If you don’t use your phone to learn English, then you are missing out.
Your smartphone is an amazing tool for learning English, and several more such tools are right in front of you. Students can also use their smartphones to get some essay writer help, this way they can improve their grades a lot.
Accessories and gadgets that you already have can be used every day to learn new vocabulary and grammar or practice speaking skills and listening comprehension. You just need to figure out how to use them to learn English.
Below we will tell you how to make devices part of your strategy for learning English.
- Your favorite websites
Websites that you enjoy visiting can be a great tool for practicing English language skills. And we do not mean those sites that are specifically designed for learning English, for example, WordReference forums or BBC Learning English. No, we are talking about websites that you visit every day for entertainment, to read the news, and to learn new things about your friends!
You can read these sites in your native language. But why not change the language to English and turn this time into an English lesson?
Browse blogs. Blogger, LiveJournal, and Tumblr are popular blogging platforms where you will find thousands of blogs (online diaries) on literally any topic. Blogs are conducted in many languages, but the largest part of their users are still from English-speaking countries.
If you subscribe to several English-language blogs that will be interesting to you, you will always have something new and fascinating to read, with a lot of new words and slang words. You will also be able to generally improve your reading skills in English.
Check out Twitter. Twitter is a well-known microblogging platform where the text of a post is limited to 140 characters. This means that you can spend five-minute classes learning the news about your favorite celebrities and brands on Twitter.
On Twitter, you can find a great variety of different content, which is also updated every second, so you will never get bored while learning new trendy vocabulary and enjoying the art of summarizing ideas on the letter.
Browse content and learn with Pinterest. Pinterest is a social media that is difficult to imagine as a tool for learning English, but it is great for vocabulary replenishment. Learning new words through graphs and images is not new to us, but you can go to Pinterest for free, and there are also a lot of different beautiful images that can be searched for by keywords.
You can use this platform as a graphic dictionary if you search for unfamiliar words here and view the search results. Beware! Pinterest is very addictive!
Don’t forget about the video! Videos are not only interesting to watch, but they can also be stopped and rewound, which is why this is an ideal activity to improve your listening comprehension skills. FluentU is a great resource for practicing English based on English-language videos. It contains videos from the real world (music videos, movie trailers, news, and motivational speeches), based on which English lessons were created.
As in other blogs, there are videos on a variety of topics, so you may not even notice that you are learning a language while you are watching something fascinating for you.
- Your mobile phone
Smartphones have become so familiar that we no longer leave home without them. Thanks to them, we stay in touch, occupy our free time, share information about our lives on social media, and even work. There are many wonderful applications for learning English that can be installed on a smartphone. However, there are other ways of using the phone!
Change the phone’s interface language to English. Go to your phone’s settings and change the interface language to English so that menus and commands are displayed in that language. If you think this is stupid, we remind you that even the smallest details can affect the course of events. This way you will see more English text every day just by looking at your phone.
Communicate with the assistant on the phone in English. If you have the latest version of the Android system or you have an iPhone, then most likely it has a built-in assistant. The most famous voice assistant is Siri in iPhone devices, but Android devices also have their assistant. Since now the language of your phone’s system is English, Siri will also receive commands from you in English.
Start talking! Try saying simple phrases like “McDonald’s opening hours” or “what’s the weather today?” So you will practice pronunciation and use the capabilities of your phone to the maximum!
Install a good dictionary app. This way you can always watch English words while you are studying. English-English dictionaries turn out to be the most useful, but even Google Translate will do!
- Your music player
Listening to music can be a great language practice, so spend your time listening to English-language songs! Free Music Archive and Jamendo are great resources to download music for free and legally. You can also find a lot of good free songs on Amazon. Of course, iTunes and Google Music give you a wider choice, but only if you are willing to pay a couple of dollars a month to listen to your favorite artists.
However, your music player is capable of much more than just playing music! In particular, you can download and play podcasts.
Podcasts are great for English classes. Look for podcasts like radio shows that match your interests and that can be downloaded directly to your device so that you can listen to them anywhere and anytime.
Many podcasts are designed specifically for those who learn English (for example, Elementary Podcasts from the British Council or 6 Minute English from the BBC). You can also choose your favorite topic and just practice listening skills of English speech while learning the news, having fun (or even all together and at once)! You’ll also find some great podcasts on the TED Blog. Podcasts can also be downloaded to your smartphone or computer!
- Your e-book
If you are passionate about reading, then you probably have an e-book like Kobo or Kindle. In these portable devices, you can carry hundreds or even thousands of books with you.
And you know what? Reading English-language books is a classic method of learning English, so an e-book is a perfect tool for this!
If you still know the language at the beginner level, then look for books that are adapted for your level – with a simple dictionary and explanations of the meanings of some words and expressions.
Intermediate: Popular fiction and detective stories can be an interesting challenge for you!
Advanced: Look among American and British classics who write a more grammatically complex language and use colorful and diverse vocabulary.
To start your journey into the world of e-books, check out the Open Culture resource list of 800 e-books that are legally available for download for free. Kobo also has its free e-book library, which is updated every week.
Don’t you have an e-book? You can read on your smartphone. Both the Apple app store and Google Books have thousands of books that can be downloaded for free!
- Your notebook (and didactic cards!)
An old-fashioned, but proven way to study English involves pen and paper. A small notebook that you can carry with you is a flexible tool for learning English, which is available to you everywhere – regardless of whether there is a Wi-Fi signal here or not.
Here’s how you can study with a notepad:
Buy a notebook. You will make your English language diary out of it. Get into the habit of writing down a brief description of your day in English (every day or every other day). It’s a great way to practice your writing skills. You will quickly see gaps in grammar and vocabulary, as well as find areas in which you need to tighten your knowledge!
Make didactic cards. You will use them to learn grammatical structures, difficult vocabulary, and anything else you want to focus your attention on. Any stack of small, clean paper cards will do. As soon as you make the cards, carry them in your diary for English.
Learn the material! Now you have educational material with different aspects of English that are most important to you. And these materials are ready for you to delve into them anytime and anywhere, as long as you carry them with you.
We hope that these ideas have inspired you to reconsider your attitude toward your favorite accessories and devices.