Interested people need only fill out a simple, one-page form at the A.C.E. Language Institute. There are no personality tests or rigorous screening processes, and volunteers can sign up anytime. Conversation partners can request a certain nationality that they're interested in, or they can leave it open. Once the paperwork is complete, Younger matches volunteers with international students who show an interest in the conversation program. Then the fun begins for both partners.
Volunteers arrange to meet their international partner once a week, for at least one hour.
Younger provides guidance for these meetings in the form of outlined steps and lists of discussion topics. Some partners simply meet at a coffee shop or at the institute, so students can practice talking. Other volunteers take their student partners to the grocery store or the post office, ordinary places for Americans but confusing ones for international students. Whatever partners choose to do with their one hour each week, volunteers quickly learn how important that hour can be to an international student. Most students have basic English skills, but that cannot always get them by in a foreign culture.