Sraboni
مدرّسAre language exchange partners really helpful?
Take the case of an English speaker who is perfect in English and decides to learn German from a language exchange partner who knows German perfectly and wants to improve his/her English. I think, maybe in the beginning it may be fine as you would learn the basics. But once you reach the intermediate level, how do you know if the other person is teaching you correct German or English (in this case) as he/she doesn't know the other language well and hence may be confused about the correct sentence structure.
It would be difficult for a German who is not good in English to translate a sentence structure from English to German, as he/she may not understand the correct sentence structure in English. So, in this case, even though he is perfect in German his translation would be wrong, as he may not know the exact meaning of a sentence in English.
Like in many Indian languages, we don't literally say, 'I am hungry'. Our sentence structure uses the word 'hunger' instead of 'hungry' and so is completely different.
While teaching Hindi/Bengali also, I have seen similar cases where students told me that they tried to learn these languages from someone whose English was not that good. When they talked to their Indian friends in Hindi or Bengali, after taking many classes from someone, their friends said that what they said didn't exactly mean what they wanted to say, but something similar.
In some cases their friends also got confused, as the words sometimes in English had a completely different meaning than what they have learnt. Like difference between, hungry and hunger. They used the word for hungry as khide (in Bengali) or bhookh (in Hindi) which actually means hunger. Our sentence structure for I AM HUNGRY is completely different.
In one case, it was only when they translated their Hindi friends in English, that their friends explained them that what she said in Hindi was not correct or the way she LEARNED was not correct. As her friends were living in America for a long time, their English was also good and so they could explain her well.
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التعليقات · 5
3
It's a really good question and you mentioned something important... (partners) I have been helping people with Spanish and sometimes I heard: "I would like to speak perfectly" and I think that might be very subjective because each case is different.
Some people want to learn with the minimum effort, some of them look for professional teachers and they speak two languages really well or some cases people go to University.
Depends on the goal you want to achieve, this will be the kind of help / service you will need, sometimes for free (exchange) and sometimes to paid.
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2
Depends on what one is looking for. In my case it is to have normal conversations without too much difficulty (normal excludes stuff like Spinoza and Einstein). I look for the same thing in teachers or partners, and it works fine for me for that purpose.
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2
I can't deny that language partners are not useful unless they vanish in a day or two! If this thing happens then it would be annoying! However, if you get a dedicated language partner, then you can learn how to speak to the general folks(the slang and all) just like you mentioned that you can hardly learn that thing if you take a formal lesson. So, language partners definitely help you not only in speaking but also giving some picture of the society and culture in which that language is spoken!
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1
It depends on many factors.
You know that not every teacher or tutor is good for you, the same situation with a language partner.
It also depends what the level of the language do you have or your language partner. If one of them speaks the second language at least on an intermediate level, the studies can be effective.
Some people are not serious in their studies for different reasons: some guys just only looking for girls, some want to learn the language but they can not find time for studies or they have no knowledge or experience in helping.
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Troglodyte,
I think you got confused. I just edited the paragraph to clear things. My student was not taking classes with her Indian friends. She had language exchange partners and 2 tutors also, whose English according to her was not perfect.
She learned the language for almost 3 months and then just for fun tried talking to her Indian friends living in America, whose English along with Hindi was perfect. Then, she realized that sometimes she used sentence structures which had a slightly different meaning than what she actually wanted to say, but was taught that way.
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Sraboni
المهارات اللغوية
البنغالية, الصينية (المندرية), الإنجليزية, الكجراتية, الهندية, البنجابية, الأُردية
لغة التعلّم
الكجراتية
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