Tips to ESL students
Always ask if what you say is what native speakers say.
What do native speakers say? It's hard to learn. Dictionaries don't help. Translations don't help but make your English worse. Grammar lessons don't help. Watching news TV programs and reading news articles can help a little bit. Your English teachers can't help if they are not native speakers. Even if your teachers are native speakers, they usually don't help you learn enough to express your experiences, thoughts and ideas the way native speakers do. Forums are good places where you can learn a lot, but it takes you years to learn enough to sound like native speakers, let alone you speak English "identity-appropriately".
If you need to speak in a language that is not your first language, search engines can help you determine if what you say is what native speakers say. It's easy and pretty accurate.
If you search what you say but it yields little or no results, you can be certain that what you say isn't what native speakers say. But you still don't know what native speakers say.
If the search engines show some results, check the websites. If they are used mostly by native speakers, probably you can trust them, or you should not.
Edited last time by REDACTED on 01/07/2023 (Sat) 02:58:56.