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Hi!
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I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
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Can you learn English alone?
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Let's talk about it.
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A lot of my students ask me, "Vanessa, can I learn to speak English, without living in
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the U.S. or another English speaking country?"
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And the answer is, yes.
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Thanks so much for watching, I'll see you ... ah, just kidding.
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Today I'm going to give you five ways that my students have creatively learned to speak
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English naturally, without moving to another country, while they're still living in their
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home country.
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If you want to improve your English speaking skills, which is probably why you're here
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at Speak English with Vanessa, well, you need to speak, right?
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The main thing that you need to do to improve your speaking, is to speak, but you don't
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need to go to a classroom to speak.
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You don't need to pay a private tutor to speak.
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In fact, you can speak, mostly for free, in your home country.
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Today, let's talk about five mostly free ways to start speaking English now.
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My first tip for learning to speak English alone, without moving to another country,
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is summarizing.
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This is the only tip that doesn't involve leaving your house, so I hope that it will
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be useful to you immediately.
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This tip is to take an article, any article, and try to summarize it in your own words.
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Let's take a look at this in action.
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Here you can see I am on the popular news website, npr.com.
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Well, let's click on this article about the World Cup.
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"The World Cup, 2018: What's Happened So Far?"
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When we see the main article, you can see that there are a lot of great expressions,
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a lot of great words that they've used, so we can go sentence by sentence.
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"The first week of the World Cup is arguably the best."
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Great.
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We can summarize this and say, "The author thinks that the first week of the World Cup
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is the best, in his opinion."
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Excellent.
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This way, you have summarized, you've used your own words, but you're also speaking out
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loud, spontaneously.
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Excellent.
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This is a great way to summarize.
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You can also do this with spoken questions.
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I made a video on my channel previously about learning English with stories, so we're going
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to take a look at that clip right now.
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You're going to hear me reading a short part of a story, and then asking a question.
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All of the words that you can use to respond, are in that paragraph, are in that section
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that you just heard.
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You need to listen accurately, but you just need to summarize and restate, answer the
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question in your own words.
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This is a great way to practice speaking at home, but let's practice it right now.
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Let's listen.
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Sam felt relieved that someone else was aware of the hectic situation outside the airport.
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Sam told the driver the name of his hostel, which was supposed to be just 15 minutes away
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from the airport.
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Question number five.
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Where did Sam want to go and how far away was it?
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How far away was it?
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Where did he want to go, and how far away was it?
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So, we need two pieces of information here.
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You can make a sentence with this in it, anyway you'd like.
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Sam wanted to go to his hostel that was only 15 minutes away.
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So, we could say this in a couple of different ways.
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You could say, Sam wanted to go to his hostel, and then we could make a new sentence here.
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It was only 15 minutes away.
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Great.
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We've got a lot of choices, but here I chose to combine these with the word "that."
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That's just going to give you another kind of sentence structure that you can integrate
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into your English learning.
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You can take a look at this full lesson up here or in the description or check it out
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at the end of this lesson.
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Make sure that you are speaking today.
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Start this right now.
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My next tip for learning to speak English, without moving to another country, is to use
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websites like meetup.com.
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I can almost guarantee that no matter where you live across the world, there will be a
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meet up in your city or near your city, and there's a high chance that there might be
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an English speaking meet up as well.
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Let's take a look at the website really quick to see what options are available.
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Let's go to meetup.com.
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We can imagine that you don't already have an account, so we'll go down to language and
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culture.
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Type in a big city.
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How about in Brazil, Sao Paulo.
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Great.
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Well, here we have, whoa, 9,000 people, English speakers.
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This is excellent.
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Click join this group.
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There's no excuse, go and do it.
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Of course, the more you speak, the better, but I know that a lot of you are busy, I'm
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busy, everyone's busy, right?
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So, try to do this at least once a month.
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Use my other speaking tips during the week, all of the other times that you're not going
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to physically speak with someone, but if you speak with someone once a month, it really
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increases your motivation and it shows you that real world application of speaking English,
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being understood, understanding other people, it's so helpful.
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My third tip for improving your English is actually one where you don't need to leave
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your house that much, and it is host an exchange student for a week, a couple of days, a month,
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as long as you want, or maybe even host them for dinner.
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I've had a couple of students recently send me e-mails and say, "I'm so excited because
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next week a British exchange student is coming over to my house for dinner and we're going
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to be able to talk together."
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In fact, I have three examples of this, that are pretty relevant.
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One of them was one of my Japanese students who invited a 16 year old American student
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over to his house for a couple of days, so that his 16 year old Japanese daughter could
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spend some time with her, but he also was in the house.
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He was taking them places.
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He was surrounded by their English conversations in his home in daily life.
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One of my other students from the Philippines, hosted a British exchange student for a couple
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of weeks during her summer vacation, so that she could have some free time and connect
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with the student, but also show her places and just enjoy this real conversation.
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My final example is from my personal experience.
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A few years ago, I went over to dinner at my friends house, and when I went there, there
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were 15 people from 15 different countries.
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She had invited tons of people from the local community who didn't have somewhere to eat
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dinner.
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No family to eat dinner with because they were just visiting or they were studying at
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the local university or they just wanted other people to connect with.
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So, she invited these people over to her house for dinner, and do you know what?
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The common language was English.
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Everyone was sharing these conversations and this dinner in English.
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Of course, you don't need to have someone actual stay in your home.
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Call the local university and usually, they're more than willing to help their students connect
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with a local family, so that the student feels more integrated and more comfortable.
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You can host them for dinner once a week, for dinner once a month.
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You can even just be a contact, if they need a local family to talk with.
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So, go and talk to your local university.
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Type into Google, the local student exchange program.
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Try to connect with other people, because being proactive, that means, doing things,
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not just sitting and passively watching, but going and being proactive, is what's going
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to help you learn to improve your English, without spending thousands of dollars to move
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to the U.S.
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My fourth tip is to get involved in your community, specifically places where there might be tourists.
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For example, maybe there is a festival or event coming up and they need someone to volunteer
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to work in the information desk.
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I know for me, when I visited other countries and I needed help finding my way places or
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getting a restaurant recommendation, and I went to the information desk, it was so helpful
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if someone could explain a little bit in English.
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I felt so comforted and I felt like I could really understand what they were saying.
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If you would like to volunteer at a festival, volunteer at an event, or maybe there's even
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a English pub, or an Irish bar, or an American restaurant, there are probably some English
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speakers who work there or who go there.
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Feel free to enjoy your community, but you can try to be proactive and find those little
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bits of English in your community and take advantage of it.
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My fifth tip is to speak with someone else online, but this one is tricky and I want
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to make sure that you do it correctly.
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Do not, never, never write your Skype ID, your WhatsApp phone number, your e-mail address
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in the YouTube comments.
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There are plenty of just bots and different things that are going around, trying to take
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your information and you're going to get spam calls and spam e-mails.
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It's not a good way to share your information, but also, it's not a good way to connect with
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someone.
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This is what I recommend doing, use the YouTube comments correctly.
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Let's imagine that you just watched a video about how to use "should have."
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You can watch that here.
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Let's say that someone else wrote a comment and said, "I should have started learning
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English with Vanessa earlier."
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It's a beautiful sentence, but you also feel like you connect with that sentence.
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You have had the same experience.
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You think, you know what?
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I should have started studying English with Vanessa earlier, too.
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So, you can comment on their comment and say, "Oh, when did you start learning English with
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Vanessa?"
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"I agree, I should have started earlier."
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Start a relationship.
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Start to connect with them.
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Don't immediately say, "Hi, let's speak on Skype," because you know what?
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It takes a lot of courage to speak with anyone in a second language in English, but to speak
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with a total stranger who just threw their contact information at you on the internet,
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it's a pretty low possibility that that's actually going to work out.
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Even if they're a nice person, it's going to be not as comfortable to connect.
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I recommend just commenting together, start to get to know each other, and maybe after
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four or five or six comments back and forth, then you can start to say, "Hey, do you have
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Facebook?"
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"Let's connect."
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"Here's my name on Facebook, let's connect."
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Great.
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You can send them a private message and try to connect.
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Also, of course, if they are a beautiful girl or a handsome man, don't be creepy.
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You know what that is, just be polite.
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A lot of my students in the course, The Fearless Fluency Club, speak together on a daily basis
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in Facebook Messenger, on Skype and Google Hangout, and it's a really great way to connect
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with each other and learn every day, learn about different cultures and also use English.
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You can join up here if you'd like for $5 for the first month, with the coupon code
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NEW.
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You can connect with tons of really passionate English learners.
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These are just a few of my top tips for speaking English, learning to speak English, without
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going to a classroom, without paying tutor, without moving to the U.S. I hope that you
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can at least take one of these and be proactive.
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Take action today, because do you know what?
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Even if you moved to the U.S., even if you lived in the middle of New York City, you
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would still need to be proactive.
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I have students who have lived in the U.S. for a long time and they're still struggling
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to learn English, because they don't get out and meet other people.
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Even if you were living in the U.S., it's not a guarantee that you would become fluent.
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You need to be proactive, no matter where you live.
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You clicked on this video because you want to improve your English speaking skills, so
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be kind to yourself and do it.
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Now, I have a question for you.
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In the comments below this video, let me know, do you have any other creative ways to learn
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English, specifically to speak English naturally, without leaving your home country?
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Let me know in the comments and let's share some ideas together.
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Thanks so much for learning English with me and I'll see you again next Friday for a new
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lesson, here on my YouTube channel.
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Bye.
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The next step is to download my free e-book, "Five Steps to Becoming a Confident English
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Speaker."
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You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.
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Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons.
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Thanks so much.
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Bye.