[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to english with lucy today we're going to talk about whether you can learn english at home on your own i think you can and i'm going to give you some tips and recommendations it's a pretty weird time isn't it a lot of us are suddenly having to spend a lot of time on our own at home but this does not mean that we have to put a pause on what we want to achieve like learning a language it is possible to continue learning a language on your own at home
and i'm not going to talk about all of the tried and tested methods like watching tv shows movies with subtitles listening to the radio i've mentioned all of that before these are new tips that are more relevant than ever before let's get straight into it the first one is free conversation classes if you want to learn to speak a language you are going to have to practice conversing i reached out to some of my students that i consider to be very very successful and i asked them what they are doing during lockdown the one activity
that came up time and time again was online conversation classes and i thought that was really interesting because i expected that they were paying for them but it turns out that a lot of them are doing it for free this surprised me i didn't think that there would be people running online classes for free but there are and you can find them and you can use them to improve your language skills on your own there are lots of non-profit online communities offering zoom conversation lessons there are lots of teachers that offer these group sessions to
advertise their private sessions as well for all the other tips i'm going to provide links in the description box but i'm not for this one because i don't want to overwhelm a small group basically i will leave it to you to search websites like meetup.com and facebook and other language forums to find these zoom groups sometimes they're run by teachers and sometimes they're run by students learners of english who want to meet other like-minded students and practice together most importantly if you can't find one of these groups or you can't find one that suits you
why not try hosting one i'm sure if you post in language forums or underneath youtube videos you will be able to find a group of like-minded people who also want to practice conversation with you you might think well that's great but how do i access proper feedback if nobody there is a professional teacher accountability partners or accountability buddies this one depends on your personality and whether you like working under pressure or not i know that i work best under pressure so this tip is one that i've used a lot in the past when people embark
on a difficult challenge like losing weight or running a marathon they often find it easier to do it with someone somebody that's going to act as an extra push of motivation because sometimes if you don't feel like doing something but you see someone that you're close to doing that thing it pushes you and it persuades you to do what you don't necessarily want to do this applies to me if i see my fiance will doing lots of exercise and going to the gym i feel far more inclined to join him you can do this with
language learning too you can find an accountability partner i bet there's a nicer name for it english buddy or something like that or a motivation mate somebody that you can be in touch with you can check in when you've done your study session you can share something new that you've learned you can compare techniques this can all be done over whatsapp or text message or email but forming a friendship with someone and being in the same situation offering those kind words when you need to offering those motivational words when they need them i had this
when i was learning spanish at school with my friend tasman she was amazing we always spoke to each other on whatsapp in spanish and when i heard that she had joined a new conversation class or something like that i felt really motivated there was a little element of competition as well it's whatever you like maybe you don't like competition maybe you do maybe you just want someone to say nice words maybe you want somebody to tell you off i don't necessarily recommend that but everybody learns in different ways number four listen to specific podcasts i've
mentioned podcasts before i've got lots that i recommend i absolutely love podcasts because you can multitask i love running and listening to something educational whilst i'm doing exercise seems like an excellent use of my time if you want to improve your listening and pronunciation the most amazing way to do it is to listen to a podcast whilst reading the transcript at the same time i always recommend that with audio books but i'm focusing on podcasts today what i'm talking about is something that i think all podcasters should do adding transcripts to your podcasts it's great
for language learning it's also so important for accessibility if you're hard of hearing you're missing out on a lot if there aren't transcriptions provided there is a fantastic website that i've found that nearly solves this problem i think many of you will find it very very useful indeed if there is a podcast that you like one of the popular podcasts that does not provide transcriptions there is a website called podscribe i'll put all the links in the description box but basically because there is a cost associated with generating transcriptions this website offers you the opportunity
to pay for a transcription to be generated it's often between five and seven dollars per hour long episode once you have made that donation those transcriptions are then there available for everyone so it's a real community thing if 500 people just made that one donation then there are podcast transcriptions for 500 episodes out there i really recommend taking a look lots of transcriptions have already been donated and you can also donate some other ones so you're not only helping yourself you're helping other people as well and not just people that are learning languages people that
have a disability as well what a fantastic idea there are such marvelous people on the planet there really are the last one number five is imitation a topic i've spoken about a lot before it's what i did when i was learning spanish it really helped me achieve natural fluent pronunciation it's no secret that i used to live in spain and when i conversed with my spanish friends i looked at their mouths which sounds weird but it's not instead of making eye contact i would make eye to mouth contact and i would look at their lips
and their lip position and their mouth shape and i'd look at where they put their tongues in their mouth and how their teeth were in comparison to their tongues um i probably made them feel a bit uncomfortable so that is one of the beauties of studying at home on your own you can do this without embarrassment all you need is a mirror and a smart device take a video of somebody speaking slowly and clearly if you really like the way somebody speaks but they speak quite quickly play around with slowing them down you can do
this on youtube sometimes it doesn't work so well make sure it's a video where you can clearly see their mouth hold the video up to your face play the video hold the mirror up to your face recreate the mouth movements and the intonation and the tongue position if there is a sound that you just can't grasp this technique will really really help you when people try to improve their public speaking whether they're learning a new language or doing it in their own native language it is often recommended that they practice in front of a mirror
this is very much the same it's about getting more comfortable right that's it for today's lesson i really hope you enjoyed it and i really hope you can take some of these tips and put them into practice don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media i've got my facebook my instagram and my website englishwithlucy.co.uk there you can access my mailing list and previous lessons and pdfs as well i'll see you soon for another lesson [Music] [Music] bye
