Every year Medellin welcomes thousands of foreigners who visit the city for either tourism or business. Many of them decide to stay for a couple of months and others stay indefinitely. The influx of foreigners from different parts of the world makes of Medellin a multicultural and bilingual city.  This environment is ideal to learn and practice various languages, as it creates spaces where locals and foreigners meet to interact, make new friends and practice their language of choice.

In recent years there have been more and more common spaces, like language exchanges and conversation clubs, where people would strengthen their language skills in a foreign language. But what is a language exchange? It’s an event, usually organized by a bar, cafe, hostel, language academy or an individual to attract tourists and locals. The objective is for them to meet people and share their culture and native language among each other. Language exchanges have turned out to be very propitious platforms to learn new languages as they allow a true interaction with native speakers. In addition, this practice is very beneficial because, the same way you can’t learn a sport out of a book, a language is not learned memorizing grammatical rules but practicing, talking, understanding the context in which the words are used. As well as copying and creating their own sentences in that language.

Language exchange at Naturalia café

These spaces are very attractive because they also allow people from different nationalities to meet around the same interests like their passion for traveling, different cultures and, of course, languages. In this context, Hablea organizes languages exchanges in Medellin and Jardin,  out of this effort a new ”paisa” initiative was born: Wola Exchange. Wola is an organization created to share, spread and promote language practice in Medellin. They spread the schedule of these events through their Facebook group and page, Whatsapp groups and Couchsurfing account. This has allowed locals and foreigners alike to be informed about the different exchanges and conversation clubs taking place in every sector of the city. Their posts are done on a daily basis so the people who are part of this community are constantly informed and can assist regularly to these events.

These days Wola Exchange have had several events to share their project with the community. They have also shared with us a guide to choose which events out of all the languages events in Medellin they would like to attend. The truth is that each of these events has variations that influence a lot the learning experience and the practice of a language. Therefore, it is very convenient to pay attention to the following aspects:

Exchanges vs Conversation Clubs:

As both options are available the attendees can determine which one is better for them. In conversation clubs only one language is spoken: English, French, German, etc. and they often tend to be academical platforms with a defined structure. Furthermore, there aren’t many native speakers attending the event but more language students. In the case of the exchanges, you find all kinds: spaces with directed activities, as well as spaces where people simply attend and start a conversation with whom they desire, which forces them to be more sociable.

Languages practiced:

Some of these events state clearly which languages will be practiced, the most popular are Spanish, English, French, and German. However, there are also areas that provide the possibility to practice less common languages like Japanese or Chinese. People who attend these events are aware that at a certain moment they will speak their native language to allow other attendees to benefit from the event as well.

Medellín city, where many language exchanges take place

Time, location, entry for over 18 year old

As there are events in different sectors of the city like Poblado, Laureles, Prado, Floresta, Centro, etc. attendees should think in matters like the distance, the time and the day of the week. The advantage for most people is that these events are close to a Metro station so it’s easy to access. Generally, they take place at night, between 7 and 8 pm, every day of the week. It is also convenient to think weather the place allows entry to minors as sometimes these events take place in bars.

Consumption:

Some language exchanges ask for a minimum consumption that usually ranges from 3 to 5’000 Pesos. Some attendees attend, participate and at the same time share a beer, coffee or any other drink. However, some go for places consumption is not mandatory. Something that must be taken into account is that even if the consumption is not mandatory the incentive of some of these places is to attract more people to order some of their products, so the meaning is implicitly understood.

This is not the case in spaces like language academies where the incentive is educational.

Level of language:

For beginners who might not feel very confident conversation clubs are ideal as the activities are generally aimed at them. They allow people who are not so confident to express themselves. In language exchanges, as it’s mostly attended by foreigners, an intermediate or advanced level is required to have meaningful interactions even though some people just go for it and get along very well

Popularity:

Some exchanges and clubs are very renowned and this makes for very high attendance, an average of 30 to 50 people, which has advantages and disadvantages. With so many people it is possible to practice more than one language as it is likely to find people that speak languages that are not so common. On the other hand, it is possible that there might be a lot of noise which would make it more difficult to hear the other person so it is not very recommended for beginners.

In Hablea we teach Spanish to foreigners who come to our city but we also promote interculturality and the interaction between locals and foreigners. This is why we help our students find favorable spaces to practice Spanish. So besides organizing our own language exchanges we also promote initiatives like this one.

If you want to find out about all these events visit the Facebook page of Wola Exchange and follow them on social media here.

Translated by: Omar Zoeir

Written by: Alicia Estrada (originally in Spanish)