over the Internet, I am not part of your everyday Environment. The practical chance of meeting me without your own intention is 0. I don’t practice chatting for language exchange so probably we will never become more familiar with each other. Just reflect on your negative feeling, and realize what is the real source of your fears. That will help me to understand that the fear has nothing to do with me.
Q. Do you want to meet friends? A. I do! And I consider everyone who helps me as a friend. That’s why the more we practice the better friends we are. Speaking Mandarin is part of me. And everyone who helped me to learn Mandarin has a place in my memory and in my heart.
Q. Do you want to meet in real life? A. I travel quite often and I certainly will be happy to meet if we have a chance. At the same time, I am completely ok with Internet friends. Some people just popped up and then disappeared. This is completely fine and I respect their freedom ^_^