One day I asked my students:
How do you get better at speaking English?My question was about how they self-study English. Specifically the speaking skill. Some responded with apps, websites or communities. Others responded with offline techniques. The important thing is that STUDENTS find these valuable and helpful. It’s not what TEACHERS think is best for them. Sometimes TEACHERS and STUDENTS are aligned and sometimes they aren’t. And that’s ok. 🙂
Here’s what students use to improve their English speaking skills.
APPS AND WEBSITES
COMMUNITIES
- Talk to other people on social media like Facebook, Twitter or Reddit
- Find an interesting server on Discord (for example: Language Sloth)
- Listen/talk to people in multiplayer online games (Genshin Impact, Minecraft, Roblox)
- Extra credit: Real English for Gamers
- Make a group video chat with Zoom or Google Meet (meet with friends to have a discussion or study for the IELTS exam)
- Altspace Language Exchange meetup
- VR chat
- Omegle
- HelloTalk
- Tandem
- Speaky
OFFLINE TECHNIQUES
- Record your voice and think about your mistakes and correct them
- Change the language of your phone/computer to English for a week
The picture was taken by Tima Miroshnichenko.