My language exchange experience I am trying to learn Chinese. I joined this site to meet different kinds of Chinese people to help improve my spoken Chinese. I have studied Chinese on my own. I have never taken a class. I have learned about 500 characters and nearly 800 words in about 3 months' time. But I want to share my experience about language exchanges thus far. There are three kinds of people that I have met. The 1st kind of person speaks English to a high degree. The 2nd kind does not speak English to a high degree. The 3rd kind gets paid to teach Chinese and may speak English to a high degree. Advantages and disadvantages of each: Advantage with 1st type of person: This person has more availability because she wants to practice speaking English with a native as much as possible. Disdvantage with 1st type of person: This person has less patience to teach their own language during the exchange because she has spent ten or more years learning English while I have only been learning Chinese for a few months. For every ten hours I spend talking to this person, I will get ten minutes worth of knowledge about Chinese? Why? Because this person has gotten used to speaking both language without many pauses in thought and mostly likely will not speak slowly so that I can understand them. Advantage with 2nd type of person: This person understands the struggles of learning a language and therefore, are more patient with teaaching their own language. In some cases, she prefer to spend our time teaching Chinese rather than learning English because she feels more comfortable speaking her own language. Disadvantage with 2nd type of person: This person is not willing to meet as often since my Chinese is as bad as her English and she is just as frustrated as I am in trying to communicate. In these cases, she and I tend to revert back to our native language rather than struggle to speak the language we are trying to learn. Advantage with 3rd type of person: The third person represents the best of all possible choices becaue the teachers i have met have been patient and understanding. They know how to communicate based on my level. They structure the lessons around my needs. (I'll be happy to share who my three teachers are.) Disadvantage with 3rd type of person: Unless you consider having to pay this person a disadvantage, there are none; well, maybe exccept their schedules,