Language Exchanges: A Worthwhile Investment

Oliver Little

My apprehension for language exchanges stemmed from school; a timid schoolboy can be somewhat affected by the horror stories you don’t want to believe, of classmates or previous year groups travelling abroad to a host family, in which the son is Satan incarnate and decides to antagonise you when you get on his nerves, by locking you in the family garage after lunch, only for the family dog to find you still there after dinner. Thankfully, language exchanges offered in Cambridge seem to give limited scope for such trauma (or so I have found up to this point). In fact, if I were to use one word to describe my language exchange experience so far, it would be rewarding. By this, I mean that it rewards you for the effort you put into it, without necessarily punishing you in the times that you don’t. 

Illustration Credit: Vega Boney-Hundal

Whilst the latter may seem like something of a drawback, for the average Cambridge student, it could be seen as ideal. Got a deadline? No problem, we’ll skip this week. Week 5 work out of the way? Fab, me too, let’s head to the pub. And that’s essentially what my Catalan language exchange has been so far – chilled, ‘if you have a spare moment’, and, when you get together, it’s just a catch-up in the target language. As someone who spent half of their Year Abroad in Barcelona, this has worked quite well; I can hold a conversation relatively comfortably in Catalan, while Bruna puts my English to shame. In short, we can alternate pretty easily between the two without conversation flow being disrupted. 

A caveat: for someone learning a language from scratch, I question how useful the language exchange would be. Should my application for a Portuguese language come back with a match (although two months after submitting it I’m not holding out hope), I would be relying on my A1, ‘o meu nome é Ollie’ level Portuguese to sustain a conversation. Should my compatriot speak English to a high degree (which I suppose is pretty likely), we would probably be ok, although, on the Portuguese side of things, I imagine conversation ebbing rather than flowing. 

Credit: Oliver Little

However, say I came across someone whose English is A1-level, how on earth would we even communicate? Of course this is speculation, but if you take the conversation out of a conversation exchange, you’re taking salt away from pepper. And anyone who seasons with just pepper is quite frankly psychotic. Hopefully my Portuguese application succeeds and I can come back with a more definitive answer by the end of the academic year. 

What I can definitively say however, is that, practically, the narrative of my Catalan language exchange so far has been telegraphed; towards the start of term Bruna (from Barcelona) and I had plenty of time to meet up. Following an initial (and successful) coffee, we spoke of hopefully meeting once a week (famous last words), and we stuck to it… for one week at least. Alas, Cambridge term bore its claws, and all of a sudden, with immediate deadlines staring you in the face, it became quite easy for the language exchange to fade into the periphery. Week 3 has all of a sudden quickly become week 6, and the question becomes, where has the time gone? The answer, of course held by Cambridge’s many burdens, unleashed by the Cambridge sentry gun during the notorious Cambridge week 3-6 frenzy. 

Credit: Oliver Little

The consequences? Well none really, except for my Catalan feeling noticeably rustier in my one hour of language class week on week. As work begins to die down, I’m sure the language exchange can continue, and I can quite easily foresee this being a consistent pattern across the entire year. Has it been that useful for my Catalan so far? Probably not. Am I to blame? Again, probably not (but maybe slightly). Could it be useful for my Catalan going forward? Most definitely. I suppose then, I’ll rephrase – rather than rewarding you for the effort you put into it, a more fitting statement is that it rewards you for the effort you can put into it. If you have a bit of spare time on your hands, why not? It’s pretty much work and play at the same time (sort of). If it takes a back-seat during term-time’s most turbulent days, no dramas. It’s then up to you to move it to the front-seat when space opens up, or even better, go out of your way and make time upfront (something that I have failed to do so far).

It’s still early stages in my language exchange, and so far I’m glad I signed up – I suppose it’s almost impossible to regret participating since I literally cannot conceive of how through these language exchanges you could wind up locked in a garage (happy to be proved wrong). I do, however, urge those of you that do sign up to make sure you set out time in your schedule, because the more you invest, the more it gives back!

Credit: Oliver Little

Are you interested in signing up to the Conversation Exchange Scheme for the start of Lent 2021? Click here to find out more!