Having a Language Tandem Partner Can Help You at Every Language Level
…and you might gain a friend.
Published in
8 min readAug 6, 2020
No matter how you are learning a language, be it at school, university, or at home as a self-taught learner: Practicing with native speakers is key to progress. I’ve had several language exchange partners to improve my Italian and Spanish and I can promise you that I have progressed a lot, learned tons about my tandem partner’s cultures, and found a few friends with whom I am still in touch.
In this text, I’d like to share my experience and talk about my answers to the following questions:
- What on earth is a language tandem?
- How can I find a tandem partner?
- What is the best way to practice both languages?
- (How) can we start both languages from scratch?
- What should I avoid?
- What alternatives are there if I can’t find a single tandem partner?
What is a language tandem?
A language tandem usually consists of two people with different mother tongues willing to learn or to improve in the other person’s mother tongue. In regular meetings, both languages are spoken, or exercises are made in both languages.
