Activities to do with a language exchange partner

You have finally found a language exchange partner. You get all excited Yes, now you will definitely become fluent! Nothing is going to stop you now! This is it!

You’re nervous. You are about to meet them today!

You meet, sit down for a coffee or adjust your camera and finally hear eachother, then… what are we going to talk about? awkward silence.

The thing about tandem partners and I have learned it from my own experience is that you can’t expect them to be your language teacher. Ideally, your tandem partner is a native speaker of your target language. And native speakers are usually not experienced in explaining grammar rules.

What you CAN and should do is put what you have learned in theory to practice with their help. If you look up a grammar rule on the internet for example you can use that the next day with them to practice it.

It is also an awesome opportunity to understand to the culture of your target language better by talking to them, by seeing how they look at certain things, and think about certain topics by seeing how they live their life.

You can also “use them” to build your everyday vocabulary. There is such a difference between the language you can learn from a book and what native speakers actually use.

I’ve collected activities you can do together both at online and in-person meetings.

• One lie two truth: Great first meeting game. Both of you have to say three stories or statements about yourselves. Two are made up and lies and one is true about you. The other person has to guess which one is the true one.
• Play never have I ever…: You minght have already played this game before. It is for when you know each other a little already. What you have to do if you have done the thing mentioned is up to you.
• What’s my line? with made up professions: One of you has to think of a profession and the other has to ask questions (usually yes or no questions) to find out what profession the other is thinking of.
• Ask for music, book, movie recommendations: Take advantage of the fact that you can get to know the culture of your target language through a native speaker
• Share recipes: Who doesn’t like food??? Share your national dishes with eachother.
• Create playlists for each other: with music from your respective countries
• Blind-instruct cooking your national dishes: Piggybacking off of the other point a fun thing to do if you have a Skype tandem partner is to call each other and one of you has to instruct the other by talking only. If the food comes out delicious it is a plus…
• Take light photos: Go outside at night with a camera or a phone or anything that makes light (sparkler, your phone’s torchlight, etc. ) adjust the exposure to long, and take photos while writing words in your target language. You can even do a spelling bee.

• Read a book or watch a movie: (both of you in their own respective target language) and discuss it with the other in both languages, talk about what you think of the story.
• Give presentations about the history of your native language to each other with your own words each of you talking in your respective target language. It is a great way to practice and learn about the history of your target language at the same time.
• Exchange diaries : Write a few sentences every week in your target languages and exchange and correct them. You can also text it to eachother of course.
• Exchange books: Give eacher books in your native language so the other can practice it by reading an interesting story.
• Dictation: Find a short text in your native language, and record yourself reading it aloud. Send it to your language exchange partner and ask them to write down what they hear, word for word, then correct their text. Ask them to do the same for you.
• Play board games: See if you can find games at home or online that can be played in any language. If you can’t find any, you can still ask your friends or rent one.

Check out my other post here to get an idea of what to expect from a language exchange, to get ideas of where to meet, and to learn about why it is important to set goals for it.

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