Today there are many opportunities to learn a particular foreign language on your own. At first glance, it seems that it is not difficult: the network is full of recommendations, video tutorials, applications that should help anyone to speak another language. The girl decided to test the effectiveness of some techniques on herself. His experience will be useful to those who are about to begin their studies. Add me.

There are tricks that don’t work, but there are also good alternatives to those tricks that can be much more effective.

Angelina had never studied English before. At the same time, every year the need for her development grew for her. It was difficult for her to work, she wanted to read strangers on social networks. She was also afraid of traveling to places where her native language was not spoken. She says she was just ashamed because it seems everyone knows English these days.

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When Angelina wanted to determine her main vocabulary, she had no idea how many English words she actually knew.

“Brand names, slogans, vehicle markings and many other minor signs of life have already put enough ground in my head to name many objects and actions,” she says.

Learn common verbs

Tips: Foreign language teachers recommend the development of any language to start with the study of verbs (moreover, learn each verb at once in all forms).

“Yes, a lot of words had to be written with transcriptions. I still don’t know what the rules for reading a text in English sound like (they were learned at the level of intuition during training), ”explains Angelina.

Result: it took him about seven minutes to memorize a verb. And she spent a few extra seconds a day staring: she was just passing the new word through all the shapes, thus staring it into memory.

The method has proven to be very effective. Angelina says that after learning the most common everyday verbs, it’s already possible to communicate in English (after all, most of the average person’s everyday sentences are built around the action that l speaker asks or is talking about).

Card applications

Tips: use special applications to expand the vocabulary in which you have to fill in cards by memorizing words.

Result: Angelina noted that app cards help memorize words, but she has never used many of the words she learned from such an app in a speech. Therefore, Angelina decided to find a way to expand the vocabulary relevant to her. She found an alternative.

Replacement: much more useful in his case was to keep a diary.

“I took notes there every day and gradually expanded the list of words used. What I had to write about every day in the diary was ingrained in my memory in a natural way,” she says.

Use language exchange

Tips: use language exchange platforms to practice communication. This is an online language exchange. The concept of language exchange is very simple. Basically, you find people who are learning your native language and offer to help them. In return, they will help you learn your native language.

Result: language exchange requests did not suit Angelina. She says most native speakers didn’t want to communicate in the app, but residents of Turkey, Egypt, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. They themselves had recently learned English and had made many mistakes there. Their goal was not knowledge, but first, as the girl noted.

Replacement: she eventually persuaded her husband to join in the study of English and then practiced speaking and writing in English only with him.

Daily communication

Tips: try to conduct as many conversations in English as possible, practice the language daily.

Result: Angelina and her companion also tried to communicate as much as possible in English. But she says finding subjects got harder and harder each time. After all, having a meager vocabulary, a person subconsciously thinks first of all about what he can say, and not about what he wants to say.

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Replacement: To practice translating their thoughts into English, they imagined the game Guess the Song. One of them recalled a song known to both of them and translated its meaning into English (as close to the text as possible), and the second had to guess this song. “At the beginning, we could play with short breaks of two hours or more,” says the young girl. This technique can be used not only with songs, but you can talk about the plot of a movie or a book.

Watch foreign language movies

Tips: Watch your favorite English movies without translation.

Result: This method did not suit Angelina. She quickly got bored, and she couldn’t see where to apply the phrases she heard in the film.
Replacement: She replaced movies with live streaming from popular English-speaking Instagram users. She liked their live talk. In the comments, they could ask questions or simply read what other viewers of the show had to say. “For me, it was much more useful, and my involvement was much higher,” explains the young girl.

First realization of success

Angelina felt she had taken her first steps in learning the language when she understood an English meme with no translation. After that, she began to read as many users as possible, writing in English on Twitter and Facebook. She says it helped her learn to understand slang, epithets and abbreviations.

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“It was a very important moment for me, because as part of my professional tasks, I wanted above all to learn how to translate messages from social networks and entertainment portals,” she explains.

After 3 months

Angelina assures that three months is enough to learn simple communication in English. But he emphasizes that the learning process must be constant and systematic, without interruption. Now she can easily correspond with a native speaker without an online dictionary or translator.

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