Boards Language Exchange

Magic Monkey

After seeing some people interested in meeting up with others to "trade" their languages (here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=193695), how about a boards.ie "Language Exchange" sticky thread per language forum?

Similar to the way the Tandem scheme that operates in Universities works, albeit you do your own matching up from the available interested parties on the list.

simu

So, you put up a list of the language(s) you could teach and the language(s) you want to learn, is it?

Sounds like an interesting idea.

Magic Monkey

Exactly, something like this as a basic layout:

Native Language(s): English (fluent)
Target Language(s): Spanish (beginner), French (intermediate)
Location: Dublin
Method: E-mail, Voice Chat, Face to face

...where you put in your preferred options for the latter. So, I'd add the above to the sticky in the Spanish forum, and to the sticky in the French forum. Then peeps can just take it to PM from there.

simu

I'm only mod of the languages forum so I can make it a sticky here but for other language forums, you'll have to ask the individual mods of those forums.

/edit

Boards language exchange should be coming soon!

BEAT

well it seems unneccessary really, I mean thats why we have language forums set up in each language, for people to go to the one they speak or want to learn and post.
Think about it

Hobbes

yea I am kind of wondering how it would work too. After all you have all these different forums.

I'll set up a language thread in the korean forum though.

simu

Magic Monkey suggested having the same thread as a sticky in all the language forums (if that's possible).

How it might be useful:

While you could ask for help with, say, Spanish in the Spanish forum as it already is, you couldn't offer to help another person with, say, Italian at the same time because that would be off-topic and the idea of the exchange is that you both help each other.

Or if you have a whole bunch of languages you can help with and want to learn, you don't have to go and post about each one in the different fora - one post would do.

Magic Monkey

Well, I think that separate stickys per language forum might be easier though, e.g.

Consider the layout given above - English is my native language, and I want to learn Spanish and French. I simply add the details (minus mentioning French) to the Spanish forum exchange sticky. I do the same to the French forum exchange sticky, minus mentioning Spanish. Indicating proficiency will help in matching different levels of speakers (natives, non-natives of varying ability) as well as locale.
Also, generally speaking, most people seem to want to learn one language at a time, so it's easier to navigate a potentially smaller list in the forum of their target language, than a bigger mixed one. Plus, it's easier to have one thread listing users interested in learning that language than a handful of individual posts saying the same thing.

simu

OK, there are two ways of doing this:

As Magic Monkey described above, we could have a seperate langauge exchange sticky in every forum and people who want to learn/teach more than one language must post more than once. There would be a similar sticky in this forum for all the languages that don't have their own forum.

or

We could have a language exchange sticky in this forum for all languages and have links to it from stickies or resource links in the other language forums.

Which option sounds better?

I'm thinking the first option might, after all, be less cluttered but I want to hear what others think would work.

simu

No replies? Last call for ideas! Otherwise, I'll just start a language exchange sticky in this forum soon and be done with!

BEAT

I still dont see a need for it, I think the existence of the language forums in themselves provides for the exchange of languages as they stand.
Am I the only one who gets that?

I was going on the "create it and they will come" principle!

Magic Monkey

Maybe BEAT's right. Thinking about it, most of the language forums receive such little traffic (relative to the other mainstream ones) that worrying about being flooded with posts is probably unfounded.

Coincidentally, I found this site that serves exactly the same purpose:
www.mylanguageexchange.com

So maybe just add that link to the pre-existing Languages charter sticky after all

simu

Magic Monkey wrote:

Maybe BEAT's right. Thinking about it, most of the language forums receive such little traffic (relative to the other mainstream ones) that worrying about being flooded with posts is probably unfounded.

Coincidentally, I found this site that serves exactly the same purpose:
www.mylanguageexchange.com

So maybe just add that link to the pre-existing Languages charter sticky after all

OK then, scrap that idea.

I've made a "useful links" thread here - you can add the link you mentioned to it. (I'd do it myself but I don't want to steal your glory )