Improving your English and your general knowledge at the same time

Improving your English and your general knowledge at the same time

Improving your English and your general knowledge at the same time? Elite universities can lend you a hand.

Every time you open that grammar book you have in your shelf the same thing happens: you just find that the stories in it are kind of… artificial. When you think it can get any better – let’s listen to the CD the book comes with! –, it gets even more disappointing: they pronounce everything so slowly that you’re actually falling asleep. They were important before, sure, but now you are starting to think that the dialogs are superficial. How are you going to improve your listening for real? Maybe you have to choose more advanced English sources now that you’ve already mastered the basics. But, really, you don’t have any time, you think to yourself. Not when you’re swamped with work from college or studying engineering, for example! How are you supposed to learn English then? Well, how about kill two birds with a stone and learn both at the same time?

COMO COMBINAR PALAVRAS EM INGLÊS Nesta aula, o professor Denilso de Lima, autor do livro "Combinando Palavras em Inglês", ensina como as collocations (combinações de palavras) podem ajudar você a falar inglês com mais naturalidade. ACESSAR AULA

It’s time you paid a visit to the YouTube channels made by the world’s elite universities. If you thought you’d never get a chance to watch one of the classes they have there, it’s time to think again. For example, in the Stanford University’s channel, you can watch courses of Classical Mechanics and Computer Systems. And if you are a person who prefers letters than numbers, Columbia University’s channel has videos like the World Leaders Forum. And, well, we wouldn’t be talking about elite universities if there’s no Harvard University. Here’s one of the videos you can find on their channel:

Other universities which are on YouTube are Yale, University of Chicago and New York University.

This way, you can improve your English listening and study the topics you have taken a liking to – be it for your career or simply in order to be knowledgeable on the hot topics by specialists on the matter. Nice way to spend some of those minutes you have to chill out, and not feeling guilty about doing nothing – remember, you’re learning English AND another relevant subject! Feel proud of your hard work! After all, you haven’t gotten to this level by a miracle, right? And when you’ve seen one video of your interests, your well-earned rest will be more rewarding.

One warning before you go exploring: some videos have subtitles. Some don’t. Well, challenges are nice, aren’t they? Maybe you can brag about how you know simply everything about some-war-in-some-country-nobody-knows to your buddies. Just kidding, showing off isn’t really the nicest thing to do – but you could give them a one hundred percent free class and exchange comments among yourselves. How does that sound?

This is my tip. So, here are some questions: what are your main interests – Politics, Economy, History, Computers, Science, Engineering? What’s your favorite channel among those? Do you have another intellectual channel to recommend?

COMO COMBINAR PALAVRAS EM INGLÊS Nesta aula, o professor Denilso de Lima, autor do livro "Combinando Palavras em Inglês", ensina como as collocations (combinações de palavras) podem ajudar você a falar inglês com mais naturalidade. ACESSAR AULA

That’s all folks! Have nice studies and until next time!

Sobre a Autora: Mariana Fonseca é estudante de Jornalismo. Paulistana, leitora ávida e nerd to the core. Fez alguns anos de curso de inglês, mas passou (e passa) boa parte de seus estudos como autodidata.

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