The Best Way to Learn English with YouTube

Okay, random question: which of these two do you do more often – watch TV or YouTube? Don’t answer that – we all know the answer. You’re online right now, for crying out loud! Second question, what is the best way to learn English by using YouTube? Keep reading and you’ll find out.

For better of worse, YouTube has become this essential thing in our lives that most of us use for entertainment, whether to watch interesting videos or listen to music. However, there is still a ton of educational content on YouTube that can benefit English learners tremendously.

In our previous post, I talked about the idea of language learners taking just a tiny fraction of their time spent on YouTube per day and applying it to learning English. Below, I’ll go over the different ways you can use YouTube to boost your English studies using great content.

1) Import your favourite YouTube videos into LingQ 

You can now import your favorite YouTube videos into LingQ! YouTube is a treasure trove of content for English learners. However, you can now reformat this content into custom language lessons on LingQ.

A Quick How-to Guide

1. Grab the LingQ Importer browser extension: Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge.
2. Open your favourite YouTube video.
3. Select the LingQ extension and click import.

LingQ enhances how you use YouTube to learn English. By importing your favourite content into LingQ, you’re now able to…

• Watch the YouTube video, but with an interactive transcript.
• Receive context-based translations with one click.
• Automatically save unknown words into LingQ account.
• Divide the video into smaller chunks with sentence mode.
• Review flashcards and automatically generate quizzes.

And, of course, LingQ is available on all of your devices. Whether listening to a lesson in the car, reading on your phone during break, or studying on your laptop at home, LingQ keeps all of your materials and progress in one place.

2) Use YouTube to Boost Listening Comprehension 

Appropriate for: Learners of all levels.
Pros: Fewer distractions, fosters communication.
Cons: No visual examples.

If you’re the type of learner who prefers to learn by listening rather than reading or doing exercises, you might be onto something. Listening to content allows you to essentially approach language learning stress-free. This means that you’re not bound by visual examples (sentences, images, or videos) and you’re only focusing on the verbal content provided by the speaker.

Think of it as a one-sided conversation with your YouTube instructor or teacher with minimum distractions. On the plus side, you can press pause any time you want without necessarily having to rewind once you press play again, since no response is required from you (in most cases).

Nonetheless, a good trick to implement while listening is to keep a notepad nearby. You never know when you might hear a cool English word or something you’d love to have written down for future use. If a notepad is too much of a hassle, another way of doing this is just quickly opening the Notes app on your mobile phone and jotting your thoughts down.

Here’s how I suggest English learners approach listening on YouTube:

• Minimize outside distractions.
• Prepare a pen and notepad on the side.
• Find content that benefits your proficiency the most.
• Focus on the content at hand.
• Take occasional notes, if needed.

In a nutshell, learning through listening to content on YouTube is actually pretty effective if you know how to approach it. With that being said, here are some of my YouTube channels I highly recommend that work well for pure listening practice: Official IELTS Tests, Go Natural English, English with Jennifer, and ToFluency.

3) Watch Tutorials in English

Appropriate Level: Learners of all levels.
Pros: Visualizing the content, seeing the speaker.
Cons: Multiple distractions.

Acquire a new skill and improve your English while you’re at it. Video tutorials expose you to large amounts of useful vocabulary and are often delivered in clear, concise English. This isn’t necessarily modified for English learners. It’s just part of the genre. Personally, I prefer tutorials on linguistic themes, such as imitating an American accent.

Furthermore, watching tutorials YouTube if you’d like to focus on correcting your English pronunciation of certain words and phrases. I reiterate that YouTube tutorials often call for a clearer, slower pronunciation. 

Here’s how I suggest English learners approach watching videos on YouTube:

• Listen carefully and absorb visual examples (words, images or videos).
• Focus on the pronunciation and body language of the speakers.
• Pause occasionally to mimic the speakers (e.g. imitate their accent).
• Take notes and tend to write down new words, rules, etc.

Here are a handful of YouTube channels you should definitely add to your watch list: Helena Daily English, EnglishAnyone, and EnglishClass101.

4) Find Free English Lessons for Explicit Study 

Appropriate Level: Beginner, intermediate.
Pros: Practicing what is learnt in new ways.
Cons: Lack of context, redundant content.

Perhaps you prefer to learn English more academically. There’s nothing wrong with explicit instruction to learn a language, especially if instruction is given in the target language! Talk about English in English. This is absolutely still an immersive means of improving your english. These types of videos often serve to drill what has previously been learnt or clarify a certain aspect of English that you often come across but don’t fully understand. 

The good thing is you’re not limited to written exercises only, but can also have pronunciation, reading or writing practice. This may be extremely useful for learners preparing for a particular exam, which causes them to search for very specific terms on YouTube and do some prep work.

Here’s how I suggest English learners approach exercising on YouTube:

• Search for highly specific topics that concern you.
• Time your exercises and aim to limit your options to “cheat”.
• Practice new things; occasionally revise what you already know.
• Include a variety of exercises (all four language skills).

One thing to note here: being that most English learning YouTube channels that include exercises in their videos tend to make their exercises somewhat easy or moderately hard to complete, I reckon that advanced English learners won’t find much use in this technique, unless the channel specifically mentions the level of difficulty. Nonetheless, one can never have too much practice.

On that note, here are my top recommendations for YouTube channels with great exercises for English language learners: Crash Course, MmmEnglish, Daily English Conversation, BBC Learning English, and Eat Sleep Dream English.

So, have you found the best way to learn English on YouTube for you in this article?

If so, I hope you’ll do your best at following my recommended steps and channels to maximize your English proficiency. However, there’s still so much that we do online that has affected us as language learners, such as swapping traditional books for e-books, audio books or podcasts while also growing our sympathy for online courses, games, and e-learning as a whole.

The list goes on… There’s nothing bad about any of this, honestly, but we have to know where and how we can make the most out of our time and learning online. Luckily for English learners (and learners, in general), YouTube offers the perfect solution for literally any given topic today.

So, what exactly is the best way to learn English on YouTube? In all honesty, the answer is: whatever makes you happy while doing it. If you enjoy it, you’ll probably learn it in no time!

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Jasmin Alić is an award-winning EFL/ESL teacher and writing aficionado from Bosnia and Herzegovina with years of experience in multicultural learning environments.