Did you know over 2 billion people speak English?
I'm Oliver and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
I'm glad you're one of those 2 billion.
Today we are going to be looking at a very useful topic, and that is how to learn english through youtube, more specifically, how to learn to speak english.
So this is one of the best and easiest tools for learning english.
It's completely free, and that is youtube.
Of course, just by watching YouTube videos, there are some great ways to learn English.
So today I'm going to share some tips about how to make the most of YouTube for learning English.
I'll recommend you some other great channels as well and I'll give you some extra bonus tips on how to use it effectively.
Let's get started.
So first off, very quickly, why is YouTube great for learning English?
There are so many reasons.
And of course, you're listening to this video right now in easy English for language learners.
And that shows the variety of content on YouTube.
You can find videos on almost any topic.
Cooking, travel, movies, music, and of course, even English lessons or English listening practice.
And that's what's so amazing about YouTube is you can find videos on anything that you are interested in.
And because over 2 billion people speak English, there is so much content, so many videos to choose from.
One of the hardest parts of language learning is sometimes staying interested and motivated.
But with YouTube you can watch and consume content in English about topics that you are interested in.
Okay, let's go to point two.
But first, if you're enjoying this video, like the video.
Okay, point two, different accents and styles.
So you can listen to people speaking English from all over the world on YouTube.
You can listen to American English, British English, Canadian English, Australian English and even non-native speakers speaking English from different countries too.
It is by far, in my opinion, the best place to practice real accents and speaking styles.
So when you watch movies and TV shows, quite often they are either standard American English, so a standard American accent, or a standard British accent.
But there are so many different regional accents within each country and all around the world.
So often people, when they go to English speaking countries for the first time, are quite surprised that people sound very different and it can be quite hard to understand them.
So with YouTube, you can practice listening and understanding these accents.
Okay, the third point is control how you learn.
You can pause, rewind and even slow down the video if it's too fast.
That's amazing.
And so many videos have subtitles that can help you to understand.
Like this one.
For example, I have built in subtitles to the video where you can read along and see any words that are difficult or hard to understand.
So that brings me on to my first tip.
If you are like a beginner or lower intermediate levels, you should watch English videos with subtitles.
And many of them on YouTube do have subtitles.
So first, find videos with subtitles and watch them.
Then try watching the same videos again without subtitles.
And this will help you to practice and improve your listening skills, as well as your reading skills when you use the subtitles.
Okay, so like I mentioned at the beginning, choose videos that you enjoy.
So the easy way to find these are to put English before what you want to find.
For example, you could do English cooking recipes if you like cooking.
And that way you will definitely get English videos.
Or you can simply search in English cooking recipes, because YouTube will give you English videos because you have searched in English.
When you watch these videos, one great thing that you can do is imitate what you hear.
Imitate means to copy and repeat.
So you want to listen to what the speaker is saying, focus on their pronunciation, the tone and the rhythm of their speech, and then copy it, pause the video and repeat back what you're hearing.
This is a great way to copy and practice accents and pronunciation from YouTube.
And you can even do it with my podcast episodes.
Okay, the next point to get the most out of learning English from YouTube is to make notes.
Don't just watch videos.
I mean, that's great.
You can do that sometimes to relax and do some relaxed learning, but you should also make notes.
So when you hear a word that you didn't know, write that word down, put it in your flip cards, for example, and try to remember it later.
You can even write down the whole sentence that the word was in.
And this is because the context of how that word was used can be very helpful to remember and learn it.
OK, so my final tip is to do short but frequent practice.
And what I mean by that is to try watching short videos every day.
Like, for example, this channel.
So these short podcast episodes.
And this is much better, in my opinion, than watching one long video per week.
So it's so much better doing short little bits every day than one long bit once per week.
It's having that routine and that continuous gradual progress every day is so much more important.
Even 10 minutes per day of YouTube in English, for example.
One of these episodes will make a difference long term and really help you with vocabulary, with listening and even with speech.
There are other channels that I recommend as well as this one.
Of course, I think this channel is great for you.
Do subscribe if you're new.
But there are other resources such as BBC Learning English, which I think is great.
I'd also recommend watching things such as TED Talks.
There are a lot of TED Talks which are given by native speakers and non-native speakers too.
Okay.
Now that we've talked about some tips, we've talked about some recommended channels, what are some problems that people often have when they try to learn English for YouTube?
One problem is just watching the videos without practicing.
So watching the videos and listening is great.
That's fantastic.
But remember, it's good to practice, to listen and to write as well.
And then review.
Let's take, for example, if you listen to this podcast episode or another one of my videos.
You can listen and watch it through one time without maybe reading subtitles, without writing or pausing, and then re-watch and listen again, focusing on key parts or aspects.
Or you can do it the other way around.
The first time you watch, you can pause, read all of the words that you don't know and then, at the very end, re-listen without pausing and see and notice the improvement the second time.
You will understand so much more.
Another problem some people have is not picking videos that are suitable for them.
And what I mean is they choose videos that are too difficult.
For example, with very fast speech or very strong accents.
So do start with easier videos and easier podcast episodes, and then you can start watching like native speaker.
Normal content.
So just be consistent.
Do a little bit of practice every day and try to follow these tips, and you too can learn English through YouTube.
Thank you for watching or listening, and I hope you enjoyed it.
If you want to support me, there is a Patreon link below with bonus episodes every week.
Thank you for watching.
Goodbye.
