What’s the best YouTube channel to learn English with? Our top 10
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It’s almost like YouTube was designed for English learners. There are more hours of expert advice than any student could watch in a single lifetime. Even better, almost every video can be watched with subtitles, played at slower speeds, paused and replayed until you understand every word.
There are easily enough great YouTube English teachers to fill a top one hundred, but we’ve narrowed it down to just ten.
Top 10 YouTube channels for learning English in 2022
Here’s our rundown of the best channels for learning English, in no particular order.
1. Preply
Preply’s YouTube channel has a wide range of English learning resources, no matter what area of English you’re looking to learn, or what level you’re at. You can watch videos on everything from grammar to business English and all for free.
Preply tutors use YouTube to share their knowledge of English with you, and if you find a particular tutor interesting or helpful, you can book a private lesson with them in the description.
At the time of writing, Preply has nearly 2 million views and counting, so join the community and check out some English videos on the channel today.
2. Bob the Canadian
If you are learning English in 2021, you’re probably already familiar with Bob the Canadian! He’s a high school teacher from Toronto, Canada, who lives on a flower farm with his wife and five kids. He decided to start making YouTube videos for English learners for fun a few years ago and they became a huge success.
Bob’s videos mostly deal with everyday situations. Bob describes common places, scenes and conversations using simple English, explaining difficult words as he goes. He has taken his viewers to a great mix of places, from hardware stores to hotels to hospitals. Bob’s accent is very clear and he subtitles his videos, so intermediate speakers will understand most of them with ease. He’s also the nicest guy in the world which makes his videos very watchable — many regular viewers start to think of him as a friend!
3. Learn English with Mr. Duncan
Mr. Duncan has been running a successful English language YouTube channel for over ten years, so you know he’s got experience as well as his expertise! He lives in a pretty town in the UK called Much Wenlock, and has an upper-class British accent to match.
Mr. Duncan’s huge video catalog covers nearly every topic in the world of British English, from idioms, to grammar, to specialist vocabulary. For the past few months, he has stopped creating short video lessons, and started running free livestream lessons three times per week instead. They’re really useful: tune in to ask questions for free in real-time! If that’s not your thing, then all of his old videos about more specific parts of the English language are still available.
Unlike Bob the Canadian, Mr. Duncan plays a character in his videos. He often acts out words in an exaggerated way, almost like Mr. Bean. His videos are quite silly — most viewers find them fun and memorable, but other learners might prefer a more serious channel.
4. BBC Learn English
BBC Learn English is definitely the most professional English teaching channel on this list. It’s a service run by the British government — every video has been produced by a whole team of experts rather than a single passionate person.
This channel is very well organized and offers something for everyone. There’s a playlist for learning English with recent news stories, another for perfecting your accent, and another for preparing for English tests. The videos are remarkably polished, and all quite short — it’s an excellent resource. If you are one of the serious souls who finds Mr. Duncan’s channel too childish, then BBC Learn English is definitely a great choice for you!
Want to feel sure of the differences between British English and American English? Take a look at American slang vs. British slang: terms & phrases compared
5. LinguaMarina
Can English learners ever achieve a near-native level of fluency? Some days, you need reminding that it’s actually possible! If you’re having one of those days, LinguaMarina is perfect inspiration.
Marina was born and raised in Russia but decided to move to the USA in 2015. She taught herself to speak English like an American and now runs two businesses from her adopted home in San Francisco, California. Her YouTube channel is perfect for anyone dreaming of a similar path.
The channel has a great playlist on studying efficiently for the TOEFL and another one about how to apply to colleges in the US, but it also addresses more universal topics like pronunciation and common expressions. Not all of Marina’s videos are about learning English; some of them share entrepreneurial expertise and general life advice — but most people learning English for business purposes will find these useful too. If you’re studying English to relocate to the US, you should definitely spend some time with Marina!
6. EnglishClass101
This is a channel designed to sell an interactive online English course which is for sale at EnglishClass101.com. However, if you don’t mind a sales pitch, the videos themselves are a great learning resource. They are all completely free — whether or not you buy the course.
This channel is particularly good for explaining grammatical rules and common expressions. If you’ve ever become so bored trying to understand the use cases for a tense that you tune out completely, there’s almost certainly an EnglishClass101 video that can help you!
7. JenniferESL
JenniferESL provides such well-structured and rich lessons that you’ll feel like you paid for a professional language course! She has been making YouTube videos teaching US English with her family since 2007, so there’s a huge collection to discover. Viewers can either follow her own pre-planned course or choose from a number of playlists, which each deal with a specific aspect of English that learners struggle with. At the moment, these include one on English prepositions and another on phrasal verbs.
Like Bob the Canadian, one of the enjoyable things about Jennifer’s videos is that you catch glimpses of someone’s life in an English-speaking country. This is one channel that really does feel like a community, and followers have a sense that Jennifer is rooting for them to succeed. She also uses her channel to advertise other teacher’s videos that she finds useful.
8. Learn English with TV Series
Everyone knows someone who taught themselves English by watching all ten seasons of Friends, right? Or at least, it’s an extremely common myth! If you’ve ever wanted to learn English by watching TV this might be your perfect channel. The presenters show clips from famous English language TV series, and explain the expressions, slang and technical vocabulary. Videos are between twenty minutes and half an hour long — enough time to really dig into the language. There are videos about a range of TV shows and films, from Spongebob to Star Wars. There’s also a playlist about famous songs and their lyrics. If you’re trying to find a TV series to learn English with, this is a great place to start looking!
There are enough videos here to keep any English learner busy for a very long time. But if you do work through them all, they also sell an extra English course about every episode of Friends seasons 1 & 2!
9. ToFluency
ToFluency is a channel for people who are interested in language learning strategies. The host is a British guy called Jack who believes the first step to mastering English is learning how to learn. Topics include “how to determine your own English level,” “how to overcome your fear of speaking,” and “common mistakes to avoid when learning English.”
If you’re not someone who likes to dwell on tactics, this channel still might be useful to check out. There are interesting videos on a range of topics, from phrasal verbs, to the vocabulary around cars. However, it is primarily one for ambitious learners who love “life hacks”!
Like several of the channels on this list, ToFluency is trying to sell viewers an English course, but there is a treasure trove of information available for free nonetheless.
10. VOA Learning English
If you’re studying the culture of the US, you might have already heard of Voice of America. It’s a company (partly) run and funded by the US government which shares North American news for audiences outside of North America, in 47 languages. The VOA Learning English channel, therefore, is a bank of English lessons created with help from the US government.
As you might expect, videos are polished and extremely well-planned — clearly the product of a team of experts. Best of all: the channel offers a free 52-week course! Video lessons on YouTube match up with worksheets and quizzes on their website. If you don’t want to invest a whole year in this course, there’s also a brilliant selection of playlists, from “English in a Minute,” where you can learn common American expressions in short bites, to “American Stories,” short clips from famous English-language stories with subtitles and explanations of difficult words. Those who are studying about American accents and culture should definitely not miss this.
Why YouTube channels are a valuable tool in English language learning
Expert knowledge used to be a rare and expensive thing, but YouTube has changed this dramatically. With so many delightful, pointless videos also available, it’s easy to underestimate the educational value of this platform!
Here’s why you should make the most of the English language resources YouTube offers.
You can find short videos to explain exactly the information you need!
YouTube is a very well-sorted database. You can search for extremely niche and specific topics, and expect to find a relevant video with the information you were looking for. Creators know that no one watches videos more than fifteen minutes long, so it’ll also be short and to-the-point.
This is an incredible benefit for language learners! Before the age of YouTube, if you wanted to learn English with videos, you’d have to buy a DVD about learning English in general and skip through to find the parts that were relevant to you. Now, we can search YouTube for exactly the skills we need to develop: whether that’s the English vocabulary needed to buy a plane ticket or irregular verbs in the past simple tense.
You can slow them down and use subtitles
Native English speakers talk fast…really fast. This can be a huge frustration when trying to improve your listening skills. Watch TV and film at 75% speed instead of full speed and you’ll be amazed by how much more you understand. The settings on YouTube make it possible to do this with every single video!
Even better, YouTube also allows users to add subtitles to videos — which most language channels do. Learners usually find it easier to understand written English than spoken English, so reading along to a YouTube lesson can be very helpful. If only you could slow down and subtitle English speakers in real life too!
They liven up your study materials
Learning English can be so fulfilling. It can open up your life to new experiences, opportunities and friends all over the world. But it doesn’t feel that way every single study session. At some point, you’ll be working through a boring textbook, wishing you were doing something else. It is vital that you don’t get too bored studying English or you’ll be tempted to give up!
YouTube is a great tool for when learning starts to feel boring. If you don’t understand a set of vocabulary or a grammatical rule at first, it can help to see the information in a different way. Put the textbook down, and find a video! YouTube adds some valuable flavor to your study cocktail.
They’re usually free
Apart from the endless cat videos, much of YouTube contains valuable expertise that would be expensive to access in any different way. Before YouTube, you had to pay someone to explain tricky parts of the English language! We are very lucky that the only price we pay for a video lesson is having to watch a thirty-second advert for something we don’t want. It means you can save your English-learning budget for even more useful tools — like practice with a real-life fluent speaker on a website such as Preply.
Subscribing holds you accountable to a community
There’s a lot of talk these days about “online communities.” Sometimes, it seems that any website with more than five visitors claims to be a “community!” However, in the case of YouTube, this term is quite accurate.
If you watch the same English-teaching YouTube channel every week, you will soon become part of a group of like-minded students who enjoy learning by similar methods as you do. You will probably see study tips in the comments section. You will probably find that the people in your community have similar questions to you, and can appreciate your language achievements better than anyone else! It’s a great way to gain support for your learning journey, especially if you don’t have many other English language students in your life.
What’s more, if you “hit subscribe” on your favorite English-teaching channel, you’ll get a notification every time a video is uploaded. This will keep you in a regular routine of learning new things! Even if you don’t watch every new video, the prompt alone will remind you to stay on track.
Start learning with YouTube, sharpen your skills with Preply
There is an incredible amount of expertise available for free on the ESL side of YouTube. You can take a whole English course, attend live Q&A sessions, or simply gain clear explanations of grammatical rules — all without opening your wallet!
The only downside of learning English with YouTube is that the videos can’t (usually) talk back. Sooner or later, you need a conversation partner in order to make real progress! Take 1-on-1 lessons with a Preply tutor, and you’ll be able to put all of the skills you’ve learned into practice. Self-teaching hours on YouTube and real-time feedback from an online tutor are a powerful combination. Try both, and you’ll be speaking English with confidence before you know it.
Top 10 YouTube Channels for Learning English in 2022 (preply.com)