Learning basic communication in English

Question

Hello, english forums!I would like to help a friend of mine learn basic communication in English, because he is seeking a job as a construction worker abroad. He is an absolute beginner in English, but the real problem is that he has great difficulty in reading and writing, so traditional books do not seem to help at all. Could you refer me to some websites you think they would be helpful in this case?I apologize for this off topic post, but I could not find the right thread to ask this question. I would be really grateful if you could give me some advice. Thank you for your time!Anne

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

Movies in English (with subtitles) are good learning tools, and there are many good basic English clips on youtube.

Blue Jay · Answer

The fact that your friend is a beginner who does not read well certainly adds to the challenge. There are many resources out there, but most of them are probably not going to be very useful here. I would think that a good starting point would be to try to find an audio English course designed for a speaker of your friend's own language, the kind where a native speaker of English says a phrase, and it is then repeated in the learner's own language. Such a course may be available online, or you may be able to borrow one from the library; I don't know what resources are available to you locally. If all else fails, your friend could buy one. You may be able to find a course designed to teach your friend's language to an English speaker, which would not be as good but would be better than nothing, especially if you are available to help.

There are various organizations that have online resources to help English learners. Here are a few:
BBC World Service
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
Voice of America
http://learningenglish.voanews.com/
Australia Network
http://australianetwork.com/learningenglish/default.htm

The British Council
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/

Here are some English learning sites that have a fair amount of audio/video material:
http://www.talkenglish.com/ http://www.sloweasyenglish.com/ has videos of a native speaker speaking English a little more slowly than normal. Some of the videos are lessons, while others are news articles and the like.
http://www.tolearnenglish.com/
http://www.english-test.net/esl/lesson-plans/introduction.html
If you do a Google search for online audio English courses you will probably find many more.

I hope this is helpful. Best of luck to you and your friend.

Learning basic communication in English

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