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
US or another English-speaking country? And the answer is yes. Thanks so much for
watching. I'll see you 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'm
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, he 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 so 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 any way 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
and 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 meetup as well.

Let's take a look at the website, really quick to see what options are available all right,
let's go to Meetup.com and we can imagine that you don't already have an account so,
we'll go down to language and culture and type in a big city. How about in Brazil? Sao
Paulo? Great. Well, here we have Whoa, 9000 people English speakers. This is
excellent. And 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 so
trying 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 and exchange student for a week a couple days a month
as long as you want or maybe even host them for dinner I've had a couple students
recently send me emails and say I'm so excited because next week a British exchange
student is coming over to my house for dinner and we're gonna 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 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 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 friend's 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 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 actually 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 a
student exchange program trying 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 US.

my fourth tip is to get involved in your community specifically places where there might
be tourists so 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 even a little bit in English I felt so comforted and I felt like I could really
understand what they were saying, so if you would like to volunteer at a festival
volunteer at an event or maybe there's even an English pub or an Irish bar or an
American restaurant there are probably some English speakers who work there or who
go there so 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 email 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 gonna get spam calls and spam emails and it's not a good way to share your
information but also it's not a good way to connect with someone so 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 well 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 be gone Skype, because you know what it takes a lot of courage to speak with
anyone in a second language and English but to speak with a total stranger who just
through their contact information at you on the internet it's a pretty low possibility that
that's actually gonna work out even if they're a nice person it's gonna be not as
comfortable to connect, so 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 or 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 Hangouts and
it's a really great way to connect with each other and learn everyday learn about
different cultures and also use English, you can join up here if you'd like for five dollars
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 a tutor without
moving to the US, so 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 US, 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 US for a long time and they're still struggling to learn English
because they don't get out and meet other people so even if you were living in the US
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 eBook 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