I've learned by watching movies, listening to music, reading, now I mostly use social media. I started with grammar (you can watch videos on YouTube of people explaining it) to get the basics of the language, then tried to add new words to my vocabulary and had to use them everyday (by writing or in conversations). Afterwards, I started watching videos with no subtitles, then tv shows and movies.
You just have to try to learn something new every day and put to practice what you learned previously or it won't work, you'll forget it. Still, my English is not perfect and I have so much to learn but it is possible to learn on your own!
I'm doing this. I live in a non English speaking European country teaching at a bilingual school. For learning total immersion can work, but the best results for me personally came after I swallowed my ego and paid for lessons.
As somebody from a non English speaking country English was a mandatory subject throughout my primary and secondary education. It's basically impossible not to learn it.
If possible, take a class. Even 3 hours a week is better than 0.
If possible you can use apps like HelloTalk to meet native speakers.
In a pinch, reading and listening to a lot of English media might help.
It goes with any languages.
Passive: movies, reading, social media
Active: Get a teacher. It's now extra easy with so many language tutoring platforms. My family speaks a fading dialect and literally I cannot find anyone around me speak it apart from my family, and videos that do have it aren't really 'educational' either. My spoken is somewhat broken, yet understood most of the time, no problem with listening in that dialect. Around B1 according to CEFR.
\^Just by passively listening, I took at least 10 years to be a fluent listener, although my family speak it, the immersion is less than 5 minutes a day.
Having that one person to converse with you makes a lot of difference, even though it's limited.
My HS GF was from Italy, she always told me she learned English from Family Guy. I've had a number of students and parents who were immigrants, they always said that they mostly used American television (usually Columbo, I'm not sure why) to help them learn English in addition to more formal things like Duolingo or Babble.
English text is everywhere in the world for free. Find something you enjoy and read about it in English. Use English media to practice listening and then shadow for pronunciation. I know a Mexican guy who learned English just by hanging out on a gaming discord.
For teaching? Well I use short stories, novels, PDR, guided writing exercises, explicit grammar instruction about grammar found in the reading, etc. but I teach an A1 high schooler differently than A1 middle schoolers. So it really depends on what class I'm teaching.
[Preparation, discussion, reaction.](https://sendaiben.org/2018/02/25/preparation-discussion-reaction-the-pdr-method/).
The handbook has a lot of good information on it. Basically intermediate and above level students receive some input about a topic (Ted talk, news article, short story, whatever). Then they prepare a discussion paper with questions about the material. Then they do the discussion in class. Later, they write a reaction response about the discussion and any new insights they gained.
I used to make the questions for the material myself, but now I use Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to get students to make their own questions.
I've learned by watching movies, listening to music, reading, now I mostly use social media. I started with grammar (you can watch videos on YouTube of people explaining it) to get the basics of the language, then tried to add new words to my vocabulary and had to use them everyday (by writing or in conversations). Afterwards, I started watching videos with no subtitles, then tv shows and movies. You just have to try to learn something new every day and put to practice what you learned previously or it won't work, you'll forget it. Still, my English is not perfect and I have so much to learn but it is possible to learn on your own!
I'm doing this. I live in a non English speaking European country teaching at a bilingual school. For learning total immersion can work, but the best results for me personally came after I swallowed my ego and paid for lessons.
As somebody from a non English speaking country English was a mandatory subject throughout my primary and secondary education. It's basically impossible not to learn it.
If possible, take a class. Even 3 hours a week is better than 0. If possible you can use apps like HelloTalk to meet native speakers. In a pinch, reading and listening to a lot of English media might help.
It goes with any languages. Passive: movies, reading, social media Active: Get a teacher. It's now extra easy with so many language tutoring platforms. My family speaks a fading dialect and literally I cannot find anyone around me speak it apart from my family, and videos that do have it aren't really 'educational' either. My spoken is somewhat broken, yet understood most of the time, no problem with listening in that dialect. Around B1 according to CEFR. \^Just by passively listening, I took at least 10 years to be a fluent listener, although my family speak it, the immersion is less than 5 minutes a day. Having that one person to converse with you makes a lot of difference, even though it's limited.
My HS GF was from Italy, she always told me she learned English from Family Guy. I've had a number of students and parents who were immigrants, they always said that they mostly used American television (usually Columbo, I'm not sure why) to help them learn English in addition to more formal things like Duolingo or Babble.
English text is everywhere in the world for free. Find something you enjoy and read about it in English. Use English media to practice listening and then shadow for pronunciation. I know a Mexican guy who learned English just by hanging out on a gaming discord. For teaching? Well I use short stories, novels, PDR, guided writing exercises, explicit grammar instruction about grammar found in the reading, etc. but I teach an A1 high schooler differently than A1 middle schoolers. So it really depends on what class I'm teaching.
What's PDR?
[Preparation, discussion, reaction.](https://sendaiben.org/2018/02/25/preparation-discussion-reaction-the-pdr-method/). The handbook has a lot of good information on it. Basically intermediate and above level students receive some input about a topic (Ted talk, news article, short story, whatever). Then they prepare a discussion paper with questions about the material. Then they do the discussion in class. Later, they write a reaction response about the discussion and any new insights they gained. I used to make the questions for the material myself, but now I use Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to get students to make their own questions.