Do You Need an English Speaking Partner? Here's How to Find One!

216,004 views ・ 2019-06-11

Learn English with Bob the Canadian


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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So the number one question that I get from English learners is, "How do I find someone
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that I can speak English with?"
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How do I find someone in my local town or my local city who would be willing to help
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me learn English by having speaking practice sessions or lessons regularly.
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So in this video I'm going to show you six ways that you can find someone that you can
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speak English with so that you get that speaking practice in.
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So you've probably already spent time reading in English, writing in English, listening
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to English, and learning lots of vocabulary.
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But speaking with a native English speaker is one of the most challenging things to do
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as you continue to learn English.
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So in this video I'm gonna show you six things that you can do to find native English speakers
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that you can talk to.
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I should say though, one of the examples doesn't involve a native speaker, but you'll see when
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we get there.
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Let's get started.
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So one of the first things you can do is you can try to find a language club in your city.
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Most large cities have language clubs where people go to learn English as well as other
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languages.
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So a great place to start with this is a website called meetup.com.
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And we'll have a look at meetup.com and we'll use this website to say that we live in Paris
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and that we are looking for an English conversation club.
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When you do this it should give you some things that you can click on.
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So here we see café conversation English language conversation group.
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So meetup is a great place, you can specify the city that you are from, so let's say you
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are in Toronto.
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Maybe you're already in Canada.
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And you could say that you want an English conversation club and you can see here again
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all different options for you to be able to go to a club and practice your English with
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other people.
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A second way to find someone to practice English with is to find someone to be your penpal.
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This is an older English word that means someone who you can write letters to.
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But you can also find a penpal who is willing to have conversations with you via Skype or
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Facetime.
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We're going to use a webpage called, "mylanguageexchange.com" So I'm just gonna go over to the computer
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here and I'm gonna search up my language exchange on Google and when we get to mylanguage, language
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exchange, we're gonna go down to where it says your language exchange partner.
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So you're describing the person you want to meet.
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I would say their native language is English, and let's pretend I'm a French speaker learning
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English.
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I would say that their practicing language is French.
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Then I would click search and you'll see that a number of people come up who say, "Hello
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I'm interested in exchanging with people on a regular basis on regular topics."
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So this is someone whose native language is English, but who is practicing French.
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So another way to find an English speaking partner is to use a website called preply.com.
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So we’re going to have a look at preply.com.
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I used preply when I was learning French or improving my French, but preply.com is a website
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where you will have to spend some money, but you can go and find people who are willing
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to teach you English via Skype or via Facetime.
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So if I went to the website I could say I wanna learn the English language.
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I wanna learn English to talk about hobbies, and I want to learn it for myself, and then
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I’m going to say that I speak French, I’m just gonna pretend that I speak French so
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here this will give us an option of how much we’re willing to pay per hour, and we’ll
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just say show search results, we’re not going to specify what days of the week, but
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you’ll see here that we right away have English tutors available who are charging
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as little as $4 an hour.
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So this is another way that you can meet via Skype or Facetime.
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You can pay someone on preply.com to meet with you.
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And another website that you can use is a website called italki.com.
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So italki is a very similar website.
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It allows you to go and look for an online English tutor, an online English partner,
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speaking partner, and I’ll show you in a moment just a quick thing.
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If we say we want to learn English on the italki.com website.
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It will find, hopefully for us, someone who teaches English.
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So you’ll see here that we have people popping up.
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We have Sara who charges as little as $4.
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So preply.com and italki.com are both excellent websites where you can find someone that you
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can pay to teach you English via Skype or Facetime.
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A fourth way that you can practice your English that sometimes English learners do not want
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to do is to practice with someone else who is learning English.
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Sometimes you might think that this will be bad for you, that you might learn each other’s
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mistakes.
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But if you can find another person who’s also learning English, that you can meet in
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person or on Facetime or Skype, it will help you.
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Whenever you know that you will need to speak English you will practice your English more
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beforehand, before the lesson.
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And even if you’re speaking English with someone who’s learning at the same time
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as you, it is still excellent practice.
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You can correct each other’s mistakes.
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You can ask each other questions.
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You can read pre-written dialogues that you find on the internet or parts from a play,
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and you can just use each other to practice your English.
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So that’s the fourth way, find someone who’s also learning English and practice with them.
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So a fifth way to practice your English with another person, and this one’s kind of hard,
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if you live near a tourist area of a large city, you will most likely have English tourists
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there during the nicer months of the year.
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English tourists are usually kind and they’re usually willing to talk to people who are
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learning English.
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So if you can find a way to volunteer as a tour guide or volunteer in the tourist area
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of the closest city to you, or in your city, you will have more opportunities to talk to
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other English speakers.
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Try it!
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You won’t regret it!
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And finally a sixth way to practice your English with someone who speaks English is video games.
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My son has a friend who’s from China and he is learning a lot of English because he
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plays video games with English speakers.
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So he wears his headphones and he has his microphone in front of his mouth, and while
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they’re playing the game they talk to each other in English.
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So joining any kind of video game where there is live chat as part of the game is an excellent
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way to talk with other native English speakers.
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You can do this with your xbox.
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You can do this with your computer.
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You certainly need at least a headset with a microphone, but it is a great way to practice
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your English with native English speakers.
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Well, hey, that was six ways to find a native English speaker that you can practice your
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English with.
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Bob the Canadian here.
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I hope this English lesson was valuable for you.
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If it was please hit the subscribe button below and give me a thumbs up.
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I really hope you enjoyed this video, and if you have some time, there’s a few videos
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that you can watch next after this one.
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If you haven’t seen them, please do!
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Have a great week!
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