Gather Tools

In the last lesson, you learned some basic English grammar principles and created empty folders in your mind for those principles. Immersion will turn your basic understanding into expert-level understanding. But for immersion, there are a few tools that we'll need.

This lesson explains what you're going to need in order to get the most out of your English studies, so let's get straight into it.

The Best English Translators

First off, you'll need a translator. You might already have one that you've been using so far, and if it works for you, that's great!

However, some translators are certainly better than others. And there are some tips that I can give you to use translators more effectively.

The best translator depends a lot on the other language you're using. You're translating from English to...what? And from what language into English?

Also, even for languages that are specialities of the translator you're using, it won't be perfect every time. If a translation seems fishy (suspicious) to you, try a different tool or try giving it more context.

DeepL is an excellent tool for translating most languages to and from English. Most people say Google Translate is a worse version of DeepL (for most languages*), so I would recommend DeepL over Google.

*I heard Google Translate is better than DeepL for Arabic-to-English.

DeepL was my go-to translator when I was learning French, but sometimes I needed some other tools like Reverso as well. Another really helpful translation tool was WordReference. It's a dictionary, not a translator, so you can only search for one word at a time. I liked the example sentences and audio samples that it provided for French, but it seems to have a lot of missing content for other languages.

How to Get the Most Out of an English Translator

Translators are far from perfect, and they are often completely wrong, but you can make them better. I have a couple of tips to help you use translators more effectively.

First tip: Translate Sentences, Not Single Words

In English, we have the word "Fork" which has multiple meanings. But in your language, you probably have different words for each of those meanings. If you type "Fork" into a translator, the translator has to guess which meaning you're wanting, and then it tries to give you the proper translated word based on that assumed English meaning.

1. A fork is an eating utensil 🍴 (the left one in the emoji)
2. "There's a fork in the road" means the road splits into multiple directions.
3. "The road will fork in 2 miles" means the same thing, but now "fork" is used as a verb.
4. "Fork over the money!". This is old-fashioned, but it demands that someone give you something.

Without the context provided by a whole sentence, the translator has to guess which version of "fork" you want to translate. By translating a complete sentence, you help the translator know what you're talking about.

Second Tip: Force Casual/Formal Translations with "Dude" or "Sir"

A lot of languages have different ways of saying the same thing using different levels of formality. English doesn't have this concept. Your translator might give you the wrong translation because of this difference between our languages.

However, you can force the translator to choose the right level of formality by including the word "dude" or "sir" in your sentence. This might seem a little funny, but it's so useful! "Dude" is a very casual word that Americans use to refer to their friends or others in a casual, friendly way. "Sir" is a very formal word that you might use when speaking to a police officer or a professor.

In French, I could say "Do you want to come with me?" in a formal way or a casual way:

Voulez-vous venir avec moi? — Formal

Tu veux venir avec moi? — Casual

Usually, DeepL defaults to the formal version of that sentence, but maybe I just want to say it to my friends! If I want to force the translator to show me the casual version, I can translate "Do you want to come with me, dude?".

Then I can remove the "mec" (dude) if I want to, but at least now I know that it's a casual sentence!

The idea is to just give the translator more information—more context—so that it knows what you're looking for. This will help it give you better translations.

An English-to-English Dictionary

When your English level progresses to the Advanced Intermediate level (B2 or C1), you'll want to start using an English-to-English dictionary rather than a translator.

As for which one is best, it mostly comes down to personal preference. They're all equally accurate, so you don't have to worry about getting incorrect information from any of these, however, you might prefer one over the others for various reasons.

First, a note on IPA notation: The International Phonetic Alphabet is a way of helping people read the correct way to pronounce words. We can't hear the way a written word sounds, so this is helpful. For example, the word "measurement" written in IPA notation looks like this: /ˈmeʒ.ɚ.mənt/. It's kind of crazy looking, but it can be really helpful for English learners. My French friend, Lucy, has excellent English pronunciation despite almost never speaking English, and she gives the credit to the fact that she learned IPA notation.

Here are some of the best dictionaries to use:

• Wiktionary—Great for a starter dictionary because it has a translation feature in the upper-left part of every page. A lot of audio clips for pronunciation are missing or of low quality, though. The organization of each dictionary listing isn't very intuitive to me. When I look up a word, I want to see the definition first, but this is showing etymology (where the word comes from), then a large pronunciation section, and then definitions are organized by their usage as different parts of a sentence. It's confusing to me, but if you need the translation feature, this might be a good option.
• Longman—Instead of just providing audio samples for the word you searched, this dictionary sometimes gives audio for entire sentences using that word. The speakers for the sentences have British accents, but the pronunciation for the individual word is given with British and American audio clips. The quality is okay, but it sounds robotic. The website also has a lot of ads, which are annoying.
• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries—This English dictionary has a clean look, but it's a little disorganized to me (maybe that's just because I'm used to American-style dictionaries). It sometimes gives an indicator of how common the word is, which is pretty useful. It also provides British and American audio samples. This dictionary is a simplified version of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered to be the best in the world. The audio clips for pronunciation are also really good and sound human.
• Merriam-Webster—This is the one I'd use if I were an English learner. I think this one has the best aesthetics (appearance). Instead of the IPA notation, Merriam-Webster uses its own phonetic system, which is easier, in my opinion. Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary, so the pronunciation and example sentences will help you learn American English, if that's your goal, but it's still useful for British English too. Unfortunately, the audio clips sound very robotic and only have American accents.
• Cambridge—For British dictionaries, this one looks better to me than the Oxford Learner's Dictionary while providing all of the same useful information. Great, natural-sounding audio clips for the pronunciation of words with British and American accents. There are some games and quizzes on the right side that are distracting to me, but you may like them.

The table below gives you a quick summary to help you decide on the best English dictionary for you:

Other Tools

Now that you have a dictionary that you like and a couple of translator options, there are just a few more tools that you'll need to collect before you're ready to begin immersion.

All of these tools are free, by the way.

Anki

Anki is the best way to learn English vocabulary. It's a flashcard app where you study by looking at the word on the front of a card and then trying to remember the meaning, which is written on the back of the card. However, it's much more advanced than using physical flashcards because Anki will show you a card right before you're about to forget it, which strengthens your memory.

There will be a lot more to explain about it in later lessons, but for now, you can just download Anki so you're ready to go.

Podcast App

Podcasts and other forms of audio are essential to immersion. You can use an app like Spotify or YouTube, which have podcasts as well as other forms of content, but I prefer to use each of those for music and videos, respectively.

For podcasts, I like to have a dedicated podcast app. My favorite podcast app is Pocket Casts. It's not a very popular choice, but I think it's the best because of the looks, the functionality, the selection of podcasts available, and the cost (free!).

Whichever podcast app you choose, I'd recommend one with an automatic way to skip intros and outros. Sometimes podcast shows have long music pieces or advertisements at the beginning or end of the episode. You're using podcasts to learn English! Not for those other time-wasters.

With Pocket Casts, you can change the settings on each show to skip the intros and outros. Click on a podcast show, then click the gear icon for the settings of that specific show, then adjust the "Skip first" and "Skip last" settings. Usually, I skip the first 60 seconds and the last 30 seconds, but it depends on the show.

English Keyboard

You'll likely want to download the English keyboard for your phone and/or computer. If your native language doesn't use the Latin alphabet like English, downloading the English keyboard will be essential.

Every phone and computer is different, so you'll have to search for how to get an English keyboard on your device. It's a pretty easy process, and you should be able to keep your native language keyboard while also being able to quickly switch to the English one.

Conclusion

Those are all of the main tools that you'll need for the English Tea Break method! You might find some other useful tools along the way, so keep an eye out, but don't waste a bunch of time trying out tons of other tools. Learning English or any language is a bit of a challenge. At the end of the day, regardless of the tools you use, you'll need to hear and read a bunch of confusing things. No tools will be able to remove that struggle, because the struggle is essential! That's how our brains learn new things.

Now that our tools are gathered, we can gather some starter content. I'll show you which content is right for you in the next lesson.