hello guys, I am Vietnamese, and I would really love to be able to use English just like a native speaker. However, I honestly don’t know where to start. Could you share any courses or learning roadmaps with me?
Thank you!
2 Likes
Xin chào 
You can start tonight. Alone. Free.
Do this first — it takes one minute:
- Open your phone keyboard and tap the microphone button (or open Google and tap the mic).
- Say these three words slowly: cost · asked · fifths
- Read what the phone typed.
Did it write “cos”, “ask” or “fif”? Then you just found the exact thing that makes people ask you to repeat. Vietnamese ends words softly. English does not. Those endings are the difference — not grammar.
Everything below is free, and each one shows you your own mistakes. No teacher. No partner. No payment.
Follow the boxes in order: box 1 tonight, box 2 for the next month, the rest whenever you want them.
🪞 The page that refuses to obey you
Say a colour out loud. The page changes colour when it hears you, and stays still when your ending disappears.
• Speech colour changer — no signup, open it in Chrome and talk.
• VOA Let’s Learn English, Level 1 — one short story a night, quiz at the end.
• LangCorrect — write three sentences about your day. A native rewrites them while you sleep.
🇻🇳 The list of your mouth, measured by a Vietnamese university
Vietnamese ends syllables softly. English does not. That single habit is what people hear.
• Can Tho University study — they recorded Vietnamese speakers and wrote down which consonant clusters (two or three sounds together, like the “sk” in asked) get dropped, changed or added. That table is your homework list.
• Refugee education guide, pages 6–12 — the older, wider table of sounds Vietnamese speakers swap.
• Sounds of Speech, University of Iowa — watch a side view of the mouth making the sound, then copy it.
• English Accent Coach — click the vowel you hear. Your ear learns before your mouth.
🎧 The voice you speak half a second behind
Shadowing: play a recording and speak along half a second late. Your mouth copies rhythm your ear cannot catch yet.
• VOA Special English + full scripts — slow native audio, every word written down.
• Randall’s Listening Lab — take one quiz, then shadow the lines you missed.
• BBC 6 Minute English — full speed, full transcript.
• Reading Bear — for sounds you keep missing; built for children learning to read, and it works.
🎙️ Captions of your own voice, made on your own machine
• BurnSub — record yourself talking, and your browser writes the captions. Nothing uploads, nothing costs. Every unclear word appears as the wrong word.
• Chrome live captions — turn any English audio into text on screen and check what you heard.
🚪 The door that stays shut until you type the right word
• Text games (IFDB) — type English to move through a story. Pick one marked easy.
• The Wiki Game — race from one Wikipedia page to another using links only.
• LyricsTraining — fill the missing words in a song.
• AllKaraoke — sing in your browser and watch the score.
• NHK World live TV — English news all day with captions, free, plays from Vietnam.
🔧 Things that prove you understood
• iFixit guides — repair something by following English steps. The working device is the proof.
• Exploratorium experiments — do it, then compare your result with theirs.
• LibriVox — free audiobooks; read the same text while you listen.
• r/WriteStreakEN · English Language Learners — post a sentence, natives rewrite it and say why.
📏 Numbers you beat next month
• Vocabulary size test — Vietnamese instructions, one number.
• Cambridge level check — 25 questions, your level on screen.
• Paul Nation speed-reading set — time yourself, write the number down.
• VocabProfile — paste an article; more than one hard word in ten means pick something easier.
• CEFR self-check grid · Vietnam’s 6-level framework — the same level in both systems.
🪤 What wastes months
• Collecting lists instead of starting.
• Studying grammar silently. Say every sentence out loud.
• Changing tools every week. One shadowing routine for one month beats ten apps.
• Skipping the ending sound.
• None of this gives you a speaking partner. Machines answer instead, and natives fix your writing overnight.
Open the colour page. Say “blue”. That is minute one.
2 Likes
Excellent, will there be a version for someone from Mexico? I’m not very familiar with it yet.
¡Hola! Sí — aquí está la versión para México. You can start tonight. Alone. Free.
Do this first — it takes one minute:
- Open your phone keyboard and tap the microphone button.
- Say these three words slowly: school · sheep · very
- Read what the phone typed.
Did school come out as “es school”? Did sheep become “ship”? Did very become “berry”? That is your accent, written down by a machine. Spanish puts an e in front of s-words, squeezes 14 English vowels into 5, and turns v into b. Those three habits are what makes people ask you to repeat — not grammar.
And here is the part nobody tells a Spanish speaker: you already own thousands of English words.
información → information -ción → -tion
universidad → university -dad → -ty
famoso → famous -oso → -ous
rápidamente → rapidly -mente → -ly
público → public -ico → -ic
Watch the false friends though: embarazada is pregnant, not embarrassed. Actualmente is currently, not actually. Asistir is to attend, not to assist.
= the tool speaks Spanish, so zero English is enough to start.
Drawer 1 tonight. Drawer 2 for this month. The rest whenever you want them.
🇲🇽 The doors your own country already paid for
Free by law, open to any adult in Mexico, no school, no enrolment fee.
• EMI — Escuela Mexicana de Inglés — the SEP’s own platform, built with British Council material, A1 to B1+. Its own page says pública y gratuita. An email address is the whole price.
• TecNM free courses — Inglés Básico 1-5 and Intermedio 1-5 from the federal technology university network, with a constancia at the end. The August–December 2026 round is open now.
• IMSS EduTK — Inglés Básico para principiantes. Their own FAQ says it is for every citizen, derechohabiente or not.
• Capacítate para el Empleo — Fundación Carlos Slim, open 24 hours a year round, English for work among hundreds of free courses.
• UNAM AVI — three free English exams from UNAM with no registration at all: general level, placement, reading.
👅 Your Spanish mouth, measured and mapped
Spanish and English are made in different parts of the mouth. This is the homework list.
• Sounds of Speech, University of Iowa — pick Español, then English, and watch a side view of the tongue make both. Same sound, two mouths, one animation.
• Vowel Epenthesis by Spanish Learners of English — the George Mason study of the extra e before school, speak, student. Your habit has a name and a page number.
• American English against Mexican Spanish, consonant by consonant — the full comparison table for Mexican Spanish specifically.
• Dificultades de pronunciación para hispanohablantes — the same list in Spanish, with exercises, from a Mexican journal.
• Ship or Sheep · berry or very — click, listen, choose. The two contrasts that give you away, drilled in five minutes.
• Minimal pairs, listening and speaking — sorted by the exact contrast: b/v, s/th, d/th, l/r.
• Sammy the talking head — move the tongue, lips and voice yourself and hear what comes out. This is how “th” stops being magic.
• Sentence stress and weak forms — paste a sentence, see which words shrink. Spanish gives every syllable the same length; English does not, and that is most of the accent.
🎤 Machines that refuse you until the sound is right
No teacher, no partner, no payment. The computer tells you, instantly.
• Read Along by Google — the menus work in Spanish, it runs offline on a 1GB phone, and it listens while you read English out loud and stops you on the word you missed. No account, no ads.
• Speech Colour Changer — say a colour. The page changes colour when it hears you, and sits still when it does not.
• Phrase Matcher — say the sentence on screen and get a straight right or wrong.
• Speak Easy — a picture appears, you say the word, the score moves only when the machine hears the right one.
• Word Pronunciation Checker — type the one word you are stuck on, say it, get a 0-100 score with the broken sound marked. Ten free checks a day, no account.
• Microsoft Reading Coach — read a paragraph aloud, it marks every word you missed and builds the drill from your own mistakes.
• Caption Ninja · Live Transcribe — talk and watch the captions write what the machine heard. Every wrong word on screen is a sound to fix.
🎧 The voice you speak half a second behind
Shadowing: play the audio, speak along half a second late. Your mouth copies rhythm your ear cannot catch yet.
• Breaking News English — the same news story recorded at five speeds, from crawling to normal, with the script for each one. Start at the slowest and climb.
• News in Levels — today’s news written three times, easiest to hardest, audio with every version.
• VOA Learning English — slow native narration, the exact text on the same page, downloadable audio, 60 years of it.
• BBC Real Easy English — normal people talking slowly, with a free transcript for every episode.
• elllo — 3,000 unscripted conversations in every accent, each with the words written out.
• Randall’s Listening Lab — take the quiz first, then shadow only the lines you got wrong.
🎬 Both languages on the same second
• Language Reactor — two subtitle lines at once on YouTube, English on top, Spanish under it, and any word you click explains itself. Free forever on YouTube.
• YouTube dual subtitles, open source — the same trick from code anyone can read, no company attached.
• YouGlish — type any English word and watch real people say it in real videos, one after another, with the line written under them.
• Democracy Now en Español — real English interviews, human Spanish subtitles, new every weekday.
• Al Jazeera English, live — 24 hours of English news with captions you can switch on, free, plays from anywhere in Mexico.
🗣️ Free humans, tonight, no card
• Free4Talk — voice rooms open right now. Click one, start talking. No account, no download, no payment.
• Spanish–English Discord — 150,000 people, half want your Spanish and half have the English you want.
• Conversation Exchange — the biggest pool of people who trade Spanish for English, by voice, video or text.
• Language Exchanges — run free by a university, not a company. Search a partner, meet on any app you already have.
• LangCorrect — write three sentences about your day. A native rewrites them while you sleep, and you correct someone’s Spanish to pay for it.
• r/WriteStreakEN — post one sentence a day, get it fixed within hours, keep the streak.
🎮 English as the controller, not the subject
• LyricsTraining — the song plays and stops until you type the missing word.
• Free Rice — every English word you get right sends rice to the World Food Programme. Your vocabulary feeds someone.
• Wiki Racer — race from one Wikipedia page to another using only the links inside. You have to read fast or you lose.
• Text games — type English to move through a story. The door stays shut until the sentence is right.
• iFixit — repair something you own by following English steps. The working phone is the proof you understood.
• Visual recipes — a photo for every step, one short English line under it, built for people cooking in a second language. Dinner is the exam.
• Science Buddies — kitchen experiments in English. The result on the table tells you whether you read it right.
📏 One number, then beat it next month
• Vocabulary size test — in Spanish, two minutes, no signup, and it plants fake words to catch you guessing.
• Level test — your A1 to C2 level given as a range, never a flattering badge.
• Paul Nation’s vocabulary test — the one universities use for research. Take it today, take it again in 30 days.
• CEFR self-check grid, Spanish — one page, official, tick every line that is already true of you.
🪤 What eats months of a Spanish speaker's life
• Reading grammar silently. Say every sentence out loud or it stays theory.
• Translating word for word. English word order will fight you every time.
• Changing app every week. One shadowing routine for one month beats ten apps.
• Skipping the e. School, not eschool — this one alone changes how people hear you.
• Watching English with Spanish subtitles only. Your eyes read, your ears rest, nothing moves.
Open the colour page. Say “blue”. That is minute one.
!