Speaking English Online, 5 Best Steps to Learn Speaking English Online

Learning to speak English is a subject that can be approached in a number of ways. Possibly the most effective way is to immerse yourself in the English language by living in an English speaking country, making English speaking friends and having a job that involves speaking English.

However, most English speakers and learners in the world do not have these opportunities and have to learn English either online, in schools or using books - or a combination of all three.

Schools in many countries teach English as a main foreign language, so in that respect English learners have a head start when they try to improve their English speaking as an adult. We spend so much of our lives online these days that it makes sense to learn English speaking online as well.

Speaking English online is something that we can do in chat rooms of course, and on social media such as Facebook. But if we want to improve accuracy and fluency when we speak English online, we really do need to have the guidance of an English teacher, and some expertly prepared lessons as well.

So here are the 5 best steps to learn speaking English online:

1. Sign up for online English speaking lessons from a website which provides lessons to help you with speaking, listening and fluency, devised by an experienced teacher. There are many such websites around - one of the effective ones is DailyStep English, which is certified by the Continuing Professional Development Organisation and can offer official certificates. The BBC website and the British Council website also offer effective English speaking lessons for online users.

2. Find a website devoted to a topic that you are interested in, whether it is sport, travel, shopping and so on. Then try to find a related podcast for this topic. Some podcasts have transcripts as well, which will be helpful. Remember to speak along with the online audio so that you can improve fluency of speech.

3. When you do find a topic that you are interested in, make sure that you always read aloud the text on the web page, rather than reading it silently. This act of speaking somebody else's words will always be helpful for your English speaking.

4. Look for radio programmes that you enjoy, such as those on Radio 4 from the BBC, which is a talk radio channel with many different topics. If you look on the BBC iPlayer, you will find a vast range of programmes to choose from.

5. If you have time for face-to-face online lessons, so that you can learn to speak with a teacher, find a Skype teacher who is a well-qualified native speaker and who can help you improve fluency, pronunciation, grammar, and so on when they teach you to speak English.

The best way to learn to speak English online is to use a combination of all the above methods. And remember to put it into practice as often as possible. This means daily English speaking if you can manage it.