ESL Blogs

Today I am handing my blog over to a long-term member of MyEC. This guest post is for #ELTChat's May Blog Challenge. #ELTChat is a twitter group for English language teachers. Once in a while, we challenge each other to blog on a specific topic. This month, I presented the blog challenge: My Learning English Journey: Invite a Learner to your Blog. I was inspired by Beyza, a teacher in Turkey who had invited a student to write a guest post on her blog. When I thought about who I would invite to my blog, Rajesh quickly came to mind. As you will see in this post, Rajesh's learning journey extends far beyond the classroom. Not only is he active in many MyEC Groups, I've seen him using and recommending plenty of other sites and tools, including Audioboo and twitter. Prepare to be inspired...

My Learning English Journey

It was the time of 2010, when I moved to my city for my graduation. It won't be easy for me to forget the moment, when I couldn't understand the native language of my teachers, some classmates, and many more people. I had just passed my schooling from my native language, where, there was no more use of English language. Because, I couldn't understand the native language of my new city, I started looking for English class in my city, and I went to an English class for about four months, but after that four months course, I was not satisfied with the improvement of my English, because I was not able to speak confidently and properly. I started looking for another English class and went to one more English class for 3 months, although that didn't give me more confidence to speak in front of my teachers and others. I was not satisfied with my real English class. And, then, finally I connected my computer to the internet. I looked for many sites over the internet to practice my English, but I was tired, I couldn't find a website as I was looking for. I was looking for some English websites, where, I could practice all my English skills and someone can help me with my English. Accidentally, I came to a website "EnglishClub.com" which gave something more than what I'm looking for. It'd be really very little for me to talk about what I have been learning from this site. And, today, I prefer online English learning more than a real class room.

What I have been doing outside the classroom for my English skills.

Well, as I prefer online English learning more than a real classroom, so, off-course, I'll count my online English learning as outside of the classroom, and I also do many things except online learning for improving all my English skills, like:

For listening: Mostly, I listen to podcast, news from TV channels, and except that I listen to some of my online teachers and friends on audioboo.fm and on their posts on EnglishClub.com and so on.

Some of my listening resources are here:

www.eslpod.com/

www.dailyesl.com/

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/

http://edition.englishclub.com/category/listening-news/

www.YouTube.com/

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/

For Speaking: Speaking is not a little bit difficult skill in English for me only, but for many English students. But, I didn't face a lot of problems like my other friends. How I'm making my speaking skill easier: I have many friends with whom I talk online, on many topics. Record my voice and post it on EnglishCulb's groups and voice blogs really helping me a lot to improve my speaking and I always encouraged by teachers and advanced learners there. In addition to that, talking to myself gives me more confidence. In self speaking, I do things, like: think in English and repeat anything I do in my daily life, what I learn in my subject and many more.

I also focus on my speaking skill while reading anything, anywhere, like: I read aloud while doing my homework to any subjects, reading advertisement boards on the roads, reading blogs on the internet and many more. I always come to many words, which I can't pronounce correctly and then I look to my dictionary.

Some of my resources which I use most for improving my speaking skill:

I love recording my voice and sharing on EnglishClub's groups:

http://my.englishclub.com/group/audiospeakinggroup/

http://my.englishclub.com/group/voice-bloggers

I'm practicing English sounds from BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html (Suggested by many teachers, but I'm following British accent)

Dictionaries I use: 

http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/

http://dictionary.reference.com/

http://www.vocabahead.com/

Voice recorders I use:

http://audioboo.fm/

http://vocaroo.com/

http://voicethread.com/

For reading: I love reading blogs, short stories, dialogs, and some English magazines. But, I can't give enough time to these always, because of my other subjects. So, I took reading challenge while I read my other subjects, and I focus more on my English reading skill while reading/studying my other subjects.

Some of my online resources which I use most for improving my reading skill:

http://improveenglishonline.com/

www.englishclub.com/reading/

http://www.britishlingua.com/content/introduction-lingua-bulletin (Lingua Bulletin: My English magazine)

For writing: It's a problem for me as I'm not focusing more on my writing skill these day. However, I do many things like: writing blogs, diary sometimes and so on, and that helps me to improve my writing skill. I'm always thankful to the teachers and friends, who always correct my writing on EnglishClub.

My English grammar resources:

http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/

http://www.englishpage.com/

By the end of this post, I'd like to say that learning English language is a long process and learners should "never show hurry" and "never say no". Take interest in learning English and don't do the things that make you feel uncomfortable else you might run away from your learning goal or might not reach to your destination(soon).

We all do many things in our daily life which can be changed into English learning process and that can change our habit into English, like: we visit social network sites, use computer, mobile phone, video games and many things, for English learners they must change their settings into English language which can be really very helpful.

Thanks, and very happy learning! :-)

Rajesh