(Leggere in italiano) The other day I received an email from Veronica Risco, the director of Marketing for Palabea, in which she invited me to check out her new website. Palabea - the speaking world was launched in April of 2012 and it is a new site for learning and chatting in a foreign language. It is the first marketplace that allows users from all over the world to learn languages and share knowledge while speaking via video chat about a topic they are really interested in! E-learning is a new trend and CEO Matthias Spanic says: “At Palabea, we believe in the power of human potential. Anyone can learn a new language. We are dedicated to helping individuals.”
Veronica’s message piqued my interest and so I surfed on over to see what Palabea was all about. I found the site easy to navigate and in a few minutes I had subscribed (gratis) and shortly there after, after filling in my information in my account, to understand how the site worked, I made my first “Palabea”. It is called “Let’s Chat! Parliamo d’arte, viaggiare, cultura, film, libri, musica”. The neat thing about this site is that there is a calendaring system for each “Palabea” that allows you to choose a date and time to have a conversation about your topic. Or if you are interested in a particular theme you can simply request a meeting with the author. Continuing to navigate the site I found a large community of Italians on Palabea interested in improving their English. It seems a great exchange. I help someone with their English and they help me with my Italian while discussing something that is interesting to the both of us. I have selected a couple of Palabea in Italian and I can’t wait to have my first meetup next week.
I returned to the site again today to create two more Palabea. Seeing that my first Palabea as a rather broad theme, I decided to make two more that are a little more specific: “I macchiaioli” to talk about art and “Julia: una criminologa/Dylan Dog” to talk about Italian comics. I am still learning how the next step works, rather how to connect with a friend using the video chat after having made an appointment…but I am sure if it works as the rest of the site does, it will be very easy to use. Come join me on Palabea and we can have a chat!
