Language Learning App - My Experience Using Tandem To Learn Spanish

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been trying to be more fluent in Spanish. There aren't many options currently offline to learn the language. I used to do that at university but that’s about it. It dawned on me when I was in Bali. I really wanted to mingle more because there were more Spanish speakers and though I can understand, I was just not advanced enough to learn idioms, slangs, etc. I can get by for 5 minutes into the conversation but the rest, that’s going to be a challenge. I find writing much easier than speaking which is why I joined Tandem, a language learning app that offers the ability to practice speaking online.

In tandem there are chats but also party options that let users join random language speaking parties with various topics. Since my main focus has been Spanish, I mostly joined them and listened while many of the people allowed me to express myself. They were really nice for sure. However, when I joined the regular English language party, not more than once, I get questions about how long I’ve been studying English. I guess because I don’t have the look and I am not from english speaking countries, they wondered how I could speak fluently.

From the app, I also met so many people who just showed me interesting facts or trivias about their country. Some were so chatty and some were more laid back. I try to allocate 2 hours to 4 hours of my time learning Spanish and join these parties. It can get addicting for sure but since I have to stick to my goals, I tried not to get carried away. By now, I can understand more when people say something in Spanish and just try to speak it more confidently.

In that app, there were many accents and one of the things was, mostly south america than spaniards itself. So, since my lecturer was catalan, many of the words I knew were much different from what I remembered. Even someone told me Catalan and Malagan sounded more different. Since I want to handle simple conversation, I think speaking the majority that are used is better than speaking things that are less used.

It’s a nice environment to be in just because everyone has the same goal, learning language. I believe that language has to be used/practiced daily otherwise, we lose the fluency of it. In that app, I met so many people who are polyglot and was able to speak many languages fluently and close to native.

Maybe in a few months, I’d be getting more fluent in Spanish, who knows? I’d just have to practice and use it daily. Since there were many natives around that were willing to help me, it was really nice. At the same time, they could also practice English with me.

There were times when people were talking to themselves and some were a bit racist but also PC. I think it’s inevitable though that I can’t always see it through rose-colored glasses. Somehow after talking to these people, my urge to travel comes once again and it’s really nice to hear various experiences and tips from these people. Like there was someone who told me, Manila was actually pretty nice as compared to what I heard previously. Who knows, it could be wrong, it couldn’t be wrong. Maybe once the weather clears up and it’s more sunny, I’d certainly have to go.