Tandempartner means language exchange partner in German. I’d like to share how I found my language exchange partners.

There is a Facebook page called “TANDEM Munich – International Language School,” where you can post what language you’d like to learn and what language you’d like to offer. However, these are Facebook posts, and not a database. It might be a bit harder to find a post that suit you or for potential partners to find you. However, I was lucky to find one of my Tandempartners on the page. He is a retired German gentleman who is interested in learning Chinese characters. And we agreed to focus on a theme to talk about everytime we meet, which is good because I can prepare for vocabularies before the session.

I also wrote an email to LMU Department of Asian Languages, and asked if there is any student who would like to practice their target language (in my case, Mandarin Chinese). It was a good idea because after a few weeks, the department office actually responded that there is a student who is interested. That’s how I found my Tandempartnerin who already speaks quite good Chinese and we are able to split the session time in half for each target language.

Although the situation might differ from case to case, for example, if you offer a language that very few people are learning, you might have a harder time to find a partner. However, I think if you can find a school/ university that offers courses in your language, it is a good idea to write them.

Lin