Learning English doesn't have to be boring. In 
today's video, I'm going to share how YouTube   helped me become fluent in English and all 
the strategies you can use to do the same.

Let's begin by talking about why YouTube is 
a great tool. I think one of the best things   about YouTube is that it's free and available 
almost everywhere. You don't need to buy expensive courses and materials.

You have YouTube, you open 
it, you turn on a video, and you learn. And you can   literally find anything you want on YouTube. 
There's just so much content, a lot of content creators posting new content every single day.

There are a lot of travel channels, educational   channels, news channels—literally whatever you 
want, you'll be able to find on YouTube. And this is extremely beneficial because it will expose you 
to different accents, vocabulary, cultural nuances   that maybe you even won't be able to learn 
during a class with a teacher, just because on YouTube you're immediately exposed to a lot of 
different people and their different perspectives.

And let's be honest, YouTube is fun. Unlike a 
lot of other traditional learning methods, you can choose content that really interests you, and 
this way you will enjoy the process of studying   and you will progress a lot faster.

I remember 
that this fun aspect was exactly something that drew me to YouTube when I was a teenager and I 
discovered American content creators.

Because I   went to school, I learned English at school, 
but it was just so boring, like all of those materials, boring text, boring audio exercises.

I 
was so, so bored. But once I discovered the type   of content that I enjoyed, like vlogs, travel videos, 
I fell in love with English because the material— YouTube videos—were really interesting to me.

Yes, YouTube is a great tool to learn English,   but another powerful tool that can be extremely 
helpful in your language learning journey is Cambly, and they're kindly sponsoring a portion of 
this video.

Cambly is an online English teaching   platform that offers an efficient method to help 
you learn and improve your English with native speaking teachers.

And right now they're offering 
a fantastic feature called the Speaking Quiz, which   is a free tool that helps you learn your English 
level. I actually tried it myself, and it gave me personalized feedback on my speaking skills, which
was extremely helpful.

Right after taking a quiz,
Camply suggested a tailored learning plan that
matched my current level and fit my goals. It's perfect whether you're a beginner, intermediate,
or even an advanced learner.

Let me show you
a quick snippet of my experience taking the
speaking quiz. So, I have my account open on Camply, and right now I'm going to take their speaking
quiz.

So I click right here, 'Start.' Okay, so the
first question is, 'Describe your favorite place to
visit. What is it like there?' Okay, and I will have to respond by clicking the mic to start recording.

Okay, so my favorite place to visit is the beach.
I really like going to the beach because I love
the climate there. I love listening to the ocean, the sound of the waves crashing.

Um, I really
like the food and um, yeah, I feel like for me the
beach is definitely my favorite place to visit. I
also really like swimming, swimming in the ocean, swimming in the pool.

So here we have my response,
and then I'm going to click 'Confirm.' And here is my feedback: grammar, accuracy, coherence, and vocabulary
range.

Okay, nice. So you can open every single tab
and um, learn your feedback this way. If you want
to learn more about what coherence is, you can just click right here and read what it is and why it
matters.

Coherence is how language is put together,
and it matters because it helps you connect your
ideas together. So let's do the final question right now.

I do like using public transportation
because I think it is very convenient and also
because I live in a big city with a lot of traffic.
And here we can see all of my results on grammar, vocabulary, and coherence.

Uh, here Camply shows
you your level. Mine is high proficiency, and
it recommends some courses for you. As you can see,
in every single plan they include private lessons, small group lessons, and also AI learning tools,
as well as 100% native speaking tutors and four
bonus lessons.

You can always go back to this page
and review your speaking level from your dashboard.

What I really like about the speaking quiz on
Camply is that it provides you immediate feedback.
You can see exactly where you need to improve
and get tips that are tailored just for you.

plus Cambly's native speakers are there to guide you every step of the way, making sure you're improving your speaking skills effectively. If you're serious about learning English and want to know what your level is, you should absolutely check out Cambly's speaking quiz.

It's free and it's the first step to improving your English speaking skills. Just click the link in my description, take the quiz, and get your feedback.

Now, I really want to talk about how to choose the right content on YouTube to improve and progress faster. The first important step is following your interests. Think about what you love doing in your everyday life.

Maybe it's traveling, maybe it's cooking, or maybe it's going to the gym. And so, watch the videos that are connected to these topics because this way it's going to feel less like studying and more like doing something that you genuinely like.

You're a lot more likely to stick with learning if it's something that you're passionate about. The next important step is watching according to your level, because I see a lot of learners watch super difficult documentaries on YouTube and obviously they cannot understand anything and then they give up.

It is absolutely natural to feel demotivated if you're using resources that are way too difficult.

Fortunately, on YouTube, we have a lot of educational channels that are targeted at learners of different levels.

Once you become intermediate-advanced, you can move on to watching something more difficult, content that is originally intended for native speakers. But what I can say though is that I've noticed that watching vlogs, lifestyle content, is even easy for beginners because when I was a beginner in Spanish, I started following a lot of YouTubers from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries who filmed vlogs, their everyday lives, and it was pretty easy to watch.

I would say pretty easy just because they were sharing their everyday experiences, like, "Oh, I just woke up. I'm going to go brush my teeth.

I'm going to go have breakfast." And this is all the vocab that you learn when you're a beginner. And finally, I do think that using subtitles is an amazing thing. I don't know why so many people are afraid of using subtitles.

As long as you're using subtitles in your target language, like if you're watching a video in English, use subtitles in English, not in your native language.

because obviously, if you're using subtitles in
your native language, you're just going to read
your native language and not pay attention to
English at all. Subtitles are great because they can help you catch every single word.

You can take
notes, you can look up all of this new vocabulary,
and you can save it to Anki. This way, you will be
growing your vocabulary, you will be memorizing more and more words, especially when you're at
this intermediate stage and you're starting to
learn more complex words.

Right now, I would like
to share some strategies for effective learning on YouTube.

The first super important strategy is
active learning. When I say active learning, I don't
mean, you know, playing a YouTube video and going to
a different room and doing something else. You're not actually watching that YouTube video.

It's just
playing in the background and it's not helping you
improve your English skills at all. Don't just
passively watch. Pause the video, repeat after the speaker, and write down all the new words.

This
will help you reinforce what you're learning, and
when you're paying more attention, your brain will
start memorizing all of those phrases and words you see on the screen if you're using subtitles,
and later when you're having a conversation with
a native speaker, it's going to be easier for you
to remember all of those words.

The next powerful technique that a lot of language learning creators
talk about when it comes to watching something in
a foreign language is shadowing.

And you can use
this technique when you watch YouTube videos as well.

You choose the video, you put the subtitles on,
you play a short segment of it, and then you repeat
everything after the speaker, trying to mimic their
intonation, their pronunciation, their body language, everything.

This technique works especially
great if you're seeing a new word, a new expression
on the screen, and if you're not sure how to
pronounce it, you can play the video, listen to how the native speaker pronounces this word, and
then repeat after them.

I also highly recommend
engaging with the content you're watching, leaving
comments in English, engaging with other viewers, maybe responding to their comments, liking their
comments, because this will help your confidence
in English a lot.

Output like speaking and writing
is always, always more difficult than input. It is a lot easier to watch a YouTube video than leave
a comment under a YouTube video.

And I completely
understand that, but if you want to communicate
with other people, if you want to text your friends in English, if you want to talk to your friends
in English, engaging with content creators through
comments is going to be a great first start.

The
next strategy is all about organization. It's about creating playlists of everything you want to watch.

Maybe you have a playlist for all the education
videos, like videos that are teaching you
English, teaching you a foreign language. You have a playlist for all the vlogs, travel videos,
lifestyle content.

And another little step to
organize and minimize distractions even further
is creating a completely separate account for this language.

If you're learning English, create a new
YouTube account so that the algorithm only shows
you videos in English. If you're learning Spanish,
do the same thing. For every new language you're learning, pretty much create a new YouTube account
so that once you're there, you're not distracted by
videos in other languages.

Because when I go to my
main channel and I open my YouTube homepage, it's honestly a mess.

YouTube is recommending me videos
in Russian, in Spanish, and English, and all of these
different languages. And sometimes when I want to
practice Spanish, it can be very distracting seeing your favorite creator post a new video in English,
and right now you really want to practice Spanish.

And now let's move on to recommended content
types. I basically decided to separate videos into educational channels, entertainment channels, and
niche content.

Educational channels normally post
structured content, like English with Lucy. Lucy
always posts amazing lessons, like literally video lessons.

And this type of content is especially
amazing for beginners and intermediate students.
The next category I decided to call entertainment
channels, and they're usually intended for native speakers.

Very casual. You watch the video
of someone traveling or maybe sharing their
everyday life. This category is probably going to
be my favorite because it helps you understand everyday language, all the words that native
speakers use every single day.

And those videos
usually teach you a lot of very useful slang. Slang
that is popular right now, because we all know with slang, it's kind of like hit or miss because you're learning a lot of new slang and then you realize that no one uses these words anymore and you're like, okay, why did I learn all of this slang?

And the last category is niche content. This type of content usually includes channels that are about a very specific topic, like computers or food or space or, I don't know, like very specific topics.

And these channels usually teach you very specific vocabulary. For example, if you're a doctor and if you want to improve your medical English, you should follow all of those creators, all of those YouTubers who are doctors, who post about their, I don't know, night shifts, their experiences, their education, maybe some fun videos about medicine because in these videos, they speak English, they use English to describe everything and it is a very natural way for you to acquire all of this vocabulary you need.

So I think it's going to be it for today's video. If you liked it, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

If you want to take Cam's speaking quiz, you can do that by clicking the link in my description. For those of you guys who need specific YouTube channel recommendations, I created this video with all the channels that will help you improve your English skills, so click right here and keep on watching.

How I learned English by watching YouTube (and how you can too)

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