Help for learning English

This Saturday (07/21/2018) I had a live English class with Giorgi Bastos about pronunciation skills and speed learning, and I'm going to share some notes and tips I took from it.

Accent is more about our own perfectionism of wanting to speak correctly than something actually relevant when speaking English, so keep calm — you'll get there.
To get a better pronunciation, try putting an English accent even on Portuguese words. Example: "I'm living in Dourados" — on "Dourados", try using the English "R". It will sound more native and will also train your English "R". PS: it feels a bit weird, but it's an exercise.
TED: on the TED website there are English videos with English subtitles, six minutes long. You can pick one, watch it once with subtitles, and the next time turn the audio off and read the subtitles out loud as if you were giving the TED talk yourself. This will improve your pronunciation, help you internalize the words, and be a bit fun too.
TOP TIP: LEARNING ENGLISH HAS TO BE FUN! ENJOY IT.

Pixar Storytelling: on Google/YouTube you'll find plenty of tips and courses on this technique. Storytelling is a very good technique for most people who need to memorize texts, improve diction, and internalize content. Basically, you pick a text or write one (in my case, I have to write a 150-word text, record a video reciting it from memory, and send it to my English teacher to move on to the next module). The cool thing is using pitch storytelling — putting emotion into the way you say the text, because you start working with the right side of the brain, and with emotion it becomes easier for your brain to make associations and access those memories when you have to narrate the text from memory. To do that, hold the text in your hands, stand in front of the mirror, and play with intonation: "OOooonce upon a timeeeee…".

Loose tips:

"Ganhar dinheiro" (to earn money from work) is "make/earn money", NOT "win money" (win as in win a competition).

"Passar tempo com alguém" is "spend time with someone", NOT "passed time with someone".

"Bring it on": something like "let's go for it" / "come at me".

IT-specific tips (Software Development)

We also briefly talked about coding:

<UsersLoader /> — "User Loader" is a React component name, and I asked if it was a correct term that wouldn't sound weird to a native English speaker.

Answer: the English is correct and it also follows the coding conventions adopted worldwide, paying attention to CamelCase. I'm also careful not to write very long method names, especially in JavaScript.

NOTE: I saw a piece of code on GitHub where a class was called UsersLoader, and it looked like it was written by a native English speaker. So it's okay.

That's it — the class was very productive and rewarding.

Cheers!