Language exchanges, with a modicum of planning, have been proven to be beneficial to the parties involved in the exchange. Therefore, should the participants in a language exchange expect to; a) reach a higher level of fluency in their targeted language, or 2) reinforce what they have previoulsy learned. Please share your experiences if you have or have not participated in a successful language exchange.
Hello Barry, I have not participated in a language exchange yet. But I would like to share my experience from another angle. I used to learn English by taking English classes in school. The advantage is I do not need to prepare for the class if I am busy. The disadvatage is I barely have chances to speak because 6-7 student have to share the time. Now I choose to learn English with tutors on internet. But this brings me another problem, the tutor do not have adequate time to prepare for the session because usually they have several students of different level at the same period of time. So I try to figure out a quantitative way to dominate the session and make the session more effective.
1.Choose a good book to follow.
2.Pick a topic to discuss in the first 10 minutes of the session.
3.Make 3-5 sentences in the class.
4.Learn the book with the teacher.
5.Ask 3 questions that prepared before the session.
Richard's idea is usefull and your English seems so good!
Richard; thanks for your input. I totally agree with you about language learning in a classroom setting with several students. I found it to be curriculum driven, by that I mean the instructor had to cover so many pages or chapters in the text per class, and as you said the prolonged questions and answers/ discussions between teacher and student(s) became non conducive to the overall learning experience. As far as your suggestions are concerned: 非常好！！！ 谢谢你。
你好～
