How I learned English by watching YouTube (and how you can too)

learning English doesn't have to be boring in today's video I'm going to share how YouTube helped me become fluent in English and all the strategies you can use to do the same let's begin by talking about why YouTube is a great tool I think one of the best things about YouTube is that it's free and available almost everywhere you don't need to buy expensive courses and materials you have YouTube you open it you turn in a video and you learn and you can literally find anything you want on YouTube there's just so much content a

lot of content creators posting new content every single day there are a lot of travel channels educational channels news channels literally whatever you want you'll be able to find on YouTube and this is extremely beneficial because it will expose you to different accents vocabulary cultural nuances that maybe you even won't be able to learn during a class with a teacher just because on YouTube You're immediately exposed to a lot of different people and their different perspectives and let's be honest YouTube is fun unlike a lot of other traditional learning methods you can choose content that

really interests you and this way you will enjoy the process of studying and you will progress a lot faster I remember that this fun aspect was exactly something that Drew me to YouTube When I was a teenager and I discovered American content creators because I went to school I learned English at school but it was just so boring like all of those materials boring text boring audio exercises I was so so bored but once I discovered the type of content that I enjoyed like Vlogs travel videos I fell in love with English because the material

YouTube videos were really interesting to me yes YouTube is a great tool to learn English but another powerful tool that can be extremely helpful in your language learning journey is Camp and they're kindly sponsoring a portion of this video Camp is an online English teaching platform that offers an efficient method to help you learn and improve your English with native speaking teachers and right now they're offering a fantastic feature called the speaking quiz which is a free tool that helps you learn your English level I actually tried it myself and it gave me personalized feedback

on my speaking skills which was extremely helpful right after taking a quiz campy suggested a tailored learning plan that matched my current level and fit my goals it's perfect whether you're a beginner intermediate or even an advanced learner let me show you a quick snippet of my experience taking the speaking quiz so I have my account open on Camp and right now I'm going to take their speaking quiz so I click right here start okay so the first question is describe your favorite place to visit what is it like there okay and I will have

to respond by clicking the mic to start recording okay so my favorite place to visit is the beach I really like going to the beach because I love the climate there I love listening to the ocean the sound of the Waves crashing um um I really like the food and um yeah I feel like for me the beach is definitely my favorite place to visit I also really like swimming swimming in the ocean swimming in the pool so here we have my response and then I'm going to click confirm and here is my feedback grammar

accuracy coherence and vocabulary range okay nice so you can open every single Tab and um learn your feedback this way if you want to learn more about what go here is you can just click right here and read what it is and why it matters coherence is how language is put together and it matters because it helps you connect your ideas together so let's do the final question right now I do like using public transportation because I think it is very convenient and also because I live in a big city with a lot of traffic

and here we can see all of my results on grammar vocabulary and coherence uh here Camp shows you your level mine is high proficiency and it recommends some courses for you as you can see in every single plan they include private lessons small group lessons and also AI learning tools as well as 100% native speaking tutors and four bonus lessons you can always go back to this page and review your speaking level from your dashboard what I really like about the speaking quiz on Camp is that it provides you immediate feedback you can see exactly

where you need to improve and get tips that I tailored are just for you plus Cam's native speakers are there to guide you every step of the way making sure you're improving your speaking skills effectively if you're serious about learning English and want to know what your level is you should absolutely check out Cam's speaking quiz it's free and it's the first step to improving your English speaking skills just click the link in my description take the quiz and get your feedback now I really want to talk about how to choose the right content on

YouTube to improve and progress faster the first important step is f following your interests think about what you love doing in your everyday life maybe it's traveling maybe it's cooking or maybe it's going to the gym and so watch the videos that are connected to these topics because this way it's going to feel less like studying and more like doing something that you genuinely like you're a lot more likely to stick with learning if it's something that you're passionate about the next important step is watching according to your level because I see a lot of

the ERS watch super difficult documentaries on YouTube and obviously they cannot understand anything and then they give up it is absolutely natural to feel demotivated if you're using resources that are way too difficult fortunately on YouTube we have a lot of educational channels that are targeted at Learners of different levels once you become intermediate Advanced you can move on to watching something more difficult content that is originally intended for native speakers but what I can say though is that I've noticed that watching vlogs vogs lifestyle content is even easy for beginners because when I was

a beginner in Spanish I started following a lot of YouTubers from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries who filmed Vlogs their everyday lives and it was pretty easy to watch I would say pretty easy just because they were sharing their everyday experiences like oh I just woke up I'm going to go brush my teeth I'm going to go have breakfast and this is all the vocab that you learn when you're a beginner and finally I do think that using subtitles is an amazing thing I don't know why so many people are afraid of using subtitles as

long as you're using subtitles in your target language like if you're watching a video in English use subtitles in English not in your native language because obviously if you're using subtitles in your native language you're just going to read your native language and not pay attention to English at all subtitles are great because they can help you catch every single word you can take notes you can look up all of this new vocabulary and you can save it to Ani this way you will be growing your vocabulary you will be memorizing more and more words

especially when you're at this intermediate stage and you're starting to learn more complex words right now I would like to share some strategies for Effective learning on YouTube the first super important strategy is active learning when I say Active Learning I don't mean you know playing a YouTube video and going to a different room and doing something else you're not actually watching that YouTube video it's just playing in the background and it's not helping you improve your English skills at all don't just passively watch pause the video repeat after the speaker and write down all

the new words this will help you reinforce what you're learning and when you're paying more attention your brain will start memorizing all of those phrases and words you see on the screen if you're using subtitles and later when you're having a conversation with a native speaker it's going to be easier for you to remember all of those words the next powerful technique that a lot of language learning creators talk about when it comes to watching something in a foreign language is shadowing and you can use this technique when you watch YouTube videos as well you

choose the video you put the subtitles on you play A short segment of it and then you repeat everything after the speaker trying to mimic their intonation their pronunciation their body language everything this this technique Works especially great if you're seeing a new word a new expression on the screen and if you're not sure how to pronounce it you can play the video listen to how the native speaker pronounces this word and then repeat after them I also highly recommend engaging with the content you're watching leaving comments in English engaging with other viewers maybe responding

to their comments liking their comments because this will help your confidence in English a lot output like speaking and writing is always always more difficult than input it is a lot easier to watch a YouTube video than leave a comment under a YouTube video and it completely understand that but if you want to communicate with other people if you want to text your friends in English if you want to talk to your friends in English engaging with content creators through comments is going to be a great first start the next strategy is all about organization

it's about creating playlists of everything you want to watch maybe you have a playlist for all the education videos like videos that are teaching you English teaching you a foreign language you have a playlist for all the Vlogs travel videos lifestyle content and another little step to organize and minimize distractions even further is creating a completely separate account for this language if you're learning English create a new YouTube account so that the algorithm only shows you videos in English if you're learning Spanish do the same thing for every new language you're learning pretty much create

a new YouTube account so that once you're there you're not distracted by videos in other languages because when I go to my main Channel and I open my YouTube homepage it's honestly a mess YouTube is recommending me videos in Russian in Spanish and English and all of these different languages and sometimes when I want to practice Spanish it can be very distracting seeing your favorite Creator post a new video in English and right now you really want to practice Spanish and now let's move on to recommended content types I basically decided to separate videos into

educational channels entertainment channels and Niche content educational channels normally post structured channels like English with Lucy Lucy always posts amazing lessons like literally video lessons and this type of content is especially amazing for beginners and intermediate students the next category I decided to call entertainment channels and they're usually intended for native speakers very casual you watch the video of someone traveling or maybe sharing their everyday life this category is probably going to be my favorite because it helps you understand everyday language all the words that native speakers use every single day and those videos usually

teach you a lot of very useful slang slang that is popular right now because we all know with slang it's kind of like hit or miss because you're learning a lot of new slang and then you realize that no one uses these words anymore and you're like okay why did I learn all of this sling and the last category is Niche content this type of content usually includes channels that are about a very specific topic like computers or food or space or I don't know like very specific topics and these channels usually teach you very

specific vocabulary for examp for example if you're a doctor and if you want to prove your medical English you should follow all of those creators all of those YouTubers who are doctors who post about their I don't know night shifts their experiences their education maybe some fun videos about medicine because in these videos they speak English they use English to describe everything and it is a very natural way for you to acquire all of this vocabulary you need so I think it's going to be it for today's video if you liked it please don't forget

to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to take Cam's speaking quiz you can do that by clicking the link in my description for those of you guys who need specific YouTube channel recommendations I created this video with all the channels that will help you improve your English skills so click right here and keep on watching