Do you ever have problems finding a practice partner?

Language learning speeds up a lot if you can practice with someone who knows your goal language well, or at least knows it better than you do. I like French and I would like to learn more of it, but I don't know anyone fluent in it that I can practice with, face to face. I tried asking at the office, I asked my friends, and I looked around the local community guides. But I still haven't found someone I can speak French with in real time.

Did you ever have this problem? How did you find someone to talk to?

It's a good question. I hope that our chat will take off, then you can find someone there. Or are you talking about in person?

Chat is wonderful, up to a point. But it lacks a kind of fluidity and a certain quality that comes from talking in person. As introverted as I can be, I sometimes miss talking to people in the same room. :P haha

Phillip.Laplana wrote:

Chat is wonderful, up to a point. But it lacks a kind of fluidity and a certain quality that comes from talking in person. As introverted as I can be, I sometimes miss talking to people in the same room. :P haha

I completely agree. I take a lot of skype lessons, but eventually I travel to the host country to really get the feel of the language. Have you tried sites like interpals.net? They often have native speakers looking for exchanges in places I visit. Another option is meetup.com - great for meeting people to arrange future conversation, but not always great for practicing in the actual meeting

I'm not sure about meetup but interpal looks interesting. I'm going to have to try that one later. I wonder where to start there.

Phillip.Laplana wrote:

I'm not sure about meetup but interpal looks interesting. I'm going to have to try that one later. I wonder where to start there.

I normally just search for people looking for language exchange in my target language, who are in the desired area, and pm them. another site which I use a lot is conversationexchange.com