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English from scratch on your own

A week of lessons and twenty phrases for your first conversation

Learning English on your own has never been easier: courses, videos, flashcards, and a translator are all on your phone and cost almost nothing. But speaking hasn't gotten any easier. Speech is almost the only part of a language that you can't practice alone: there's no one to listen and no one to correct you.

We create a voice partner for English practice, so every day we see where self-study gets stuck. Below is a routine that works without a school or a teacher, and twenty phrases you can say aloud today.

Where self-learners get stuck

There's a lot of material, and almost all of it is for eyes and ears.A trainer offers to choose a translation, build a sentence from words, listen to a dialogue, and select the correct answer. All of this is done silently. In a month of such lessons, a person learns two hundred new words and doesn't utter a single sentence aloud.

No one points out mistakes.If your interlocutor understood you on a trip, it means you said it correctly. That's how «I go to work by the bus» lives on for years: the extra article doesn't hinder understanding, so no one corrects it, and it becomes ingrained. Self-study almost always lacks feedback, and mistakes don't disappear but become entrenched.

Lessons fall apart.An hour on Sundays works worse than fifteen minutes every day: language relies on repetition. The first missed week usually turns out to be the last.

Beginner's Week: four fifteen-minute sessions

The plan below is designed for someone who reads English with a dictionary but doesn't speak it. It takes about an hour a week for words and structures, plus fifteen minutes of speaking every day.

Session	How much	What you do
Words	15 minutes, twice a week	You take the words you were missing in a conversation, not a list out of a textbook. Each one goes straight into a sentence: not «bus» on its own, but «I take the bus to work».
Structures	15 minutes, twice a week	One structure per session: present simple, past simple, "I would like", questions with "do". Say it aloud using ten of your own examples.
Speaking	15 minutes every day	Speak aloud on any topic: how your day went, what you bought, where you're going. This approach doesn't count if you do it silently.
Review	10 minutes, once a week	Go back to your phrases from the week and see what was wrong with them. One analyzed mistake is worth ten new words.

It's best not to change the daily order: first five minutes of words, then speaking. A word you've just said in a live phrase stays in your head. A word from a list is forgotten by evening.

Twenty phrases to start a conversation

These are working phrases for the first few minutes. They keep the conversation going when you don't have much vocabulary yet. Half of them are about asking for help, and that's normal.

In English	In Russian
Sorry, I don't understand.	Sorry, I don't understand.
Could you say that again, please?	Please repeat that.
Can you speak slower, please?	Please speak more slowly.
How do you say that in English?	What's the English for that?
What does «spare» mean?	What does "spare" mean?
Could you repeat the last word?	Repeat the last word.
What do you mean?	What do you mean?
Let me think for a second.	Let me think for a second.
I'm not sure.	I'm not sure.
I agree with you.	I agree with you.
That sounds good.	Sounds good.
My name is Alex, I'm from Russia.	My name is Alex, I'm from Russia.
I work as a manager.	I work as a manager.
I've been learning English for two months.	I've been learning English for two months.
I'd like a coffee, please.	Coffee for me, please.
How much is it?	How much does it cost?
Where is the nearest pharmacy?	Where is the nearest pharmacy?
Can you help me, please?	Help me, please.
I'm looking for a smaller size.	I'm looking for a smaller size.
Thanks, that helps.	Thank you, that helps.

Learning them as a list isn't enough. Take three phrases at a time and use them in every conversation until they come out without a pause.

How to correct yourself when no one is listening

Repeat after a model.You play a short phrase from a native speaker, pause, and repeat it aloud until the rhythm matches. This is the only technique on the list that works for pronunciation: a person doesn't hear themselves from the outside, but immediately notices a mismatch with the model.

Record on a voice recorder.Spend a minute talking about your day, then listen back. The first few times it's uncomfortable, but you'll hear your pauses and filler words where you didn't notice them before.

Batch analysis.Write down five of your phrases for the week and check each one: tense, article, preposition, word order. Analyzing one mistake at a time is pointless — they're only visible when seen together.

When self-study isn't enough

There are three tasks that self-study doesn't cover, and it's more honest to say so directly.

• 1Result by a specific date.An exam, an interview for a specific company, moving in six months. This requires a program and someone to keep the pace.
• 2Pronunciation coaching.Individual sounds are taught by a teacher who hears you and shows you how to move your tongue. No program can replace this.
• 3Discipline.If lessons don't happen without an external schedule, it's smarter to pay for lessons than to blame yourself for six months.

Everything else — words, structures, daily speech, error correction — is done independently.

How we cover daily speech

Parleo is designed precisely for the third approach from the table — the one that can't be done alone. You speak aloud, Parleo responds with voice and shows you below your phrase how you should have said it. The conversation doesn't stop.

For beginners, there's a separate level: Parleo speaks in four-to-eight-word phrases from the thousand most frequent words and adds a Russian translation to each of its replies. If you're missing a word, you ask in Russian "how to say I missed the bus," get the phrase, and return to the conversation.

Further on, it's structured the same way as in the plan above: an eight-topic course covers structures, a vocabulary with repetitions covers words, thirty-four role-play scenes cover daily speech, and the analysis at the end of the conversation covers error correction. The first twenty requests are free; no card or registration is needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time per day does a beginner need?

Fifteen minutes of speaking every day plus two short sessions for words and structures per week. This is less than an hour and a bit for the whole week, and this routine can be maintained for months, unlike two-hour weekend sessions.

Is a textbook necessary?

For topic order — yes, any A1 level course will do. A textbook provides sequence but not conversation, so speaking will still need to be practiced separately.

When to start speaking?

From day one. Waiting "until you build up vocabulary" is pointless: it's built from the words you lacked in conversation. First conversation, then words.

How much does it cost?

Words, structures, and A1-level textbook are available for free. Speech costs money in any form. A lesson with an online tutor costs from 990 to 1490 ₽. Our text conversation is free. A month of voice conversations is 599 ₽.