15 free ways to practice your English

Playing your favorite English speaking musical artists on repeat is a fun way to boost your listening skills. To practice your writing at the same time, try to transcribe the lyrics while you’re listening. Then you can check the song lyrics at the end to see what you got right!

Either in person or online, this is a great way to practice speaking and listening at the same time, plus you might even make a new friend! You can try using Meetup, a website where people with similar interests get together to hang out; many cities also have some kind of English conversation club you can join!

The great thing about TED talks is that there are often visual aids which can help you understand what the speaker is talking about. There are a ton of these available on the TED website, and on YouTube—might we recommend the one given by our CEO Luis von Ahn?

Books are often published in multiple languages, so check online or at your local library! When you already understand the plot from having read the book in your first language, that context can help you when you encounter new words and sentence structures in English.

This could be facebook groups, whatsapp groups, or even subreddits for something you’re a fan of, like a favorite hobby, an artist, or a film franchise. Discussing things you're passionate about with others who share your interest lets you practice authentic conversations with English speakers online.

Whether they’re on your phone or computer, you can switch the user interface to English mode. This is even better if it’s a multiplayer game, where you can connect with English speakers online.

There are many English-medium news sources out there, of course that can help you become familiar with a more journalistic style of English. You can also just read wikipedia articles about topics that you’re interested in!

No, seriously! As you go about your day to day activities, narrate what you’re doing in English. You can even try writing yourself a to-do list in English.

There’s a ton of podcasts out there about all kinds of topics, and as an added bonus, you can check out these podcasts' websites, their show notes, and even their social media for more sources to read, so you can keep practicing!

This is a great way to practice, because the text is accompanied by visual aids that can help you understand new words and phrases in context. These genres also tend to feature a lot of dialogue, which can help you improve your conversational English.

On youtube and tiktok, you’ll find lots of people who share advice for communicating in English. You can even create your own profile on those platforms for this purpose. That way the algorithm will serve you more and more creators like that who can help you improve your English.

This is an easy, entertaining way to practice your listening—and you can turn on subtitles to practice your reading, too! If you use streaming apps, you may be able to set up a separate profile for English content only. That way you can discover new shows and movies that you can watch to continue to practice!

Choose any kind of English audio—a movie, TV show, or a podcast—then as you listen through, pause and try to repeat exactly what you heard. This can help with your pronunciation, as well as your general speaking abilities.

No matter your first language, many people have particular sounds that are difficult for them to make when learning a second language. This is because when we learn our first languages, we learn to make certain sounds, and not others that exist in other languages. So if there’s something particularly tricky for you, a sound or a word, look up a video about how to pronounce it.

Our free, full-length practice test is available on desktop and mobile, so you can practice anywhere you like! And of course, our learning app has a lot of English content. And both are completely free!