Learning English Outside the Classroom

Working in a language school as a teacher, I’m often asked by students how they can improve their English when they return to their home countries or when they are not in the classroom. There are many ways to do this. So, I’m now going to share the best ideas with you.


Reading
Whatever level your English is, reading will help to consolidate what you have learnt in the classroom or from a grammar book and is a great way to learn new vocab. Reading should be an enjoyable activity so it often helps if you choose a subject that you have an interest in, for example I love football so I enjoy reading about football in another language (I’m currently studying Modern Greek at evening classes). You can read most English newspapers online nowadays. Something I sometimes do in class is compare a news story that has been written about in two different newspapers, you can see how the language and style varies in each newspaper, for example comparing an article in The Sun to the same article in The Guardian can be very interesting and shows how an article in the tabloid press (The Sun) can often be harder to read than an article in a broadsheet because The Sun uses far more phrasal verbs and colloquial language than The Guardian. See links for both newspapers below.

All good bookshops will sell graded readers from beginner to advanced; you can read anything from Shakespeare to John Grisham. Sometimes it’s a good idea to read a book that you’ve read in your language. Lots of my students have read Harry Potter in English and because they’ve already read it in their own language they don't feel the need to look up every word they don't understand.

When you are reading it sometimes a good idea to focus on one thing, for example, you just read one column of a text or newspaper article and you focus on one aspect of language such as prepositions or phrasal verbs. You can then see which preposition is used with which noun, adjective or verb.

Internet

There are so many internet sites for English language learners to use. As I mentioned earlier, most English newspapers have sites. If you are studying for one of the Cambridge exams like FCE or CAE then you can go on to Flo-joe and practise grammar, reading and listening. See link below.

My favourite site is the award-winning BBC website, as well as having podcasts and interesting news stories it has an English language learning section which is excellent. It an easy site to navigate so try it and see. See link below.

Films, TV and Radio

Watching films is a great way to improve your English, you can turn the subtitles on and play back scenes again and again until you understand or can follow what is being said. TV can be a lot harder to follow but can be good if you watch the same programmes each week like the Apprentice and Dragons’ Den (both on the BBC) and understand what’s happening. I like to listen to Greek radio so that I hear Greek everyday and I try especially hard to listen to the news. Find an English radio station that you like and listen regularly; there is a broad range to choose from such as Radio One with DJs from all over the British Isles with their various accents, to LBC which stands for London’s Biggest Conversation, this station has discussions and phone-ins, it never plays music. See links below.

Out and About

Something that I do and encourage my students to do is to use ‘dead’ time to learn English. For example, when you are travelling on a train or bus or are queuing in a museum or shop; you should look around and see if you can describe your surroundings and the people around you in English, is there any vocabulary that you don’t know? If so you could make a note of it in your own language and look it up later.

Finally, speak English as often as possible. If you go to English classes, ask the people in your group if they want to go out and speak English together. If you aren’t having lessons and live outside the UK then you could see if someone wants to do a language exchange with you. If you have a language school or university near you then you may find that there’s a native speaker who is willing to speak English to you for an hour or so in exchange for you speaking or teaching them your language.

Learning English should be fun…try some of these methods and let me know how you get on and if you have any tips on how you learn English outside the classroom let me know!

Good luck and have fun!


http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/
http://www.lbc.co.uk/