 It's amazing how because this is the topic of today's video I'm a bit more conscious about what I'm saying, how I'm saying it and the vocabulary that I'm using. While I think that my English could be better, I still receive questions about how to learn English, especially from people who come from non-englophone countries. So I'm going to share with you my story with English, how we all started and the things that were helpful along the way to learn. But before we get started I kind of want to put you in the context. I was born and raised in Morocco and Morocco is a francophone country. When you start going to school, in primary school for example, half of the day is spent on Arabic school subjects and then the other half on French school subjects. So we grow up learning Arabic and French together. Things might have changed right now but English doesn't come to the picture until you get to high school. And in high school it's very basic conversational English. You just start getting your feet wet unless you are in private school. And then when you go to college all of the school subjects in college are in French. But there are about two to four hours every week for English and then at that point it's up to you to learn on your term. It could be going to private classes. A lot of people do that like private evening classes when you are in high school, even in primary school. Like I said English is becoming more and more important right now. So people are leaning towards learning English as an early stage which I think is very important. I found English to be a very interesting language growing up. I found the culture to be different and interesting and I remember when I was in high school I would spend a lot of time watching American movies. There was this channel in Morocco or in the Arab world called NBC2. So I would spend hours and hours especially during summer. I didn't really play sports growing up. So most of my time or most of my free time would be spent learning languages and English is one of them. So I would spend countless hours watching NBC2. I think when you are starting, sure school is going to be the first introduction to English but you shouldn't rely on school. And let's say you can't afford to pay for private classes after school or during summer then you have to do the work by yourself and use the word wide web which is very possible. There are a lot of resources right now on the internet and YouTube to help you learn English. And to be fair if you speak one of the Latin languages or Arabic for example, English is not going to be the most difficult language to learn from my experience. Surrounding yourself with the language is going to be very important. Movies and music is going to be your go to especially in the beginning. That's how we are going to build your vocabulary initially. So I remember when I was younger in high school and even before high school I would have a notebook and when I'm watching movies I'm interested in the story to some point but I really want to gather as many new phrases and words as possible and I would write them down. And then during summer I would pick a list of 10 to 20 songs that I find to be exciting and interesting and I would print out the lyrics and I would just spend time memorizing and singing whenever I have time. And it also helped that when I was younger I really enjoyed singing so that was helpful. I think it's really important to watch movies and listen to music but I know that for a lot of people you have the vocab, you can put sentences together, you can read and understand. If someone speaks to you in English you understand what they have to say but it's difficult to speak English and sometimes it has to do with not wanting to sound like an idiot especially if you are talking to someone who's American or Australian or British you don't want to sound dumb and I think you just have to break away from that idea that they are going to judge you. Heck you probably speak two languages fluently and every effort that you are putting into speaking a new language is already incredible so you have to have that confidence to just speak and throw words out there and it's going to make sense. You are going to be understood and by way of practicing more and more and more you will get better and I know that a lot of people find it challenging when you are in the classroom as well. There might be two or three students who are excellent and their English is just perfect all the time and you find it to be intimidating to participate. I think that's wrong you have to participate because if you only have access to an English teacher four hours a week or six hours a week you have to take advantage of that. You have to spend every single moment that you have speaking and participating and answering questions from your teacher. We will all have to start from somewhere don't be shy. Even if it's not perfect you have to participate because that's how you are going to learn and grow. One of the funny and silly things that I used to do is speak into myself when I was at home. So my mom would literally find me all the time talking to myself in English and sometimes when I'm even having conversations with my parents I try to do the translation in my head in English. Well if your parents or your family doesn't speak English you're not going to have a chance to practice with them so try to talk to yourself. I know it sounds crazy but it really helps. I think one of the best ways to learn is to surround yourself with native speakers if there is a chance for you to have some sort of working holiday or travel to a country where English is the primary language that is going to be tremendously helpful but I know that it's not always possible with having to apply for a visa especially when you are a student and you're still under the guardianship of your parents. For that reason one of the platforms that I found super helpful in the past I think it's still out there even right now it's called Live Mocha. I don't know if it's Live Mocha or Live Mocha but it was so very helpful. It's a platform like social media for languages so it's a platform where people would go in to meet other people who are interested in learning a new language. I didn't really use it for English but I used it for Spanish so let's say someone is interested in learning French. They would connect with you, they will teach you English, you teach them French in your return or they teach you English and then you teach them Arabic but it's not really a teacher it's more time that you get to spend together to have conversations and I did that when I was learning Spanish. I literally connected with a teacher, a Spanish teacher who was located in Egypt and he was teaching at Cervantes in Egypt which is a big international Spanish learning center and it's really helpful when you get to have that face-to-face conversation with someone we would spend countless hours helping each other. He was helping me with Spanish, I was helping him with English because nothing beats having a real conversation especially with native speakers. You could go and connect with Americans or Australians who are interested in learning Arabic for example and that is going to be very valuable but you have to be careful with platforms like this to make sure that people are not going to take advantage of you it's not a dating site you know it's a place for people to really learn and help each other learn so you want to make sure that you set expectations in the beginning. So these are some of the things that I did when I was still living in Morocco and obviously by way of moving to the United States you get to immerse yourself in the culture. When I moved here it felt like I didn't learn any English in the past with all of the slang and the terms that people are using on a daily basis. The one advice that I have to give to you if you are moving abroad let's say you're moving to the US or Canada English-speaking country it's good to connect with a community that's similar to yours. My little brother for example he just moved to Russia and the one advice that I gave him is that it's nice to have that strong relationship with the Moroccan community in Russia for example but it's also important to build connections and to immerse yourself in communities that are native to the area. Not just for the language but you grow as a person because sometimes with communities where you share the same culture or the same language, same religion it's super comfortable and you feel like people think the same way and you don't get to experience what the new culture feels and looks like while when you connect yourself with communities from the country that you are moving to it's going to change you as a person you get to learn about their ways of thinking and their lifestyle and that is going to make you most likely a better person. It also helps to have friends who are native speakers when I was in Chicago I had so many friends who were native speakers and they helped me out tremendously it also helps to have a partner who is a native speaker and I always ask my friends who are native speakers to correct me if I ever say something that doesn't sound right or if I'm not using the right word I ask them to correct me and I always appreciate their feedback. And of course when you start a professional job or you start working on your career you are going to be forced to speak better English because having good communication skills is going to be essential. The other thing that was very helpful for me although I only tried it for a brief amount of time is something called Toastmasters International and Toastmasters International is a non-profit organization with clubs all around the world and they focus on leadership, communication and public speaking. They have usually chapters in different countries and different states here in the U.S. And I joined them when I was in Chicago and it was so helpful. So when you join a Toastmasters Club you will have the opportunity to go to these meetups and present and talk about a topic that you are interested in and then the audience is going to give you feedback so that you can become a better public speaker. I highly recommend joining a similar club. It's going to help you become a better public speaker 100% and become comfortable. I forgot about one of the things that helped me in the past when I was still in Morocco is starting a YouTube channel. My first YouTube channel which is not this one I created a YouTube channel just so that I can get comfortable with speaking English. It was horrible. I remember back then I used to do book reviews so I would read a lot of books which is always helpful and then I would provide 15 to 20 minutes book reviews and it was awful. Check this clip out. Today I will be talking about The Rich Dead or Dead by Robert Kiyosaki. It's really the book that changed my mindset, my philosophy, my conception about life, about what I want to do, what I want to become, the way I want to do it, how and when. He wrote approximately about 20 books I guess which is impressive. What the rich teach their kids about money that the poor and middle class do not. Interesting, isn't it? I know it is. Every time I go back and watch one of these videos it's a bit embarrassing but it's part of your progress. I think if it's something that you are comfortable with it's going to be super helpful and I'm also just being able to reflect back and say wow this is where I started, this is where I am right now. It's a beautiful feeling. It's also important to come up with a daily routine. It could be 15 minutes every day doing such and such, 30 minutes, one hour and one of the things that I did in the past is using this mobile app called TED and the way this app works is that they would go to long-format videos from TED talks around the world and then they would trim them to 10-15 minutes videos and I would listen to one new TED talk video every single morning. I think it took me probably 15 minutes so every morning I'm listening to something new. I'm learning new words, new vocabulary and at the same time I'm learning about a topic that I'm not familiar with and I did that for probably six months when I just moved to the US. Now there is always room to grow and learn new things and when it comes to continuous learning there is this app that I enjoy called Word of the Days so this app is going to present you with a new word on a daily basis, a definition of what the word means and then two or three examples of how you can use it in a sentence. I think it's a great way to enrich your vocabulary and keep on learning. I believe that takes care of everything that I wanted to share with you as part of this video. I hope that you guys found it to be useful and I wish you the best of luck with your journey to learn English and if you have any additional questions feel free to leave me a comment or you can send me a direct message on Instagram, tracking pills. If you guys found this video to be useful, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. My name is Habiba, this is tracking pills and I will see you soon on a new adventure.