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Showing posts from August, 2016

Living in an English-speaking country and your English level

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Why living in an English-speaking country doesn’t automatically improve your English level and how to make sure it does First, I want to clarify a couple of things. This post is about non-native speakers who go abroad for a longer period than an ordinary tourist trip, for example, to work or study. This post serves to bust the myth “Learning English in my home country isn’t effective anyway. As soon as I get to an English-speaking country, my English level will skyrocket in the blink of an eye.” This post is based on personal experience of living in the USA for a year , so I am going to use English and Russian but the ideas are probably true for other languages and countries too. So why doesn’t it? - You are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of language you are exposed to.  When you arrive, you are instantaneously immersed in English. You speak English to your colleagues, bus drivers, cashiers, and bankers. You read pages of contracts and manuals. You come across massi