Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

In-Person Opportunities
I do a lot of stuff online, but there are plenty of offline alternatives that can
help you get in touch with people for language practice.
For instance, if you live near a university, you will certainly find an
advertisement board where you can leave your request for a “language
exchange.” Many universities have exchange students from abroad who are
learning your native language and are eager to practice.
Even if they don’t speak the language you want, ask your friends and
family for advice to see if they know communities you could join to
practice your language in person. Sometimes groups meet up at a local
library, or notices in local newspapers advertise such meet-ups. Just ask
around, and you’ll be surprised what you find.
Social Skydiving
Life begins where your comfort zone ends.
Another option for the more adventurous among us is to simply walk up to
someone you don’t know who is using your target language, or otherwise
appears to be from that country, and strike up a conversation. Many cities
have large communities of foreigners who are pleasantly surprised when a
local person tries to speak to them in their own language.
An excellent example of someone who takes advantage of this
adventurous approach is Moses McCormick (whom I mentioned in the
introduction), who lives in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus isn’t a city you
would immediately think of as international, but Moses shows us how much
practice you can get in many languages anywhere in the world.

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Moses and I went together to a shopping mall, and he showed me how
easy it was. He stopped strangers and asked nonintimidating questions to
break the ice, such as asking what time it was or whether that person knew
where the mall arcades were. When they replied, he continued by casually
asking where they were from. If they were from a country whose language
he knew, he would then ask, in their language, whether they spoke that
language. Simple as that. We did it for a couple of hours and found that
each interaction was pretty positive—some people were busy working, so
they could only speak for a moment, but nobody was angered or frustrated
by our attempts. We recorded the experience, so you can watch it on
YouTube and see how it went.
This is good for some quick practice, but you can also ask people if
they’d like to meet up later to chat some more in their language. Believe it
or not, people are nice, even with strangers, and the many excuses you
might come up with about making someone angry by such interactions are
usually just in your head.
I try to be friendly when I first meet people, and those meetings have
pretty much always worked out well. When you are genuine and truly
passionate about learning a language, people can tell. They are often open
to a quick chat, even when they have just met you.
Hopefully this shows you that there are many in-person opportunities to
practice with others who speak the language you are interested in. As long
as you live in a sizable city and are learning a pretty widely spoken
language, you will surely find those opportunities if you look hard enough.
Don’t give up after the first attempt. Some smaller towns or less common
languages may make this trickier, but there may still be someone out there,
ready to share a conversation.