Freebie: Practice Foreign Languages With Rosetta Stone SharedTalk
When I was in high school I took 3 years of Spanish but never practiced it and thus over the years have forgotten what I learned. I went to Cancun, Mexico this year and got by on very broken Spanish and the luck of the Irish of meeting many people who spoke very good English. Next time I go to Mexico I would like to know more Spanish. I also would like to learn some conversational Portuguese because I live in an area with many Brazilian immigrants and it would be nice to exchange pleasantries with my neighbors.
Like many others I have heard of The Rosetta Stone programs for learning languages but I would rather spend my money on gadgets and clothing than language programs. So, it was a nice surprise to come across a free service offered by Rosetta Stone called SharedTalk. Using the web as a platform SharedTalk makes it possible to have voice and text chats with people wanting to learn languages and in exchange help you learn their language. SharedTalk is a language exchange community to practice foreign languages – currently 113 languages with people from 174 countries. Wow!
Signing up is easy to do, choose a username, password and provide a brief profile and you are all set. I signed up, got my confirmation email and was voice chatting with a young man from Santiago, Chile. His English was much better than my Spanish but now he is in my network and hopefully we will have more chats and my Spanish will get better.
Rosetta Stone points out that a language exchange has many advantages including
- practice with a native speaker.
- discovering other cultures.
- sharing hobbies and interests with your language partners.
- learning slang, informal expressions and idioms.
As a member of SharedTalk you get a mailbox and can practice language skills through email exchange. There is no need to hand out your email address or instant messenger information. I like the privacy that affords me, similar to what is available on the top dating sites.
I like that you are able to join in on public text chats or chose to have private exchanges. SharedTalk is not for shy people, this is a community of people who want to talk, learn new languages and cultures.
I’ll be visiting SharedTalk often, probably late at night when I can’t sleep and feel like chatting. Not only will I get to chat, I’ll get to learn and practice foreign languages with native speakers. Pretty neat.
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