- 1). Use the Internet to find your pen pal. The easiest way to find pen pals these days is via a pen pal portal. These websites offer pen pal services to those who want to look for someone new to befriend, whether it is for educational purposes or just for fun. These pen pal portals would require you to have your own profile on their site so that other pen pal searchers can also view your profile. From this point, you can either engage in email writing or snail mail exchanges. Examples of pen pal portals are Pen Pal Party (penpalparty.com), Pen Pal World (penpalworld.com) and Mail Friends (mailfriends.com).
- 2). Enhance your foreign language skills with a foreign pen pal. Having someone to converse with in a different language will sharpen your conversational skills. Others have pen pals so that they can learn more about a particular country. There are specific websites that help facilitate educational pen pal relationships, such as World Wide Classroom (worldwide.edu) and Europa Pages (Europa-pages.com).
- 3). Email Pen Pals. Having pen pals via email is a faster route to getting correspondence from your friends. This is especially true if your pen pal is halfway across the globe or if you have more than one pen pal, since snail mail costs some money when you send it out. With emailing, you can easily attach photos and other types of files to the message without worrying about the cost. This is useful when you are trying to learn about other cultures, too, since videos and photos of their native area can help illustrate their part of the world better.
- 4). Write your pen pal a physical letter. While snail mail takes longer to arrive and costs more than regular email, there is a different kind of intimacy when you receive something via snail mail. Having a tangible letter to write, to send and to receive is very fulfilling for other writers. Seeing the handwriting of the other person is also helpful, especially if you are learning about different methods of writing or a different set of characters in a foreign language.
- 5). Keep safe when you are writing to someone, whether it is via snail mail, email or in a pen pal forum. There are many people out there who wish to take advantage of outgoing and friendly people who just want to learn about different languages and customs. Be wary of people asking for money or offering you money in exchange for something else.
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