In my 1200 hour/Level 5 update post I had a couple of people ask me to write this post so here it is!
What is crosstalk?
Here is a blogpost from Dreaming Spanish creator, Pablo Humanes, on what crosstalk is in-depth. To give the short version, crosstalk is when two language learners, each native or near-native in the other's target language, speak to each other in their native language or the language they speak at a near native level. It is a method for two language learners to improve their listening level in their target language. You can think of it as having a conversation in two languages where each person responds in the language that is most comfortable for them. Interestingly, this is how my parents communicate. My dad speaks German and my mom speaks English despite them both being near native in the other's language.
Why should I do crosstalk?
Crosstalk has a lot of pros when it comes to improving listening level through immersion/CI. Perhaps the most obvious and important points are that the level is adjusted to level that the learners are at and that it is a dynamic, responsive type of input. This means that if you are confused or something went completely over your head you can say that and the person can rephrase, draw or find a picture to illustrate a point, give multiple examples, etc. I think the advantages over a video or podcast are pretty clear in this regard. Something that might be a bit less obvious is that this also means that you are fully engaged and full engagement means faster learning. Another aspect that I think few people talk about enough, including Pablo, is that crosstalk is by definition a social activity. Crosstalk gives you the ability to make connections very early on in your language journey. I have made friends through crosstalk and that's something really special. I believe an advantage that crosstalk has over other types of language exchange in this regard is that because each person is able to speak in their native language that means you can speak about deeper topics at a lower level. Having a social connection that exists in your target language is a great source of motivation to stay engaged and consistent with that language!
When should I start doing crosstalk?
Ideally as soon as possible, but I think the true answer to this question depends and is related to the next question: how do you find someone to do crosstalk with? For those at the complete beginner to mid-beginner level (levels 1-3 on the DS Roadmap) the type of crosstalk you need to engage is very limiting to the people who you can do crosstalk with, because at this level you still require quite a lot of visuals to follow what someone is saying. This more or less limits you to other people at your level, which for a language like Mandarin almost certainly rules out finding someone online. This largely has to do with the difficulties of navigating western websites for someone with low level abilities in English. This might mean that if you speak a language other than English you will get lucky and find someone from China who already speaks English and is looking to improve in a different language. This happened to me, but in person.
At level 4, which spans upper-beginner to low intermediate level, you can now start to understand things with far few visuals. This means that you can start looking online for people to do crosstalk with. This is a probably the ideal time to start doing crosstalk for most people. I started looking for crosstalk partners as soon as I hit 600 hours and while it was doable it was really rough. Right around the 800 hour mark crosstalk started to feel much more less rough. If you are excited by the idea of doing crosstalk and you're ok with communication feeling very difficult then start at 600 hours, if you want it to be a little smooth from the start 800 hours is a great time.
How do I find a crosstalk partner?
I had really good luck on r/language_exchange. In fact, I kind of got overwhelmed with responses (something like 30-40). I was offering English, which is obviously in massive demand. If the language you are offering is something else you will very likely get far fewer responses. Other languages that are popular for Mandarin speakers to learn are Japanese and Korean. You'll want to describe what crosstalk is in your post since it's a very uncommon form of language exchange. You'll also want to describe yourself and what sort of language partner you think would fit you best. You can use the post I made to base yours off.
Now that you've made your post there's a few more steps before you can find a crosstalk partner or partners. The first is downloading and setting up WeChat. Almost everyone in China uses it and it will be by far the most convenient method of communication. It also has a pretty good built in translation feature which can also making setting up calls and then next step easier. Once you have WeChat ready you'll need to look at and responses to your post and DMs. There will be a lot of people who will be a pretty obvious bad fit. You can ignore them tbh. If someone seems like they might be a good fit start chatting with them. I think texting for a few days is a really great way to figure out who is worth setting up a call with. Of the 5 people who I set calls up with, only 1 ended up going poorly enough that we never called again.
At this point you should have found at least one or two people to give crosstalk a try with. If you stay consistent you'll likely start to realize you're a better fit with some than others. I found that with partners where chemistry lacked our calls naturally got less and less frequent, but the ones that you really enjoy talking with will be super fun and you'll look forward to your sessions!
I hope this has been a helpful write up and that it pushes you to try out crosstalk! If you have any questions I'm happy to answer them!