We took a closer look at Virtually Native and his creator Vladimir Skenderoff. This review consists of the youtube channel, the website virtuallynative.com and the book virtually native (19 $).
The review does not include the grammar book English Grammar and Functions (19 $).
On my fluent podcast, we have talked about Virtually Native in episode 47 become an independent learner and 49 Book review virtually native. At first, you should consider to have a listen to them. Unfortunately, this blog post is still under construction. However, we decided to publish it anyways.
The amount of time and effort people have wasted00:58waste01:00and going to waste doing this shadowing thing 01:03is just mind-boggling
Vladimir Skenderoff, Julian Northbrook from Doing English fast MEFA course – honest review 00:58
Whats the tagline?
By a non-native, for the non-native. According to Vladimir everything he knows about learning English is in his Books and in his Courses as well. In addition, Vladimir shares his valuable knowledge with the YouTube world. As a Bulgarian, he knows how it is to learn a foreign language. Even so, he is a teacher. So ho knows both sites.
The Tagline on Vladimir’s Youtube channel is “learn how to learn English“, which we find great. Every learner should bear this in mind before even starting with his language journey!
Trivia
At the time of writing this blog post, the channel counts 89 800 subscribers and contains 91 videos. Although the influencer notoriously calls to action his fans not to subscribe.
Welcome to VIRTUALLY NATIVE. This channel is for people learning English.
Vladimir speaks very slowly so that even a beginner probably will understand the gist of the messages. By the way, the book is written in simple English. It’s supposed to show you how exactly to learn English.
Often times, he uses the same expressions over and over again. Besides that, important messages are shown in writing form so that literally everyone understands him. By conveying his messages, he is brutally honest to his YouTube listeners.
“Every YouTube video I upload is designed to wean you off YouTube videos of people calling themselves language teachers. I try to convince you to Stop watching videos of people calling themselves teachers…”
Vladimir Skenderoff
The truth about language learning (The only truth!)
His so called honest Reviews
The so called honest reviews are more of a Carnage. We think that Vladimir sometimes goes too far here. Especially, we got the impression that these reviews are not at all indepths reviews as we actually wished them to be.
It seems, that he always picks YouTuber who he isn’t that fond of.
With his cynical and often agressive comments a review turns quickly into a kind of horror show (or horror comedy?). Nevertheless, often times there are still good points we could learn. Vladimir indeed knows his field.
Nevertheless, we can clealry make out a agressive attitude towards the language learning industry 🙂
Use monolingual dictionary. Use a monolingual learners dictionary
Vladimir Skenderoff, who hamemrs the same line over and over.
Stephen Krashen, Luca Lampariello, Julian Northbrook and many more Names in the language world are pulled through the cocoa. And that is clearly an understatement.
A selection of reviews on YouTube
The verdict
Vladimir definitely knows his field. He mastered English as an adult. Above all, in times where the Internet did not support you at all. But we don’t understand one thing (well, actually we do). Even though, he mastered English many years ago, he still watches other language teacher’s videos and makes videos about them. 🙂 He literally destroys them.
Who likes to listen to a rebel in the language learning industry, will have lots of fun and at the same time learn useful tips. Consider it as entertainment though! By creating his YouTube channel he has created a perfect sales pitch. The channel’s purpose is to lead you to his website virtuallynative.com. Subsequently, you are meant to purchase his books and other products such as the video courses. My Fluent Podcast doesn’t blame him for this. (The youtube channel is entertainment, whereas the books is education)
You’ll find most of the information he gives away for free in his YouTube channel, in his book Virtually Vative but in a more structured form and with more detailed explanations. By following his instructions given in the book, we are convinced that you will master English some day.