How to express opposing ideas in English
Hey there everyone, How are you all doing? On cloud nine? Of course, you must be, it’s Christmas Eve and New Year is about to begin after a few days and everybody is super pumped up for everything. So what do you like to eat more during these eves? Cake or pizza? Wait!!! What did you just say? Pizza? Or Cake? You must be thinking what am I rambling on, isn’t it? I got no problem if you like any of the above two options, but same scenario (one-word answers) occurs whenever I hear a non-native stating their choice. Conversation is all about two or more people interacting equally with each other. Now if a person asks you about choices and you give him a one-word answer, it kind of puts him on the stand to lead and balance the vacuum you created for the further conversation. And I can tell from my personal experience that following up every time after such gaps is definitely not a piece of cake on the other end, hence the conversation ends out of nowhere. It doesn’t mean that I am telling you to exaggerate the situations or answers. The thing is, one-word answering is one of the top conversation killers in spoken English. Well, how to deal with such issues? Luckily, dealing with these issues is not that tough how it seems. Using one of the three formats of sentences that I am about to mention down below, you will start noticing your conversation skills improving and you the one leading the conversation. So without beating around the bush, let’s begin: Method 1: Question: What do you like- Pizza or Cake? Answer: Although some people like cake, I prefer pizza because I love its toppings and cheese. Method 2: Question: What do you like- Pizza or cake? Answer: Some people like cake; however, I prefer pizza because I love its toppings and cheese. Method 3: Question: What do you like- Pizza or cake? Answer: Even though some people like cake, I prefer pizza because I love its toppings and cheese. In all three methods above, we have talked about the negative part first and then explained why we prefer our respective choice. You can see yourself how better it sounds than just one-word answers like- Pizza or cake. Make sure you start applying these strategies in your spoken English and you will notice your conversation skills improving day by day. Merry Christmas to you and your family and enjoy your time. May you have an amazing year ahead! Till then, keep learning and improving. Bye-bye.
Can’t Say a Word in English Because Of Embarrassment… Is That Normal?
Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS - and that's why I'm going to highlight them for you in RED! Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Video Transcript Below: Hi guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear foreign English speakers. Welcome back to Robby's English Harmony video blog and tonight I'm going to record a video as a video response to one of my YouTube commentators. But just before that, allow me to take a sip of my evening decaf coffee, right? Cheers my friends! So this person, Triple H and he is as a matter of fact, one of the most prolific commentators on my channel and I really hope that you don't mind Triple H me reading out your comment because it's going to help everybody, the whole audience for that matter. So Triple H shares a very embarrassing moment that happened to him at the embassy. So basically the woman or personnel asked him who was going to collect his passport. And basically he didn't get her accent, her pronunciation so she had to say it 4 times over and he couldn't get it. And she pronounced basically the word “when” as “wha” and “who” as “he”. Yeah, well, there are certain distinct accents whereby native English speakers pronounce words completely differently to what you would have expected, right? So after that incident his fluency went down the drain, out the window and afterwards he couldn't say one word. So the question is do you think it's common? (more…)
How to Speak in English Well During Bad Fluency Days
Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS - and that's why I'm going to highlight them for you in RED! Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Video Transcript Below: Hey guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! This is me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! Today I wanted to tell you something interesting in relation to English fluency obviously because this whole project is about English fluency so what else could I be possibly telling you about, right? Other than English fluency related matters. Anyhow, the particular thing that I wanted to bring up today was the phenomenon of you being able to perform quite well when it comes to spoken English performance on days when your English is kind of suffering a little bit but still you have those particular situations during those days when you're capable of performing very well. And here's a typical example just to make it a 100% clear to you what exactly I mean by saying all this, right? Let's say for argument's sake I go to work in the morning and for some reason my English is not a 100%. My brain is not firing on all cylinders for whatever reason, you know, and my English is kind of sluggish. So it's basically one of those bad fluency days. (more…)
Be Specific – Don’t Try to Make a General Statement When Explaining Something in English!
Why Are We Always Trying to Speak Too Fast in English?
Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Video Transcript Below: Hi guys, hello boys and girls, hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers and welcome back to Robby's English Harmony video blog! Today guys I wanted to share something with you. A revelation that I had when I was driving in the car to college this morning, right? As it always happens I was speaking with myself practicing my spoken English. As you may know by now that's how I roll, that's how I maintain a high standard of my English fluency. And I was thinking about the fact that so many of us foreigners are trying to speak too fast, okay? And it's a mistake number one that I come across time and time again whenever I start teaching a new batch of Fluency Star students I witness the same thing again and again. People are trying to speak too fast, okay? And I've written about it in the past, obviously years ago I wrote a blog post about not comparing yourself with others. And back then I knew only too well that the desire to speak just like the other person does is the biggest pitfall for you guys, right? That's when you start comparing yourself with the other person and that's what brings about all these fluency issues. If you didn't have the comparison in place and you only focused on your own performance, it would be so much easier, so much better to maintain your fluency and to work on your spoken English, right? (more…)
FAQ: I’m Afraid My English Fluency Isn’t Coming Back!
We Create English Fluency Issues for Ourselves!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj-q3VfJ1O0 Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! This one may come as a shock to you, my friends, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes those terrible problems we experience with our English fluency are our own making. Yes, you heard me right – we create a lot of our fluency issues for ourselves, and there’s no-one else to blame for it but us! Sure enough, we’re not even aware of the fact that we’re contributing to our inability to speak fluent English, but the good news is that it is relative easy to get our fluency back on track if you know the right techniques and methods, and that’s exactly what today’s video is all about. So don’t despair, watch the video and you may just learn the right approach to fix your fluency issues on 5 occasions out of 10! Chat soon, Robby ;-)
My Own Struggling With English Fluency is What Drives Me!
Passive English Input Isn’t Going to Improve Your Ability to Speak!
There’s Always Someone Worse Off Than You!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK5J94FKo3M
Ask Robby: Why Do I Start Forgetting English After Moving Back to My Country?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04h0DOgO1ec In this video I’m responding to Arzhin’s comment which you can read here and here’s what he asks: Robby I have been in an English country for 4 years. So I could speak English very well. Then I backed to my homeland. So since one year ago I am living on my homeland. But because here is no one to talk with, and no one speaks English here. So I feel that I am forgetting things. Please tell me what to do! Also, he goes on to ask the following: Once I read that you know 3 languages fluently how don't you mix them? Or forget them? I need that technique! Well, here's my video response, and I hope that all of you are going to find it useful! ;-) Merry Christmas Everyone :!: Cheers, Robby
Answering Questions: Can’t Practice Fluency, What to Do If My Fluency Dwindles When I Speak With Others and More…
Terrible English Fluency Issues? You’re Not Alone In This!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4b1Ji2qFQ0
Difference Between Struggling English Speakers & Those Who Don’t Experience Fluency Issues
Don’t Try to Impress Others With Your English!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCg4wmfqQFI VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW: Hi guys, and welcome back to Robby's English Harmony video blog! In today's video, I'm going to touch upon a subject that I've actually spoken about before, and it's the fact that you don't have to try to impress other people with your English. Typically what happens is, when you're having a conversation with someone, deep down inside you're trying to show off your English skills. You're trying to show that person that your English is up to scratch, which is another idiomatic expression for you, which means up to standards, right, basically, good enough. And more often than not, it backfires on you, which means you end up being in a worse situation than in the beginning, in a worse situation than you're starting with. (more…)
Don’t Over-analyze Your English – Say SOMETHING!
Translation from English is Bad For Your Fluency + Example From My Early Days as a Teacher
Memorizing Grammar Rules to Get a Promotion? How Crazy is That?!
Back in the day when I was still naïve and thought that learning plenty of English grammar rules would avail of increased fluency, I used to dedicate a significant amount of time to re-reading all those grammar rules and memorizing them off by heart. I mean – I was actually MEMORIZING the grammar rules like a POEM! Here’s an example: When to use the indefinite article “a”: With nouns in singular only First mention with countable nouns In predicate with the verb “to be” Instead of “every” I won’t list the rest of the stipulations on when the indefinite article is used because this is just an example of what I used to memorize so that you get the drift of what I’m saying here. Basically I would memorize LONG LISTS of stipulations and example sentences describing specific aspects of English grammar and I was hoping that when I know them all, I’d become a fluent English speaker. I was even hoping that this exercise would help me get a promotion in the job I had at the time! (more…)
The More English You Know, The… Less You Know?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7qdHloilI0 VIDEO SCRIPT BELOW: Hello boys and girls and welcome back to my video blog! I'm Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and I'm your fluency mentor, and today's video is going to be dedicated to the following subject: Sometimes as you go about your English learning and improvement routine you will kind of realize that THE MORE YOU KNOW, the less fluent you become! If you reminisce about days gone by, a couple years ago probably - when you just started learning the English language, when you knew not so much - basically when your knowledge was quite limited - you could actually say a whole lot more than now, when your knowledge is quite thorough and profound and you know a lot of synonyms describing the same abstract concepts and things and so on and so forth, you sometimes find that you actually struggle to say anything at all! But in the very early stages of your English fluency improvement and learning attempts you could say a whole lot more, or at least so it seems, right? So why this funny thing is happening? There's a very easy explanation for that, my friends: it's SYNONYMS, English vocabulary in general and how you've learned it - that's what it all boils down to :!: (more…)