YouGlish – Listen to “Real” Pronunciation

youglish  Are there words – or groups of words –  that are are especially difficult for you to pronounce, or understand, in English?  “uncomfortable”; “sixth”; “how much does this cost”; “what are you going to do”?

On YouGlish.com you can type in those words, and then listen to how they are said – as part of conversation – by many different people in YouTube videos.  Try it below.  (Press the  button to go to the next video.)

Libby

Reading books and listening to audiobooks is an excellent and enjoyable way to improve your English.  Did you know that you can borrow eBooks and audiobooks (with thousands of choices)  – for free – right on your phone or tablet?  All you need is a library card from your local library, and the new Libby app from OverDrive.

If you live in Massachusetts, you don’t even need to visit the library to get a card.  You can get a free eCard from the Boston Public Library.

After you enter your library card number in the app, you can borrow ebooks or audiobooks.  There are also some “Read Along” books (mostly kids’ books) that you can listen to while you read.

YouTube – Finding English Grammar Lessons

youtube-logo   There are SO many videos on YouTube that can help you improve your English grammar (and much more!).  Search for a video lesson about anything you want to study.  You can start by searching for: beginner English grammar.

youtube-search
You will see many choices for videos.  Which one should you watch?

Look at: youtube-hits

  • How much time the video takes – 5 minutes? 30 minutes? 2 hours?
  • How many people watched (viewed) the video
    (1.3M = 1.3 Million = 1,300,000)
    (14K = 14 Thousand = 14,000)
  • When was the video put on YouTube – 2 weeks ago? 8 years ago?

If you have a problem with something specific, watch some lessons on that. On YouTube, search for English past tense (or ESL past tense); or ESL verb to be; or ESL auxiliary verbs; or quoted and reported speech (direct and indirect speech).

When you find a video you like, you can look for more videos by the same people.  Many people have a “channel” – a group of their videos – that you can go to on YouTube.  Examples of some good YouTube channels for English learners are: Jennifer ESL, EngVid, and Rachel’s English.

 

Translate

Numbers!

numbersEnglishNumber.com is a very good little website to help you learn and practice… English numbers!

Small numbers, large numbers, and numbers of all kinds – such as the name of years (2018), months, dates, fractions, math equations, decimals, and percentages.

There are listening exercises where you can see if you understand the numbers correctly.

This works best on your computer, but it mostly works on your phone/tablet.