Learning English by conversation-exchange

In my previous post I wrote that I got a lot of my English from podcasts.

Where did I get the rest ?

The second big part comes from conversation exchange.

It's a way to practice your English speaking with native speakers.

In the beginning it was a really hard job for me to get acquainted with native speakers. Especially because Russian is not very popular for learning, only several people in the world would like spend their time talking to you.

But as time went by I found a way to solve that and I want to share a few my tricks with you.

1. The place

First of all you need a site where people looking for partners, there are a lot, google knows about  2,030,000 results.

I tried only few of them, and found that this one : www.conversationexchange.com suits my needs.

2. The attitude

Be ready to be refused. For any ridiculous reason. People have different habits and culture  all over the world. I promise you will be surprised. Some people don't speak with person of opposite gender, some people don't like bearded men.

Don't overthink it. Don't get disappointed. Don't let you be stopped by that. 

If you got refuse from someone who you didn't know a few moments before, who cares, go on.

I've written a tons of letters at first (bad letters actually) before I got first contact, I thought a lot "what is the reason?" and rewrite and send my e-mails again.

3. The text 

The only thing what you partner know about you, it's your letter, only if this letter is good he or she may decided to look on your profile and contact you back.

When I mean the letter should be good, I don't tell it should be without mistakes in perfect English, my experience told me it's not important (moreover some people would like to correct you as soon as possible to show their expertise), but it definitely have to be understandable.

Brevity! Very important to deliver your thought concise. It's a crazy world today, you can't expect that someone will spend more than two minutes for that.

What to write about?

We have a funny proverb in Russian, I'll try to translate.

I like strawberry, but hate worms. In opposite, fish like worms, so when I go fishing better to have worms than strawberry with me.

I used this wisdom a lot. If your contact wrote something in their profile -> use it.

She likes art? show her your drawing; he likes cars? show him funny Russian car, ask about his car.

In a few words, try to imagine what do you have/know what interested to this human, and use it in your letter.

Add only a few word about you and a link where they can get more info about you (blog/profile/social network).

The only fact which I left undecided is should I write that I married when I send e-mail to woman or not. It's not a easy thing, I should admit. I tried both option, but nevertheless women refuse me because "they don't speak with married men" equally with "they don't speak with single men".

I tried a lot to predict that, I was looking for clue in their profile, but got failed.
Mostly I do it in random way now, the percent of success is the same.

4. The topic

You got contact, what's now? How to start conversation?
Well the first talk is the easiest one, you have to say your name, where you from, ask the same, pretty easy.
The problems will come later. Sometimes it's really hard to find a topic especially when you (or your partner) have difficulty with the language.

I solved it in this way: Photos! ;)
I share a lot of them, about me, my place, my town, something funny in general. And we can discuss them.

Sometimes we can't predict how the usual (for you) thing can surprise other human from another continent. 

I also write in my blog for the same reason, but it works a little worse.

5. The time

Don't wait too much. If you didn't resume contact in a few day after the first conversation, most likely it lost. I can't explain it well, but I have a lot of statistics about that.

If you interested in this particular contact, try to resume it in a next few days.

I don't mean be clingy, but don't expect you can resume conversation after the long time.

6. Does it help?

I don't know the answer, it definitely something different than having a teacher.

People will not fix your mistakes endlessly (British people never do it even once)

So if your goal is grammar, better to find another way.

What it actually do, it helps you start to speak what was a huge problem for me.

Even when I could understand 90% of my podcasts, I couldn't speak at all.

And it has changed in a few months.

7. The feeling

I've found that it's normal to feel like an idiot most of the time when you are on the beginning of your way.

It's not a quite comfortable, but think if you can get used to how useful it can be for you ;)

8. The bottom line

Let me show your some my  statistics. 

Unfortunately the site which I use, store letters only for last six month, and it's for sure not my "active" period.

My active period was 2 years ago or so, and at that time I considered a few coherent sentences in English as a big achievement.

The last six month.

I send e-mail to over 480 contacts, got answers from 90 of them ( a huge rate,  huh?) 

I got about 15 friends whom I call from time to time, often than once a month.

And I got 5 close friends whom I talk to almost each day (not about English already though).

Is it good? Well it's approximately 2.5 times more than I got in my off-line life for the same period.