Today, I want to talk to you about something that
will make it easier for you to learn and improve your English skills.
And that is...
Before we begin today's lesson, I'd like to remind
you to join our social media classes because it's another.
great way to practice your English skills.
So a lot of you out there who are learning English are studying on your own.
Maybe you don't have time or the resources to take classes.
So you are trying to teach yourself.
And self-study is a great way to try and learn the language.
But there are certain things that you can do to improve
your skills, so you become better at teaching yourself.
One thing that I think is so important for learning English
or any other language for that matter is using
pictures and images to learn the language and reinforce
whatever it is that you're trying to learn.
And this is especially important for self-study
because there are so many images out there
that will help you learn the language.
So first why is it even important to use pictures
or images when it comes to language learning?
Well, we are all different and we have different learning styles.
Some of us are kinesthetic learners, and we need to move around.
Others are auditory learners, and we need to hear
whatever it is that we're learning because that's going to help us.
Others, like me, are visual learners and it really helps
to see pictures with color, and it has a stronger meaning.
And it helps me, especially remember the material and
really reinforces my understanding of whatever it is I'm learning
because I'm actually able to see something to associate with that.
And the significance of visual learning is evident all around us.
This is especially true when it comes to early childhood education.
You can just go into many elementary school classrooms
around the world and you will probably see that they are
full of pictures that are very colorful because this really grabs our attention.
And not only that, it really provides a stronger
connection with what we are learning, which in turn
helps with our memory and our retention of the material.
So what I want to show you today is something that
maybe you are already familiar with and hopefully
you are already using it.
But if not, I strongly suggest that you start using it.
And it is a great online resource that is available to everyone.
And that is...
So Google images, what is it?
Well, it's basically a search engine of pictures
and images of anything that you want to know about.
And it can be extremely useful for learning English,
especially if you're studying on your own.
So a lot of times students will ask me a question about
vocabulary grammar, maybe pronunciation.
And depending on the question, I might just go on Google images
and find a picture and send that to them because that
not only explains the material, but it gives them a visual reference.
So the most common way that people
use Google images would be for vocabulary.
They come across a word that they don't know
and they want to have a picture to associate with that word.
So for example, say that you are reading a story
and you come across the word DRAWBRIDGE.
And you know it's a bridge, but you're not really sure
exactly what type of bridge it is, so you can just write
DRAWBRIDGE into the Google image search engine
and then...voila you have a bunch of pictures
about what a drawbridge actually looks like.
And now it's something that you can associate with what you already know.
Because many of us have seen a drawbridge in our lives at one point or another.
And now we can associate that word to the image.
Another example, maybe you don't know what a
GROUNDHOG is so we can put that into Google images
and then we see that...yes, okay. It is an animal.
And maybe this is an animal that you never seen before
so you really learn something entirely new.
Or perhaps you have seen a groundhog before and you just didn't know that
that's what it meant in English.
That's going to help you remember it especially
when you want to produced that word in speaking or writing.
We can also use Google images to find out the
difference between two words.
So for example, a lot of people might confuse the words borrow and lend.
And on a side note, if you're looking for an explanation
you can check out our video right up there.
Or there. I don't know. It's somewhere up there.
But we can use Google images to find out the difference
We can just type in "borrow versus lend."
And then we're going to have a lot of pictures and
images come up showing us the difference.
And some of them even show us directly that yes...borrow means to take, lend means to give.
And even if there's not necessarily a picture of the action,
we can find the meaning and it shows us using a lot of different colors.
And colors really help.
And what I recommend is that you save these images, put them in a vocabulary
folder, and then you can reference them in the future.
So Google Images is not limited to just vocabulary.
We can also use it to learn grammar
So for example, say that we are studying and learning about the present perfect tense.
Well, we can put that into Google Images,
and again we're going to have a lot of different pictures come up.
And some of them are even going to have graphs and
charts that are showing us more information
about this verb tense, when to use it how it's used,
and it'll also give us many different example sentences
using this verb tense.
And then if you go up to the top you can see that
it gives us more words that are associated with our search.
So maybe you also want to learn about the present perfect continuous.
So now we can go over there and look at some of those
pictures to give us an idea about how that verb tense is used.
And maybe even understand the difference between
the present perfect and the present perfect continuous.
Finally, we can even use Google Images when it comes to pronunciation.
So say that you want to learn and understand
a little bit more about silent letters.
So you can write silent letters into the search, and now
we have a lot of different pictures showing us images
of words with silent letters, and the silent letter is even highlighted.
So we know that when we're saying this word
we're not going to pronounce that sound
because that letter is silent night: knight, knee, wrist.
These are all common words that have silent letters.
And truthfully, these are just a few examples
as to how you can use Google Images to improve your self-study.
I would definitely recommend checking it out.
If you have any question about the English language,
just put it in the Google Images and see what comes up.
It's going to help you learn and understand the material better.
So what I'd like you to do now is in the comments below
let us know what online resources you are using
when it comes to learning English.
And sharing this is going to help everyone
because we'll be able to find and discover new resources
that will help us learn English better.
Especially if we are using self-study.
Thanks for joining us.
I hope you enjoyed this learning tutorial about
how to use Google Images, so go use it.
We'll see you next time.