Over the past week, I've been exploring this new website: Govoluble. It's like lang-8 and italki rolled into one, with some additional features that I appreciate.
Like lang-8, you can submit your writing in your target language to be evaluated by other users. It has the added bonus of being able to add audio to your submissions, so that you can get practice speaking your target language in a less terrifying situation than speaking one-on-one with someone.
Like italki, you can meet language partners and arrange meetups to speak with them.
However, one of my favorite features of this site is that you don't need another program, such as Skype, to talk to the people that you meet. Your language exchanges, both text and video, take place through the site. I have found having to use Skype to generally be the dealbreaker for me, because I'm not logged into Skype normally so I miss when my language partners might be on.
You can also schedule either text or video sessions for designated times, and interested people can accept them. So you can get partners that can meet you on your schedule, and it saves a bit of overhead with trying to set up times to meet with people. You designate how long you want the exchange to last. When you are in the chatroom, it will tell you which language to start with, and count down the time to switch languages. It also provides topic suggestions for the tongue-tied. You can correct text in the chatbox itself. I've had one successful meetup so far, and it was a pleasant experience.
I will note that the site is still fairly new, but the owner of the site has been very responsive to all my feedback so far, and I anticipate it will become better in the future.
And it's all free, so give it a try!
Like lang-8, you can submit your writing in your target language to be evaluated by other users. It has the added bonus of being able to add audio to your submissions, so that you can get practice speaking your target language in a less terrifying situation than speaking one-on-one with someone.
Like italki, you can meet language partners and arrange meetups to speak with them.
However, one of my favorite features of this site is that you don't need another program, such as Skype, to talk to the people that you meet. Your language exchanges, both text and video, take place through the site. I have found having to use Skype to generally be the dealbreaker for me, because I'm not logged into Skype normally so I miss when my language partners might be on.
You can also schedule either text or video sessions for designated times, and interested people can accept them. So you can get partners that can meet you on your schedule, and it saves a bit of overhead with trying to set up times to meet with people. You designate how long you want the exchange to last. When you are in the chatroom, it will tell you which language to start with, and count down the time to switch languages. It also provides topic suggestions for the tongue-tied. You can correct text in the chatbox itself. I've had one successful meetup so far, and it was a pleasant experience.
I will note that the site is still fairly new, but the owner of the site has been very responsive to all my feedback so far, and I anticipate it will become better in the future.
And it's all free, so give it a try!
Hi, thank you for your sharing. And I wonder if you can take a look at HelloTalk, a language exchange learning App. In it one can talk with native speakers from all over the world. Its link is: www.hellotalk.com. If you are interested in this, you can contact me by email, kimberly@hellotalk.com. Thanks^^
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