Hello everybody. It's Lisa here. So we are just about to start today's live session devoted to some ideas on how to improve English skills. And while I'm waiting for more people to join me, let me just tell you about this live sessions. So we are doing them weekly on the regular basis and right now there are a lot of videos to check on our YouTube channel or Facebook group. So if you missed any of these live streams, you can go to our social networks and see those live streams. Hello everybody. Welcome to the new session. And if you haven't heard already, my name is Lisa. I'm a non-native English teacher from Russia. And I can see that there are some people from the Philippines. Aaron, am I pronouncing your name correctly? So welcome from the Philippines. Okay. Let me know where are you guys tuning in from because this moment we are just getting started and it's a great idea to have this piece of communication. So we've got this comments chat, comments box. And with this comment section, you can basically communicate with me. And I'll be really, really glad to hear from you because every time I go live, I kind of talk to myself because right now I just see my face on the screen and that's all. So today's live session will be devoted to some ways to improve your English because last time when we talked about international exams, many people asked me to suggest to practice English on their own and they kind of figured out that it's a great idea to talk about it. And by the way, I have prepared a really cool presentation and a nice folder with useful resources for you. So stay tuned, stay with me until the very end of this session and you will get everything. You will get all of these links absolutely for free just for you to help yourself in your English path. Okay. As I have already said, my name is Lisa. I'm from Russia. And if you are not, I don't know, if you are willing to talk to me, just let me know via the chat box where are you from and where are you at on your English teaching path and maybe English learning path. So let me know. And I'll just proceed with the presentation so that you could see my personal experience and feel that we are on the same page with you. So when we talk about our English skills as English teachers, we usually think of like taking classes or self-study probably. So today I would like to dwell upon self-study thing a little bit more. And this is my story actually. So before 2016, I used to study in a class mostly. I studied first, I found a tutor just to make sure that I progressed more because I was really, really motivated to learn English to have more opportunity to work in the future. And that was actually not in vain because my whole life is now connected to English a lot. So it was really helpful. Then I went to university and learned English even harder there. But it was all about me being in a class. And in 2016, I finished my linguistics department and started like my real life. It was probably the best point to start with because I just stopped. I didn't want to learn. I didn't want to practice that much because I had no idea what to do with my future.  And in China, I just realized that I needed English a lot because it was not that good, unfortunately. And I knew for sure that I had to practice myself because I basically didn't have teachers around myself to teach me. So I started like practicing but in real life communication because at that time in 2017, I had a lot of colleagues from all over the world. We all worked side by side in a Chinese school and it was really challenging to express myself because I always felt like an outsider and it was pretty difficult. At the same moment, I started traveling around the world and I knew that I needed English a lot but I still didn't know how to work on myself. Okay, so I can see that there are people from Saudi Arabia. Glad to see you. Thanks for joining me. And from Myanmar. That's a great country. I would like to visit. Bangladesh. Nice to see you guys. Thanks for joining me. And yeah, this is just the beginning and if you don't like to listen to my story, I'm just wrapping up right now. And I would like to tell you a little bit more on how to become more aware of your English if you don't want to join a classroom. So basically my recipe to practice and to enhance my English ability was to listen a lot. I knew that I didn't have that real environment like a native speaking environment because at that time I was in China and then I went to Thailand and back to Russia. So I didn't have native English speaking environment so my choice was to listen as much as possible and the best source for myself was YouTube. I really love to practice yoga with some YouTube channels run by native English speakers. It was so helpful because I learned a lot of useful vocabulary from those videos and also they spoke like real life English not like in course books or in audience from those books. So I feel like YouTube is the best source to practice listening. Hey, there are some people from China as well. Nice to see you guys. China is still in my heart. So I wish I could go to China again. Maybe one day I will. And at the same time, apart from YouTube, I still wanted to get some more topical vocabulary. So I chose to watch TV shows such as Two and a Half Man, How I Bet Your Mother and so on. And they were actually cool as well. Those TV series were, those episodes were not that long, you know, like 20 minutes and it was just enough to expose myself to some English. I listened to many useful vocabulary again and to grammar patterns and like in half a year I noticed that my grammar improved but I didn't do anything for that. So basically I learned English grammar without actual learning. All right. And then let's see what other things I attempted to do were some practical things. As a TEFL course, for example. So while being in China teaching English for the first year, I also took this TEFL course online and it was also quite helpful because I still had a chance to practice more specific things like grammar and pronunciation, for example. We also had a lot of teaching workshops at work thanks to our employers in China because they provided really great workshops at that time. We also had observed teaching practice and peer learning so other teachers also helped me and it helped me to become more confident in speaking English in front of other people because, you know, it's kind of the most difficult thing for non-native English speakers to show off, you know. It's really intimidating, especially when straight A students look at you or native speakers look at you and listen to you. So for me, those things were really helpful and apart from that, I traveled from time to time and I had a chance to practice speaking and listening and reading and it was also something to add to my English learning. Okay, and right now please let me know if you have the same kind of experience or you would like to have something like that. So let me know, please. Okay, so Barbara says that there is nothing like a primary English speaker because we speak English and desire communication. Yeah, that's actually right, but there are still people who judge others by their experience and ability to express themselves and sometimes it is still quite difficult, quite challenging to open and to give presentations and to speak in front of the audience and even right now I feel really stressed speaking in front of the camera knowing that a lot of people watch it and will watch it, so for non-native English speakers practicing English is something really important and I know there are some people who say like, I have learned English and this is the expression I hate because you can't stop learning English. It's like a long-term process. You have to keep learning something like that. Yeah, by the way, hello. Thanks for reminding me. I wanted to congratulate all the women out there with the International Women's Day. We actually had a huge celebration yesterday in Russia. It's like a public holiday here and it's a bit different from the rest of the world because women are given flowers and nice jewelry and stuff like that. It's nothing about feminism but I still like this holiday because women are praised here. And then I would like to also dwell upon some formal learning. So apart from all practice you can still attempt to learn by the books, which I have done and I am still doing. I think it's a really important part of the work experience, of English learning experience and when you pick out some of the course books you kind of get to know the publishers and the teaching styles of those course books and it's also valuable for your teaching experience apart from your English learning experience. And here you can see two of my favorite course books. The first one is English Vocabulary and Use. I have found this picture for pre-intermediate and intermediate and these course books are for all various levels. So currently I actually have it right above myself on the shelf. So I bought this book, a printed copy of this book just to have it on my shelf and refer to it whenever I want. And I also really like this Advanced Grammar and Use. I also bought a printed copy because it is so convenient to practice some grammar rules. I really like this one. And I also listed several websites here and I would like to point out these two for writing. They are really useful. The first one is called this one, Writing Tips. It is called I Forgot It. Sorry. It's for copywriters not actually for practicing writing but to learn how to write a nice copy. So on this resource you can find useful tips on how to use punctuation. So this is probably the most challenging thing for advanced English learners. How to put all of these punctuation marks. So you can find it there. And I will send this presentation with all the links after the live session. So stay tuned because you will have all of these resources just at your hand. And I hope they will be useful for you. I also want to mention this pronunciation course. So I have I had been participating in the pronunciation course for like two years. I have stopped for some time but I would like to come back because it's really helpful. It's a self-paced practice but they also provide some weekly live streams and weekly group lessons something like that and it's quite affordable. So for those who are not aware of the pronunciation it's a great way to practice English speaking. And I also would like to mention this resource library. It's a great website. Unfortunately it's in Russian but there you can find a lot of useful course books books and so on in English which cost quite a lot if you go to a bookstore. But there you can like get a copy. Of course it's not legal, you know but I still want to mention it because we teachers really need to get to know different materials and only after that buy them. That's my opinion and we also have a grammar infographics corner on our ITTT website so you can also refer to it if you want to refresh your grammar knowledge so it's also useful. Okay and by the way guys I can see your comments right now but I would like to go back to them when we have a Q&A session so feel free to write down everything from myself and I'll try my best to reach back to you at the end of the session and help you with your problems or maybe with your questions. Okay and this is another slide related to this formal learning oh sorry okay so it's quite difficult to speak without breaks so sometimes my voice becomes a little bit strange okay so if you also want to practice grammar and vocabulary on your own this course book from Pearson oh no this one is from Longman but anyways it's also really useful but it's kind of advanced and a little bit challenging so I would recommend to use it together with this advanced grammar and use so if you want to practice advanced grammar and want to refresh your knowledge from the past there are still some topics that English learners have problems with for example I have problems with if clauses like third condition and so on and I refer to advanced grammar and use first read all of the simple rules and then I go to this course book grammar and vocabulary and it's so deep and proficient so it helps me to I don't know expand my knowledge on the same topic and this practice advanced writing is a great resource to learn how to write yes it is from CAE or proficiency exams but if you don't want to take English level tests it is still really useful because there are topics related to writing resumes or proposals maybe some letters and it's so useful for just real life so I strongly recommend to refer to this book and by the way all of those books will be on this Google Drive in my own folder so you will be able to download all of those copies and I hope that these books will be useful for you and I think that is all what I wanted to just another slide so a little bit more about practicing without English speaking environment so generally speaking you can watch movies TV shows and YouTube as I have already mentioned but it's even more important to look at podcasts and clubhouse chats so if you have already started if you have already joined clubhouse you've probably also found some groups or clubs related to your interests and it's a great source of English so I also recommend you to use this tip another idea would be to read articles or books in English and two two points at the bottom are my favorite ones because they help to practice productive skills so if you want to speak as much as it is possible then it's a great idea to join a speaking club there are so many of them I think last year when we had that COVID-19 so many speaking clubs appeared and it's so convenient to practice English speaking and also book clubs I actually joined a book club in Russian because I've always dreamed of reading extensively but I've never had a chance to and I think there are also a lot of book clubs in English so it's a great idea to look for it and the last point is it's a great idea to write on your personal blog you can basically use social networks for example I write on Instagram I don't think there are many people I mean there are not many Western bloggers writing actual posts in English but I know that many Russian English teachers prefer to write on Instagram compared to Facebook and another idea would be create your personal web blog and start writing there it will help you practicing your English writing as well and by the way I forgot to list another resource which can help you to write better it is Grammarly let me show you how it looks like I'll just send you a link to the group chat so if you use Grammarly you can check if your writing is correct like it will highlight all of the mistakes and errors and help you improving it so it's a great way to practice writing as well by knowing what mistakes are there and right now let's go to the Q&A session and let me also mention that this is where we share this 30% discount on any of ITTT courses so if you guys are willing to take a tuple course you can simply scan this QR code or let me send you a direct link with this 30% discount to the chat box so if you want to take a tuple course and if you want to start your teaching career then save this link and maybe sometime when you want to enroll into the course you will have this 30% discount and right now I would like to go to the chat box because I can see there are many different questions thanks a lot guys for asking me because that's the most nervous moment for myself the most stressful that I won't have any questions and I'll just need to wrap up and finish the session without just answering and helping other people okay so so Akbar asks what can they read to improve English well basically you can read anything but it should be related to your needs first so I would recommend you to read articles in English if you are an advanced learner an advanced level of English you can check out such resources as I don't know the Economist what else New York magazine or something like that so those resources are full of different expressions helpful for English speakers non-native English speakers so you can refer to them or you can also read some novels some novels like to kill a walking bird Dracula or something like that just nice novels you are interested in and it will also help you to practice your reading and to practice real life grammar and vocabulary okay and as for writing I have already mentioned that you can look at the resources I listed in the previous slides so if you need the links stay tuned I'll finish this session and drop the link in the chat box and you will be able to download this presentation and get all of the resources I mentioned yeah that's right that's right Aaron so those English in use series and advanced grammar in use are really helpful to practice various skills by the way English vocabulary in use online version which you can get with your printed copy will give you an access to the online library and there all of the texts are vocalized so you can basically skip reading but just listen to the same theory instead of reading okay there is Vanessa from Malta nice to see you thanks for joining us and Vanessa are you a native speaker or an non-native English speaker okay yeah that's right so those resources are really useful so you asked me if you could prove that the English level is like advanced with your bachelor's degree in English okay so it depends actually it depends on the place where you got your bachelor's degree for example I also studied at the linguistics department and I learned English during like the four years of my study and after the university I was like supposed to have advanced level or something but it was actually not true because at that time my level was lower than that and I basically got that diploma from a Russian university not from a native not from a native English university so I couldn't prove that my level of English was comparable to advanced or something with my degree that's why I needed to take IELTS to prove my level if you for example got your diploma in a native speaking country then you can prove that your English level is the same standard as from for example an international test but if you received if you got your diploma in a non-native speaking university then you probably need to take an English level test so good I hope I answered your question if not please provide me with some more information like what exactly you would like to prove and to whom okay thanks okay so Erin adds that Cambridge dictionary and Docksworth dictionary explain some meaning but it's not true and I would like to prove it so I use I use online versions of those dictionaries and they actually have a lot of useful materials and a lot of useful tips for learning not only vocabulary but grammar and maybe writing spelling and stuff like that so let me just show you okay so I'll stop showing the screen for a moment and we'll show you another okay so this is yeah this is how this lexico dictionary by Oxford dictionary looks like and at the top of the site you can see many other links and for example if you go to grammar there are useful links for example usage and you can look through their articles and see what is interesting there what is useful there that's probably the most the most important thing about dictionaries for myself yeah so you can basically use dictionaries in various ways not only to refer to vocabulary but to refer to grammar and other materials okay so yeah and let's go back to the presentation but I feel like you don't need it already okay anyways okay so let me check some other questions okay so if you need some materials for IELTS I have listed them on my resource library which I will share with you after the session yeah so you will be able to find some of my resources I used when I prepared for IELTS so I hope they will be helpful okay and let's see I'm currently reading a question from the chat box it's just really really long so I won't show it on the screen so it's about CPE preparation materials and some other things related to practicing English in terms of fluency and accuracy so let me finish my reading and I'll try my best to answer and help you so good has a lot of important questions and I'll try my best to answer and be helpful so as for CPE materials I've already mentioned some of the resources I've been using so basically it's grammar and vocabulary from Longman practice advanced speaking from by Mary Stevens and these two books I also have been using objective objective advanced or just let me check it it's right here so yeah objective proficiency it's a course book we've been using in a group so I don't prepare for CPE on my own I join a group and this course book was recommended by our teacher and the whole course is based on that book but yeah you can actually mix and match and you can also practice proficiency preparation on your own you don't necessarily need to join a classroom or to find a teacher you can prepare yourself but I just decided that it's more helpful for me to study in a group so just so that I could have some speaking practice as well okay as for fluency and accuracy without English environment that's also a good question and I believe you can only have it by creating this environment yourself so if you want to become fluent and accurate you need to find some ways to practice English on a regular basis so if you are an English teacher it's quite helpful because you can practice English with your students and even if your students are like little children with zero English it doesn't mean you have to be like intermediate or something you have to strive to excellence and practice even harder so for myself it's great point of growth because when I prepare for classes with my students I always go back to their materials and look through all of the grammar vocabulary and stuff like that when I prepare for their lessons and I constantly refresh my knowledge even on the lower level topics so I feel like it helps to increase accuracy in English and as for fluency it's all about speaking and practicing through this active active expression constantly so probably it's a great idea to that's actually a great question I have something useful I've been practicing for a while so there is an app which is called Big Wu it's a simple teletype when you input the text into the app and start filming yourself and you can just simply read the lines out loud and film yourself it's called teletype I believe I think yeah it's a teletype or not I'm not sure but anyways check out this app Big Wu on Apple Store or on Google and you will get what I mean so you choose a random text put it in this app start filming yourself and pronouncing reading all of the text the whole text and after that you will be able to if you did good or bad and after a while of such practice you will probably see that your results are getting better and better so if you don't have an opportunity to speak in front of the audience you can speak to yourself basically you don't even need this app you can do it in front of the mirror it's also a way to practice speaking so you can try it and previously on the other live sessions I mentioned another app which is called Elsa Speaks Elsa Speaks you can check it on the App Store as well because it's a really, really useful application to practice pronunciation there are many exercises to practice various problematic things like pronunciation of consonants, diphthongs and stuff like that and at the very beginning of the app you will get a kind of an assessment of your pronunciation accuracy the app will compare your pronunciation to a native speaking level yeah alright so check out these two applications and try your best to practice speaking daily there are also some other ways to practice speaking for example right now I'm practicing speaking I basically don't have opportunities to speak everyday but I practice speaking weekly hosting these live sessions and it's also helpful because it helps me become more confident and after these live sessions I can evaluate my speaking even regardless of the thing that I'm still so ashamed of myself it's really easy to listen to myself at the end of the live session going back to the streams, the recordings but still a way to practice so if you want to have the same kind of experience think of starting a YouTube channel I know that many non-native English speakers run their YouTube channels for the sake of practicing English and you can even go to their earlier videos and compare their results in speaking and see that it actually helps a lot so if you don't have the environment you can create it yourself it's just about your willingness and your commitment so try these tips and let me know if they are useful okay and the last thing Good has also asked about the problem when a student has different levels of various English skills to be more exact their student has B2 in writing A1 in speaking and it's a really usual situation basically what I would like to suggest to you is to review your course review the teaching course you are following with your student so maybe it's a great idea to change the course book you've been using because I had the same problem with one of my students we've been using a course book which content was focused more on receptive skills than productive skills it's a really common situation with course books they are not ideal so you as a teacher have to add on the content so if you see that there are not many activities related to speaking related to activation of the other skills you need to add some more activities and by the way if you teach online I'd recommend you to watch one of my previous live streams where I talked about creating lessons with Miro it's a great online white board it's really really useful for online teachers and with the help of Miro we organize interesting and creative lessons which contain a lot of speaking components don't worry about your student being on different levels with their productive and receptive skills it's a normal situation and when for example we advanced learners go to language tests we also find out that we have like these many points on grammar these many points on reading and writing so for example when I went to IELTS I found out that my writing was like like falling behind it was not as good as speaking for example which was really surprising to me but on IELTS I got 7.5 for speaking and just 6.5 for writing it was really strange to me I used to believe that my writing was bad but that was not true so that's just common to many learners that different skills are on different levels and the best thing is to test the skills as you've done already and adjust the program so that your student could have a little bit more chances to practice those skills that are not as good as the others alright so please let me know if I answered your question and right now please let me drop the links to the resource library oh no I have to share the presentation probably yeah I have to share the presentation let me do that and by the way guys we've already been 53 minutes online so if you still have any questions just let me know via the comments box and I'll try my best to answer and we will finish at this point because we've been almost one hour here and it's a really productive presentation I should say it's a really productive session and I'm so thankful that all of you came today okay so let me just share the link to the presentation so that you could see this materials and I'll also share the presentation on Facebook as well okay so just one moment and if you still have any questions just let me know yeah okay and right now I'm sending the link to this presentation which you are watching right now try to click the link and let me know if you can see the presentation at the end of the session I will also send a PDF file on Facebook so that you could also have a PDF version of this presentation let me just point out that all of these links for example on this slide they are clickable and if you click on it you can go to the resource listed here okay so all of these websites have actual links and yeah and this resource library it's my google drive so if you go to my google drive you will be able to get all of the books I've mentioned today so make sure you download or copy that google drive folder so that you have all of these resources and I can see that there are no other no further questions so just right now please let me know if today's session was useful to you and by the way if you still have any concerns related to English learning English teaching just message me right now so that I see it and probably I'll pick out a topic for the next time to create like to have the same session for you related to a more specific topic because frankly speaking it's really difficult to think of a topic to talk about weekly so if you have any questions please let me know and I'll try my best to just present it next time ok thanks a lot guys thanks for coming today and also I forgot to mention that myself and Linda my colleague who has live sessions on Friday we are on clubhouse and if you would like to chat with us sometime we can get in contact keep in touch there and maybe one day we will create a room related to tuple teaching and we'll be able to discuss in a live chat so these are our profiles so follow us and I personally will follow you back we will have a networking and ITTT also has various ITTT is also presented on various social networks so if you for example like Instagram or Pinterest follow us and you will be able to get updates every day there are also useful sections on our website so if you would like to read some other persons some other graduates stories you can go to the website blog and read ok so actually these profiles are for clubhouse but I believe we are also on Instagram by the same nicknames so you can find us as well and I also have a facebook page so you can direct message me on facebook and we can also make friends on facebook and become friends so if you want to add me feel free to do that I should say I'm really friendly so I would like to communicate ok so thanks a lot guys if you haven't checked the presentation yet I will I will post it on facebook so you will be able to get the presentation from there and additionally don't forget to go to the google drive with all of the materials I listed ok alright so ok prudence says that he likes my accent oh my god this is so pleasant to hear nobody likes russian accent so yeah I can I feel like I'll burst into tears right now ok thanks a lot alright guys so it's one hour already I mean we've been online we've been live for one hour I think you all have something to do as well so just keep in touch I'll go live next week as usual and I hope to see you again have a good day and have a good rest of the week and bye bye see you next time