Not in an English-Speaking Country? How to practice English! | Go Natural English

How's it going.

Hi.

How are you?

Hey, Stephanie.

OK.

Stephanie's here joining Go Natural English and me, Gabby,

as you know, for a special series of question and answers.

Stephanie's awesome.

She has over 10 years of teaching experience.

And so do you.

I do too, this is true.

So 20 years-- over 20 years of experience

right here in this room, in this episode, in this video.

It's amazing.

Masters in TESOL, TESOL's teaching English

to speakers of other languages, you.

Right.

We both have one of those.

And a master's in African Studies.

Yeah

Amazing.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

No, thank you for joining us.

Yeah it's fun.

So I have a question from a Go Natural English audience

member.

How can I practice English if I don't live

in an English speaking country?

I've gotten this question several times.

I it's a big concern.

And maybe you've thought about this as well.

How can I practice if there's nobody around me who

is speaking English?

That is hard to do, it's true.

But it's possible.

It's totally possible.

One thing I want to let you know about,

just before we answer is, if you would like to learn about how

to learn English, I have a sample free course for you

at gonaturalenglish.com/7steps.

Number seven, S-T-E-P-S. After you watch this episode,

go check that out.

Yes check it out.

It's really good.

So OK.

How to practice English if you're not

around the native English speakers.

One thing is to consider yourself a resource.

Right?

It sounds funny, but you can think in your native language

or in English.

So I'm sure throughout the day, you

think thoughts in a language.

So I think about what am I going to eat for breakfast, what

am I doing today, what do I think about this, that,

and the other thing.

Why not think those thoughts in English?

Why not push yourself to think about your day

and what you're going to do or you're opinions,

why not do that in English?

Right.

What do you think?

No.

I think that's really good advice.

I think that it's hard to do, but it

is possible to force yourself to think in English.

And some other really good advice

is to record yourself, listen to yourself speaking English.

And try to find a native speaker maybe

to give you some feedback, which through Go Natural English,

you actually can do that.

You can actually record yourself,

and you will have a teacher who responds to your recording

and tells you what you need to work on.

And it's awesome.

Thanks for mentioning that, because that's

a feature through the fluent communication course, where you

can record your speaking, and, as you said,

a teacher gives you feedback about your pronunciation,

your vocabulary, your grammar, everything.

And I interviewed the current students,

and they all are telling me that you love this feature.

It's awesome.

They love, love, love it, because if you're

a busy professional, you can do it any time.

And you don't have to worry about making

sure you have hours of free time where

you can sit down and focus and do a meeting time.

It's on your time.

Yeah that's awesome.

It's a really cool feature.

And also the private Facebook group

that you get when you sign up for the course

is really awesome, because you connect

with other international students

from around the world who are learning English.

You practice your English there.

You interact with the teachers.

It's really great.

I think it helps you learn how to think in English,

because when you are chatting in English, when you're thinking

about expressing your opinions, or just talking about your day,

that will help you see how other people are doing it

and how you can start thinking more in English too.

So I'm glad you mentioned that.

Sometimes I forget to mention about how awesome the Go

Natural English premium courses are.

Yeah.

No.

It's really great.

And I think it's like you said.

The students love it.

They have a lot of great testimonials

about their experience.

And it's awesome.

I'm very happy to hear that.

And I hear from the students to that they love it.

So I'm just thinking what else?

Think in English.

Try to talk to yourself in English

record yourself in English.

You said that already.

But really, just don't forget that you yourself

are a great resource for your English.

And also there's so many videos out there.

Obviously you're watching this one.

Congratulations.

But turn on the subtitles so you can watch the words on a screen

as you listen to native speakers speak.

And then take notes.

Have your notebook out, be an active listener

don't just listen and let it passively fly over you.

You're not going to retain or keep

a lot of the words, unless you write them down,

and maybe stop it, go back, listen again, write down again

what they said.

Repeats what they said.

Yeah, be active.

We were talking about this, and I had this image in my mind

that when you listen without being an active listener,

it's like looking at food when you're hungry

but not eating it.

You don't get full.

Yeah you look at the food to expect to get full, but--

Why is this food not going into my stomach?

I'm looking at it really hard.

But you have to take action.

Right?

You have to take it and you have to--

And this is both for listening and reading.

Yes

So both of those.

You have to be actively listening and actively reading.

You can't just read something and expect

that all that new vocabulary's just

going to soak into your brain.

It doesn't work like that.

You have to really take the time.

When you're reading, don't look up

every new word, because you'll go crazy,

and it'll take you like 10 years to read a book.

But maybe every couple pages, you learn a new word.

You guess the context from the words around it.

Same with listening.

You can try to guess.

But you take notes.

You write down questions about the reading.

You reflect on it.

Like, Oh, I remember a situation when I had the same experience

or something relating to the reading or the listening

is really important too.

You mentioned about listening or watching with the text.

So you're watching this episode.

You can turn on the subtitles.

You can click on CC for closed captioned or subtitles.

Also in the Go Natural English courses,

we have texts of conversations.

So as you hear a native speaker conversation,

you can read along with it.

And I make sure that they're correct.

So it's not some text or transcripts

that might not be quite right.

Some YouTube videos are weird if you click on the subtitles.

Because it's automatic.

But the Go Natural English ones are done professionally.

Yeah.

Well, that's really good advice.

Thinking, recording, listening, reading.

We have so much advice.

My head is swimming with everything.

But I hope that this was helpful.

Remember that you can try a free sample course

at gonaturalenglish.com/7steps.

That's the best place to start.

I hope to see you there.

Thanks for watching.

Bye.