I must confess that I wasted some hours to try out several English learner communities on discord and, so far, I cannot say that it suits me. I was expecting channels with people interacting in English about a given topic of interest with kind feedback and encouragements. And why not channels in other languages to help people willing to improve their French for example (unfortunately the only language in which I can be of any help). Instead, I have been suprised to discover posts with so many 1 or 2-letter words like u, dm, ... In the best case, I have been welcome with a "Wazup, dude?". Well, I must make a second confession: I'm not really interested in slang, informal or heavily-idiomatic English. My usage of English is mainly for reading newspapers, listening to podcasts and dicsussing with non native English speakers and most of the time in a professional context. I know that there are at least two levels of language in any language, the one you learn at school and you use at work and the other one. But, In the discord communities I connected to, I think another issue is the age of the learners. I think most of the people there are between 10 and 20 years old. Our eldest daughter is 14 years old and I hope she is learning annother English than the one I saw there. I had the feeling to be an old dog not at the right place and I disconnected discretely. Am I wrong? But if you have a good community to recommend, I would be happy to give annother try to this practice.
Hello @Molly49, many thanks for your king corrections. I would be glad to help you in French in return.
Thank you I would appreciate it. I just uploaded my first journal if you could look at it when you have time.
Hi Heathcliff, I've not used Discord, but I can imagine that the use of slang English is prevalent. I agree that it's not helpful; teenage English mother-tongue speakers may speak like that amongst themselves in real life, but I wouldn't consider it useful or particularly appropriate in a language community - but then again I'm 47! I do see similar language at times on Journaly, and I do wonder where people are picking up these words that are never used in written English. Perhaps they just watch American TV shows in order to learn English!
Hi Heathcliff! Discord seems to be used by mainly teenagers and young adults, so a lot of slang is to be expected. You can try 2 phone apps called HelloTalk and Tandem, where you message other language learners who need help speaking another language. This means you would be messaging an English speaker who wants to learn French and both of you will help each other! It is much easier because they have profiles that show their age and language style. In this case, you can find out who you want to speak to and who to avoid. Good luck!