Recently I registered with the language exchange site, Mixxer. This is a free service hosted by Dickinson College where you enter some information about yourself, particularly the languages you want to practise, and can then search for native speakers of those languages who want to practise speaking and/or writing your mother tongue. You can then contact them via Skype. Language tutors and teachers can also use the site to find students.
This is a great idea and seems to work well – since I joined the site, I’ve chatted with people from Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Japan, Spain and Taiwan, practised my Chinese, Japanese and Spanish, and have learnt some more Russian and a bit of Bulgarian.
Have you tried this site or any similar sites?
I typically just use the search function built into Skype. It’s a lot more random, but you can search by country, language, or both. People who want to talk to people will have their ‘skype me’ setting on; you can search for only people with this on, if you want. If you and someone really hit it off, you can add each other to each other’s buddy lists, so you’ll know when the person is online without having to search for them – like with a regular IM client. It’s pretty fun!
Thanks for the link, just joined the website, though can’t find with whom to talk in Spanish or German 🙁
By the way, I wanted to propose a link exchange or some kind of cooperation between your website and my language portal: Uz-Translations: http://uztranslations.net.ru/ I think you will understand everything on that website, since I read in your profile that you can speak Russian.
Awaiting your reply and truly yours Temur
Good luck or as Russians say “Udachi”!!!
You might want to have a look at friendsabroad.com
It sounds a lot like Mixxer.
I found you through this site 🙂