English Tutor Dad

Conversation Exchange is a website built to connect language learners in a language swap scenario. For instance one person may be learning Japanese and one person may be learning English, so the session is normally one person teaching the other for the first half of the session and then the roles are switched.

The language swap may involve meeting up for face-to-face conversations, via a video or audio call, or via a written communication (like an old fashioned Penpal).

Conversation Exchange when you first see it, it looks like quite a simple site but when you start using it you discover it has all the features you need to connect with people.

When setting up your profile you enter some information about, where you are from, your age, your native language, your practicing language and what type of exchange you want to have (face-to-face, correspondence or via communication software). Next you enter your hobbies and interests. Then a description about yourself.

People may contact you if they do a search and you meet their criteria. I find the more interesting part though, is the advanced search functionality. You can do all sorts of searches via their country, language, type of correspondence they want, their level of proficiency. You can also save that search for later use.

Once you find someone interesting, you can read their profile. If you decide to contact them you can send them a message. The messaging system works like a basic form of email. I don’t spend too much time using their messaging system before switching to another messaging platform like email or WhatsApp. I prefer using WhatsApp for texting to arrange appointment times and I’m a big fan of the video call. For the video call I tend to use Microsoft Teams, mainly for the screen sharing capabilities and the excellent AI noise suppression audio quality.

Because I am a volunteer English tutor I use the site a bit differently to language learners. I put my native language as English and there is no field that says you just want to tutor, so I put I am a beginner in Māori. Then I explain in my profile that I am a volunteer English tutor. If you just want to help someone with English, I recommend you do the same. You can also explain your situation in any message you send to someone.

I haven’t really had any problems on the site. Occasionally, the site sends an email message about a ‘scammer profile’ detected on the site. One time a scammer did message me but I didn’t respond for some reason and later a message was sent by the site that they were a known scammer. Perhaps I don’t come across them as I move pretty quickly from sending text messages to scheduling a video call. I really don’t think a scammer wants to do a video call with me.

Conversation Exchange have written an extensive article about how to avoid scams here. They also provide a link to the US FTC Consumer Advice page about scams.

I think the main things to avoid is any financial related conversations, which would normally involve some kind of hard luck story. Romance scams, according to the article are also a thing. I’ve always got my antenna up a little bit when I first meet someone, keeping an eye out for red flags.

I feel like I’m a pretty good judge of character and I’ve never had any problems with the people I’ve met on video calls. Initially the conversation is pretty light when you first meet someone but I’ve been on the site since 2023 and chatted to some of the same students for that length of time. After knowing people that long the conversation can get pretty deep. Trust is built up over time.

My Conversation Exchange tips are:

• Give some thought to the timezone of the person you’re going to contact. Living in Australia I prefer students from Asian countries where the time difference is small and also students from Canada or America where their evening is my daytime. I prefer talking to students in my daytime hours.
• I find university students quite good as their time is often a bit more flexible.
• Often other people do like to talk in the evening, so you can take that into consideration when finding people.
• If you have multiple people you chat to, it’s good if you can get them all using the same texting app. Therefore, you don’t need to keep changing apps to message people.
• It’s nice when a person puts a substantial amount of information in their profile. So you can see if you have any common interests. I wouldn’t normally contact a person who only puts a few words in their profile. It seems a bit lazy to me.
• The site is free, but it does have ads. I think it’s okay though because it doesn’t seem to have any annoying popup ads that actually interfere with using the site. There is a membership option that gets rid of the ads. I’ve never paid for it. Membership is pretty cheap though.
• I feel like people that learn languages are generally pretty highly educated. You have to have quite a bit of motivation to learn a language, the ability to concentrate and focus on a hard task, able to visualise a long term goal and probably have a high level of education in relation to another area of life. I do enjoy chatting to educated people.
• As I am a volunteer English tutor, the students are very appreciative of my help and I find this very rewarding.
• You don’t have to just talk to one person from the site. I have many students. The last few weeks I have been averaging 11 students a week. This sounds like a lot but it’s only 1-2 a day. It’s quite easy to fit my other activities around my students as I’m volunteering online, I only have to logon a few minutes before the session.
• If you can, try to schedule the session at the same time each week. It saves on the administration of booking people in each week.
• Sometimes I will send the occasional text message to my students, maybe of an interesting pic but generally I just use texting to arrange times to talk. If I am on holiday and I have a lot of pics or activities to share I will set up a Broadcast Group in Whatsapp. I feel like texting doesn’t add much value compared to having an actual conversation via a video call.
• I think once a week is the ideal time to talk, otherwise if you talk too often you can run out of topics to talk about. Occasionally I might talk more often than that, if it’s for a specific reason like practising for a job interview or the student is sitting an English exam. A short term burst of more frequent sessions makes more sense in this scenario.
• If you have trouble using technology, pick someone younger and, hopefully, they can help you with the video calling part.
• Discuss how you would like to practise together. So you have some sort of plan about what a session should be like.
• It’s quite normal for people to need to reschedule, as long as they communicate about it, I think that’s fine. People have busy lives and things come up.
• If you want to tutor someone in a language but not learn a language yourself, I would set the search field to the Intermediate to Proficiency level. This way you can have a reasonable conversation with the person you meet. Tutoring beginner students can be really challenging.
• Often language learners you meet on the site will be a bit nervous and take a while to get used to your accent. I find their language skills improve after a few sessions as they are more relaxed and used to my accent.

I think when you meet someone on Conversation Exchange it’s good to have a bit of fun and have a laugh sometimes. It’s also fun comparing countries and cultures to what happens in your own country. Of course, it’s ideal if you have some common interests to talk about but it’s not always needed.

I often think about some of my ‘student friends’ that I have spoken to for over two and a half years. If they hadn’t signed up to the site, and I hadn’t signed up to the site, and one of us hadn’t messaged the other – we would still be complete strangers. Instead, we’ve had over 130 hours of conversation together.

Journaling Prompt

As usual, as I am a fan of journaling, I will finish with a journaling prompt.

‘What value can you show to the people you meet on Conversation Exchange?’ What qualities or skills do you have to help people you meet there? Just in general, what makes you a good friend to the people you meet there?

People often focus on what you can get from other people. I think the more interesting question is what you can give.

North Fitzroy Library rooftop garden, part of my challenge to visit all the libraries in Melbourne.