Picture this: You've been studying English for a while.
You’ve taken classes here and there, but you never actually felt really engaged with them.
So, you open your computer, type in Google "How to Learn English for Free"
and get about 4,650,000,000 results in less than one second! The time it would take you to open,
explore, and make a decision about which resources to use would be so time-consuming that you think:
"I'm never gonna learn this way. I better give up on this. I'll study when I'm able
to afford a good school" . And then, you are back in exactly the same place you started.
What’s up everyone, I’m Andrea, your RealLife English fluency coach. If you've always wanted
to speak English fluently or make English a fun part of your day, but you can't seem to
find the right resources to make it happen, then you're going to get a lot out of today's lesson.
I'll share with you my favorite FREE websites, apps, and activities that help learners take
their English to the next level. You can choose your favorite ones according to the
areas you still need to improve. I'll also take you behind the scenes on how to use our FREE App,
which was designed for people who want to speak English in a safe, judgment-free environment and
connect with cultures from all around the world. Because here at RealLife English we want to
guide you beyond the classroom to live and learn and speak English in the real world.
So hit that subscribe button and bell down below so you don't miss any of our lessons.
Now, these resources i'm going to share with you today can complement your studies.It's
ideal they first choose an area they want to improve and 2 or 3 resources to help them so
they don't get overwhelmed trying to do it all at once. Mastering a language involves a series
of other skills such as reading, listening, writing and speaking. With companies adopting
remote work, asynchronous communication became a really important skill to have.
Learning how to write doesn't need to be boring. Write and Improve is a free tool developed by the
University of Cambridge. You can choose or create a task according to your level and after you
submit your writing, you'll get automatic feedback on where your writing may need to improve.
If you are looking for something less formal, you can join Facebook Groups,
Forums like Quora, Discord, or Reddit on your favorite topics - not English learning groups,
and interact there by asking questions and sharing ideas.
You can use these opportunities to make friends who have the same interests as you
and you'll see how fluent speakers communicate while they are writing.
Reading is your main source of vocabulary and one of the best ways to learn
new words and acquire a more advanced vocabulary. Did you also know that blogs are not dead? Most
Youtubers also have blogs where they share bits of their content.
You can choose to follow the ones that are made for English learners or the ones about the topics
you like. And if you are interested in a foreign culture, most countries have their
website in English. You can explore them to find out more about that place and learn vocabulary
that will be useful when you travel there. If you have a Kindle, find free ebooks on Amazon. They
are organized into categories. Many of these books are classics in the public domain, and feature
similar cover art. They'll have a button that says "Buy for Free" on their individual payment pages.
This is a nice way to learn grammar and collocations intuitively.
You know that feeling when you know how to complete a sentence or how to use a certain
preposition, but you don't know why? You probably listened to it so many
times before using it actively. As you know, we are big fans of
podcasts to help you with your listening. So we publish them twice a week. You can also
practice your listening with songs on Youtube - just search [name of the songs and the lyrics].
And I also highly recommend the Lyrics Training website. This is super fun, even I like to do it
sometimes. There's different levels as well, so you can challenge yourself as you get a bit more
used to it or get better at it. And it's a fun way to learn the lyrics to your favorite songs.
Now I totally understand that this can be the hardest one to develop.
You may feel shy always thinking that your English is not good enough or wondering if
people will understand you or you even have the belief that to speak a language you need
to live in the country where that language is spoken. So a good idea is to start alone. You
can start practicing talking about things that are meaningful to you. The story of your life,
something that you're interested in, something you've recently read, watched or seen on the news.
You can even write down some bullet points about the topic you choose.
So just open a new Google Doc, go to tools, voice typing and change it to English. You should speak
non-stop for about three minutes. And if you don't know a word, you can say it in your mother tongue.
This is a great way to see how you are organizing your thoughts and which words you still need to
learn. The tool is not 100 percent accurate but it does the job of providing some feedback on
those points. For more ideas, I highly recommend you watch this lesson. It sounds impossible, but
believe me, it's not. I use these tips so I don't forget my Spanish while living here in Brazil.
I know many of you out there for various reasons are frustrated at not having anyone to speak
to. That is exactly why we developed the RealLife App. Now, as promised,
I'll share with you more about the process of creating it. Let's start with our CEO
Justin's testimonial. Justin, how did the idea for the app come about?
The main inspiration for the RealLife App was all the way back to right around 2011,
when Ethan and I first met. We were private English teachers in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. And
we had big dreams. And so we were organizing these English-speaking parties. For at first a few dozen
of our friends, but then this quickly grew into a few hundred people. And so we had so many people
at these parties where we wanted to find a way to not only help people, kind of mix the party
up and help people separate from the groups they came with. But also for people to... have the
courage to speak, to overcome their shyness. And we learned a couple things from this, like... One:
people are very happy and successful to speak English with non-native speakers. And two:
English learners are hungry to speak English in the real world and make friends across cultures.
And just as we did back then with those parties, we're doing now with the app. We've been doing a
lot of product research that is to understand the frustrations that English learners face,
to understand the problems they face in order to propose a solution. So when I was a teenager,
I was trying to find a way to improve my English and to practice my English, but I could not find
a place that was safe enough, that I have people of the same goal as mine. I tried Facebook groups
about movies, series, music and sometimes there was someone that I would become friend
and then call to each other to speak in English. And I even tried Omegle (that is not the safest
method) just because I really wanted to talk to someone in English. So and that,
they'll provide me a safe place to connect with people would really have been a dream come true
at that time. So, if you're not already using it, I highly recommend you start now because
our app is free. You can download it in the Google Play and Apple App Store, but I'll
also link it down in the description for you. Here are my tips for when you're using the app:
Do not worry whether you have an accent or not. As Amy Chua pointed out:
It's a sign of bravery. It means you gathered the courage and the effort to learn another language.
It's okay to make mistakes. Everyone's there to practice and learn together.
If you are afraid of freezing up... there's a solution to this problem
and it's what we call Survival Phrases. Think of survival phrases as the pocket version of English.
They're phrases that you can count on when you're looking for certain information
or you need to ask for something. They can even help you get out of a sticky situation
and also help you confidently make conversations and be understood by other English speakers. So
in this lesson we'll begin by talking about types of survival phrases that can help you
facilitate conversation. Then we'll talk about chunking and learning without grammar
which is a method for learning vocabulary. That's related to survival phrases.