Phrasal Verbs – Great Way To Improve Spoken English!

Hi my foreign English speaking friends! I’m back with the next video episode and I hope you’re having a good time this summer!

I’ve been away for a while from making new videos – you know, I just wanted to take it easy and relax a bit before jumping back into my home studio.

Ah well – I’m quite well rested now and here we go with the next video topic – phrasal verbs.

This is a very important aspect of English language and especially spoken English. To put it simply – every day English has plenty of phrasal verbs in it and if you want to become a fluent English speaker you just have to learn a number of them!

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How I Define Real English Fluency

There are many reasons why foreigners start learning English. For me it was being fascinated with everything that had to do with America when I was a child. For others it’s necessity when they move to an English speaking country.

And many are forced into learning English at school yet at the same time they acknowledge the fact that English is spoken worldwide and nowadays it’s one of the basic requirements if you’re willing to attain good education and advance in your career.

Yet all English students would agree on one thing – English fluency is what one strives for when learning English. In order to be able to communicate with work colleagues and customers one has to be fluent in English otherwise it just won’t work!

But now tell me – has English fluency been defined for you by your English teacher or someone else? The chances are that you’ve been lead to believe that standard English tests and grades adequately reflect your English fluency. But here’s the drawback – real life English fluency has little to do with your ability to complete English language tests and get high scores in them…

Here’s how I would define English fluency!

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Top Secret! (How To Achieve Truly Confident Spoken English)

My dear website readers, YouTube channel watchers and Twitter followers! You can religiously stick to my advice on how to improve spoken English, but if you miss the most important component – your road to fluent spoken English will be filled with potholes!

You can really gather yourself up every time you feel that your confidence in spoken English drops. You can start speaking slowly and pick the words carefully as I’ve told you should do when you feel your mind racing. You can also use really simple words to explain yourself to prevent from getting stuck if you can’t remember the very exact phrase or word you want to say in English. But once again – if you miss the most important part of the equation, you’ll be always struggling with maintaining constantly fluent English!

So which way you want to go? Do you want to be able to consciously use all the good advice on improving your spoken English and keep making effort OR you want to reach a point in your life where you don’t have to make an effort at all to speak fluently?

If I were you, I’d definitely take the last route and I believe you’d too!

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Using Perfect Simple And Passive Voice In Spoken English

Hello everyone who watches my video blog – thanks for tuning in and finding time for watching my next video! I can assure you – your time won’t be wasted because today I’m going to highlight important aspects on using different English grammar tenses in live English conversations.

First of all I want to give you an example. Here’s a simple phrase you’d use when you’d have finished doing something – I’ve done it. This is Present Perfect Simple – a grammar form to describe an action that has been finished at some time in the past but the actual time of its completion isn’t known.

Well, so far it’s all fairly simple and understandable, and you shouldn’t have any difficulties with using a simple phrase like I’ve done it.

But now let’s take it one step further and look at the same phrase only in Passive Voice this time. Just a quick reminder for those not sure what Passive Voice is – it’s a way of describing an event without mentioning who did it.

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English Vocabulary Building – Part 3

How are you getting on, foreign English speaker? Have you heeded to my advice from the previous videos? I hope you have because if you’re still experiencing difficulties with speaking English fluently, you have to take action.

Just by standing by and hoping the things will improve achieves nothing, so today I’ll be telling you about the third aspect of building your English vocabulary. And it’s about not learning many meanings of the same word at once – believe me, if you do it, the chances of memorizing and using that particular word are slim indeed!

I can tell you from my own experience that if you write down a new English word in your dictionary that has a number of different meanings; it’s a very bad idea to try memorizing them all at once.

And taking into account that most of English words do have a number of meanings, you might be very tempted to learn a few of them at once assuming that this way you’ll increase your learning curve.

But it just doesn’t work that way, and here’s why.

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English Vocabulary Building – Part 2

Here we go with the next video episode – and this is the tenth one. Two and a half months in production – not bad, is it? I hope I have enough dedication to see the hundredth one online and there’s no better way to achieve it than by taking just one step at a time…

This time let’s look at the following thing – eliminating your native language from the English vocabulary building process. If you’re like the majority of language learners, most likely you’re using your native language dictionary to explain new English words and phrases.

You probably also have a pocket dictionary where you write down the new words and by repeating them on a daily basis they become a part of your overall English vocabulary.

Haven’t you noticed, though, that you actually can’t use most of your vocabulary when you have to speak English? And have you not also noticed that sometimes when you try to think of an English word, your native language words start getting into your way?

Well, it’s the typical English fluency issue I was facing for long years, and it’s partially down to memorizing new English words through my native language.

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Building English Vocabulary – Part 1

Are you considering building up your English vocabulary? Well, it’s time to get started boys and girls!

Let’s take out our English dictionaries and write down the new English word that you’ve just heard for the first time. It can also happen that you’ve already heard the word a few times and been wondering since what it actually means. In either case, you just put it down in your dictionary followed by a translation in your language. Now you can repeat the word a few times till it settles in your memory. Nice! Another word added to your English vocabulary!

Another surefire way to build your English vocabulary is using flashcards. Just carry them with you and whenever you get a chance – memorize and repeat new English words. Sure your spoken English will improve in no time!

Well, not really…

It took me years and more than 7000 English words memorized using the techniques mentioned above to realize it’s making very little difference to my English speech. I had grown my vocabulary a great deal, no doubt about that. I new all those English words, I could understand them whenever they were used by others, and I could enjoy understanding the English language fully. Watching films, reading fiction, listening radio shows and news – and all that in English. Not bad, is it?

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Future In The Past – Often Ignored But Very Useful!

Have you ever heard of Future in the Past Tense? The chances are – you haven’t! It’s quite weird, but it’s true – many English Grammar books and English learning websites simply ignore Future in the Past!

So here’s how it works – whenever you’re re-telling past events, the word WILL becomes WOULD – when referring to future during your story.

Example: After the first week in gym I decided I WOULD never quit!

Before I had learned this simple grammar rule about using Future in the Past, I would say the above sentence using the word WILL:

After the first week in gym I decided I WILL never quit it!

How wrong was I… And how wrong are thousands of other foreign English speakers! Yes, I’ve met quite fluent English speakers in my life who still kept on making the same mistake – using WILL when describing future events from past’s perspective.

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‘Th’ Pronunciation – Thank You or Senk You?

In video Episode #7 you’ll hear me discuss benefits and drawbacks of pronouncing the voiced and unvoiced English sounds ‘th’ – ð and θ – the traditional way.

Generally I’m agreeing with the general English teaching principle of trying to pronounce those sounds as close to their native pronunciation as possible. Nonetheless, there are situations when foreign English speakers are much better off with replacing the ð and θ sounds with easier ones like d and t.

I know that many ESL and EFL teachers would kill me for saying that, but I’ll risk it anyway!

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English Possessive Case And All The Tricky Stuff!

Hi Folks,

This is the first video in the English Harmony Practical Grammar video series. The grammar videos are still going to be part of my usual video blog. I just came up with this idea of the English Harmony Practical Grammar brand because I know that many of you are using grammar as a starting point to improve your English. But my English grammar lessons will be different – you’ll learn how to use it in real life conversations!

I’m not going to repeat what you can find on a million websites on the Internet, or read in any English grammar book. Instead I’ll be giving you interesting and practical interpretation of ordinary English grammar – and it will be much more useful to you, believe me!

Moreover, I’ll put all my experience, mistakes and conclusions that I’ve had throughout the years of improving my English into these lessons for the biggest benefit to you!

So today’s topic – the possessive case in English language.

If you’re not sure what it is – read more about the possessive case here. It’s simple enough, and your English teacher probably didn’t dedicate more than ten minutes to the possessive case in the classroom.

However, it’s not that simple at all! I can remember myself struggling with the possessive form of nouns a few years ago – I was applying the same grammar rules on English that I would on my own language. As a result I was using the possessive case way too often! Read more

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