Language Partners

Some language learners find it useful to have a language partner when they start learning a new language, while some other learners don't find it necessary, or ever it is not something that would cross their mind, to look for a language partner.
For you to decide whether you need a language partner, you need to ask yourself few questions:
1- What am I learning the language for?
2- How good do I want to be in it?
3- How important are culture, pronunciation and daily expressions to me?
Most people who want to learn a language, they want to be (or they don't mind being) perfect in it, having as much vocabulary as they possibly could have, and sounding like ,or close to, a native speaker.
To help you answering the question whether you need a language partner, let me tell you that a language partner can be a great boost to your language skills, but as you can tell, you need to have language skills to start with!
If you are an absolute beginner, then the need of a language partner will not be that important right now, unless you are interested in the culture of the country which you are about to learn its language (most learners are!) Say you want to learn Japanese, and (or because) you are really interested in the Japanese culture, then it would be a great idea to have a Japanese language partner, who would keep you interested and enthusiastic, and also keeps track of your language improvement, which is really important to you later to know exactly how far you gone with the language. Unbelievable how your partner would know exactly how good you are, better than you.

If you are not addicted to chatting, go for it. But if you are, then be careful. Having such a partner in an early stage can distract you from your main mission you have set, the language learning mission.Unless you already have some conversational skills you want to practice, try to keep the idea of a having a language partner later.
Once you decide you want a language partner, there are few things you need to keep in mind. First of all, a language partner is someone you have to stick to for the next year or two, or maybe longer, so be sure you get one who you can really talk to; someone who shares lots of interests with you. In the beginning you won't feel the need for being so picky, most language learners don't consider this when they look for a partner, since it's not ''personal'', but after few months, when they start having some conversational skills they start finding the need of having few conversations about random topics, guess what? the partner then doesn't make that good company to be with, and they start looking for another partner from scratch, or they draft into normal conversations with few native speakers online, which is not bad itself, but having a constant language partnership beats anything else. In one year, your partner would know everything about you, what you want to say, what is on your mind, what mistakes you always do, what words you don't know, what words you overuse, and much more. and this is incredible for your language progress.
If you are Jewish, look for  a Jewish partner, if you are a person full of passion for politics, try to look for someone like that, etc...
Soon I will post a list of free methods to find a language partner.