Is it good if I attend language exchange talks?

[Muz1234]

I attended couple of these talks, it is sometimes posted in Facebook events lists, and I do met some Japanese people. My Japanese is around intermediate level. What are your thoughts about these talks?

I do learn the language in my own and free time, but is it a good idea to attend these kind of events?

 

[Buntaro]

いい考えです。

 

[salyavin]

I feel interacting with people is necessary to learn a language. I feel in person interaction is better than online via various chat software (which I also think is very valuable). What is a language for? To communicate with people. So yes I recommend it. Going to Japan for a couple years or more is even better as so many of us here have done but I fully understand not everyone has that option. Where I live the Japan-America society has all Japanese only meetings specifically so we can try to keep our level up. Japanese and others who can get by entirely in Japanese show up. If you have a group like that where you live that is even better than language exchange as you won't be using anything but Japanese.