learning Chinese using social software Have any of you used LiveMocha to learn Chinese before? It was a great social website for language learners. Unfortunately, many of the "social" features were disconnected after Rosetta Stone acquired it. I'm so glad to find this new site. It looks like italki has better business ideas without sacrificing free social learning resources. I would very much appreciate If you would kindly share your experience of using language exchange or online social resources to learn Chinese. I'm a PhD student at Uconn, this is one of my research interest. Answers to any of the following questions would be appreciated: 1. How have you used online language exchange communities in your language study and for any other purposes? 2. How have you built your network in the language exchange community? 3. How would you describe the experiences of your online interactions with native speakers? (How do you find them? How often do you chat or exchange messages with native speakers? How did the interactions improve your Chinese? How did the interactions increase your learning interest?) 4. Tell me about your online interactions with other Chinese language learners, and particularly any incidents where you remember picking up more Chinese? 5. Besides practicing language, many people also appreciate the opportunities to make friends in online language communities. Please tell me if there are cases that you focused more on developing a friendship than practicing the language when you engaged in language exchange activities? Please also tell me if there are any cases where you helped online language exchange community members learn a language primarily to build friendship. 6. How would you describe your role in the online language exchange community? Do you feel you are important to other learners? Why or why not? 7. Please tell me about your Chinese studies experience before you join the online exchange community. How do you see the difference of learning in the online exchange community and learning in school? 8. How would you describe an ideal learning community for your study of Mandarin Chinese? 9. Is there anything else you would like to tell me about your experience with learning Chinese through social media, anything I didn’t ask you about?