The Language Lovers

THE LANGUAGE LOVERS  

The Language Lovers is a casual language-learning group based in Singapore. We welcome both language learners and proficient speakers. Come and join us and have an enjoyable time learning to say something new and say everything in a new way. Come and experience The Language Lovers and have loads of fun with us!   

Currently, we organise meetups for learning Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Korean and Cantonese Chinese, German, Spanish, French, and Bahasa (Malayu & Indonesia). We also organise a Hokkien/Taiwanese meetup in collaboration with The Singapore Hokkien Language Meetup. So check out our various language sessions. Meetups for other languages will be available in the future when we have more resources (event organisers, event hosts and 'teachers').  

The Language Lovers was interviewed by Mediacorp Channel 8 News 29 December 2018. Here's the news telecast on 30 December 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdaHZOO-6JU 

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OUR APPROACH

We take a casual yet engaging approach towards helping everyone learn the language they are interested in through peer-teaching/peer-sharing. Anyone who speaks a language fluently, regardless of nationality, may be a 'teacher' of that language and help to 'teach' it. Our meetups are NOT structured classroom lessons; there is usually no lesson plan and we learn through conversation. Nonetheless, some ‘teachers’ may take it upon themselves to prepare learning materials, but this is entirely ad hoc. You can also bring your learning materials if you have (but the 'teachers' and other learners can decided if they want to use them). 

Our meetups are free of charge and the ‘teachers’, just like the event organisers and hosts, are not paid for their 'teaching'. So, we urge everyone to be thankful for their very presence and sharing at the meetups. 

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HELPING OUT

We are constantly looking out for ‘teachers’ and proficient speakers to help out at our meetups. We also want to expand our language repertoire. So, if you are keen to ‘teach’ or share your knowledge of a language, please let us know.  
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ETIQUETTE  

1. Attendance 
We would appreciate it if you would attend the meetup events you have signed up for. We believe you understand that organisers and ‘teachers’ take time and effort to run the meetups. So it is only polite to attend the events which we have said we would. Because the purpose of our meetups is language-learning, rather than merely socialising, so if there are no learners, the events would be meaningless.

2. Expectation 
Some individuals may have expectations of our meetups that differ from what we can offer. It is best to do a reality check. Firstly, all of our meetups are FREE of charge. Secondly, the organisers, event hosts and ‘teachers’ spend time and effort to plan and host events, doing all of these out of passion. No one makes money out of doing all these. Hence, it is only meaningful that learners come with an open mind. Of course, we welcome suggestions, but whether or not we could cater to every learner’s specific needs depends on whether we have the capacity to do so. Very often, our resources are limited. If you find that you need help at out meetups, feel free to speak to the event hosts or organisers and we can always try to sort things out. But experience tells us that individuals who take a proactive approach to learning – that is, by offering solutions rather that just voicing out dissatisfaction – learn better. So, we urge our meetup participants to be proactive in helping themselves and others learn, instead of passively waiting for the learning to happen for them.

3. Intent 
We welcome anyone who in learning languages or helping others learn. However, if you have other intentions, such as recruiting members for your business or organisation or selling products or services, then this meetup is NOT a suitable platform for you. We are particularly wary of individuals who engage in multi-level marketing businesses coming to our meetups, and we will confront them if we feel or discover that they are preaching their ideologies and promoting their businesses, explicitly or covertly. We will not hesitate to ask such individuals to stop attending our meetups if they have been found to be pestering our members for such purposes. 

Additionally, this is not a dating group, and we do not come welcome individuals who attend our event specifically to seek out romantic partners. There are many other meetups groups for that purpose; our purpose is solely language learning. Should we receive complaints from our members, we will investigate and will not hesitate to remove such the individuals involved from our group permanently. We will deal with complaints of harassment from members seriously.