My Favorite FREE Resources for Practicing with Native Speakers

I’m all about speaking as a way to learn languages — pound for pound, I’m convinced it’s the most effective and efficient way to learn. This is backed up by studies that show how making an effort to speak improves your listening ability much more than simply practicing listening, even if you can’t say much in the beginning. And of course, speaking with real live people tremendously improves your motivation to learn — your language ceases to become something academic and starts becoming part of your life. So it’s usually the way I go about learning new languages — I’ll often get a course or a quality grammar resource to start out with, but I always supplement with large amounts of speaking. Here are my favorite free resources to get speaking practice in any language. Most of these are free because you teach as well as learn — you spend, say, half an hour learning your target language, half an hour teaching English. And because so many people around the world want to learn English, you’ll have an extremely easy time finding language partners!

Tandem

Recently this has become my favorite app for language practice. It’s sort of like the Tinder of language learning — you can filter by the language you’re looking to learn and your app will become chock-full of people who want to learn with you. And I do mean chock-full — even if you’re looking for people who are native speakers of really obscure languages. You can text, audio, or video chat within the app, and it’s an overall awesome experience.

HelloTalk

If Tandem is the Tinder of language learning, HelloTalk is the Facebook of language learning. You get a social feed of friends who are native speakers of or are learning the same language you are, and you can correct people’s posts and chat with people directly. It’s less based around immediately finding language partner and more around the social experience of language learning. And unlike Tandem, you can only pick one language to start with — if you want to find speakers of other languages you’ll have to upgrade to the VIP membership.

Another note — because this app comes from China, it’s full of speakers of Chinese and other Asian languages. I would highly recommend checking it out if you’re looking to learn an Asian language.

Italki

Sometimes searching for language partners and coordinating times can be time-consuming and exhausting, and if you just want to learn and you’re willing to pay for professional tutoring or conversation practice, Italki is an excellent option. (If Tandem is Tinder, HelloTalk is Facebook, Italki is…eBay?!) I’ve used it extensively and highly recommend it. All you have to do is select the language you want to learn and bam, tutors and selectable times will pop up! A couple words of caution — (1) less popular languages are much harder to find people to practice with on Italki than on Tandem or HelloTalk, and (2) the Italki mobile app is absolutely terrible, so you’ll need to use the website.