Why Interact is The Best Way To Improve Your English Skills?

Why Interact is The Best Way To Improve Your English Skills?

Steve Wright

Smart Brains Spotlight 

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The topic for today is “Why Interact is The Best Way To Improve Your English Skills“.

Learning should be for life. Every moment of every day we are being presented with new and important lessons.

Here we will present you one handpicked new and important lesson every day from smart brains and experts around the world.

Today we learned about Why Interact is the best way to improve your English skills and how. Let Steve Wright explain why Why Interact is the best way and most important skills to improve your English skills.

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Jowayna Alfonso

 
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Why Interact is The Best Way To Improve Your English Skills – Steve Wright

Why Interact is The Best Way To Improve Your English Skills?

Steve Wright

How can I become fluent in English?

How To Practice (Interact) English With Native Speakers

Thank you, “Youtube – The English Coach“.

Answer by Steve Wright ( Over 30 years’ experience as an EFL and ESL teacher ). All credit goes to Steve Wright, Thank you!

Why Interact is The Best Way To Improve Your English Skills?

6.5/10

Every major world language involves 4 skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking.  Many EFL and ESL learners are frustrated because they do very well with 1 or 2 of these skills, but not as well with the others.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses- it’s natural to do better with 1 or 2, not as well with another 1 or 2.

The best way to improve in all 4 skills is to interact.  All language is a tool of interaction, and we improve by using language to give our thoughts and wishes to others and to receive their thoughts and wishes.

I teach English to young Japanese schoolchildren, and my first question is, “Do you like playing sports or music?  If so, raise your hand.”  Then I tell them to look around them.  The people with raised hands are probably going to be the best students in English, because they already know that actually playing sports and music is the best way to improve.

So figuring out how to interact with English speakers is the real goal of this question.  Do you live anywhere near any English speakers?  If so, great!  If not, you’ll need to find some.  Here, more is always better.  Your local university or college should have at least a few foreign students.  What stranger in a strange land would turn down the chance to make friends?  The admissions office is often your biggest help here, so ask them to introduce English speakers to you.  And there’s no need to be shy or apologetic here.  You’re asking them for a chance to make their students’ lives better- you’re helping them.

And if there are no universities or colleges near you, please learn how to use Skype or similar apps.  If you can’t go to them, bring them to you- or to your computer screen, the next best thing.

So you have some English speaking acquaintances now.  What next?  Always keep in mind what your ultimate goals with English will be.  Do you want to make movies?  Do you want to write books?  Do you want to do scientific research?  Whatever your goals, try to keep them in mind when you make your plans to spend time with your English partners.

If you’re aiming for a career in medicine, then that should be one of the more common topics in your talks.  What do you know about medicine in your partners’ countries?  What do you want to know? Offer to show local hospitals or other health care institutions to your partners. Offer to introduce a doctor or a nurse you know.  If you can think of anything that will make more interaction possible, do it!  Language is a tool to give and receive knowledge and wisdom; there are new insights even in the most basic things.

Warning!  As you become better acquainted and as you get to know more about each others’ homes, a strange thing will happen.  You will start to understand yourself better; you will have a clearer idea of how you and they are different people.  You will understand that parts of their lifestyles (back in their home countries) should change to be more like yours.  And you will come to understand how some of the things in their country are done better than in yours.  Your interaction with them can be the basis for improving both of your home countries.

This is how cultures and civilizations advance.  Your choice to interact more with others is absolutely the key both for you and for them.

Reference: Steve Wright. “How can I become fluent in English?”  originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Other useful ways to Interact With Native English Speakers

Find a sympathetic listener

Find a sympathetic listener. A sounding board. Someone who will patiently listen to you and try to understand. It’s the role of the mother with the child. It’s a support figure while you try to make sense of the language. It gives you your first steps in producing the language, allows you to try stuff out, test hypotheses, figure out what works, and generally explore the sense world of the language. It could be a friendly colleague, a girl/boyfriend or a language exchange partner. Find one online here.

Thank you, i will teach you a language – teach you the secrets to learning foreign languages.

Join polyglot interest groups on Facebook

As renowned polyglot Lindsay Dow pointed out in a recent blog post, Facebook is chock-full of like-minded language learners who have created interest groups for those studying a specific language, or just language-learners in general. Though they’re not the most widely used feature on Facebook, groups are great ways to personally connect with other language learners, as well as with native speakers of almost any language.

Thank you, flashsticks – the foreign language Post-it® Notes.

Video Game Voice Chat

Do you play video games on your PC or on a console like Xbox or PlayStation? Guess what, you have some English speaking partners already! Many games these days have built-in voice chats, so you can talk to others using a headset with a microphone. Don’t be afraid to join in the conversations.

In fact, video game chat should be easier than real-world conversations because no one knows who you are. You can feel free to make mistakes because you never have to talk to them again if you don’t want to.

Remember that you might not learn perfect grammar here, but you will get to hear native speakers taking naturally. Also keep in mind that some video games (for example, shooters like “Call of Duty”) have a lot of cursing in the voice chat, and not everyone is nice. But there are a lot of great gamers who would love to help you out and have fun playing games while you chat.

Thank you, FluentU – brings language learning to life through language immersion with real-world videos.

Useful Apps to Interact and find English Native speakers

Cambly: English Tutors Online – Cambly gives you instant access to native English speakers over video chat, so you can learn and gain confidence!

Italki – Learn a language online.

HelloTalk – Talk to the World.

Tandem – Find a Language Exchange Partner on Tandem today.

Conversation Exchange – Language learning with native speakers.

Preply – Find language native speakers.

Duolingo – is the world’s most popular way to learn a language.

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