How to learn English as a third language in a fun way?
Yes it’s possible.
I also put together an ebook for all the resources I mention here. Get the pdf here.
I have a friend, let’s call him Jerry not his real name of course.
Jerry is from Madagascar, that is where we met.
His first language is Malagasy and he understands French! He loves studying and I definitely consider him an education activist! I will stop his bio there because if I continue, any other sentence I am going to tell you will reveal his identity!
Here is Jerry’s story, Jerry really wants to learn English but he did not have the luxury of getting a private tutor or going to a language school because his parents did not have the money. He already learned basic English in school but it is not focused on speaking!
So, Jerry asked one of his friends, who is not me, by the way, how can he learn to listen and speak English. His friend told him to listen to the radio station BBC World. And he started listening to it because he really wanted to improve his language skills.
Fact is, BBC World is a radio station that broadcasts international news and a lot of their journalists are native British English speakers. So, Jerry did not know what they were talking about, he did not pick any words because the journalists spoke very fast and you can not pause a radio station!
Most importantly, the topics were not things that Jerry was interested in. After a while, he decided it was a waste of his time and he gave up!
Years later we met and he told me this story and I laughed! I definitely would not recommend anyone starting their English journey to listen to BBC World. What I recommend instead is that you decide what topics are you really interested in, what topics are you passionate about, and what topics you see yourself talking about in English.
Note those topics in a notebook. Now, there are those things called podcasts that you can use to improve your English or any other language while learning more about your topics of interest! So you go to Google, you write in the search bar, “Podcasts about -whatever your topic is- for beginners and intermediate English learners”.
There will be tons of results and you just need to read and see which one will go best for you! There are podcasts for any topic you can imagine, also, some podcasts have their show note that you can download for free so that you can listen and read at the same time.
That way, if you do not know the word they are using, you can pause the podcast and open your dictionary. You can also download those podcasts so that you will not need the internet all the time to listen to them and you can listen to your downloaded episodes as many times as you want until you understand everything!
This is also a very good way to use your time when you are stuck in traffic waiting for the bus or in line for an ATM. Just make sure to bring a headphone!
A second way I definitely recommend is to download good English songs. What I mean by good is a song that tells a story, not just “Let’s Dance” twenty times. So you download the song and search for the lyrics and French translation.
Listen to the song in a loop until you can pronounce every word they are saying and know the translation of each sentence! There are already songs that are recommended by a lot of English Teachers so just search “Good songs to learn English” and you can see a lot of titles.
You just need to listen to each one until you know what song you like and commit to learning that song. It does not matter if it is famous or outdated, or weird, as long as it tells a story and teaches you vocabulary, and pronunciation, that is okay. I have been listening to Bruno Mars, Enrique Iglesias, Shakira, and The Script and I recommend you listen to them.
To conclude, I just told you about two ways to improve your English for free. Those methods are listening to podcasts and learning songs. It is totally free, anybody with a smartphone can do that and it is really fun! If you liked what I just shared, please consider following me and tell your friends to do the same!
