Sandra’s suggestions for keeping up your English fluency after you leave inlingua Vancouver.
So you’ve had a great time learning English at Inlingua in Vancouver. You have made good progress but you are worried that you will forget what you learned. You have wondered what will happen when you go back home: Will you lose your English because you don’t have anyone to speak to? What can you do to keep improving your English fluency?
Here’s a list of things you can do:
- Watch English movies with (or without ) English sub-titles; you can watch the same movie more than once so you can study the dialogue; choose a movie that’s fun, but also one that will teach you some English phrases that you want to be able to speak. Here are some sites that help you learn English using videos:
- English movie clips – http://www.real-english.com/ (for ESL learners)
- Listen to English Audio books (read the text and listen at the same time and/or just listen). You can purchase audio books on-line, or check out these websites with free listening resources:
- ESL BITS – http://esl-bits.net/ (free audio books; also has songs, radio dramas & more)
- ELLO – http://www.elllo.org/ (listen to conversations with English speakers from around the world; click on highlighted words to hear an explanation of word’s meaning)
- 5 minute English – http://www.5minuteenglish.com/listening.htm (quick listening practice – dialogues, new vocabulary, a few questions – each exercise takes just 5 minutes!)
- Learn English through song lyrics. Some sites are especially for ESL learners, like these:
- My English Pages – http://www.myenglishpages.com/site_php_files/lyrics_and_songs.php
- Lyrics Training – http://www.lyricstraining.com/ (select “beginner” and you can fill in the gaps while listening and watching popular music videos)
- Use an English learning websites that uses multi-media. You can check these out to start:
- Breaking News English – http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/eslvideo/ (British English)
- TED talks – http://www.ted.com/talks (Very interesting topics for more advanced learners; even the teachers love to listen to TED talks!)
- Start an English conversation group: get together with a group of people who all want to practice their English; meet at a coffee shop, tea house or someone’s home; choose topics in advance so you can prepare vocabulary and phrases in advance.
- Stay in touch with friends you made at Inlingua using skype or other on-line resources, so that you can chat
in-person or on-line, and maybe even a video-chat!!