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 U.S. or another English speaking country?"

And the answer is, yes.

Thanks so much for watching, I'll see you ... ah, 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 am 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.

"The 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.

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 it, anyway 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."

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 meet up as well.

Let's take a look at the website really quick to see what options are available.

Let's go to meetup.com.

We can imagine that you don't already have an account, so we'll go down to language and

culture.

Type in a big city.

How about in Brazil, Sao Paulo.

Great.

Well, here we have, whoa, 9,000 people, English speakers.

This is excellent.

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, right?

So, try 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 an exchange student for a week, a couple of days, a month,

as long as you want, or maybe even host them for dinner.

I've had a couple of students recently send me e-mails and say, "I'm so excited because

next week a British exchange student is coming over to my house for dinner and we're going

to 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 of 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

of 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 friends 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 do 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 actual 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 student exchange program.

Try 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 U.S.

My fourth tip is to get involved in your community, specifically places where there might be tourists.

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 a little bit in English.

I felt so comforted and I felt like I could really understand what they were saying.

If you would like to volunteer at a festival, volunteer at an event, or maybe there's even

a English pub, or an Irish bar, or an American restaurant, there are probably some English

speakers who work there or who go there.

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 e-mail 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 going to get spam calls and spam e-mails.

It's not a good way to share your information, but also, it's not a good way to connect with

someone.

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.

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 speak on Skype," because you know what?

It takes a lot of courage to speak with anyone in a second language in English, but to speak

with a total stranger who just threw their contact information at you on the internet,

it's a pretty low possibility that that's actually going to work out.

Even if they're a nice person, it's going to be not as comfortable to connect.

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.

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 Hangout, and it's a really great way to connect

with each other and learn every day, learn about different cultures and also use English.

You can join up here if you'd like for $5 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 tutor, without moving to the U.S.

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 U.S., 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 U.S. for a long time and they're still struggling

to learn English, because they don't get out and meet other people.

Even if you were living in the U.S., 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 e-book, "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.