If someone says "I can teach you a language" (for free), what would you expect from him/her?

Where should he/she start?
Grammar? Vocabulary? Phrases?

it's a very interesting question.
I think the person needs to start from what you know. I will explain how I do for japanese (it's not really teaching a language, but maybe it can help you) :

I learned hiragana/katagana before starting any online lesson (you can find great ressources for free, I didn't buy anything for my learning). After, I've started lessons where you have grammar points and phrase examples (including vocabulary). There are exercices after each lessons. But, when I don't understand something with the website explanations, I ask my japanese penpals.

I will add, it's maybe better to learn on your side (like that, you can learn whe you want, it's more convenient) and if you have a question, you write it somewhere to ask later to the person.

that's how I do. I hope my explanation will be useful.

I suddenly bumped into it. I've found a site where you can find penpal friends and language exchanges. I got a respond and now I have to teach German. Her English is pretty good. Now I have to find a structure in my lecturing.

oh okay I see. One of my penpals is learning french at university. With me, she asks me more details about what she learned during the week or ask me some questions. But yes, I don't do a full lecturing at all.

Your penpal just started german ?

Hey guys,

I'm interested in learning new languages. (Mandarin, French and maybe some Japanese)

What are some good websites that helped you guys learn?

Thanks in advanced!

Hi somechineseguy

For japanese I use this website http://www.ici-japon.com/apprendre-le-japonais but there is an english version here http://www.learn-japanese-free.com/ It's free, and very complete.

It's not the best the "learn" but more of a mix learn + exercises : Memrise.com

Check my sig, you can try a game with SCANDAL on that website if you want to have fun and "work" with japanese words.

For Japanese, I recommend the books from James Heisig, Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Kana. I used the books + Anki (http://ankisrs.net/) to memorize them in the way Heisig proposes and it works for me. Now I'm messing with things from Tae Kim's guide (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/) which is completely free, and from AJATT (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/)

Tofugu (http://www.tofugu.com/) also has some awesome material and a (paid) online textbook for begginers (which I didn't test, but it seems good), but I recommend going through the AJATT site first to get some advice/inspiration. AJATT has links to other amazing sites and sources of material in there too, and there's a store in which the guy sells sentence packs and other things for you to study. I decided to buy one of those a while back and I don't regret it.

All of that is for self study. Personally, I can't learn a language from ~classes~.

@spin_along
You're right to talk about Anki, I use it, and it's an awesome way to remember what you learn.

Here's site i use to learn Japanesse  Hope it helps:

http://www.japanessepod101.com

@Mitchan~

For the full things, do you need to pay ?

IceT wrote:I suddenly bumped into it. I've found a site where you can find penpal friends and language exchanges. I got a respond and now I have to teach German. Her English is pretty good. Now I have to find a structure in my lecturing.

What's her native language? Is it very different compared to german, like japanese?

I'd start with useful and common phrases (introducing him-/herself for example). Then grammar and vocabulary. Maybe you should take a look into some of your old english-books from school (if you still have them)?

She is from Japan. But like I said her written English is pretty good. A good idea to take the old English stuff and take it as route.