Hello my friends foreign English speakers on this wonderful Sunday evening!
How’s your week been?
I’ve been pretty busy learning new American English phrases, idiomatic expressions and slang words which is all part of my 50 American Phrase Acquisition Mission, and here’s the list of phrases I’ve acquired during the last six days:
I’ve spent the last 6 days learning new American phraseology taken from English fiction I’m currently reading – GONE series – to be more specific! I’ve been also recording videos all of my spoken English self-practice sessions so that you can see EXACTLY how such spoken English practicing is done in real life!
As you may have heard, I recently launched a brand new English fluency coaching product called Fluency Gym Coach Program (FGC Program) , and it’s mostly centered around confidence building and creating an English fluency improving routine (as opposed to purely technical speech pattern building which is the scope of the English Harmony System).
The Action Plan – a file outlining the goal setting and execution – is an integral part of the FGC Program, so I decided to showcase it by setting a goal for MYSELF.
And, as you can guess by the headline of this blog post, my goal is to acquire 50 new American English phrases within the next 25 days!
Hello guys from YearOfEnglish.com and also anybody else having dropped by my blog
In today’s video I’m touching upon the subject of vocabulary building, and needless to say it’s all within the context of spoken English self-practice.
Why?
Simple enough – if you’re serious about your ability to SPEAK, you have to speak, and speaking with yourself is by far the best tool available to ANY foreign English speaker ANYWHERE on this planet!
The video above, however, contains more info that just that, so please make sure to watch it if you’ve got 10 spare minutes – you’ll thank yourself for it later on!
In today’s article we’re going to focus on English vocabulary building the smart way. The English Harmony Way, to be more specific!
You see, the reason why I’m touching upon the subject of vocabulary building is simple enough. I’m getting quite a few e-mails on a daily basis along with questions disguised as YouTube comments in relation to building English vocabulary and new words.
“What’s the best way to learn new English vocabulary?”
“One English word has up to 50 different meanings, do I have to learn them all at once?”
“I’m trying to do spoken English self-practice as advised by you, Robby, but there are many English words I don’t know…”
Now, despite me having published quite a few blog posts and videos about vocabulary building over the last couple of years, it’s never hurt anybody to repeat and reiterate the main points from time to time.
As a matter of fact, it’s only a positive for the simple reason thatrepetition is the most efficient – if not the ONLY! – way that we humans learn anything!
So, here are the 3 steps for building your English vocabulary in the most effective manner possible!
Yes, in this article I’m going to draw parallels between using the keyboard to input text into your PC or laptop AND speaking in English as your second language.
Do you think I’m mad?
Do you think I’m trying to make all different sorts of connections between things that don’t really go together just so that I could publish more content on my blog?
Well, you’re right – I have been finding commonalities between seemingly unrelated concepts.
I created the Fluency Gym Coach Program where hundreds of parallels are drawn between our fitness performance and spoken English practice.
If you think about it a bit deeper, however, you’ll realize I’m not such a nutcase as you might have thought when seeing this blog post’s headline. You see, all the previously mentioned activities – playing an instrument, using our body and also using a keyboard for text input purposes are PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES.
Spoken English is also a VERY PHYSICAL ACTIVITY because you use your mouth to produce sounds and your brain constantly works in unison with your sound producing organs so that you can verbalize your thoughts.
So read the rest of this article to find out exactly what the two types of physical activities – TYPING and SPEAKING in English have in common.
Now, while there’s nothing wrong with learning such vocabulary words for as long as you acquire them contextually, there’s another aspect to contributing vast amount of time and effort into the process – namely, USEFULNESS.
You simply have to ask yourself the following question:
Is this particular English word going to come in handyin my everyday life?
More often than not, little known words just aren’t used in daily English conversations; just because they’re used by authors in order to illustrate this or that particular concept in the very depth in their pieces of literature, doesn’t mean they’re used in colloquial English (which is the main focus of us – foreigners who aspire to become fluent English speakers!)
Let’s take, for example, a couple of words so that you get the full picture on what exactly I’m talking about here (I’m heading straight to Dictionary.com website to pick some recent “words of the day”):
I was browsing YouTube the other day, and I came across some video where an English teacher talks about common English errors made by foreign English speakers.
It wasn’t that teacher’s only video – not by a long shot. As a matter of fact, there were LOADS of videos of this nature on that particular YouTube channel – let alone other channels were different teachers are talking about pretty much the same things:
Most commonly made English mistakes;
Things not to say when speaking in English;
English mistakes made by Spanish people;
English mistakes made by Russians…
… and so on and so forth.
And you know what?
I think this illustrates a terrible trend in the English teaching community!
Everyone is focused on the aspect of making mistakes. Mistakes this, mistakes that, you can’t say this, you can’t say that…
The only thing that these videos achieve is the following: THEY FREAK ENGLISH STUDENTS OUT!
This Funny English Phrase video is my contribution to the YearOfEnglish.com project, and in case you haven’t noticed it yet, I’m publishing a video dedicated to YearOfEnglish.com audience once every three weeks.
This time around, let’s learn some animal related English idiomatic expressions and conversational phrases.
You’re more than welcome to watch the video above where I’m doing a little role play portraying two people at the same time. And, in case you need it, here’s the video script in written format:
After a short chat about reading in general she asked me if I own a Kindle reader to which I simply wanted to reply with “Well, my daughter owns a Kindle reader!”
Guess what?
I made a completely stupid mistake in that simple sentence, and not only that!
I tried to say the sentence once more, and the very same thing happened again!
Then I started pronouncing those words for the last time, and to my dismay I made the same stupid mistake for the THIRD TIME!
Now, the only explanation to this is a glitch in my brain. I can’t see any other reason as to why it should have happened especially considering the fact that the mistake was 100% illogical!
