Free sites to immerse yourself in English

Thanks to Karen Schweitzer for another of her guest posts:

Immersion is one of the quickest ways to learn almost any language, and English is no exception. To immerse yourself, you can move to an English speaking country, enroll in a fee-based English immersion education program, or take advantage of the many sites online that focus on learning, speaking, writing, and listening to the English language. A few free sites worth exploring include:

EnglishClub.com – EnglishClub.com is an ESL website that provides a wide range of resources for English students. Some of the most useful resources include games, chat rooms, discussion forums, subtitled videos, and pronunciation tutorials.

LingQ – LingQ is an online community for people who want to practice English and other languages with native speakers. After signing up for a free membership, LingQ users can also take a limited number of free language lessons.

Busuu – This free online language learning community makes it easy for members to learn English for free. Busuu members can study learning units and communicate with native speakers via video chat.

Odeo – Odeo is a search engine that can be used to locate English audio and video from around the web. Odeo users can find TV shows, podcasts, and other material and save it to a playlist for later viewing.

Hulu – Hulu makes many different English television shows, movies, and video clips available over the Internet. Nearly all of the site’s offering can be watched for free without having to download anything.

VoiceAmerica – VoiceAmerica is a talk radio network with free streaming English radio programs. More than 300 free programs are available on the network’s seven channels.

Project Gutenberg - Project Gutenberg provides free ebooks in English and links to other books around the web. Many of the books on the Project Gutenberg site are the sort of classics that a student would study in university.

The New York Times – The New York Times website is a great place to find English news on almost any topic. The site also offers cartoons, crossword puzzles, word games, and blogs that welcome comments.

Writing.com – This online writing community is perfect for English language learners who want to practice their writing skills. The community welcomes writers at any level and provides free memberships to everyone.

My Language Exchange – My Language Exchange uses a proven language exchange method (the Cormier method) to help people learn English and other languages fast. After signing up for the free service, you can practice writing English with a pen pal or practice speaking English with a video chat partner.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degrees for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.

IELTS Speaking

Quite a few of my students are taking IELTS again over the next few months as part of their preparations for taking a Master’s course. (I would have thought that graduating from a British university would be proof of a student’s English ability, but it seems that some universities want students to take another IELTS course as well!) A student came to me for some speaking practice saying “I can practice the other skills on my own but I can’t do speaking on my own.” I’d like to point students preparing for IELTS to the materials on UsingEnglish.com written by Alex Case. The materials here are excellent. If I was preparing for IELTS I would print out Alex’s IELTS part 2 speaking materials. I would paste them onto card and cut them up, so I had lots of different cards with different sets of questions on each card. Keep the cards in your pocket. Whenever you have a spare moment, pull out a card and answer the questions out loud (under your breath if you are in public!). Practice speaking with Alex Case’s materials on UsingEnglish.com.

Improving your motivation for learning English

I’ve been talking to a few international students recently about their English learning. What I’ve found is that there are a very few students who are really motivated and do lots of studying on their own, and then there is everybody else! Many students don’t do any work outside class, although they say they would like their English to be better. One student even admitted to me that he didn’t do very much, “but, I have subscribed to the posts on your website.” I think there are quite a few students who subscribe to my posts….. and then do nothing else! Guess what? Subscribing to the posts won’t improve your English! You have to follow the links and do some exercises too! I heard a great thing on TV today (and I won’t tell you what programme it was because it’s too embarrassing to admit I was watching it) when a young woman was talking about her horse jumping activity. She works really hard and wins lots of competitions. She said: “I win the competition at home every day and then go to the show to collect the prize!” I thought that was a great way to look at it. What matters is the work you do when people aren’t looking – that’s when you get the good marks!
Read some uplifting commments about improving motivation from antimoon here.

Listen a minute

“One minute a day is all you need to improve your listening skills.” So says Sean Banville, author of Breaking News English and Listen A Minute (just two of his sites!). Sean Banville is one of those people with such extensive websites (like Larry Ferlazzo I mentioned the other day) that you wonder how they manage to do anything else in their lives. The best known of Sean’s sites is his Breaking News English which has huge numbers of lessons based on current news stories. But I have been exploring his Listen a Minute site and enjoying the short listenings with scripts and quizzes. Do one a day and improve your listening! It’s here.