English Speaking Practice, Know How to Pronounce Words, and What to Do if You're Busy (AJ #4)

Hello, and welcome to episode 4 of Ask

Jack: the free series where I answer your questions about learning

English. So, I've had a great response to the first 3 episodes out there

Thank you so much for your questions, for sharing

the videos and for, or course, watching them too

Now, in this episode, we're going to have a look at three more questions I've received from

you guys,

and if you have a question about learning English that you haven't

asked me yet, then you can do so by clicking the link

Now, when you're ready, let's get into question 1

Ibrahim asks: how can I improve if I have no one to practice with?

Thank you for your question Ibrahim. Now, there are so many things that you can do

to improve your

English without having conversations with someone; you know, you can do things

like

reading; do different methods that are gonna improve your speaking;

so many things that you can do but

it's also important to get that natural practice... to have that interaction

with people.

This is going to help your English in a big way and it's going to make you

excited about using your English at the same time.

Now, the good news is... is that because of the Internet, there are so many different

ways that you can find people

to practice your English with, in fact, I made a video about

how you can get more speaking practice online. Additionally,

in your local area there should be people that speak English;

generally speaking, in the big cities, this... this is usually the case.

So, think about ways that you can make friends with English speakers in your

local area

so that you can actually have this conversation with them.

But as I say, (there are) so many ways to find speakers online

so that you can practice, and in the show notes, I'll have more notes on this for you.

Pascale asks: how can I know how to pronounce words in English

without looking at a dictionary?

Pascale, English is really problematic when it comes to pronunciation

it's not phonetic so this means you can't know

the pronunciation just by reading a word so,

therefore, looking up the word in a dictionary and listening to the word

is recommended if you want to know how it's pronounced.

But this also leads into something that I recommend doing too,

and that is to listen to English as much as possible,

and if you're going to read in English, try to find books and resources

that also have the audio format too. Now, I know a lot of English learners who like

to listen and read at the same time

and doing this is going to help you attach sounds

to the words that you read; but, additionally,

try to listen to other things too - listening

is so important especially with English which isn't

a phonetic language. But if you see a word

on a page and you don't know how to pronounce it, look it up in

an online dictionary and listen to the pronunciation

that way you going to know exactly how it's pronounced. Jafar from Indonesia asks:

I want to improve my English but I don't have time to learn.

What should I do? Thank you for this question Jafar.

Now, I receive this question all the time because

we're all busy; we all have jobs;

we have to spend time with family; we have different interests and hobbies

and, therefore, we we look at our schedule and think,

"When can I do this? When can I learn English?"

or in my case when can I learn to play the guitar?

or learn photography? Or whatever hobby this may be?

Now, I made a video on this subject and I talked about the things that you can do

if you are too busy to learn english. So I'll link to that now...

but in a nutshell (there are) the two things to bear in mind here; two things to think about:

the first one is thinking about your priorities -

now, are you doing things that aren't as important as learning English

and if so, why not replace those activities

with English. Now, this doesn't mean that it has to be

English study because ... it could be as simple as

instead of watching television in your native language, watch television

in English. And just thinking about the different things that you can do in

English

throughout your day. Now, if you are super busy

and you think, I don't have half an hour today to learn english

then listen to English while doing other things

always have English radio on while you're working, for example,

and listen to English, obviously, when you're going to work

So, there are different ways that you can fit more English into your daily routine

even if you're really busy.

Now, my question for this video is this: do you find English pronunciation

difficult?

Leave your answers below this video, thanks for watching

and see you next time!