The Power of Language Exchanges
Let's talk about the power of language exchanges and why you must exploit them if you want to get fluent in Mandarin.
Let's face it: one of the main reason why we want to get fluent is to converse with other people. It's all well and fine if you can read texts, learn words, and listen to audios while sitting alone at home, but it doesn't compare with the satisfaction of speaking to natives in their own language. It's even better than the Cicero and Parrot methods.
And in language exchanges, by speaking to natives, you slowly train yourself to speak with natives.
It's like riding a bike. Our goal is to competently ride the bike, and the best way to learn is not to read books about it, or to talk about it, or to find a super effective way to learn, but to simply get on the bike and keep getting back on when you fall off. Do it for long enough, and you'll be able to ride it no problem.
Language exchanges are the same. By making them a habit and accumulating hours of speaking practice, eventually you'll be able to converse freely with natives.
Let's look more closely at the key benefits of language exchanges:
- they're among the most natural ways to learn a language,
- they expose you to the language in its pure, authentic form,
- they force you to construct understandable sentences,
- they oblige you to listen in real time,
- you learn about the culture of the country or countries where the language is spoken, which equips you to travel in that country and fit in more easily,
- you pick up tone, intonation, pronunciation, expressions and usage without realising it,
- they force you out of your comfort zone in a controlled way,
- you make friends,
- they're fun!
So language exchanges are very powerful, but there are a few challenges involved.
For one thing, you'll probably resist doing them. You feel challenged, exposed and inferior, particularly for the first few weeks and months. It's emotionally difficult.
The key is to push through your resistance and do it anyway. I find I always resist my next language exchange until I actually start talking. Once we've been conversing for five or ten minutes, I feel at ease.
Another problem is finding people who are as committed as you. If you really want to get fluent in Mandarin, and get fluent in the next few years, you might find it tough to find a suitable exchange partner.
That might sound weird, so let me explain.
Ultimately, most people are not very serious about their goals. They have ideas and fantasies about what they'd like to achieve, and will happily talk about them, but they're not willing to go through the struggle to get there. They're half-assed. They set goals but they don't fight for them. As soon as they encounter obstacles, they give up.
This goes for all areas of life, and certainly language learning. On your Mandarin travels, you'll come across many such people, including language partners.
Eventually, the exchange will break up because you'll outshine them and the discrepancy in your levels of dedication will make it untenable. It's really tough to find people who will challenge you to be more committed than you, but those people are ideal language partners.
And finally, true language exchanges are quite difficult to find. Many of the big apps and websites are full of people who use them as a substitute for Tinder. They're not really interested in learning the language. They want a good time, or a spouse.
In my case, I've been lucky to find two good exchange partners for my target languages. One is my girlfriend, who I've spent over five years talking with in my strongest foreign language, and a relative of hers, who I've been speaking Chinese with once per week since the start of 2024.
But for a long time I sought exchanges with no success, and this can be frustrating. Know that it's totally worth it once you find it, and exploit them to the max to get fluent in Chinese.