I was recently talking to a female friend of mine who is currently learning Japanese, and she was describing her experience of using a popular language exchange app to me.

In short, she got over 200 messages from people wanting to talk to her.

Unfortunately, the majority of the messages were not for talking in Japanese, and they weren't for the explicit purpose of exchanging and mutually improving their foreign languages either.

I wish this was an uncommon occurrence, but it is not. There is a sharp reality that most people will butt up against in the language community, and that is

Most people who are learning a foreign language, are learning it for another reason than language learning itself.

I'll try to explain my thoughts further in the post below.

English ; The Global Hegemon

In the most obvious case, we have the currently most powerful language on the planet, English. Most of the people who I have encountered in learning English circles, both as a teacher and as a fellow learner, have had the goal for using English for something bigger. A job that would take them beyond the borders of their country, even if just digitally. A method of communicating with people that everyone (somewhat) agreed to use to better facilitate communication. And since most people have learned some English, that exponentially increases the amount of people you will be able to talk to.

I have met much more people that need English for their jobs and other professional settings and just basic communication, than people who tell me that they actually like English because they've read English or American literature, because they really enjoyed House of Cards, or that they have friends and or family who exclusively speak English. In short, English is seen much more of a necessity than a passion project.

And so English is treated more to a means to an end, rather than it's own separate thing that requires much more attention to cultivate, use, and express yourself fully.

To an extent, we all do this with our own languages, as even us language nerds have other reasons to continue learning besides love of language. Extrinsic reasons will push us to do things that we may not have intrinsic motivations to do, so how do we reconcile this in our pursuit of language learning?

Managing Expectations with Language Exchange Apps

What do we usually want when we go on a language exchange app? I have found, in my own experience, that I am searching for someone who is

• Interesting to talk to, have common interests
• Serious about improving their language skills
• Willing to commit to regular speaking
• Able to be flexible, and willing to compromise when needed
• Relaxed and able to not take themselves as seriously
• Honest about their goals and what they are looking to do

There's some other traits I do look for, but these are among the major ones that I would like my partner to have. Obviously your preferences may vary, but building your own list of preferable values and traits will allow you to quickly weed out the uncommitted, the dabblers, the creeps, and all the other people who may be nice, but you both don't click.

Being a good Language Partner

How to be a good language partner? Well, take a look at all the things that you would prefer in a language partner, and then apply that to yourself. In my case, it helps to ask myself, "have I been willing to commit to regular speaking?" Honestly, in the past, I did not do that at all. I liked text messaging people because both of us could respond at any given time in our respective busy lives. But then I perceived that that method of communication really sucks for building relationships, because unless you were online in the rare moment your LP was also online, the messaging happening was not a present and attentive relationship. A lot of them were games of glorified phone tag. Send, receive, send, receive, and back again.

Dedicated speaking times can be extremely difficult to set up, especially when combined with finding a good language partner with the above listed traits, but it is ultimately much more rewarding.

The pursuit of wholesome and fulfilling relationships

Honestly, as much as we want to find a language partner who will help us out, there's just as much friendship to be gained from a really good language exchange partner, and it should be pursued exactly how you would approach friendship in real life, attentively, focused, and intentionally. My friend who runs a professional language page recommends having exactly ONE exclusive language partner per language. That way, you can dedicate sufficient time and energy to building, re-enforcing, and maintaining that relationship over the long term.

This does not usually happen quickly, this does not always work out, and sometimes you or the person will give up on the relationship. Be patient, be selective, and make a conscious decision and effort to maintaining your few and precious relationships with people. Strong networks are built slowly, and over the course of a lifetime, as we are all lifetime learners, whether or not we consider ourselves so.))

The Language Community

As a last resource, and something that I do personally participate in, is the private community and site that my best friend Sam co-founded, and that is

The Language Community (Main Site)

This group is a private and paid community for members to converse in daily Zoom calls to practice our respective languages. There's language specific call days, as well as days where we all just meet up, and then join the breakout rooms of the language (or languages) that we want to practice. Today I actually was in three rooms, for Portuguese, English, and French, and I got some good practice in all of them (especially in French, cause my French is horrible atm lol).

We also have our own social network (kinda like Facebook) that members can participate in, share memes, and access all the information and dates for the daily calls.

It's still a pretty nascent community, so we are looking for more committed language learners to join the community, especially if you're learning Dutch, or you speak it as a native language. :))

Otherwise the languages offered for practice are English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese.

If you would like more information about the community, it's hours, and it's times, you can personally DM the moderators Sam and Marjo at their Instagram. They're really nice people, and they respond pretty quickly.))

@the.languagecommunity (Instagram)

I hope to see you there. :))