Do You Need an English Speaking Partner? Here's How to Find One!

So the number one question that I get from English learners is, "How do I find someone

that I can speak English with?"

How do I find someone in my local town or my local city who would be willing to help

me learn English by having speaking practice sessions or lessons regularly.

So in this video I'm going to show you six ways that you can find someone that you can

speak English with so that you get that speaking practice in.

So you've probably already spent time reading in English, writing in English, listening

to English, and learning lots of vocabulary.

But speaking with a native English speaker is one of the most challenging things to do

as you continue to learn English.

So in this video I'm gonna show you six things that you can do to find native English speakers

that you can talk to.

I should say though, one of the examples doesn't involve a native speaker, but you'll see when

we get there.

Let's get started.

So one of the first things you can do is you can try to find a language club in your city.

Most large cities have language clubs where people go to learn English as well as other

languages.

So a great place to start with this is a website called meetup.com.

And we'll have a look at meetup.com and we'll use this website to say that we live in Paris

and that we are looking for an English conversation club.

When you do this it should give you some things that you can click on.

So here we see café conversation English language conversation group.

So meetup is a great place, you can specify the city that you are from, so let's say you

are in Toronto.

Maybe you're already in Canada.

And you could say that you want an English conversation club and you can see here again

all different options for you to be able to go to a club and practice your English with

other people.

A second way to find someone to practice English with is to find someone to be your penpal.

This is an older English word that means someone who you can write letters to.

But you can also find a penpal who is willing to have conversations with you via Skype or

Facetime.

We're going to use a webpage called, "mylanguageexchange.com" So I'm just gonna go over to the computer

here and I'm gonna search up my language exchange on Google and when we get to mylanguage, language

exchange, we're gonna go down to where it says your language exchange partner.

So you're describing the person you want to meet.

I would say their native language is English, and let's pretend I'm a French speaker learning

English.

I would say that their practicing language is French.

Then I would click search and you'll see that a number of people come up who say, "Hello

I'm interested in exchanging with people on a regular basis on regular topics."

So this is someone whose native language is English, but who is practicing French.

So another way to find an English speaking partner is to use a website called preply.com.

So we’re going to have a look at preply.com.

I used preply when I was learning French or improving my French, but preply.com is a website

where you will have to spend some money, but you can go and find people who are willing

to teach you English via Skype or via Facetime.

So if I went to the website I could say I wanna learn the English language.

I wanna learn English to talk about hobbies, and I want to learn it for myself, and then

I’m going to say that I speak French, I’m just gonna pretend that I speak French so

here this will give us an option of how much we’re willing to pay per hour, and we’ll

just say show search results, we’re not going to specify what days of the week, but

you’ll see here that we right away have English tutors available who are charging

as little as $4 an hour.

So this is another way that you can meet via Skype or Facetime.

You can pay someone on preply.com to meet with you.

And another website that you can use is a website called italki.com.

So italki is a very similar website.

It allows you to go and look for an online English tutor, an online English partner,

speaking partner, and I’ll show you in a moment just a quick thing.

If we say we want to learn English on the italki.com website.

It will find, hopefully for us, someone who teaches English.

So you’ll see here that we have people popping up.

We have Sara who charges as little as $4.

So preply.com and italki.com are both excellent websites where you can find someone that you

can pay to teach you English via Skype or Facetime.

A fourth way that you can practice your English that sometimes English learners do not want

to do is to practice with someone else who is learning English.

Sometimes you might think that this will be bad for you, that you might learn each other’s

mistakes.

But if you can find another person who’s also learning English, that you can meet in

person or on Facetime or Skype, it will help you.

Whenever you know that you will need to speak English you will practice your English more

beforehand, before the lesson.

And even if you’re speaking English with someone who’s learning at the same time

as you, it is still excellent practice.

You can correct each other’s mistakes.

You can ask each other questions.

You can read pre-written dialogues that you find on the internet or parts from a play,

and you can just use each other to practice your English.

So that’s the fourth way, find someone who’s also learning English and practice with them.

So a fifth way to practice your English with another person, and this one’s kind of hard,

if you live near a tourist area of a large city, you will most likely have English tourists

there during the nicer months of the year.

English tourists are usually kind and they’re usually willing to talk to people who are

learning English.

So if you can find a way to volunteer as a tour guide or volunteer in the tourist area

of the closest city to you, or in your city, you will have more opportunities to talk to

other English speakers.

Try it!

You won’t regret it!

And finally a sixth way to practice your English with someone who speaks English is video games.

My son has a friend who’s from China and he is learning a lot of English because he

plays video games with English speakers.

So he wears his headphones and he has his microphone in front of his mouth, and while

they’re playing the game they talk to each other in English.

So joining any kind of video game where there is live chat as part of the game is an excellent

way to talk with other native English speakers.

You can do this with your xbox.

You can do this with your computer.

You certainly need at least a headset with a microphone, but it is a great way to practice

your English with native English speakers.

Well, hey, that was six ways to find a native English speaker that you can practice your

English with.

Bob the Canadian here.

I hope this English lesson was valuable for you.

If it was please hit the subscribe button below and give me a thumbs up.

I really hope you enjoyed this video, and if you have some time, there’s a few videos

that you can watch next after this one.

If you haven’t seen them, please do!

Have a great week!