HOW TO LEARN FLUENT

ENGLISH

Hello everyone and welcome back to

English With Lucy. Today,
we're going to talk about whether you can
learn English at home on your own. I
think you can,
and I'm going to give you some tips
and recommendations. It's a pretty weird
time,
isn't it? A lot of us are suddenly having to
spend a lot of time on our own at home,
but this does not mean that we have to put
a pause on what we want to achieve, like
learning
a language. It is possible to continue
learning a language on your own at home,
and I'm not going to
talk about all of the tried and tested
methods like watching TV shows, movies
with subtitles,
listening to the radio. I've mentioned all
of that before. These are new tips that are
more
relevant than ever before. Let's get straight
into it. The first one is free conversation
 classes.
If you want to learn to speak a language,
you are going to have to practise
conversing. I reached
out to some of my students that I
consider to be very, very successful, and I
asked them
what they are doing during lockdown. The
one activity that came up time and time
again,
was online conversation classes. I thought
that was really interesting because I
expected that
they were paying for them, but it turns out
that a lot of them are doing it for free.
This surprised
me. I didn't think that there would be
people running online classes for free, but
there are,
and you can find them, and you can use
them to improve your language skills on
your own.
There are lots of non-profit, online
communities offering Zoom conversation
lessons. There are
lots of teachers that offer these group
sessions to advertise their private sessions
 as well.
Through the other tips, I'm going
to provide links in the description box,
but I'm not for this one because I
don't want to overwhelm a small group,
basically.
I will leave it to you to search websites
like Meetup.com and Facebook and other
language forums
to find these Zoom groups. Sometimes
they're run by teachers and sometimes
they're run by students,
learners of English, who want to meet
other like-minded students and practise
together.
Most importantly, if you can't find one of
these groups or you can't find one that
suits you,
why not try hosting one? I'm sure if you
post in language forums or underneath
YouTube videos,
you will be able to find a group of like-
minded people who also want to practise
conversation
with you. You might think, well, that's
great, but how do I access proper
feedback if nobody
 there is a professional teacher? Well,
that brings me on to point number two,
which comes
thanks to the sponsor of today's video,
Busuu.When I was speaking to my
students about learning
from home on their own, there were two
key problems that came up again and
again and again.
Motivation and access to feedback. That's
where the Busuu comes in. They have a
solution for both
of these problems. If you haven't heard of
Busuu before, it's a global language
learning community
on both desktop and mobile, which
I know is very important to some of you.
They have loads of language courses
that you can take to practise your
speaking,
listening, reading, and writing in English,
and many other languages like Spanish
and Japanese.
On this platform, you can connect with
speakers of the language that you are
learning and receive
feedback. Feedback is like gold dust
 when you're learning a language. It is so
valuable,
but it's often very hard to find,
especially if you are learning a very
popular language.
They also have this amazing study plan
tool, which is going to help you stay
motivated.
It breaks the language down and reminds
you when and what to study, allowing you
to set
realistic goals. When I start focusing on
learning a language, I get overwhelmed. I
don't know where
to start. This breaks it down for you. To
sign up to pursue and explore what they
have to offer,
click on the link in the description box.
You can sign up for free, or you can
choose to get
a premium account, which has loads of
additional features. They are offering my
students an extra 30% discount on all
memberships. Use my code, Lucy30 to
take advantage
of that offer. Let's move on to number
three, accountability partners or
 accountability buddies.
This one depends on your personality and
whether you like working under pressure
or not. I know
that I work best under pressure, so this
tip is one that I've used a lot in the past.
When people embark on a difficult
challenge, like losing weight or running a
marathon,
they often find it easier to do it with
someone, somebody that's going to act as
an extra push of
motivation, because sometimes if you
don't feel like doing something, but you
see someone that
you're close to doing that thing, it
pushes you and it persuades you to do
what you don't
necessarily want to do. This applies to me.
If I see my fiance Will, doing lots of
exercise and going to the gym, I feel far
more inclined to join him. You can do this
with language learning
too. You can find an accountability
partner. I bet there's a nicer name for it.
English buddy,
or something like that, or a motivation
 mate. Somebody that you can be in touch
with, you can
check in when you've done your study
session, you can share something new that
you've learned.
You can compare techniques.
This can all be done over WhatsApp or
text message or email,
but forming a friendship with someone
and being in the same situation, offering
those kind words,
when you need to, offering those
motivational words, when they need them.
I had this when I was
learning Spanish at school with my friend
Tasman. She was amazing. We always
spoke to each other on
WhatsApp in Spanish, and when I heard
that she had joined a new conversation
class or something like
that, I felt really motivated. There was a
little element of competition as well. It's
whatever you
like. Maybe you don't like competition.
Maybe you do. Maybe you just want
someone to say nice words.
Maybe you want somebody to tell you off.
 I don't necessarily recommend that, but
everybody learns in different ways.
Number four, listen to specific podcasts.
I've mentioned podcasts before.
I've got lots that I recommend. I
absolutely love podcasts because you can
multitask. I love running
and listening to something educational,
whilst I'm doing exercise, seems like an
excellent use of my
time. If you want to improve your
listening and pronunciation, the most
amazing way to do it is to
listen to a podcast whilst reading the
transcript at the same time. I always
recommend that with
audio books, but I'm focusing on podcasts
today. What I'm talking about is
something that I think
all podcasters should do, adding
transcripts to your podcasts. It's great for
language learning.
It's also so important for accessibility.
If you're hard of hearing, you're missing
out on a lot if there aren't transcriptions
provided. There is a fantastic website that
I've found that
 nearly solves this problem. I think many
of you will find it very, very useful,
indeed. If there
is a podcast that you like, one of the
popular podcasts that does not provide
transcriptions,
there is a website called Podscribe.I'll put
all the links in the description box,
but basically because there is a
cost associated with generating
transcriptions,
this website offers you the opportunity
to pay for a transcription to be generated.
It's often between five and $7 per hour-
long episode. Once you have made that
donation,
those transcriptions are then there,
available for everyone. So, it's a real
community thing. If
500 people just made that one donation,
then there are podcast transcriptions for
500 episodes out
there. I really recommend taking a look.
Lots of transcriptions have already been
donated and
you can also donate some other ones, so
you're not only helping yourself. You're
 helping other
people as well. Not just people that are
learning languages, people that have a
disability as well.
What a fantastic idea. There are such
marvellous people on the planet. There
really are. The
last one, number five is imitation, a topic
I've spoken about a lot before.
It's what I did when
I was learning Spanish
It really helped me achieve natural
fluid pronunciation. It's no secret that
I used to live in Spain, and when
I conversed with my Spanish friends,
I looked at their mouths, which sounds
weird, but it's not.
Instead of making eye contact, I would
make eye to mouth contact,
and I would look at their lips and their
lip position and their mouth shape. I'd
look at where
they put their tongues in their mouth and
how their teeth were in comparison to
their tongues.
I probably made them feel a bit
uncomfortable. So, that is one of the
 beauties of studying at home
on your own. You can do this without
embarrassment.
All you need is a mirror and a smart
device. Take a video of somebody
speaking slowly and clearly.
If you really like the way somebody
speaks, but they speak quite quickly,
play around with slowing them down.You
can do this on YouTube. Sometimes
it doesn't work so well. Make sure it's
a video where you can clearly see their
mouth.
Hold the video up to your face. Play the
video. Hold the mirror up to your face.
Recreate
the mouth movements and the intonation
and the tongue position. If there is a sound
that
you just can't grasp, this technique will
really, really help you. When people try to
improve their
public speaking, whether they're learning
a new language or doing it in their own
native language, it is often recommended
that they practise in front of a mirror. This
is very much the same.
 It's about getting more comfortable.
Right? That's it for today's lesson. I really
hope you enjoyed
it and I really hope you can take some of
these tips and put them into practise. A
big thank you

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