Is anyone using it? Worth it? Or are there better alternatives? Thanks!
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Yeah I tried it a few times and it was ok, but italki lessons worked way better for me (of course you have to invest some money but it’s worth it & there are a lot of cheap community tutors) 
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I found some awesome language exchange partners on Tandem, some of whom I still meet with regularly and others whom our schedules don’t mesh but we still leave each other voice mails. This was, however, through extensive searching IN Portugal and still having to filter through a large number of Brazilians in order to practice European Portuguese (I wish there was a feature that allowed one to select this, but alas there is not.)
I have also had to filter through a lot of people who seem to think tandem and tinder are the same word. But, in the end … super worth it.
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Only have a few weeks of experience, but considering that it’s free and pro doesn’t really cost much as an yearly subcribtion (seems like they often have specials that make it cheaper for the first year). Still it’s a bit of challenge to find people who are active and serious about learning languages. Over half the converstations seem to stop after hello, how are you? and many those that continue might not continue the next days. That doesn’t matter that much as there are always new people contacting so in any case you get to practise continously. If you just keep your own and switch to your target language. With spanish the problem many times is the time difference and the fact that many are unaware of it. It might be easier to make conversation if time difference is small to where your target language is spoken. Similarly it depends what’s your target language and what languages you have to offer.
Haven’t had especially big problems, but still it’s better to keep your wits about you. Some might be asking phone number etc. One just recently had marked spanish as native (apparently didn’t speak know any) just to have more english conversation. Better always check profile if something is off. Similarly some might be more interested in getting practise, but not use your target language.
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It’s not bad and I have had some productive conversations there and did get to know one person in real life from using Tandem, who has helped me with my French.
There are things to watch out for though:
- Many people are trying to use Tandem like it’s Tinder and I’m sure many of those are fake accounts / catfishers who will eventually try to scam you for money. You can report people who are trying to use it as a dating site and sometimes they will be banned right away.
- Many people are out to financially scam you and/or beg for money. You will get people who tell you they are poor and suffering and need money or they will start talking to you about business ideas / investments or they will try to get too much personal information out of you too quickly.
Another downside is you often have to spend loads of time finding people to talk to, then the conversation might not ever get beyond very basic hellos, they might leave the site and so on and you of course also have to teach them something.
So Tandem isn’t bad but if you don’t want to waste any time, want more focused learning and are willing to pay for it, I’m pretty sure Italki would be a better option.
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Adding to my previous comment, I agree there are also a lot of obvious scammers. Here has been my more detailed approach to find needle-in-a-haystack European Portuguese native speakers with similar interests to mine to engage with:
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First, my profile clearly states that I am looking for European Portuguese native speakers and that I’m not interested in flirting. This MIGHT weed out some undesirable engagement but certainly doesn’t weed out all of it LOL.
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Second, I do have a Pro subscription, so I know my profile is visible. This results in a ton of messages. I ignore all of the “Oi, tudo bem?” messages (frankly, there are dozens a day and I don’t have time to reply to all of them.) If someone sends a message with some substance up front, I might engage to see if they’re worth talking to further.
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I actively search for people of interest by filtering by location and going straight to Portugal. Within Portugal (for example) I’m interested in various accents (Porto vs Lisbon, etc.) so I search for people in those regions.
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I click into profiles to find ones that look interesting to me, and follow those that do.
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This has resulted in “following back” by some of them, at which time I typically ask up front if they are Portuguese. If they’re Brazilian, I say thanks for engaging but I’m really focused on Portuguese dialect at this time.
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This all sounds like a lot of work but it really isn’t. It has resulted in meeting a few people who are exactly the type of person I want to speak with, and we then have to find times to talk that work with both of our schedules with an 8 hour time difference. This has fluctuated (sometimes I can talk to someone regularly, and sometimes we can’t find a mutually acceptable time so we’ll drop off for a while until someone’s schedule changes again.)
I have routinely had two or three conversations per week this way which is a really good amount of discussion! In between, I talk to myself :O) LOL
Never ever ever give anyone any personal info or money, and I suggest waiting until you know them a bit to share something like your WhatsApp info (I have some friends now that we talk off the Tandem platform.)
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This is good! Thank you!
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Wow. Excellent details about how you have been able to find good conversation partners. This gives me hope that I might be able to find some good ones once I am ready.
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of course you have to filter to a lot of people. But I have found some really good exchange partners there.
I also recommend the partys feature. These are basically group calls, but you will find that most people in there are serious learners.
The app provides a lot of value for free and premium is reasonably prices (unlike many other apps these days)
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I’d like to note though, how I had a much more positive experience with Tandem than with conversationexchange(.net? can’t remember). On conversation exchange I got a lot of requests for teaching ppl English without them being able to teach me anything I listed as wanting to learn and some ppl who were just rude or uninteresting.
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Now that I think of it, Teacher AI, even though you are not speaking to real people, might be a good alternative/addition. The obvious pros of talking to an AI instead of real people is that it’s always going to be there whenever you want to use it and you don’t have to do anything for it or take it’s interests into consideration.
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