You Can Polish Your Foreign Language Skills With Tandem

But I do have some suggestions

I have been using various Spanish learning apps over the past decade, but had not made much progress until I retired this year and have had more time to devote to it.

I recently tried Tandem because I now feel ready to begin some direct communication. I am not yet ready to talk face to face; I’m far too slow translating in either direction. Maybe someday, but not now.

Tandem allows you to text back and forth and it doesn’t necessarily have to be in real-time. It also allows recording speech, so you can use it for what you and your correspondents prefer. That sounded good to me.

Extroverts needed

If you are considering this sort of experience, my first suggestion is that you not bother with it if you are shy and at a loss for conversation with strangers. The problem is that many people are like that themselves and two people who are poor at carrying on a conversation will just frustrate each other, especially in a foreign language.

If you are naturally more of the reticent sort, but lucky enough to find someone on Tandem who is more talkative, you’ll probably annoy them because they won’t learn much from you. Ideally, both of you will be garrulous extroverts or at least able to keep up a pretense in a medium like this.

Personality