Have you tried learning English on YouTube?
YouTube isn’t just about cats and silly videos anymore.
You’ll quickly find thousands of free YouTube videos on learning English.
But then how will you know what to watch?
To help you, I’ve picked my top 10 channels to help you learn English on YouTube. The styles are all very different, but they’re all really fun and interesting.
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Wait. Why Should I Study English on YouTube?
So, you might be asking: “Why should I use YouTube to learn English?”
Here are a few reasons:
You might already have books or classroom lessons, but having a variety of materials is good.You can pause and rewind whenever you need to.Many of the videos let you see the speaker’s mouths. This way you can better understand how their mouths move.
Learning any new language is going to be a challenge. But the experience doesn’t have to be painful.
Whether you are a child, teenager or adult, absolute beginner, intermediate or advanced ESL student, YouTube has a lot of English language lessons and English language learning channels that are available for free. Hope you enjoy the ones shown here!
10 Awesome Channels to Learn English on YouTube
Speak English with Misterduncan
This is one of the most popular YouTube channels for learning English. It’s easy to see why.
Misterduncan is passionate about his topic. He’s excited about English and you can feel it in these well made videos. He uses humor a lot of the time to help you learn. Misterduncan teaches English to the world for free and has had a channel on YouTube since 2006. There are many lessons on topics like the senses, slang, news, fashion and money. They’re easy to watch and are about how the language is spoken instead of grammar.
Learn English with EnglishClass101.com
Designed for rapid English language learning, these interesting video lessons cover many aspects of American and British culture. So you can discover more about the countries as you learn their language.
If you love their videos, there’s much more that you can learn from EnglishClass101 by Innovative Language. It’s so much more than a YouTube channel! It’s actually a complete English learning program with over 1,000 English video and audio lessons. You can sign up for free and learn more on their official website, here.
Real English
Real English is one of the best channels for English language beginners and has a large library of free access lessons. Each one includes two videos, one with subtitles and one without and a handful of exercises. It has real people and real-life situations, so you get a true feel for how people really speak English.
BBC Learn English
From one of the world’s most famous broadcasting companies (the British Broadcasting Corporation) comes a bunch of free English language learning lessons. They’re in a variety of formats such as real life situations, cartoons and interviews.
There’s also a really cool collection of videos for words you’ll hear in the news. The videos are short but filled with a lot of really good information.
British Council: Learn English Kids
Songs are among the most enjoyable and effective ways to learn a new language.
Their melodies and rhythms help to create strong memories, vital for picking up new verbs, expressions and colloquialisms. Young children learning English as a second language can benefit from listening and singing along to nursery rhymes as they too help to improve memory and recall skills.
The British Council’s Learn English Kids is a superb channel that’s packed with animated videos of nursery rhymes. Each well-produced video features entertaining cartoons and subtitles in English.
Children love being read stories and the British Council’s YouTube channel also features animations of favorite children’s tales including Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood. As with the nursery rhymes, the cartoons are accompanied by subtitles in English.
The channel also features a ‘word of the week’ video where you can see and hear children from around the world say a new word.
Business English Pod
You can ask for directions, get a meal in a restaurant and tell the time in English. But what if you’re called on to attend a business meeting conducted in English? There’s no need to break out into a cold sweat as Business English Pod has it covered with clear and thorough lessons on topics such as supply chain management, finance and economics and contract law.
VOA Learning English
VOA is something a bit different. The channel offers subtitled news reports that are read out at slower speeds than normal. This gives the viewer time to hear every word clearly and to see the shape of the announcer’s mouth as he or she reads the script.
VOA also posts its Google+ Hangouts where callers from around the world discuss in English the stories that have been making the news. Other Hangouts provide tips on grammar and different aspects of speaking the English language.
Jennifer ESL
English with Jennifer is a rich collection of more than 200 videos that are grouped into easy to use playlists. There are lessons for beginners, lessons to improve your writing in English, lessons on grammar and many more.
What marks them out as a cut above the rest is the fresh and simple presentation and the special focus on pronunciation. There are no scripts and no actors, just real, natural English language speaking. In common with many other language learning channels, there is interactivity as well.
Linguaspectrum Interesting English
Linguaspectrum Interesting English takes a different approach from many other language learning channels. It concentrates learning around interesting things that you may encounter. For example, there are lessons about the vocabulary you will need at an airport, creepy-crawlies (insects) and types of musical instruments.
The narration is straightforward and accompanied by subtitles and occasionally some fascinating scenes. The lessons all link to follow-up interactive elements on Linguaspectrum’s website which are also free.
EF podEnglish
Learning English from YouTube is made a lot easier with EF podEnglish. These are slick, bite-sized 5-minute English lessons that are aimed at English language learners at every level, from absolute beginners to advanced students. They’re well-structured with a three-part lesson plan: watch, learn and try and there’s a great range of topics too. These include families, pets, directions, weather, films and technology. Some of the lessons use humor to get the points across. These are welcome touches that make learning easier and ensure that new words are memorized.
Learn Something New Every Day
One of the most useful aspects about learning English on YouTube is that most of the lessons in the above examples are short, but convey a lot of information in easy to understand ways. There’s no chance of you losing your focus. By dipping into one short lesson a day you will soon notice the difference in your ability to speak English.
Additional YouTube Resources for English Students
Well, that’s my list of 10 great channels to learn English on YouTube. There are many more out there. Among the good ones which didn’t make my first list but are still excellent channels are:
Learn American English – free daily videos that are designed to help you learn English quickly and include real American slang, idioms and phrasal verbs.
Holmwood’s Online Learning – a good selection of videos covering the basics and much more. Clear and crisp presentation make the lessons a joy to watch.
Holmwood’s Online Learning – this smart video series is a pain-free way of getting a good foundation in English grammar.
Learn American English – yes British English is not the only type of English that’s spoken around the world. This is a good introduction into common American words that differ from their English counterparts.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)