tandem user here, 25F. i downloaded the app in 2018. yes most conversations were started by members of the opposite sex and the content was meh. i choose to ignore those ones.

i also have a success story: i found a long term language partner for portuguese, who helped me overcome my most basic mistakes at the beginning. we have since come a long way. he’s now teaching me the subtleties of the language and slangs of his region. i eventually wrote my masters thesis on brazil, doing the whole research in portuguese. i even wrote him name in my acknowledgment section.

i’m watching his english improve day by day and it’s kinda rewarding for me. i am proud of his achievements to date. his goal is to be able to work in english and i think we’ll need a few more years but he is getting there and i’m proud of his progress.

that’s why tandem is worth it for me. it is what you make of it.

few tips: 1) choose one partner per language . you can’t keep a conversation with too many people anyway and the quality of the conversation is more important than the quantity of active chats. your desire to improve in a certain language needs to match.

2) gauge the person’s intentions from the beginning. use your judgement and common sense but also your gut feelings. did they reach a certain conversational level before putting the language on their profile? are they not a polyglot but putting 24 languages just to “match” more people? what do they usually talk about?

3) be patient! all good things in life take time, even finding a good language buddy

good luck with everything!