Talk abroad was a terrifying concept to me at first. I was not confident enough in my French speaking to be able to speak to a native speaker for 30 minutes. From the start of the course, it seemed so far away, and I sort of just went through the class like it was never going to happen and it snuck up fast. Everything in the class was all to develop the skills required to pull it off. I have to say, I think the thing that helped the most was the immerse me. Just having that experience of speaking in a real life environment to another person helps a bit. That said, I really don’t think anything can prepare you for that except doing it. I was nervous when I got to it, but it went by pretty quick and it was definitely not as bad as i had anticipated. The people on talk abroad are there out of choice, and they really are nice and will work with you through the questions. He didn’t give answers, and if there was something I didn’t know he just moved on. My partner was from Canada, so culturally he lives very similarly to us in the U.S, but my next partner is from Togo so I’m interested to see any differences in the dialect and culture in our conversation.