Hey, my fellow language learner! My name’s Olga, and I’m also known as Lady Giraffe since I have a YouTube channel in English devoted to English learning called Fluent English With Lady Giraffe. My native tongue is Russian, and I grew up in a small town in Siberia, Russia.

English has become an important part of my life and my identity in the past 10 years or so. The ability to get access to so much fantastic content is probably what I love about this language the most.

Sharing my experience of studying the language with my fellow English learners and helping them to make the learning process a bit easier and more fun are the things I find really enjoyable and gratifying, and because of that, I’m now on the journey to become an English teacher.

I don’t live in Russia anymore, so I don’t have a lot of friends/family members around to provide commentary on how much time I’m spending on studying languages. They’ve been pretty supportive of my YouTube channel (even though none of them understand English) and my wish to become a teacher. When it comes to anything language-related, my husband is my #1 supporter, which means the world to me.

I studied English at school for 10 years, but it was mostly reading, translating texts from English into Russian, rote memorization of grammar rules and vocabulary, and doing grammar exercises. We didn’t have access to any real books in English or any listening materials back then. We also didn’t speak or write in English much.

However, I’m forever grateful to my teachers for helping me to lay a pretty solid foundation of basic understanding of English grammar and vocabulary. Because of that, when I got access to content in English, I was able to start reading children’s books and listening to podcasts with slow English right away, which I did pretty much every single day for a few years.

I don’t translate words from English into Russian anymore. Instead of that, I’ve been using English-English dictionaries for many years now. I also don’t learn new words by sitting down and memorizing them. I expand my vocabulary by consuming a lot of content in English on a variety of topics and using these new words in my speaking and writing.

I’m a bookworm, and I went from reading 10-20 books in English a year in 2013-2015 (mostly children’s books and YA fantasy) to reading 40-60 books a year (mostly adult fantasy, nonfiction, and classics). The amount of YouTube and TV content I’ve consumed over the years is enormous.

I’m an introvert, so the biggest challenge for me is boosting my speaking skills and interacting with other people. Creating my own opportunities for speaking has helped a lot. I had lessons with a teacher for a while, organized a speaking club for 9 months, was a member of a book club, had a few long-term speaking partners, and practiced speaking by recording myself. To improve your speaking skills, you need to speak. As simple as that.

It wasn’t easy for me to step outside of my comfort zone and start talking with other people. Becoming a member of a small but welcoming community of other English learners was something that allowed me to start learning to express myself in English, one small step at a time. It was an American pronunciation course, and we were encouraged to practice sounds, linking, intonation, etc, and record our exercises on camera. Posting these short videos in the group slowly built my confidence in my language skills, and I started going to speaking clubs.

That’s how I found enough confidence to host my own speaking club for a while, and preparing topics for discussions and leading those discussions was so fun and exciting that I almost forgot that I was supposed to be shy and afraid to speak. I was nervous and anxious at first, of course, but my feelings didn’t stop me from doing something that was getting my speaking and communication skills to a whole new level.

Studying for two English proficiency exams was also a struggle. I invested a lot of time and energy into learning how to write essays and describe graphs and charts for IELTS Academic. Constant practice and good sources of information were the keys to my preparation, and I got an overall 8 out of 9 in both tests, IELTS Academic and IELTS General.

I still read and listen to stuff in English that I really enjoy every single day. I’m pretty active on Reddit, and I create videos in English for my YouTube channel.

I’m already learning Dutch because I’m planning to move to the Netherlands. I’m a beginner in this language, and I’m trying to study it by myself right now. Since I love reading, I’m in the process of reading my 10th children’s book in Dutch. My progress in listening is slow, but I’m happy to discover so many wonderful things in the language every single day.

Language is a tool: use it! Read fun books, listen to engaging podcasts, watch really cool stuff on YouTube and TV shows you love, write in a journal, write comments on social media, interact with other language learners and native speakers, join a book club, etc. There are so many awesome activities you can do while improving your skills in your target language.

Buy a Kindle or any other e-reader to read books you really enjoy. It’s such a game-changer when it comes to reading in your target language! You can look up new words in the dictionary embedded in your Kindle without disrupting the reading process. Reading will help you improve your passive vocabulary and develop an almost intuitive understanding of how grammar works. It’s also super fun!

There is no one foolproof method to learn a language. Experiment with your studying methods! I’d highly recommend you to learn more about evidence-based methods such as active recall (also known as retrieval practice), spaced repetition, and interleaving. The Learning Scientists Podcast, for example, explains them really well.