Can I Learn English Alone Can I Learn English At Home
Hi!
I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Can you learn English alone?
Let’s talk about it.
A lot of my students ask me, “Vanessa, can
I learn to speak English, without living in
the U.S. or another English speaking country?”
And the answer is, yes.
Thanks so much for watching, I’ll see you
… ah, just kidding.
Today I’m going to give you five ways that
my students have creatively learned to speak
English naturally, without moving to another
country, while they’re still living in their
home country.
If you want to improve your English speaking
skills, which is probably why you’re here
at Speak English with Vanessa, well, you need
to speak, right?
The main thing that you need to do to improve
your speaking, is to speak, but you don’t
need to go to a classroom to speak.
You don’t need to pay a private tutor to speak.
In fact, you can speak, mostly for free, in
your home country.
Today, let’s talk about five mostly free ways
to start speaking English now.
My first tip for learning to speak English
alone, without moving to another country,
is summarizing.
This is the only tip that doesn’t involve
leaving your house, so I hope that it will
be useful to you immediately.
This tip is to take an article, any article,
and try to summarize it in your own words.
Let’s take a look at this in action.
Here you can see I am on the popular news
website, npr.com.
Well, let’s click on this article about the
World Cup.
“The World Cup, 2018: What’s Happened So Far?”
When we see the main article, you can see
that there are a lot of great expressions,
a lot of great words that they’ve used, so
we can go sentence by sentence.
“The first week of the World Cup is arguably
the best.”
Great.
We can summarize this and say, “The author
thinks that the first week of the World Cup
is the best, in his opinion.”
Excellent.
This way, you have summarized, you’ve used
your own words, but you’re also speaking out
loud, spontaneously.
Excellent.
This is a great way to summarize.
You can also do this with spoken questions.
I made a video on my channel previously about
learning English with stories, so we’re going
to take a look at that clip right now.
You’re going to hear me reading a short part
of a story, and then asking a question.
All of the words that you can use to respond,
are in that paragraph, are in that section
that you just heard.
You need to listen accurately, but you just
need to summarize and restate, answer the
question in your own words.
This is a great way to practice speaking at
home, but let’s practice it right now.
Let’s listen.
Sam felt relieved that someone else was aware
of the hectic situation outside the airport.
Sam told the driver the name of his hostel,
which was supposed to be just 15 minutes away
from the airport.
Question number five.
Where did Sam want to go and how far away
was it?
How far away was it?
Where did he want to go, and how far away
was it?
So, we need two pieces of information here.
You can make a sentence with this in it, anyway
you’d like.
Sam wanted to go to his hostel that was only
15 minutes away.
So, we could say this in a couple of different
ways.
You could say, Sam wanted to go to his hostel,
and then we could make a new sentence here.
It was only 15 minutes away.
Great.
We’ve got a lot of choices, but here I chose
to combine these with the word “that.”
That’s just going to give you another kind
of sentence structure that you can integrate
into your English learning.
You can take a look at this full lesson up
here or in the description or check it out
at the end of this lesson.
Make sure that you are speaking today.
Start this right now.
My next tip for learning to speak English,
without moving to another country, is to use
websites like meetup.com.
I can almost guarantee that no matter where
you live across the world, there will be a
meet up in your city or near your city, and
there’s a high chance that there might be
an English speaking meet up as well.
Let’s take a look at the website really quick
to see what options are available.
Let’s go to meetup.com.
We can imagine that you don’t already have
an account, so we’ll go down to language and
culture.
Type in a big city.
How about in Brazil, Sao Paulo.
Great.
Well, here we have, whoa, 9,000 people, English
speakers.
This is excellent.
Click join this group.
There’s no excuse, go and do it.
Of course, the more you speak, the better,
but I know that a lot of you are busy, I’m
busy, everyone’s busy, right?
So, try to do this at least once a month.
Use my other speaking tips during the week,
all of the other times that you’re not going
to physically speak with someone, but if you
speak with someone once a month, it really
increases your motivation and it shows you
that real world application of speaking English,
being understood, understanding other people,
it’s so helpful.
My third tip for improving your English is
actually one where you don’t need to leave
your house that much, and it is host an exchange
student for a week, a couple of days, a month,
as long as you want, or maybe even host them
for dinner.
I’ve had a couple of students recently send
me e-mails and say, “I’m so excited because
next week a British exchange student is coming
over to my house for dinner and we’re going
to be able to talk together.”
In fact, I have three examples of this, that
are pretty relevant.
One of them was one of my Japanese students
who invited a 16 year old American student
over to his house for a couple of days, so
that his 16 year old Japanese daughter could
spend some time with her, but he also was
in the house.
He was taking them places.
He was surrounded by their English conversations
in his home in daily life.
One of my other students from the Philippines,
hosted a British exchange student for a couple
of weeks during her summer vacation, so that
she could have some free time and connect
with the student, but also show her places
and just enjoy this real conversation.
My final example is from my personal experience.
A few years ago, I went over to dinner at
my friends house, and when I went there, there
were 15 people from 15 different countries.
She had invited tons of people from the local
community who didn’t have somewhere to eat
dinner.
No family to eat dinner with because they
were just visiting or they were studying at
the local university or they just wanted other
people to connect with.
So, she invited these people over to her house
for dinner, and do you know what?
The common language was English.
Everyone was sharing these conversations and
this dinner in English.
Of course, you don’t need to have someone
actual stay in your home.
Call the local university and usually, they’re
more than willing to help their students connect
with a local family, so that the student feels
more integrated and more comfortable.
You can host them for dinner once a week,
for dinner once a month.
You can even just be a contact, if they need
a local family to talk with.
So, go and talk to your local university.
Type into Google, the local student exchange
program.
Try to connect with other people, because
being proactive, that means, doing things,
not just sitting and passively watching, but
going and being proactive, is what’s going
to help you learn to improve your English,
without spending thousands of dollars to move
to the U.S.
My fourth tip is to get involved in your community,
specifically places where there might be tourists.
For example, maybe there is a festival or
event coming up and they need someone to volunteer
to work in the information desk.
I know for me, when I visited other countries
and I needed help finding my way places or
getting a restaurant recommendation, and I
went to the information desk, it was so helpful
if someone could explain a little bit in English.
I felt so comforted and I felt like I could
really understand what they were saying.
If you would like to volunteer at a festival,
volunteer at an event, or maybe there’s even
a English pub, or an Irish bar, or an American
restaurant, there are probably some English
speakers who work there or who go there.
Feel free to enjoy your community, but you
can try to be proactive and find those little
bits of English in your community and take
advantage of it.
My fifth tip is to speak with someone else
online, but this one is tricky and I want
to make sure that you do it correctly.
Do not, never, never write your Skype ID,
your WhatsApp phone number, your e-mail address
in the YouTube comments.
There are plenty of just bots and different
things that are going around, trying to take
your information and you’re going to get spam
calls and spam e-mails.
It’s not a good way to share your information,
but also, it’s not a good way to connect with
someone.
This is what I recommend doing, use the YouTube
comments correctly.
Let’s imagine that you just watched a video
about how to use “should have.”
You can watch that here.
Let’s say that someone else wrote a comment
and said, “I should have started learning
English with Vanessa earlier.”
It’s a beautiful sentence, but you also feel
like you connect with that sentence.
You have had the same experience.
You think, you know what?
I should have started studying English with
Vanessa earlier, too.
So, you can comment on their comment and say,
“Oh, when did you start learning English with
Vanessa?”
“I agree, I should have started earlier.”
Start a relationship.
Start to connect with them.
Don’t immediately say, “Hi, let’s speak on
Skype,” because you know what?
It takes a lot of courage to speak with anyone
in a second language in English, but to speak
with a total stranger who just threw their
contact information at you on the internet,
it’s a pretty low possibility that that’s
actually going to work out.
Even if they’re a nice person, it’s going
to be not as comfortable to connect.
I recommend just commenting together, start
to get to know each other, and maybe after
four or five or six comments back and forth,
then you can start to say, “Hey, do you have
Facebook?”
“Let’s connect.”
“Here’s my name on Facebook, let’s connect.”
Great.
You can send them a private message and try
to connect.
Also, of course, if they are a beautiful girl
or a handsome man, don’t be creepy.
You know what that is, just be polite.
A lot of my students in the course, The Fearless
Fluency Club, speak together on a daily basis
in Facebook Messenger, on Skype and Google
Hangout, and it’s a really great way to connect
with each other and learn every day, learn
about different cultures and also use English.
You can join up here if you’d like for $5
for the first month, with the coupon code
NEW.
You can connect with tons of really passionate
English learners.
These are just a few of my top tips for speaking
English, learning to speak English, without
going to a classroom, without paying tutor,
without moving to the U.S.
I hope that you can at least take one of these
and be proactive.
Take action today, because do you know what?
Even if you moved to the U.S., even if you
lived in the middle of New York City, you
would still need to be proactive.
I have students who have lived in the U.S.
for a long time and they’re still struggling
to learn English, because they don’t get out
and meet other people.
Even if you were living in the U.S., it’s
not a guarantee that you would become fluent.
You need to be proactive, no matter where
you live.
You clicked on this video because you want
to improve your English speaking skills, so
be kind to yourself and do it.
Now, I have a question for you.
In the comments below this video, let me know,
do you have any other creative ways to learn
English, specifically to speak English naturally,
without leaving your home country?
Let me know in the comments and let’s share
some ideas together.
Thanks so much for learning English with me
and I’ll see you again next Friday for a new
lesson, here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
The next step is to download my free e-book,
“Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English
Speaker.”
You’ll learn what you need to do to speak
confidently and fluently.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons.
Thanks so much.
Bye.