Online Foreign Language Exchange

Because our for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts have gen­er­at­ed a lot of inter­est this week, we want­ed to men­tion anoth­er intrigu­ing for­eign lan­guage resource: The Mixxer.

An excel­lent way to learn a lan­guage is to par­tic­i­pate in a lan­guage exchange. Years ago, when I set out to learn French, I went to Paris and found some­one (a French per­son) who want­ed to learn Eng­lish, and we met twice a week and spent one hour speak­ing in Eng­lish, the oth­er hour in French. And, with­out fail, my com­mand of French dra­mat­i­cal­ly improved.

Now you don’t need to trav­el very far to get involved in your own lan­guage exchange. The Mixxer has devel­oped a site where you can find eager lan­guage part­ners, down­load Skype (the soft­ware that lets you talk over the inter­net for free), and then start your bilin­gual exchange.

With this and our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, the inter­net will rapid­ly get you up the lan­guage learn­ing curve.