Lately I've been trying to learn Spanish because, in contrast to my previous home state of Ohio, I now live in an area where a lot of people speak Spanish, and it just doesn't make any sense to me not to be able to communicate with all of the people around you. So, I like, when I have the time, to search out new and exciting ways to learn languages. Changing things up keeps them interesting. Years ago, I used this site,eTandem, to find a French pen pal, and it really did help a lot with my French, not to mention just being fun - it's not often, as an adult, you get the chance to have a pen pal, something most of us left behind in elementary school. [Viktor from Russia, wherever you are, I hope you're doing well ;) ]
But back to eTandem. After using it once, I then lost the address for years, and for some reason, Yahoo and Google searches do not turn it up, or at least they didn't for me. I think it was because I forgot the crucial 'e'. 'Tandem foreign language penpal' didn't cut it. And now, here it is again! I'm excited to be able to use it, and I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell the rest of you about it. What is it, you ask? Well, it's a free penpal matching service that asks you a few questions (age, country, language you know, language you'd like to know, how good you are at it already), and uses that info to pair you with someone who commits to writing to you in your respective languages (and possibly communicating in other ways too, if you're up for it and you both agree - such as letter, phone, chat, or video chat). Anyway, it's fun and free, and it deserves to be more commonly known about. So, give it a try, if it sounds like your cup of tea. Why let all those high school language classes go to waste?
