There are so many English courses to choose from, but what course is best for you?

If you are struggling to find a course in your local area, or it's too expensive to travel to an English speaking country, then maybe an online English course is for you. There are many different online language schools, all offering different types of courses. Before signing up to a new course, make sure that the tutor is qualified and experienced. This really makes a difference as teaching English is a skill that takes some years to get to a good level.

Learning English online means that you can take your lessons when it suits you. This is important for people with busy schedules, but also has a positive effect on learning as students learn more when they are more relaxed. It also makes the student speak English more because Skype and other platforms limit body language and other forms of communication, placing a greater emphasis on speaking.

I am also amazed how many on line courses you can find nowadays. Some of them are very well structured and, above all, for free! For those who are extremely busy, a good way to learn English is...through skype. How? It is simple. You find your teacher on the Internet, you pay him or her, and without leaving your home you have a private one to one tutor. Moreover, it is up to you if you want to see your teacher or not! I have a couple of friends who use skype as a learning language tool and they absolutely love it. They think that this way of study makes them feel comfortable with their teacher who they have never met, they feel at ease to ask their tutor any question, even those the most infantile, and this makes, according to them, their language acquisition more effective. Definitely, this is something to consider!

I saw a conference this week end about learning English with Skype. I did not know it was that easy to find a teacher. Actually, I went on "youtube" and I found a lot of them. The speaker of the conference said there were some of them teaching for free but I personaly did not see any. I guess there are ways to look for them. At the same time, I found several online courses on " youtube". They only thing you need is to find the subject you want to explore. For my part, I typed " learning english" and it gave me 229 000 results!
I guess it would be a good idea to mix the two kinds of lessons : taking the free " youtube" lessons on the appropriate subjects, and follow with some time with a tutor on Skype to have further information and some practice.
Good luck

yes! technologies are now part of our life and we hardly see how we could live without it. However, I don't think that online course should replace school. Indeed, many prefer to learn English online. Well, good idea if you don't want to spend to much money, and you don't want to live your home. BUT, there is a need for interaction when learning a new language. How can you get feedbacks? What about your writing skills? Internet is a good introduction to learn a new language and get the basis. However, I think you need to go into a classroom and have real interactions. It is important to see different speakers. Real life situations!

Melgaut, you’re right when you say that the technologies are now the huge part of our lives. However, I disagree with you that the online resources are developing only writing skills. And I’ll explain why.

Of course, if you look at the last years of the developing of the technologies, you can see that the technologies in some spheres of our lives were developing much faster that their use in the some other domains. As it usually is, the main issue is financing question. Look at tourism, food and entertainment industries, you could always find technical support company providing the most modern solutions for your business. Education, being less profitable and most money and time consuming business sphere, is mostly supported by the enthusiasts. As the result, it took much more time to adjust new information technologies to the educational purposes taking into account the requirements of the modern society.

And you’re right saying that communication is the most important competence in learning languages and that students need to have feedback through real interactions. However, we can say finally, that students have such possibility to have the complete and real-time interactive communication using information technologies!

As claudie mentioned in the previous message, the use of Skype technology is one of such examples. You and your teacher have microphones to interact, web-cams to see each other’s paralanguage, a chat to write down notes, to send each other instantly useful files, homewrok etc. You also have an option that makes your learning even more real-class like – a conference option, where more than two users can collaborate together at the same time. If you would like to find more information about this technology, you can read more information provided by the Skype ESL Teaching Community:

http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=100115