Why the Best Way of Learning English Is Not Through Studying Textbooks

My Sordid Past with English Textbooks
 

There are many ways and methods that could be used to learn languages. However, I have come to find out that studying textbooks is not the best way to do so, especially if you are trying to learn English. Therefore, I’ve provided you with the reasons why the best way of learning English is not through studying textbooks.

I spent five years in English classes in highschool, two semesters in college, and a semester abroad in the United States where everyone spoke my first language, Spanish. This being said, as soon as I took a job in Toronto a few years later, I realized I could barely understand anyone around me. 

So what did I do? I did the only thing I knew how to do: I studied. I sat alone in cafes reading books, pouring over grammar rules, looking up words in the dictionary, and writing out sentences from my textbooks and literature books. 

One day, I noticed this interesting Spanish professor Toronto. She did not spend 1 minute studying English. Not ever! Do you know what her strategy was? She made local friends, went out on dinners with them, met a boyfriend from Toronto, went to concerts, listened to music in English, and watched English TV shows. She was way too busy becoming fluent in English to bother with studying English. 

What English Textbooks Don’t Teach You

• Real vocabulary that is actually used in real life

• Real pronunciation

I ended up memorizing tons of vocabulary from textbooks. However, when I got to the USA, I realized that I never heard anyone use many of the words I had learned. Textbooks can be out of date, and it’s hard for them to keep up with the modern words used on a daily basis. It would be better to learn vocabulary from modern TV shows, like The Office (humor), Scandal (Drama), or any of the hundreds of other modern TV shows on Netflix. These shows use words that everyone is using today. Textbooks simply cannot keep up. 

In addition, pronunciation and listening skills should never be learned from a textbook. You would be setting yourself up for failure this way. Watching the news will also set you up for failure. No one speaks like they do in textbook audio activities or in the news. I’m sure there are some good ones out there, but for the most part, it is best to find authentic material to listen to. Even if you don’t understand what they’re saying for the first 20 times, keep listening. Eventually, you will! This strategy is much better than listening to textbook audios or the slow-speaking newscaster, because then you will go try to speak with a native speaker, and quickly realize that native speakers speak WAY faster and they link all their words together. It’s best to learn the hard truth from the beginning, instead of spending years listening to audio clips that aren’t the real deal. 

How English Textbooks Waste Your Time

• You don’t know which grammar rules are actually important and you end up spending time on obscure rules that even English speakers don’t know or use

I used to spend hours learning obscure grammar rules and verb tenses. I felt extremely proud when I could conjugate verbs for the many different kinds of conditional sentences and past perfect usage.

Unfortunately, the time spent learning these sentences wasn't worth it. I noticed that many native speakers expressed this idea in a much simpler way. I’m not saying that you should not learn these conjugations or verb tenses, but I think more time should be spent on learning everyday words, phrasal verbs, idioms and more, so that you can actually 

understand your colleagues at lunchtime. Much more important than the past perfect grammar rules. 

The Best Way to Learn English 

I think it’s annoying when people tell you to go out and talk to people to learn a new language. How? Where? What if you don’t know any English at all? What if you’re just too shy? It’s overwhelming to get started. These are 3 critical components to ensure you will learn a new language without a textbook:

• Get a real live tutor.

• Make a list of interesting podcasts, TV shows and/or youtube channels THAT YOU FIND INTERESTING (you must be interested in the topic). 

• Find 2-3 songs to memorize the lyrics and then learn the songs. 

• Find someone to chat with, even if only a few sentences per day. 

A Live English Tutor for Corrections and Conversation Practice 

A real live tutor will give you the time you need to get fluent. You can’t make a friend or chat with a stranger for 300 hours, which is how long you might need to get to the language level you want. A friend will not have that amount of time or patience. Realistically, a friend will not be able to get you fluent. A real live tutor will give you the time you need to practice, work on pronunciation, tell you which vocabulary words are useful and which words are archaic, and help you prepare for real conversations in English. 

English Podcasts, TV and Youtube for Listening Skills

At first, if you’re a beginner, podcasts and TV shows will seem impossible to understand. Of course you can start with textbook audio or textbook TV shows (if your textbook has them), but make sure to keep pushing yourself to listen to authentic, native speakers as well. If you find topics that you’re interested in, then you will stay glued to the TV, youtube channel or podcast for a longer amount of time. Now I’m learning French and I’m an entrepreneur, so I found some French entrepreneur youtube channels to subscribe to, and I’m learning French while I learn about business. I’m loving it! You should definitely give it a try.

Learn Songs in English for Better Pronunciation

Learning songs will help your pronunciation a lot. So find 2-3 songs, learn the lyrics, and then REALLY listen to the song and try to mimic exactly how they are singing it. Be sure to listen hard to when they link the words together. English speakers do not separate each word, so keep your ears open, and you’ll start sounding more like a native speaker.  

Make Friends to Practice Your English Even More

It can be hard to find someone to chat with, especially if you’re really a beginner. I’ve been taking Japanese lessons for about 7 years now (about 750 hours of conversation classes), and it’s still hard for me to have a conversation like a native speaker. It’s not fair to ask someone to practice with me every week, so that’s why I hire a tutor… because I know I need that practice. Eventually I will be able to make friends in Japanese, but until then, I need the tutor. On the other hand, I try to speak with native speakers at conferences, especially the international ones. You can seek out people to have short conversations with, or go to social gatherings outside, which is easier to hear people if you’re not in a bar or restaurant. Moreover, Facebook groups and meetups are in every city, so make sure to get out of your comfort zone. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. 

Let’s Learn English 

I still feel pulled to grammar books, literature, and learning obscure words in English (words that even native speakers don’t use on a daily basis), but today I know that these activities teach me useless things that will not serve me in life.

Now I know that if I want to: 

1) Get a job using English; 

2) Be able to make friends with English speakers; 

3) Be able to connect with and collaborate with my colleagues in English successfully…

I need to: 

1) Get a tutor for conversation practice (to get corrections in vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar); 

2) Watch as much TV as possible from lots of different genres;

3) Be VERY social and meet people so that I can learn REAL, everyday English. 

So if you’re sitting at a coffee shop memorizing the obscure subjunctive in English, please take your nose out of that book, look up, and say hello to the English speaker next to you. I hope you enjoyed reading why the best way of learning English is not through studying textbooks.

###

BIO

Our contributor, Micah Bellieu, is the CEO and Founder of Fluency Corp and TruFluency. Both sites focus on improving communication for those working in their second language, by providing private English, Spanish and French lessons with native speakers. Micah has been an avid language acquisition researcher and language learner for over 15 years. She created The Bellieu Method for getting fluent, Sound Like Americans Accent Bootcamp, and she speaks Spanish, French, English and Japanese.