LIVING IN ENGLISH

WITH ONE CLICK

THE SIMPLICITY OF
INFORMAL LEARNING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
First of all, I would like to acknowledge Universitat de Lleida for this opportunity they
brought me to take part in this amazing Itinera project, which lets students from all over
Catalonia to create their research along with a well-known university.

In addition, it has also been a pleasure to work with Federico Borges, a professor from the
University who has been decisive in the starting stages of the research and who gave me the
feedback I needed to start researching on my own.

Also, I am extremely proud to have Anton Not as my research tutor, who has been decisive
on everything and made me clarify my thoughts on what I needed and wanted to do. He has
helped me a lot on the project and it would have not been the same without his presence and
recommendations.

Last but not the least, I must acknowledge Anna Bosch to be my new tutor for the research.
She has shown enormous professionalism when taking the role to become my new tutor just
some days before having to hand in the project.

Finally, thank you to my family, because thanks to their support and patience I have been able
to achieve whatever I wanted. They have taken me to Lleida’s University when I needed
books and information without hesitating, being completely conscious of the importance of
the research.

To sum up, thank you to everyone who has been a part of the research and helped me to
create this body of work. I feel very pleased and proud of all the people who have taken part
in it, it could not be possible without them.
 RESUM

A partir d’una experiència personal aprenent una llengua

en un ambient on-line, s’ha portat a terme una recerca
sobre com aprendre l’anglès de manera gratuïta i
mitjançant mètodes on-line.
La part teòrica del projecte inclou una experiència
personal i mètodes emprats per un individu en específic
que l’han portat a aprendre la llengua anglesa.
Seguidament s’ha comparat el seu mètode amb el de
diversos professionals que han fet recerca en aquest
àmbit i què recomanen ells fer per aprendre la llengua.

La part pràctica consisteix en una plantilla de l’app

Notion, on s’ha decidit quina és la millor manera
d’aprendre l’anglès amb mètodes on-line. Hi ha
adjuntades les millors aplicacions per ajudar en
l’aprenentatge de la llengua i les ajudes necessàries per
millorar l’experiència d’aprenentatge.

Paraules clau: aprenentatge de llengües, anglès, on-line,

gratuït.

ABSTRACT

Starting from a personal experience learning a language,

this research shows how to learn English in an online
environment and completely free.
The theoretical part of this project includes a personal
experience on how someone has learnt the language
following a completely free and online path. In addition,
this personal and informal method has been compared to
those that professionals have researched and studied.
Therefore, we have a perfect mix between professional
tips and personal experiences.
The practical part is a Notion template where you will
see all the apps and resources that have been selected
between the professional and personal experiences.
It can be concluded that everyone who is willing to learn
English can have a prepared and personalised path to
follow.

Keywords: learning, informal learning, English, online, free.

Formal education is a walk through the zoo, informal learning is a walk through the
savannah.
- Stephen W. Hart.
 INDEX

1. Introduction.
2. Professional Methods and Research.
a. The Role of Digital Technologies to Promote Collaborative Creativity in
Language Education.
b. Wikis: Promoting Collaborative Literacy through Affordable Technology in
Content-Area Classrooms.
c. Learning English as a Second Language: A Comparison between Spanish and
Adopted Chinese Teenagers.
d. Carla con Wifi.
i. edX.
ii. Duolingo.
iii. ABA English.
iv. Busuu.
e. Manu Velasco.
i. LingoClip.
ii. HelloTalk.
iii. Language Guide.
iv. Sub inglés.
v. Flowlingo.
f. Conclusion about professionals and research.
3. Personal method.
a. Duolingo.
b. YouTube.
i. The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.
ii. 7clouds.
iii. Linguamarina.
iv. Amigos Ingleses.
c. Grammarly.
d. Twitter.
4. Putting everything in common.
5. Conclusions.
6. Bibliography.
INTRODUCTION:
As a result of a personal learning experience with English, it has been decided to execute this
study along with Universitat de Lleida, to be capable to comprehend and understand how to
become fluent in this language in a brief period of time and to help anyone willing to learn a
language informally, without having to spend lots of money.

When I was younger I remember craving to learn this language and its culture, but I have
continuously had complications with it. Unexpectedly, when quarantine occurred in 2020, I
initiated a journey that would undoubtedly change my life as an effect of free time and
instants where I was predominantly bored.

It all commenced with my purposes. First, I wanted to learn English to enhance my

weaknesses in school, thus in the marks, as it was one of the toughest subjects I remember
having.

Second, my objective in life was to live and work in the United States of America or the
United Kingdom, because I continuously had an ideal impression that they are the best
countries to live in, and their official language is English.

Third, and probably the less significant objective, I wanted to understand and not have the
necessity to translate completely everything that celebrities that I followed on social media
were communicating.

Since I was a child I reckoned that the only path to learn a language was to study it in an
academy or school, and I discovered that I was completely mistaken. For example, one of the
most ideal processes to learn a language is to live in an environment where it is spoken, so
you do not have to study for it. Since I know about this, I have started exploring alternatives
to improve my English at home and completely free.

In this research, you are going to find a personal experience on how I became fluent in
English. It is going to be explained a personal method, the apps that have been used, the
books that have been read, the YouTube channels which have been visited, and some tips,
paths that anyone interested in learning a language can use and paths documented by experts
on the topic and which they consider the most profitable way to learn a language.

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After that, the personal method is going to be compared with the ones presented by
professionals and a Notion template will be created, which is one of the best tools for
organisation. The apps and tips that have been discovered in the individual learning process
will be compared with the apps and suggestions given by professionals and other people on
the internet if they are helpful.

As a result, it will be offered a schedule plan and a variety of tools, so that everyone
interested in learning English or any other language can organise themselves and become
productive. If you learn a language following a plan and a schedule you will do it faster.

Furthermore, this app can be downloaded on all phones and it has a web to access the
template everywhere. It even lets you create a schedule, so you know how many days a week
you are practising the language and how many hours a day.

An informal learning process will be described as well as tools to be used informally. The
most incredible aspect of this kind of experience, informal learning, is that you are learning
based on your necessities and objectives, which means that it is completely personalised for
everyone. It is an excellent way to learn in a relaxed environment, where you do not have to
care about how fast you learn but about how much.

Nevertheless, it is not said that going to classes to learn a language is a waste of time or that it
is less effective. Learning a language in an academy, for example, prepares you for official
language exams, like the Cambridge ones, which are the only official way to prove that you
have a certain level of the language. In addition, you are in an environment made for work
and study, so you do not have any kind of distractions and you are more focused on studying
and practising the language.

Using informal learning can offer you an excellent level of fluency in any language, but it is
harder, it would take you a lot of time to get the same level that you could achieve studying in
a language school. This may be because of the tools that you have, you might have no one to
answer your questions and it can be harder to understand English grammar or to learn
specific vocabulary.

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PROFESSIONAL METHODS AND RESEARCHES:
Those who have the most knowledge and capacity to say something about this kind of
learning are professionals. For that reason, I have been searching information about different
apps and individuals who have experienced some apps or learning experiences online and
have more background in these environments, as well as other studies where there has been
research on how online learning may change how a student learns a language.

About learning a language online, a research made by Universitat de Lleida students called
The Role of Digital Technologies to Promote Collaborative Creativity in Language
Education, indicates that learning languages online, or getting help from online sources to
learn a language or teaching it, increases not just the wide number of opportunities that you
can obtain to accomplish it, but it also improves the students’ creativity, as it encourages
them to participate on settings where they may not have to be exposed to a public response.
“Technology can act as a tutor that encourages creative thinking by following pre-established
guidelines and the design of scripts or prompts that promote the performance of specific
creative skills”.

The research also showed how 50% of the dynamics when learning languages on students
changed drastically and managed their time dynamically, as collaborative work with other
learners was needed. “The result of this study showed that the inclusion of ICT in the
teaching of English changed the dynamics of teaching in the learning of this language in 50%
of the students. Indeed, students managed time asynchronously as participatory and
collaborative work was necessary to carry out learning activities.”

This exact research also demonstrates that technology is crucial when learning a second
language, due to the environments that it provides and the immersive, creative and
collaborative experience in the process. It lets you experiment with a social and creative
experience online for all the users willing to learn a second language. Furthermore,
Carlos-Miguel Lorenzo researched the creation of Massively Multiuser Online Learning
(MMOL), also called “virtual learning worlds”, online spaces to learn a language to enhance
the collaboration between students, as they need to work together to accomplish their goals.

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The result of that research shows how “to cooperate and collaborate in a 3D educational
context, in combination with the use of communication tools (e.g., chat, video chat or VoIP)
and intelligent assistants (chatbots or NPCs), help the learner to accept a role of acceptance
and objective criticism for group learning, which has a positive effect on individual
acquisition of second language linguistic content.”

Also, it proves how using audio and video platforms favours the creation of 3D characters
who play different roles and it improves the learning of the language, as listening contexts are
created for students to improve their writing, reading and listening skills simultaneously. “In
the same way, the students became real actors in this teaching and learning process, and
valued the use of technology as a means of encouraging creativity, as this methodology broke
away from traditional practices in language teaching and learning.”

As the second research, we have Mak, B., & Coniam, D, with their research made in 2011
called Wikis: Promoting Collaborative Literacy through Affordable Technology in
Content-Area Classrooms, where they suggested Wiki as a platform to improve some
students’ level in English.

In the research, they used this tool to improve students’ communicative skills when writing in
a second language, such as English. They had to describe in groups of four people the
characteristics of their educational centre to promote it. When the project started it did not
have enough quality, but when it was ending, they observed how the process made the
writing skills of the students so much better, being able to correct themselves and other
mistakes made by their partners.

To sum up, we could agree that any blog app such as Twitter, Blogspot, Google Sites, and
much more, could be essential to any language learner, as it would improve their writing and
communicative skills helping them when experiencing immersion into the language, being
English the only one they would be able to write and express themselves with.

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In the next research made by Maria Esmeralda Vicente González, on her final degree project
called Learning English as a Second Language: A Comparison between Spanish and
Adopted Chinese Teenagers, she said that “Many teachers, professors and researchers agree
that high exposure of a second language to the students is a positive way to get them involved
and familiarised with it. In this sense, “learning English language needs to be encouraged and
developed in classroom environments and out the classroom through appropriate techniques”
(Al Zoubi, 2018, p. 152).” So, we could agree that an environment fully created with the
language that someone is desiring to learn, will make them learn the language faster and its
characteristics, as immersion is one of the most effective ways to learn.

She also is convinced that those learners whose mood is not positive, face more difficulties
when learning a language, showing how feelings and attitudes are crucial for learning. “So,
the environment that surrounds students in their daily lives needs to be considered: depending
on their circumstances with their families, friends and school, students will have a high or
low affective filter that will influence their aptitude when learning a second language.”

In addition, she shows how Spanish English learners face serious difficulties when learning
this Germanic language. Spanish students tend to predict the rules of some grammar
structures or tenses in English like irregular verbs; they know that regular verbs in the past
end with -ed so if they are unaware of irregular verbs, they will predict that to write them in
past, they must add -ed at the end of the verb.

Nonetheless, when reading in English, they also face another common difficulty. In Spanish,
every word is pronounced the same way that it is written, so it does not generate any doubt
when someone reads it. On the other hand, when someone who is not an English native
speaker tries to read in English, could mispronounce some words as they want to anticipate
their pronunciation.

When writing in English, Spanish native speakers face more problems normally with word
order. As Vicente González says “English is a language with fixed word order
(Subject-Verb-Object), while in Spanish the word order is more flexible (example:
Verb-Object).”

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With all of this said, we could conclude that English, like any other language that someone
does not speak as their native one, requires an immersion made by the environment that we
live in. Assuming that most people are not capable of going abroad to another country and
living there for a while, this immersion can be generated with online resources, which also
improve our creativity and cooperative skills.

It has also been proved that using apps which require writing aptitudes are useful to improve
your communication skills. Furthermore, with video or audio apps, students from all over the
world can create a 3D character that has an objective and they need to communicate
something to someone, so it is increasing their communication talents and improving their
listening and speaking techniques.

Now, it is time to start talking about people who have successful careers and have given tips,
apps and web pages teaching how they learnt English and reached a very good level in it.

First of all, we will introduce Carla con Wifi, a young woman who works online and is an
entrepreneur. She also works in social media, sharing tips on how to become better in
business and working online on your own.

In one of her tweets, she talked about ten platforms to learn English completely free and
online, which is the goal of this research. The first one that she talked about is edX.

edX is a web page where you can find millions of different courses in English to learn about
any topic that you may be interested in. The good point of it is that you can learn English
from a very beginner level until you become completely fluent in it. You can even focus on
business understanding when you achieve a decent level of the language, which will give you
a huge knowledge about business in English, being able to increase the number of
professional opportunities that you could get in the future.

Fig 1: logo of edX.

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Following it is the well-known and most popular app when talking about learning a language,
Duolingo. This famous app gives you the unique opportunity to learn an infinity of languages
and it is 100% free. It is mainly focused on learning vocabulary and basic sentences and
grammar structures of the language, but it is worth it if you are looking forward to starting to
learn a foreign language.

Fig 2: logo of Duolingo

Next, there is ABA English, an English digital academy which lets you perfect your skills in
the language, helping you achieve any English title, from A1 (beginner) to C1 (advanced).
There is something bad about this app, it is free to download but not to use. The great aspect
of the app is the immersion that it provides you when doing the lessons, you enter a world in
English and it is the only way you can communicate with the teachers or other students.

Fig 3: logo of ABA English.

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Finally, we found Busuu, a completely free app which is made to learn languages from all
over the world. It lets you learn vocabulary, and grammar and practise your pronunciation in
real time with real people helping you. This app is great for that immersion effect that is
essential to perfect any language. As said previously, it is free, but it has some premium plans
with advantages that you may find helpful.

Fig 4: logo of Busuu.

The next individual that has been found is Manu Velasco, a teacher who is also well-known
in social media and the creator of the web page “Ayuda para maestros”. In one of his tweets,
he posted about online tools to practise and learn English.

One of them is LingoClip, an app that mixes music and English to improve your vocabulary
and reading comprehension, as well as boost your grammar and have as much fun as
possible. It works the following way: you select the song that you like, then you see the lyrics
on the screen and while the song is playing you might have to fill in the missing lyrics with
pre-selected words or you may have to write them. After that, you can select words which
you are not capable of comprehending and translating or getting their meaning.

Fig 5: Logo of LingoClip.

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Another suggestion is HelloTalk, an app that has that immersion which is crucial to learn
English. With this app, you can chat and connect with native speakers of the language that
you want to learn, so they correct your mistakes and you can ask them to give you better
words to have a wider knowledge of vocabulary, improve your grammar, perfect your skills,
and a lot of other things more.

Fig 6: Logo of HelloTalk.

The following app is insanely helpful to improve your vocabulary using interactive activities.
It is called Language Guide. You just have to select a language that you want to learn and,
following different visual and interactive activities, you are going to increase the amount of
vocabulary that you have. Also, it includes audio and pictures to complement the information.

Fig 7: Language Guide logo.

Sub inglés might be the most basic app that is shown here, but it is as helpful as the previous
ones. With this app you are going to visualise the lyrics of any song that you select, being
able to read the lyrics paying attention to the way that the singer pronounces the words as
well as you read them and trying to comprehend them to improve your reading skills. It is
worth it and user-friendly.

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 Fig 8: Logo of Sub inglés.

Flowlingo is an app that practises immersion in the language. It is ideal to improve our level
of the language, by watching videos or reading texts. If you do not understand a word you do
not have to worry about it because, by selecting it, the app will automatically create a
memory card so you do not forget it.

Fig 9: Logo of Flowlingo.

Conclusions about professionals and research:

After all of this research has been done, all the studies have the same conclusion: to learn a
language you need to experience an immersion into it.

The best way to experience this immersion is to travel abroad to the country where they speak
the language that you are interested to learn, but it is hard to do it if your economic situation
is not the most optimal one.

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To achieve this immersion without spending money, you could create your own virtual world
and environment in the language that you are interested to learn, in this case, English. All the
apps that have been shown demonstrate how this is possible, as they teach you absolutely
everything that you may need, from grammar to improving your speaking skills with the
language, as well as your listening abilities and reading techniques.

It has also been proven that these online methods enhance the creativity of any individual
using online tools. As people can feel nervous or shy in face-to-face situations when learning
a language, these apps and web pages give the best options to improve your English in any
other aspect.

Furthermore, one of the most useful ways to learn a language is to write with it and practise
as much as possible your techniques when expressing yourself with the language. It has been
proven that writing in groups of four people will, progressively, improve your
acknowledgements of the language, as some students have ended up correcting themselves on
grammar or spelling mistakes.

If your goal is to get better when speaking and comprehending oral English, recording videos
or audio tracks where you are speaking is an amazing exercise to enhance your abilities, as it
tests your creativity when thinking about what to talk about and lets you express your
thoughts or ideas in the language that you are learning, becoming better when learning
vocabulary and new sentences and expressions.

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PERSONAL METHOD:
I went from getting 4 out of 10 at school in English to get 9 over 10, this is a significant
progress. I enhanced my marks in just three months while everyone was on lockdown and my
hunger to become more fluent in this language appeared.

Surprisingly, the main place where I have been able to improve my English language level is
on social media, where you are capable of interacting with individuals from all over the world
and you can enjoy immediate communication with native English speakers. But that would
not have been possible if I did not have the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary that I
have learnt from school.

To learn these basic grammar structures and useful or common English vocabulary from an
absolute beginner level, we might need apps to help us, for example, Duolingo, an app I have
personally used.

1- Duolingo:

Fig 10: Logo of Duolingo.

This language learning app is the most used around the world to start learning any language
on Earth. This is because it has a basic interface and it is very friendly for all kinds of users of
all ages and places; it is easy to understand. Also, it is proven that it helps you to increase
your level in your desired language, which gave me confidence when I was choosing which
app I would use.

The way you learn with this app is through games. Sometimes you may have to translate
sentences from Spanish to English, or from English to Spanish. You can choose between
using a keyboard to write down the words yourself or selecting the words you may use from
a pre-established list of vocabulary, being able to see a selected amount of words if you are
starting. I would suggest you use the keyboard when you feel confident with the language.

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 Fig 11: Screenshot of the app. Fig 12: Screenshot of the app.

You will also be able to choose if you want to repeat what you are listening to from the app,
for example, they could be pronouncing a word and you would have to repeat it in a way that
the app understands, and it is going to tell you if you did it well or not, which is an
exceptional way to learn how to pronounce basic words or short phrases.

Fig 13: Screenshot of the app.

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In addition, there are a lot more games in the app such as matching games, where you see the
words in both languages, so you have to link the translation of those words. Nonetheless,
each exercise is designed with a sort of competitive spirit, so that it makes the user more
interested in learning the language and in not leaving the app.

First, it has a ranking and a big variety of divisions, which means that if you learn a lot in a
day, you have not a lot of mistakes and you make more exercises, you will win more
experience points, which are the ones that you need to increase your position on the ranking
and to go to different divisions. And do not forget that you have a maximum of 5 mistakes,
you cannot do more if you do not want to wait some hours to be able to practise more.

2- YouTube:

Fig 14: Logo of YouTube.

This is a worldwide known app as it is commonly used as a tool for entertainment where you
can find videos, music and thousands of more things with just one simple click. The way I
have used it to learn English is very simple to understand.

As I said previously, one of my goals was to understand what my favourite singers, actors and
famous people that I follow on social media were saying. With YouTube, it was so easy to
find interviews with them, songs, videos and a lot of other things.

For example, if I wanted to practise my listening skills I would go to YouTube and either try
to understand a song by my favourite artists or listen to their interviews so it was something
that I was interested in and I did not feel like I was practising or studying. In addition, once
my level was increasing I started following some YouTubers who were English native
speakers to learn more about the informal vocabulary and daily words and phrases that they
usually say.

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One of the best channels I have ever seen for interviews is The Tonight Show starring
Jimmy Fallon, where he hosts famous people and they may play games or talk about their
professional careers and achievements, so you get to know more about the celebrity and you
learn simultaneously. It is an excellent way to entertain yourself and learn at the same time.

Fig 15: Logo of The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.

If my goal was to learn how to pronounce words or to improve my listening skills, I would
listen to songs from my favourite artists and try to understand them. I would also read the
lyrics while I was playing the song, so I could see the words written and I could hear the
pronunciation of those words.

One of my favourite YouTube channels for this task is called 7clouds and the videos that they
post come with the lyrics of each song, and they have a lot of videos and so much variety of
music, so it does not matter what kind of music you prefer, you will probably find something
that you are interested in.

Fig 16: Logo of 7clouds.

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In addition, in this app, there are also a huge number of people who teach things, such as how
to make a cake or, the one I am interested in, how to learn a language. Among the thousands
of content creators who help other people to learn a new language, there is one of them that I
have found especially useful and has been the main channel that I have followed for a while,
it is called linguamarina.

Fig 17: YouTube video cover.

This woman is called Marina Mogilko and she is originally from Russia, where she lived her
entire life until 2016, when she moved to the United States of America to grow a company of
her own, “LinguaTrip”, where she helped English students from all over the world to have an
experience where they could travel to an English speaking country and develop their abilities
with the language.

She also founded another company called “Fluent.Express”, an online web where you can
paste your texts, like emails, important documents and a lot of things and native speakers
correct them in a way where they become excellent in grammar, have an adapted vocabulary
depending on what kind of document is and make them cohesive.

On her YouTube channel, she mostly posts videos talking about common mistakes that we, as
non-native speakers, do when we write or speak English, videos where she shows words that
we usually mispronounce, how to act in different situations if you are travelling to the United
States, so you do not seem rude or strange due to your nationality, common expressions that
native speakers use, and a lot of content that everyone willing to learn English will, for sure,
love and claim.

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In this channel, I have improved dramatically my level of English, mostly with expressions,
abbreviations and tips that she gives you to learn the language in your daily life.
On the other hand, if you are more interested in learning British English, I would suggest you
another channel that I have also watched and learnt from, this is called Amigos Ingleses.
They are a marriage where the woman is from Spain and the man is from England, so the
content is usually translated and focused on Spanish learners of the language.

Fig 18: Logo of Amigos Ingleses.

They show the same kind of things as linguamarina but, as I said previously, they are
focused on Spanish people, as they sometimes speak in Spanish to make clear some
important points of the lessons.

They also have a big difference with linguamarina, they teach grammar and have videos
where they are focused on different Cambridge exams as a preparation for them and they tell
you some “secrets” to make your exam more interesting, helping you to improve your marks.

3- Grammarly

Fig 19: Logo of Grammarly.

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This app is a keyboard that corrects absolutely everything that you write in English. It
corrects your grammar and gives you suggestions on vocabulary based on your needs for
each document or text that you are writing.
It works as a normal keyboard and you can add an extension to your laptop or pc, so
everything that you write is going to be corrected and it is going to look way better with its
suggestions on vocabulary and sentence structure.

You can select which kind of English you want your texts to be corrected. You can choose
between American, British, Australian or Canadian English, so the texts are going to fit each
culture and the way they write better.

In my opinion, it is an excellent tool to learn vocabulary or improve your grammar if you are
lacking in it. Also, if you do not have an advanced level you will not have to worry about
how your texts are going to be, this tool makes them look so much better than what they
would be if you accept its recommendations.

4- Twitter:

Fig 20: logo of Twitter.

Maybe you have never thought about any app related to social media to learn a language but
they give you an enormous number of possibilities that other kinds of apps could not give
you, such as the opportunity to communicate with other people and to practise with real-life
situations.

First, when I downloaded this app I had never done it intending to learn or practise a
language, which is something that I discovered later that I could do. I just wanted to be
updated on the latest news related to my favourite celebrities, so it was just a tool for
entertainment.

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Later on, once I was already learning and improving my level in English, I thought about
writing using this language in the app, so I could enhance my communication abilities as I
was talking and reading about information that I found interesting. As a consequence, I would
increase the amount of vocabulary that I know and I would fix some problems that I used to
have when I wrote in English.

At that moment, as I was obsessed with improving my level of English, I thought that it
would be an outstanding idea to create a private account just for myself, where I would be
able to share and write about absolutely everything that I was interested in. For example, I
used to write about things that I was doing at the moment, like: “I’m going to the grocery
store”.

I reckon that it was an amazing decision to open that account, it was incredible to see my
growth and improvement over the months of writing in English and what I was talking about,
the vocabulary that I used and it gave me a lot of satisfaction to be able to track absolutely
everything.

I remember reading old tweets that I had posted and recognising where I had committed
mistakes. Sadly, this account is no longer available as I deleted it, but I would have liked to
share my first and last tweets so everyone could be able to compare them and see their
differences.

Nowadays, Twitter offers new opportunities to communicate with people inside the app, such
as “Communities”. As Twitter says: “Twitter Communities were created to give people a
dedicated place to connect, share, and get closer to the discussions they care about most.”
(Twitter help centre).

With this new function, you can find communities that talk about your interests, for example,
music, and you will find people in them talking about music, so you will be more interested
in the discussions, vocabulary and expressions that they use to talk about certain information
provided by them.

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Overall, Twitter has given me a bunch of tools to boost my level in this language and I
consider it an amazing app to learn about new topics, learn more vocabulary, focus on the
main ideas of the texts, as there is a limit on each tweet, and even to meet new people who
share the same interests as you.

5- Conclusion about my method:

To sum up, when I first started learning English by myself, I had a lot of knowledge about
grammar and vocabulary thanks to school and I needed to comprehend how to use all of this
knowledge.

Duolingo was the first app that I downloaded and I must say that it is insane for someone who
wants to learn a language from nothing, but once you already know a lot about it, you might
need other tools to enhance your level.

YouTube helped me to increase crazily my skills with the language. I started to comprehend
what someone was saying while they spoke in English and I could differentiate American
English from British English. I also started watching movies and TV shows in their original
language and it made me feel proud of myself, which led me to keep working on it. In
addition, I was able to understand my favourite songs quicker without the need to look at the
lyrics.

Grammarly made me realise all the mistakes that I committed related to grammar and
vocabulary, which was crucial when I had to write an essay for school, I already learnt as I
was writing sentences which were my mistakes.

Twitter had the biggest impact on me because it is a social media app and I had never thought
I could do something with it. The best thing about this app is that everything that you see is
written by real people and not by an app which is trying to teach you.

On Twitter, you usually see abbreviations and other writing features that you are not used to
see in school. Another important aspect is the limit of characters in each tweet, which is
useful to help you focus on the main idea of what you want to share.

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As you can see, my progress following all the steps that I have done has been incredibly
huge. I went from failing English to being completely fluent in the language and even
changing the degree that I wanted to do at the University. Nowadays I want to study English
but I wanted to study Economics.

Fig 21: Photo of the marks

Fig 22: Photo of the marks

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PUTTING EVERYTHING IN COMMON:
As it was previously said, both professional and personal methods would be compared and
put in common to extract the best conclusions and, furthermore, the best path to learn English
using informal learning.

As it has been said by a research carried by Carlos-Miguel Lorenzo, writing is one of the best
options to practise the well-known immersion. Immersion makes you live with the language
and use it on a daily basis, which means that you could use it to do daily habits, such as going
to the grocery shop, writing a journal or blogging. Talking about blogging, the app that has
been selected between the ones given by professionals and the ones that individuals have
used, Twitter is, definitely, the most complete app to write and immerse yourself in English.
With Twitter you will be able to interact with millions of users who are native speakers, as
well as to improve your writing skills, being able to write the main ideas on each tweet, as
you have a limit of characters on each post.

I reckon it is necessary to suggest Grammarly, an extraordinary app to improve your writing

mistakes, incoherences, spelling and sentence structure as you are writing your desired text.
This is going to help you realise where you are making mistakes and you will be aware the
next time that you will be facing any of them. In my opinion, it is worth the download.

If your goal is to widen the amount of vocabulary that you know in English, the best way to
do it is by downloading Duolingo. The world-wide famous app is the number one on
language apps due to its easy interface and usage. The activities that this app offers are
perfect to increase your vocabulary and you will be able to understand more words as its
exercises are perfect for it.

Previously, there have also been recommended apps which are useful to listen to English
conversations, songs and much more. In my opinion, you do not need to download different
apps to do different tasks if you have everything in one. This is why YouTube, one of the
most popular entertaining apps, is the best one for this kind of usage. Even if you would like
to listen to a song, watch the lyrics, listen to conversations or even watching content creators
who are native speakers, YouTube is the perfect app as it has all of them.

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There have already been too many apps which improve your vocabulary, listening and
writing skills and even entertaining with English, but what about the grammar? It is crucial to
have a basic knowledge about grammar to be able to speak clearly so others understand the
full meaning of the message that you are trying to communicate. That is why Busuu is an
extraordinary app as it has been completely created to improve your grammar skills.
Definitely, it is a must when learning English.

Another very important skill is speaking. You will not always have the pleasure to not face a
real life conversation with someone whose language is English. This is why HelloTalk has
been made for, to help everyone to improve their skills when speaking in English or any other
language. It offers you the possibility to talk with native speakers of any language that you
want to learn and you are able to have real time conversations with them. It is a unique way
to simulate what could be a real life conversation.

Last but not least, there is Flowlingo. This reading app is focused on increasing our
knowledge and capacity to read in English, being able to understand harder texts as we
continue reading. Using this app is crucial if you do not have a habit of reading or you do not
have access to books in English.

All of these apps will be found on the practical part of this project, where you will be able to
have a link to all of them if you are interested in downloading them and improving your
English skills.

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PRACTICAL PART:
In this part, I have decided that I am going to create a Notion template. Notion is an app that
is worth it for everyone whose desire is to organise their lives, jobs, or studies. In it, you can
create a template and personalise it the way that you like it to make it more interesting for
your needs.

Fig 23: Logo of Notion.

In a template, you can add text as if you were writing as usual in a word document, tables, to
have a more detailed organisation, lists, to-do lists, bulleted lists, toggle lists, add quotes, add
direct links to online pages, dates, reminders, calendars, and a lot of things more that make
this app an amazing tool of organisation.

This is how Wikipedia describes the app: “Notion is a project management and note-taking
software. Notion is software designed to help members of a company or organisation
coordinate deadlines, objectives, and assignments for the sake of efficiency and productivity.”
https://www.notion.so/

I have chosen this one in particular because it is free and it can be used on any software,
phone or computer. Also, its interface is easy to understand and it would help people to be
more productive in their way to learn English. My template has the following parts:

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1- Introduction:
In this part, I just present the template and what users will find in it and a warm welcome to
the path that they will follow. As you can see, I invite them to join an informal learning
method to learn a language.

Fig 24: Screenshot.

2- Steps that people must follow:

Here, I have created a to-do list with things that will help people find their weaknesses and
strengths in the language. In addition, they will also find their motivations to learn it, as I
reckon it is crucial to have specific incentives to be ready to study a new language.

Fig 25: Screenshot.

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Inside the “Motivations” page, they will have a space to write why they want to learn the
language. In “Weaknesses” and “Strengths in the language”, they will be able to write those
in list form. It will work for them to be conscious about what parts they have to put more
effort into.

3- Apps and tools that will be used:

This is another part of the template where everyone who uses it will see the apps that they
will need to download and use for their journey into learning the language. The apps that
have been selected are those which are the best between the ones given by professionals and
personal experiences.

Fig 26: Screenshot.

Once they click on “Apps”, they will be redirected to another page, where all the apps are
going to be displayed and you will have, pressing on their names, a direct link to their official
websites if someone is interested in downloading them.

Fig 27: Screenshot.

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4- Organisation:
Under the “Apps” page, there is another part called “Organisation” that, as its name says, is
the part where users will be able to decide how much time a day they will spend exercising
each skill, and here is where the “Weaknesses” and “Strengths” parts take action. If there is a
part that you consider to be your weakness, you will focus more on it than if it is your
strength and you will spend more hours and days working to improve it. It is game-changing
to have an organisation and a well-structured calendar or timetable to learn a language.

Fig 28: Screenshot.

Inside “Time that I will spend” you will find a table. On one side there are written all the
skills: “Grammar”, “Vocabulary”, “Writing”, “Speaking” and “Listening”. Next to them, you
will be able to write, depending on your necessities, how much time you would like to spend
working on them. It could be half an hour, an hour, two hours or the time that you prefer and
you are able to spend doing each of those activities.

Fig 29: Screenshot.

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Inside the “Week calendar” there is a table similar to the one on the top, but it is slightly
different, as you can see the name of the days that are in a week and all the aptitudes that you
can develop, so you can mark which days you are going to be working on each skill. It is like
a timetable where you can easily see what you have to do each day.

Fig 30: Screenshot.

5- Track your improvement:

This is, for me, a must that every language learning app should contain. This is because when
you are learning a language you will find new words that were unknown to you before and
you may like to write them down as soon as possible, so you could use them in different
situations and impress your teachers or other people when writing or speaking in English.

With the “Track your improvement” part you will be able to do that. This part is going to be
redirecting you to a page called “Things that I have learnt” where you will be able to write all
of those new things learnt by you, so you do not forget them. It is crucial to keep track of
everything new that you learn.

Fig 31: Screenshot.

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Inside the “Things that I have learnt” page, there are also different toggle lists called
“Vocabulary”, “Grammar”, “Pronunciation of words” and “Sentences”. In each of them, you
can add the items that you have learnt to keep the progress of your level and you will feel a
sense of satisfaction every time that you write something there, you will be learning and you
will realise it, and that feeling will motivate you to keep learning and desiring to write as
many things down as possible, which is important to be conscious about you learning
experience and how quickly you achieve your goals.

Fig 32: Screenshot.

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CONCLUSIONS:
In the world where we live, it is crucial to understand and to have a decent level of English to
communicate with other people or to increase the amount of possibilities that you have to be
selected for your future job.

In this research there have been selected three studies related to English and its learning; The
Role of Digital Technologies to Promote Collaborative Creativity in Language Education,
Wikis: Promoting Collaborative Literacy through Affordable Technology in Content-Area
Classrooms and Learning English as a Second Language: A Comparison between Spanish
and Adopted Chinese Teenagers, where it has been able to select the correct amount of
information to prepare a decent path to follow for everyone interested in learning this
Germanic language.

In addition, there has been researched two individuals who are considered as professionals for
their fluency in the language and the amount of knowledge that they have in this specific
department, Carla con Wifi and Manu Velasco, who have shared their opinions and favourite
apps to learn English online completely free.

After that, my own personal experience on how I have learnt English has been shared and I
had to find all of the apps that I used when I was learning informally and how they helped me
to improve certain aspects of the language, such as my speaking, listening, writing and
reading skills, my grammar knowledge and vocabulary research.

Finally, a Notion template has been created to mix all of the apps and paths that professionals
recommended and the ones shared by me, as someone who has had the same experience, to
try to recommend the best apps to learn English informally for those who do not have the
opportunity to access a language school or for those who are having a hard time improving
their marks on the subject and want to become better.

In conclusion, in this research you can find a professional perspective of informal learning
and the processes that they have followed to improve the level of English of their classes, like
the techniques that they said were the best ones, like immersion or practise with writing.
These professional techniques have been very important to select the information that was
desired to extract from those individuals who have given their opinion and experience on the

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language and the apps which they recommend, being this completely useful and accurate for
this research. Finally, and after comparing those methods and apps with the ones given by
me, I have been able to create a Notion template, where all the apps are displayed and it has a
lot of tools to help people to organise themselves for this kind of learning.

It has been seen how the path that professionals proposed, which is immersion, has been also
used by me when learning English without knowing exactly what I was doing. This means
that the best way to improve and increase your knowledge in English is immersion, to live
with a language is the only way to get fluent in it and to become proficient.

Doing this research has been a complete honour and I am delighted to be able to show to the
world how my marks and professional life have completely changed when learning English,
being it crucial for my daily life nowadays. Also, as I always wanted to help people learning
English, it is insane to know that everyone interested in learning it will be able to do it by just
downloading my own template, using the apps that have been researched by me. It is a way to
help everyone indirectly.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
In this research there have been used three different researches:
- The Role of Digital Technologies to Promote Collaborative Creativity in Language
Education.
- Wikis: Promoting Collaborative Literacy through Affordable Technology in
Content-Area Classrooms.
- Learning English as a Second Language: A Comparison between Spanish and
Adopted Chinese Teenagers.

Also, there are other papers which have not made the cut to be a part of this research:
- Motivation and attitudes towards english: evidence of francophones’ learning english
as a second language.
- Content comprehension and Learning in English Medium Instruction: Teachers’
Views.
- Competing linguae france: the place of english and spanish for chinese students.
- Learning English in Catalonia: beliefs and emotions through small stories and
iterativity.

Pictures that have been used:

- Fig 1: https://images.app.goo.gl/hXBRnoZHQhSm26wa6
- Fig 2: https://images.app.goo.gl/YyT7senY26Bw6oxr6
- Fig 3: https://images.app.goo.gl/D8wG4chkR89BKC2X9
- Fig 4: https://images.app.goo.gl/jkuJRNrPeSSMQSFi9
- Fig 5: https://images.app.goo.gl/GS3zirqNyB1Q6SwaA
- Fig 6: https://images.app.goo.gl/N1TfUknxL3xH9VjN6
- Fig 7: https://images.app.goo.gl/Ct3YTxR4UqpTmgF96
- Fig 8: https://images.app.goo.gl/ik9y7GRMiZnsPvst9
- Fig 9: ​https://images.app.goo.gl/jRvVKHxUX69Yjwi57
- Fig 10: https://images.app.goo.gl/YyT7senY26Bw6oxr6
- Fig 11: Screenshot of my own.
- Fig 12: Screenshot of my own.
- Fig 13: Screenshot of my own.
- Fig 14: https://images.app.goo.gl/tUEPw7CV5rbEjyKe6
- Fig 15: https://images.app.goo.gl/qaik7CTk2QL7FVNu5

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- Fig 16: https://images.app.goo.gl/NykS7yQiQ3Es4u1dA
- Fig 17: https://images.app.goo.gl/8sBvGP9x9UMEvzns7
- Fig 18: https://images.app.goo.gl/fnNiHYertxWYW4NCA
- Fig 19: https://images.app.goo.gl/mrKWXHisQf4QTiZ67
- Fig 20: https://images.app.goo.gl/YjgXjEmcBSiTcu7cA
- Fig 21: Photo of my own.
- Fig 22: Photo of my own.
- Fig 23: https://images.app.goo.gl/h4Exux3jLzMvdk159
- Fig 24: Photo of my own.
- Fig 26: Photo of my own.
- Fig 27: Photo of my own.
- Fig 28: Photo of my own.
- Fig 29: Photo of my own.
- Fig 30: Photo of my own.
- Fig 31: Photo of my own.
- Fig 32: Photo of my own.

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