I went to the French & English Language Exchange group in Liverpool last night – a friend found it on Meetup, decided to see what it was like, and asked me to come along. They meet twice a month at Thomas Rigby’s, a pub in the centre of Liverpool, and last night there were 30 or 40 people there, including some French people – far more than ever go to the Bangor French conversation group. I talked to various people from England, Brazil, China and New Zealand in English, French, Mandarin and Portuguese. So it was worth going, though it is quite a long way to go – about an hour and a half from Bangor – and I might go back there occasionally.
Do you meet up to find / arrange similar groups?
Does it work well for you?
There are very few groups on meet up in the Bangor area at the moment, but I might set one up.
Have recently attended Meet Up Catalan conversation while spending a month in Barcelona. Small number of participants can make it a pretty intense hour and a half for an intermediate learner like me. (It’s not a language exchange just Catalan conversation led by a “teacher”). I had forgotten how tiring it is to be speaking a foreign language at the stage that is not beginner but still far from fluency.
However, the token charge of 3 Euros was brilliant value.
I’ve been to Portuguese language groups in Philadelphia and Washington, DC. It’s helpful for me because the the people I’ve met tend to have a strong level of Portuguese which makes for better conversation and practice, since I also speak at a more advanced level.