Learning foreign languages: live teachers or the Internet?

- Fedenka, you are a very intelligent boy, I really like you, but I WILL PUT TWO PER YEAR !!! - My school teacher in French screamed and made something like that.

My school teacher in English did another person:


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- Look at the kids Fyodor. Ha-ha-ha, how he makes a ridiculous mistake, what a moron he is, he does not know English, let's laugh at him together with the children, ha-ha-ha.
Friendly laughter classmates.
- But I also studied a similar moron, so he said: "I blow, I blow." We were laughing at him with the whole class, ha-ha-ha-ha, the teacher was glad.

After the gymnasium with such wonderful teachers in English and French, I felt completely incapable of languages ​​and tried in every way to mow away from them. At the institute, teachers in English behaved in a similar way, in graduate school, too. Only we met less often, bullying was only on tests, exams, passing candidate minimums.

But at one point I was invited to work at an international software company, and I had to urgently learn English. It turned out that it is possible to raise the language to a normal level in a few months using the Internet, without homework, without control, without scandals and hysterics. I often tell my story to my friends. It turns out that many people are concerned about this topic, and my experience for them is almost a discovery. Amazing So I decided to talk about how the Internet replaced teachers, here. I hope my story will be interesting and useful to you, dear fellow students!

Torrents

Since I didn’t want to get in touch with the teachers any more, I began to wear rutracker.org. I apologize for piracy, but I had to try all the courses. At that time, I would not have had enough money to buy a bunch of courses and just throw out the bad ones.

Course

I tried many different courses, including Ilona Davydov. Most of it turned out to be complete thrash. In the end, I stopped at the method of Dr. Paul Pimsleur. This is a full audio course - listen and repeat. From simple to complex. But the doctor gave me only the most basic knowledge, I learned to perceive something by ear.

Adapted audiobooks

Then I began to download adapted audiobooks. Their essence is that cool literature is adapted for language morons like me. Fewer words, simpler sentences, simpler plot, all unnecessary is deleted. Books are conditional from level 0 to level 6. Although each school has its own gradation. I just stupidly downloaded all the books of the zero and first level and listened. Then it became boring, and I moved to the second level, then to the third. And then I noticed that I understand what the English songs are about on the radio!
Most remembered detectives and slobbering women's novels. They always have a clear plot, you immerse yourself in it and forget that you are listening to an English book.
A friend here asks me to link to books. What are the links? I am on the first three or four levels of the entire search track issuance listened!

The first English-speaking clients

I worked 3 hours a day: 1.5 hours on the way to work and 1.5 hours from work, I listened to audiobooks. A couple of months later I was able to communicate normally with clients from the United Arab Emirates by correspondence. I was no longer afraid that I had blasted something off the translate.google.com , fatally insulting the Muslim female sysadmin Hanina.

Conversational English

Then I opened my own business and already needed a spoken language.
I decided to do the same through the Internet with a teacher from America. I chose as a result english-by-phone.ru . Led on advertising with Vasily Strelnikov and cheap prices. In general, the office is quite razdolbayskaya.
Gave a choice of three teachers. The first one tried to talk to me about animals - we didn’t get along with him, I don’t remember his name. Judy was a classic teacher. And for some reason I bought 4 classes with her once a week. She tried to give me written homework, check them and swear at me in English (she is not Russian in Russian). Even English-language teachers are the same gremlins as the Russians. In the end, I bought a whole month - 6 days a week with retired investment advisor Evan. Every day we talked to him about business in the USA and Russia, about officials, about crime, about weapons, about investments and PR. He did not set me homework and did not allow me to pry into the dictionary. Required me to just speak. But sometimes Evan skipped classes without warning. But I did not complain to him in the office, because he was cool.

I took Evan for January. And at the end of January I had a Skype call conference call with clients of my clients who were unhappy and cursing, while they themselves were sitting in England. Even managed to calm them down. I felt like those Tajiks from Nasha Rusha. As a result, customers have not gone, they are still working.

Lexicon

I listened to the adapted books to level 6 and it became boring. My dream is to listen to business letters, but vocabulary is not enough. I understand only Brain Tracy - he is quite primitive. Now I decided to learn words with the help of the Internet service w2mem.com . It is a pity that I did not know about him, when I listened to adapted audio books, everything would have gone more productively.

There are ready-made dictionaries, and you can remove all unnecessary from them or add your own words. Directly during the test, in any case, it pronounces each word through the columns. They promise that if you do this regularly, the words are better remembered, for that there is an auto-reminder. There are also phrasebooks, but somehow there are not enough phrases.

Here is my way from a person who is not capable of learning languages ​​to a person who uses spoken English in everyday life and in business. I think now to learn French by the same method.

In this post, all Habromists are called with similar problems. Share your own solutions and cool links to online language learning projects.