I knew that if I wanted to improve my chances of getting a better job, I needed to learn English. I had always earned the minimum wage here in my country, and it wasn’t enough to cover my expenses. It wasn’t an easy decision because I didn’t have enough money to pay for a course at an English academy, and I definitely didn’t have the opportunity to travel to an English-speaking country to immerse myself in the language all day.
So I started searching on Google and YouTube. And I realized, based on the experiences of others, that it was possible to learn English without paying for expensive courses or moving to the United States or Australia. The success stories I found not only showed me that independent English learning was possible, but also increased my confidence in achieving my goal.
I realized that with just the internet, I could immerse myself in the language as if I were living in an English-speaking country, watching movies in English, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, applying the shadowing method, or listening to music. Since I had a full-time job and was actually working overtime to pay my bills, I decided to make a habit of incorporating English practice into my daily routine, dedicating at least an hour a day to it in my limited free time.
My new goal began in January 2022 as part of my New Year’s resolution. Initially, my goal was to be able to speak English by the end of that year, haha, which was really naive of me. I thought it was going to be difficult, but in reality, it was more difficult than I expected. It was because of the time I thought I would achieve it, not because I thought learning a language was impossible or anything like that. I think that with the right mindset, it can be considered not difficult at all, but like everything worthwhile, it takes time to achieve, so I had to divide my goal into smaller goals.
At that time, I started using Duolingo. I knew about the idea from the book Atomic Habits of building small habits daily. Although I hadn’t read the book yet, I realized that I needed to maintain a habit in my learning, so I chose Duolingo to track my streak and be aware that I wasn’t missing a single day. Even if a lesson only took 10 or 15 minutes, I knew that at least I was dedicating some of my day to English. I had also heard of a concept called comprehensible input, which refers to receiving information in a language by reading or listening to it and understanding most of it. For example, watching a movie in English with English subtitles and listening to it and reading it at the same time.
This is a passive way of learning the language. I had seen a challenge to do this passively, and I complemented it by keeping up my Duolingo streak. At the end of three months, I had improved a lot. I was already able to understand typical and recurring phrases in English such as “What are you talking about?” and a few others, but that’s the one I remember being repeated a lot.
For a year or more, I was always researching how to learn the language, so I found new ways to study, apps, and resources to do so. For example, to improve my pronunciation, I used the Elsa Speak app and also practiced shadowing, not by repeating the phrases after a character said them, but by memorizing 15- or 20-second clips and repeating them myself, recording myself, and comparing it to the original.
I tried to memorize it to have a more active learning experience. With the Elsa Speak app, I remember practicing the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). I don’t know it by heart, by the way, but it has helped me a lot to improve the pronunciation of words and sounds. Shadowing also helped me a lot with the pronunciation of phrases and connecting them more naturally. Some of the resources that helped me a lot during that year or so were Netflix and Friends.
I learned a lot of vocabulary with Friends, to be honest. A YouTube channel I really like is “Learn English with TV Series,” and I did that for over a year. I was learning to understand English quite well, but I had a problem and was stuck with speaking. I had never really spoken to anyone, and when I did, I realized that I couldn’t come up with enough sentences and words that I knew I knew, that were in my mind. That’s when I decided to use the Cambly platform, which is used to practice speaking with native tutors. At that time, I think I bought a plan to have three 30-minute conversations per week for a year.
I spent my time practicing English enjoying content in English on YouTube or Netflix. As I understood more, I no longer felt bored, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I also combined it with active study such as shadowing. I used the Anki app to memorize vocabulary, or when I saw new words in English content, I looked up the meaning and learned it. I had already given up on Duolingo. I think I did a streak of a little less than 400 days, but by that time, Duolingo was already boring me. I complemented all that studying with Cambly sessions, which helped me a lot with speaking. By that time, in 2023, artificial intelligence had already become fashionable, so I started to implement it into my daily routine, using it as if it were my mentor.
I practiced writing a lot with ChatGpt and asked it to help me correct my mistakes. At that time, I wasn’t very good at practicing speaking, but today I’m excellent at it. When my Cambly subscription ended, I had already been practicing my English for a little over two years as part of my routine, as a habit, and my next step was to find a remote job. After applying a couple of times, I got a job as a customer service representative on my second try.
I stayed there for two months and then got a job in medical billing, where I’ve been working for a little over a year. I have been working in a bilingual environment for about a year and a half (as of the date I am writing this). It has been very satisfying, and I am still training and learning. My next goal in English is to reach a C1 level, where I can better defend myself with phrasal verbs and idioms in English, and improve my pronunciation much more. Thank you very much if you are a real person and read my journey to the end 😄