You want to chat with native speakers but don’t know how?
This is the book for you.

Handbook of Language Exchange

All the help you need, for the student and for the native speaker.

Find tandem partners and learn languages together! A great idea and a wonderful experience, which will enormously improve your language skills.

90% of language exchange relationships fail or disappoint the students, because they lack the guidance and the methods needed to make it work.

Teachers and courses explain grammar but don’t give advice on language practice with native speakers. This book fills the gap.

Alessio F. Bona, polyglot and language coach, will give you insights and practical advice to bootstrap your language practice and guarantee fun and success.

15 years of personal and professional experience, learning six languages and helping hundreds of people learning languages, all condensed in a single handbook.

Ebook offer:

One format of your choice: ~~€30~~ – 15.99

All three formats: ~~€45~~ – €18.99

Paperback soon available on Amazon!
For questions and contact: exchange@speaxel.com

Are you studying Italian, Spanish or German?

There is a special offer for you!

The author: Alessio F. Bona

Polyglot, Language Coach, Methodologist

Alessio lives in Berlin, speaks six languages and has been working as language coach, helping clients from all over the world learn foreign languages.

He has a degree in Cultural and Linguistic Mediation and is a fervent critic of classical teaching approaches, which led him to develop his own methods to learn foreign languages.

His experience with language exchange is based not only on his personal learning and his work as a language coach. He did field research on exchange students at the Humboldt Universität in Berlin and worked for many years in integration programs for foreign students in Milan and Berlin.

Why did he write this handbook? “90% of attempts at language exchange fail. Students suffer from these failures and nobody explains to them why it is happening and what they could do better. The critical issues are always the same though, it’s time to explain them and offer efficient solutions.”

Find a partner

The handbook explains where and how to find a matching native speaker, and where to meet to practice.

What to do?

Many activities, for beginners and advanced students, explained in detail and with examples.

How to communicate

Techniques to make yourself understandable and to efficiently formulate questions and answers.

Cultivate the relationship

Language exchange is a complex relationship: all the tips to keep it healthy tn the long run.

Learn

How to get the most out of it and improve your learning experience. The handbook includes questions to help you keep a weekly journal.

Have Fun

The advice and the techniques from the book will make studying more pleasurable and fun. And the more fun you have, the more you learn!

From the reviews:

I live in Germany, have German friends and a German girlfriend, but somehow I couldn’t speak German with them.

This handbook solved my problems and now my German is skyrocketing.

Thanks Alessio!

Edoardo, Engineer, learns German

I have been studying Chinese only a few months and I would have never imagined to be ready for language exchange. The exercises for beginners are pure gold. And to practice with a native speaker from the very beginning makes a world of difference for me.

Alice, Marketing, learns Chinese

To chat with native speakers is necessary to improve, but it’s easier said than done. The teachers I met so far just told my I should “dare more”. Thank you very much.

This book pinpointed precisely the obstacles I was meeting and showed me how to overcome them.

Monica, University teacher, learns Russian

You can see right away that the author has a lot of first-hand experience. I often thought “that’s me”, “this happens to me all the time”. The advice is very easy to put in practice and some tips are pure genius.

Umberto, Educator, learns Japanese

I am learning my fifth foreign language and read many books on language learning.

This one was the most useful, because it teaches the most important exercise: how to interact with a native speaker.

Karen, writer, learns German and Polish

Content and Structure of the Book

This handbook helps you transform language exchange into a constructive and satisfying experience. It addresses linguistic and communicative aspects as well as psychological and relational ones.

The handbook is divided into three parts:

General, on language exchange
Specific for the students
Specific for native speakers

Contents:

First part: the exchange.
How to structure the meetings, how to handle the languages and how to set boundaries.
List of activities to do together, with practical examples and ideas, conversation techniques, reading, role play, games, and so on.
Practical advice on where and how to find a partner, in person or on the internet.

Second part: for the learners
The psychological difficulties of the language exchange and how to overcome them.
How to get help from native speakers and let them correct you.
How to prepare for the meetings and how to get the best out of them.
This part includes a questionnaire for self-evaluation and improvement.

Third part: for native speakers
The psychological difficulties of native speakers and how to overcome them.
How to talk to make yourself understandable to beginners.
How and when to correct your partner and help him/her improve.
Also this part includes a questionnaire for self-evaluation and improvement.