A platform is a platform. How effectively it's used depends on the people who use it. Like you I was curious (and admittedly skeptical) of its utility. So I joined some two or three of them about a year ago just to see.

Turns out that as expected they don't work. Nothing that is comprised of people of very diverse ages, countries, proficiency levels, educational levels, cultural backgrounds and degrees of commitment can ever work. If one just thinks of the hundred things that don't work even within a single family, it's hardly surprising.

As for me I don't find groups efficient. All members usually have different level of English and if you are beginner you highly likely will borrow others member's mistakes. If you are advanced in language you won't know something new, because proficient learners are rare take part in group chats.

hi davide.

I just wanted to clarify what I mean by “getting worse”. It is when someone is learning from someone else the wrong way (wrong grammar, wrong structure, even the wrong words) and pick up whatever he/she has learned thinking that it’s proper English or whatever language they are learning.

I've been once part of a German-Spanish WhatsApp group that worked very well. The participants were mainly native German and native speakers. They took turns in practising the languages. So, if Monday was German day, then Tuesday was Spanish day, Wednesday was German day again, Thursday Spanish and so on. The members were also part of a German-Spanish group. The group existed already for quite some time, so people knew each other. They didn't have to start off with "hi, I'm ... Where are you from?" but just talked about daily stuff. I left the group because it was too active for my taste and I just couldn't keep up with them but I think that it worked well for the longterm members. I don't know how many members they had but it seemed to be well balanced. I'm still a member of the Facebook group and posts in this group are mostly good. There are some really great Facebook groups for language learning and many trashy ones. It often depends on how good the moderation of the group is.

I can imagine that a Whatsapp/Skype or whatever practise group could work well, if it isn't very big, all members get along and have approximately the same level in either common target language or in each other's nstive tongues. I have to say that I wouldn't mind practising with fellow learners. I often exchange messages in my target languages with other learners at a similar or higher level. Especially when it comes to grammar questions, fellow advanced learners might be better at explaining them, than native speakers who never reflected about their own grammar.

Hey Davide,

I think it doesn't work and Those people who post this kind of suggestion I think they are not aware of learning language process .

And unfortunately nowadays some hackers take people numbers and call them (miss call) in a special way to hack them!