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English Harmony Highlights of April 2012

Robby — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:35:34 +0000

This month has been prolific in terms of publishing and attracting more and more visitors and commentators to my website, and every day I have to spend more and more time engaging with my blog readers. And I have to tell you it’s very rewarding to see that your opinion matters to so many foreigners and native English speakers alike!

The first article I want you to look at is called “How to Develop the Gut Feeling for Correct and Natural English”. You may have had the feeling when you just know that something sounds right when said in English, and you don’t even have to explain why, you just know it. I call it the “gut feeling”, and if you want to find out more about it and how to develop it, make sure you read this article!

Next up is an article dedicated to learning American slang phrases by watching TV and in this particular article I’m focusing on the Desperate Housewives series, but it can be any TV show for that matter. Whatever floats your boat, as they say!

If you’re struggling a bit with your English Grammar when speaking, you should definitely read this article called “The ONLY 3 English Grammar Rules You Need to Know to Speak Fluent English”. My approach to English Grammar is the following – once you know the basics, you don’t have to constantly analyze your speech with surgical precision and apply grammar rules as you go along. All you need to know is a few rules to get your speech right in simple daily conversations, so definitely make sure you read this article!

By the way, speaking of English Grammar, did you download the free eBook called “Practical English Grammar” that I published a short while ago? If you didn’t, please submit your request on this blog post and get your copy. You’ll find really useful stuff in the eBook, and many of those practical grammar aspects haven’t been actually looked at by anyone else, as far as I’m aware!

Let’s move on to the next blog post, and it’s an interview with an American Slang and Pronunciation teacher Anthony Krese! If you’re interested in some quick and dirty tips on how to sound like an American, this article is a must-read for you!

That’s all for this month in terms of blog posts, but I did publish a number of videos on YouTube and let’s run through them quickly.

Here’s one more Funny English Phrases video about money related matters. I’m portraying two different characters in this video so if you want to see how good I am at acting, check it out!

Here’s a video about how I started speaking fluent English pretending to be a gangster. This is quite funny too, and you’ll find it especially interesting if you’re a fan of mafia films.

And here’s the last video of those I put up on my blog this month – it’s my rant about a particular blog post I read on another person’s blog where she’s bashing foreign English speaking bloggers. It sparked some really interesting commentary, and you may wanna check it out!

So, that’s all for this month’s highlights, I hope you’ll enjoy reading my blog posts and watching my videos, and if you’ve anything to say or ask, just use the comment section below!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

How I Started Speaking Fluent English by Pretending to be a Gangster

Robby — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:02:45 +0000

Probably one of the weirdest strategies among my English fluency improving methods is speaking with a hard foreign accent – and that’s what the original English Harmony eBook was based upon.

It’s actually quite straightforward if you think about it:

You make an awful lot of effort in order to sound native in terms of pronunciation;
You become conscious of your own speech and you start doubting yourself every time you open your mouth to say something;
Your speech becomes very hesitant, your mind is racing and you find it difficult to verbalize your thoughts in English.

So if you forget about the pronunciation aspect while you’re speaking by allowing your mouth to speak the way it wants, you may just be able to speak more clearly and stop hesitating and preparing speech in your head before speaking out loud.

Do you want to know what lead to this discovery?

It was my fascination with one of the greatest mafia films ever – “GoodFellas”!

You see – the Italian-American accent spoken by the mobsters in the film is somewhat similar to my own East-European accent. They pronounce the ‘th’ sound quite hard, the letter ‘o’ in worlds like “coffee” is pronounced with mouth wide open and would also bear similarities with the way we Latvians speak.

So one night after watching “GoodFellas” I was going back to the “What’s so funny about me?” scene where Joe Pesci is messing with one of his mobster friends portrayed by Ray Liotta.

For someone watching the film for the first time it may seem that he’s about to blow his friends brains out being the psychopathic killer that he is in the film. Eventually it appears he’s just been messing, but it doesn’t make the scene any less enjoyable.

Actually it’s one of my favorite scenes in the whole film, and every time I watch it, I can’t help but to imagine what it would feel like to be in such a situation for real…

Anyway, I was pretending to speak like Joe Pesci in the film and right after I pronounced the first sentence “You think I’m funny?” I felt that the awkwardness in terms of speaking fluently is disappearing and I started feeling that I could speak in English as if I were speaking my own language. I couldn’t believe that simply changing the way I talked and pronounced words could have such an immediate positive effect on my English fluency!

After this realization struck me, I resorted to this hard accent method whenever I found myself struggling to speak in plain, understandable English. And you know what? It helped most of the times! Having had a short conversation with myself in a heavily accented English I would feel my natural fluency returning.

I know it sounds weird to say the least, but it worked and it was a solid English fluency management method I could rely on

I’ve refined my English fluency management strategies over the years, and I’ve written extensively about them; here’s just a few to give you an idea of how diverse are the techniques you can implement to get your English fluency back on track:

The simplest and easiest of them all, however, still remains doing away with your normal English pronunciation and adopting a harder accent – or whatever way you’d speak when speaking with your native accent. It’s helped me countless times to get my English speech going, and I don’t see any reasons why it couldn’t help you!

Robby

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

My Opinion on Who the English Language Belongs to…

Robby — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:19:23 +0000

I don’t think that anyone can claim ownership to the English language and tell foreign English speakers what to do.

And that’s exactly the impression I got while reading this article the other day!

I was thinking that I should probably leave it, but I just couldn’t because I’m a foreign English speaker AND a blogger, I represent my fellow foreigners and I think someone should say something about views expressed in this article.

Basically this is how I understand it:

we all foreigner bloggers are the same – bad English, hard to read articles etc;
we’re less fortunate than native English speakers having been born in the US;
we’d better stop struggling with English writing – leave it to native English speakers!

To be honest with you, I didn’t believe I was reading it!

First of all - the English language isn’t owned by a certain group of people, and it’s most definitely not limited to the United States. Anyone on this planet is entitled to start learning English, and if one wants – start a blog in English.

Secondly – what kind of a message is that article sending out there to foreigners who might be having self-confidence issues? Instead of encouraging them to improve their English writing and keep blogging, Kathy seems to be saying – “Common, be realistic about it – you’re not getting anywhere, better start writing stuff in your native language because that’s what you’re good at!”

When I started blogging in English all those years ago, my writing wasn’t as good as now.

Just read this article and you’ll definitely notice differences between the way I was writing then and now. Had I stopped back then, I wouldn’t have achieved the kind of written fluency I have now!

And what would Kathy say to foreigners like Antonio Banderas who didn’t speak English at the start of his career until his twenties ? “It’s not worth trying – better look for diamonds in your own field (read the end of her blog post to see what I’m talking about here)”

Basically I got an impression that Kathy and a few commentators hold to a view that Americans, Brits and Australians represent the English speaking world, and the rest of the world looks up on them. They’d probably be surprised to find out that there’s millions upon millions of people out there using the English language to communicate with each other, and they’re not native English speakers!

Any comments welcome,

Robby

Funny English Phrases #3 – Money & Finance

Robby — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:09:15 +0000

Are you prepared to learn some money and finance related English idiomatic expressions?

Then watch the 3rd Funny English Phrase video and you’ll learn the following expressions:

To go to the wall
The check bounced
To buy a lemon
Never bite the hand that feeds you
Money talks

To make sure you add those expressions to your active English vocabulary, please read them out loud a few times, memorize them, and eventually make a conversation with yourself.

You don’t necessarily have to make it funny like I did in the video; all you have to do is use those phrases in your own sentences so that you become comfortable using them in real life English conversations.

Enjoy!

Robby

English Harmony Highlights of March 2012

Robby — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:26:09 +0000

First off, I want you to watch a video where I’m putting all my accent and pronunciation related concerns and issues to bed. Apparently it’s a very controversial topic among foreign English speakers because whenever I touch upon the subject, it sparks heated debates as to whether foreign English speakers have to try to master American or British English pronunciation by all means possible, or it’s OK for them to speak with an accent and feel more comfortable about themselves.

My personal position on this issue is definitely not changing no matter what others say, and it’s the following – there’s nothing wrong with speaking with a thick foreign accent if it helps you speak English more fluently. You can also go to the respective blog post and read comments below the article to fully understand my position on this matter.

Next up – an article I wrote in the beginning of March about English fluency issues in the context of anger management. This article is inspired by my own experience and as you might have already guessed, at some point in time I started to make a connection between my English fluency problems and incidents when I lost my temper and argued with people trying to prove my point.

If you have similar problems, you should definitely read this article and you’re sure to find useful advice on managing situations when you can’t seem to control yourself and as a result you lose the ability to speak in English properly.

Another subject I’ve touched upon in the month of March is the nature of human mind in the context of English learning. To be more precise – it’s about mental associations, past experience, contextual learning and the importance of it all when it comes to spoken English performance.

It may sound too scientific, but don’t be put off by the first impression – give it a shot and read the following two articles:

4 Pieces of Evidence That Past Experience, Context and Mental Associations is Everything When it Comes to Spoken English

More Proof That Context and Associations Play Crucial Role When It Comes to Spoken English Performance

I wrote these two articles with one goal in mind – to raise awareness of the fact that speaking in English is about so much more than just acquiring information and then releasing it at the proper moments. It doesn’t work like that for the simple reason that our brain isn’t based on a database principle where you can access any record of information at your will.

If that were the case, all foreigners would speak fluent English without any problems, but in reality our spoken language ability is determined by how well we’ve associated certain English words with others and how certain situations trigger the right responses when we speak.

Another article you’d probably find worth reading is my response to a question I’ve been asked many times – “Is it possible to become a fluent English speaker when living in a foreign country?” I’m not going to give you any clues right now as to what my conclusion on this question is, so you’d better read it – especially if you’re one of those foreigners living in a foreign country and thinking if it’s worth improving your spoken English when there aren’t many opportunities to meet other English speakers.

And now let me ask YOU a question – have you heard of the concept of repetition in terms of English improvement? If you’ve been following my blog for a while, most likely you’ve encountered it a few times – especially when I describe that the English Harmony System 2.0 is based on the spaced repetition principle. To dispel any doubts you may still be having in relation to this approach in English improving, please read this article and you’ll see that repetition happens all the time in real life conversations!

But if you are often having doubts over your English communication ability, here’s the article you just have to read. The three effective communication rules mentioned there are quite simple and straightforward – but then it’s often the case that the simplest things in life are the most effective ones! Basically what I’m saying in that article is that on many occasions we foreigners don’t really know what we want to say and we mistakenly assume that it’s our lack of English fluency that prevents us from communicating effectively.

In reality, a little bit of preparation goes a long way, but you always have the alternative to admit that you don’t have an opinion on that matter instead of forcing yourself to say something just for the sake of saying it!

On the finishing note, here’s an article where you can read how to perform very simple research on Google in order to find out how certain things are said in English. It’s very simple and very effective – read it and implement that method whenever you’re in doubt over your word choice when you say certain phrases and expressions in English!

I really hope you’ll enjoy reading my articles! Remember – even if you implement one piece of advice from it all, it will still make some difference to your English fluency!

Robby

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Should Japanese and Vietnamese English Speakers Bend Over Backwards to Get Their Pronunciation Right?

Robby — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 07:03:55 +0000

I have customers from all over the world – Brazil, the United States, Australia, Japan, Philippines, Arab Emirates – you name it!

Also, the native background of the English Harmony System’s owners is as diverse as the countries they reside in. I have Arabic and Chinese speaking customers from the States, Hindi speakers from the UK and Brazilian Portuguese speakers who live in Australia.

It just goes to show how widespread the English fluency issue is and how often foreign English speakers have developed their understanding and reading skills at the cost of their spoken fluency just because it’s a conventional wisdom that one needs to focus on reading and writing in order to become fluent.

It’s wrong, of course, and that’s what the English Harmony System does – it rearranges your English knowledge by forming natural English speech patterns so that you can speak more fluently and confidently.

Anyway, there’s one aspect the English Harmony System doesn’t cover, and I don’t touch upon it on my blog often, either. Namely, it’s English pronunciation.

Well, I actually do mention pronunciation when it comes to discussing fluency and the fact that many foreigners are trying to speak with perfect pronunciation which may actually have quite the opposite effect on their ability to speak fluently.

In other words, I’m always saying that you have to speak and pronounce English words in a way most comfortable to you, and that you don’t have to be too hung up on being perfect

But then one day I got an e-mail from one of my Japanese customers and it got me thinking if there might be more to the pronunciation aspect than I had thought.

You see, I had always assumed that once my English Harmony project is for foreign English speakers who’ve been struggling with English fluency for years, I don’t really have to focus on teaching proper pronunciation because that’s something my target audience has learnt ages ago.

Well, I do have tips on how to pronounce certain English sounds if you’ve always been struggling with them, but my advice always follows the same pattern – I tell my fellow foreigners to pronounce words in a way that suits them best and allows them to speak freely rather than trying to please others. Especially those, who think that a near-native pronunciation is a pre-requisite for English fluency

But that particular e-mail from my customer made me wonder if my assumptions about pronunciation are correct because he basically said that it’s very difficult for Japanese English speakers to pronounce English words properly and they’re even struggling with FINDING a way to pronounce English words that suits them because English sounds are very distant from their native pronunciation! Some students apparently struggle with pronunciation even after years of practice, and what it means for the English Harmony project is the following.

Foreigners who I deal with, have very decent English understanding, reading, writing and listening ability, and can also speak fluently on certain occasions, but what they lack is the ability to produce instantaneous speech and use the same means of expression used by native English speakers.

I would have thought that all such foreigners surely would have acquired quite a normal pronunciation regardless of their national background.

I mean, once the person has spent literally years learning the language, even with relatively little spoken practice they would possess the ability to make themselves understood, and as far as I’m concerned, we foreigners don’t need more than that

However, if some of my customers would even struggle to pronounce words and repeat phrases and engage in the dialogues in the speech exercising lessons contained in the English Harmony System, it would mean that I’d have to review the whole methodology and provide some help with learning to pronounce English words properly!

I went over the e-mail a few times – especially places where the customer said that Japanese and Vietnamese languages are the furthest from English in terms of pronunciation and that he still faces many embarrassing situations because others don’t always understand him.

I e-mailed him an answer saying that it’s indeed something I hadn’t taught about because I hadn’t realized that Asian students have these particular difficulties, and that it’s something I have to think about when making future System’s updates.

But here’s what I realized soon after my communication with my Japanese customer.

There will always be native English speakers in the States or the UK or Australia who won’t understand what you’re saying, ALWAYS

Unless you have a perfect pronunciation, that is, but if you’re anything like me speaking with an accent, you’ll definitely get the typical question at some stage: “Can you say it again?” Or – “Can you repeat it?” Or even worse – they’ll pretend they understood what you said, but you’ll clearly feel that it’s not the case!

And you know what?

I also encounter situations when I’m not understood because of my accent. No matter how hard I try, there will always be someone who won’t understand a particular word or a whole sentence I’m saying, despite the fact that I come from Eastern-Europe instead of Asia!

And do you also know that even native English speakers struggle to understand each other if they come from different geographical backgrounds?

There are so many different regional English accents that you’d go mad trying to understand them all – Cockney and West of Ireland accent, South African and Southern American – all these regional accents are so distinct that it actually makes me think that ANY specific foreign English accent should receive the same respect and treatment!

So here’s the bottom line.

You don’t have to bend over backwards trying to make your English pronunciation to be very close or identical to that of a specific group of native English speakers.

No matter where you come from – Japan, Indonesia, Argentina or Russia, you don’t have to be ashamed of your accent and the way you pronounce words!

After this e-mail exchange with my Japanese student I believe stronger than ever that the whole pronunciation issue originates in trying to please some other group of English speakers who think that their English is the correct one.

But did you know that the English language has surpassed its historical native boundaries a long time ago and these days many nations on the planet can call English their native language? India and Nigeria, for instance, are the second and third biggest English speaking countries in the world, and just because English speakers from those countries have different accents doesn’t mean they should try to sound more like American or British English speakers!

Please, don’t be ashamed of your native background, and don’t let the misconception that only American or British pronunciation are correct drive you mad trying to replicate them!

So, if you’re from Japan or Vietnam, speak English the way your mouth wants, and let others worry if they can’t understand this or that specific word you said.

They can make it out from context easily, and if something presents real difficulties, they’ll ask you to repeat it, simple as that!

All right, that’s all I wanted to tell you today, and I hope it’s going to put all of your English pronunciation worries to rest!

Robby

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

English Harmony Highlights of February 2012

Robby — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 06:31:46 +0000

Blog post I want you to check out first of all is the announcement of the digital download version of the English Harmony System 2.0 going live, and it’s really good news for those who’ve always wanted an immediate access to the product after the purchase is made.

The only difference between the download version and the physical product is that you need an Internet connection to use the download version of the English Harmony System, so if you want to play safe and use the System on your laptop when you’re not connected to the Internet, you might as well pay those extra few bucks and get the DVD package delivered to your doorstep worldwide for free. And – you’ll still get the download, so it’s a win-win no matter how you look at it!

Now let’s look at one particular strategy of English fluency maintenance that definitely warrants your attention. It’s an article is about using reverse psychology in order to deal with English fluency issues. It’s definitely worth your time and if you only have a few minutes, it’s the only February blog post I want you to read!

It’s controversial, it’s crazy, and your first impression might be that by implementing the reverse psychology strategy you might only make your matters worse! Well, you are totally right IF you don’t experience those terrible fluency issues when you get tongue-tied and unable to say anything reasonable. Those who’ve tried all my fluency management strategies and still encounter situations when it’s very difficult to maintain fluency at a normal level, this reverse psychology approach might just do the trick!

Next thing I want to tell you today is about my Twitter account and what I’ve started using it for. Up until recently I tweeted only my blog posts and major announcements so frankly speaking there wasn’t much happening on my Twitter page. Then, one fine day, I just thought – “why not use my Twitter account to publish all those idiomatic expressions I’ve been highlighting in my blog posts for the last year or so?”

And so I started doing it, and you can read this blog post to find out how to get the most out of my tweets!

Actually the basic premise that this whole idiomatic expression and collocation thing is based upon is very simple:

You don’t need to learn massive vocabulary and intricate grammar rules; you can speak fluently by just sticking word chunks together and that’s how any native English speaker actually forms their speech

Speaking of word chunks, I definitely suggest you to read one of my recent blog posts How Words Hook Up With Each Other in Spoken English where I’m explaining the concept of English words forming combinations with each other. This article elaborates on the same concept of word chunks, and I’m sure you just can’t get it wrong after reading this blog post or watching the corresponding video on YouTube. To get the most out of this video, you should most definitely participate in the little experiment I’m conducting there, and I believe that you just can’t fail to understand how important it is to learn and improve English contextually after watching this video.

Another February blog post you may want to read is called Is it OK to Pretend to Understand What an English Speaker Says When You Don’t? and I’m sharing some funny experiences in it. As you can guess from the headline alone, in this article I’m looking at those situations when we foreign English speakers pretend to understand what we’re told while we actually don’t. As you know for yourself, it doesn’t necessarily mean our English is bad, there can be other reasons for that such as your conversation partner speaking too fast or with too distinct accent. How to go about such situations, when it is and when it’s not OK to pretend to understand – you can read all that and much more in this article.

On the finishing note, I’d like you to read a blog post I published in mid-February dedicated to speaking English with a hard native accent. This time I’m looking at one of the most famous Spanish actors Antonio Banderas and if you’re wandering why I chose him, then here’s the answer: he’s a fluent foreign English speaker, yet he speaks with a distinct Hispanic accent.

With this blog post I’m sending a message to all those perfectionists out there who still think that perfect American or British pronunciation is a requirement for English fluency!

If you’re constantly beating yourself up over your native accent and you’re going out of your way just to pronounce words in English as perfectly as you possibly can, what you don’t realize is that you might be actually compromising on your fluency. It’s happened to me before, and now I just don’t care if there are people who think that my English isn’t fluent just because of my accent.

I know better than to allow such criticism to get me down, and I warmly suggest you to adopt the same attitude!

That’s all for the February English Harmony Blog highlights, thanks for tuning in and you can stay in touch with me by subscribing to my YouTube channel or by signing up for my mailing list on the top left hand side of my blog!

Robby

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Random Stuff – Perfectionism, English Word Chunks and Blind Faith

Robby — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 06:01:25 +0000

Hi my fellow foreign English speakers

Here’s a video I recorded on a Saturday night – I just thought “Why not just have a chat with my YouTube subscribers and blog readers? All my video Episodes are prepared and rehearsed; why not record something completely random and speak anything that crosses my mind?”

So I did – and in this video you can hear me sharing my views on:

perfectionism
importance of learning English collocations
having faith in your ability as a fluent foreign English speaker
making mistakes, hesitation and stuttering when speaking English
drinking

And please – don’t take me too seriously in this video.

It’s not an official English Harmony video Episode; it’s rather a friendly informal chat with you.

Enjoy!

Best Regards,

Robby

How Words Hook Up With Each Other in Spoken English

Robby — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:50:05 +0000

IMPORTANT! Please grab a piece of paper and a pen before you start reading this article as you’ll be required to write down a few English words if you decide to participate in a small experiment!

In this article we’ll look at how important it is to acquire new vocabulary in context, and how much time you may be wasting learning new words seperately, just by learning meanings of new words or even worse – learning them through a translation in your native language. I’ve been discussing it on my blog and in my videos quite a lot, but I’ve never actually brought up certain examples to show you the effectiveness of learning new English words through context.

So, let’s do an experiment first.

It’s very important you participate in this because if you don’t, you won’t be able to feel the difference between learning new vocabulary with and without context, so please follow my instructions, all right?

Basically you’ll have to make effort to memorize a few quite sophisticated English adjectives but in case you know a few or even all of those words, please don’t be offended! I’m not trying to insult your intelligence by making assumptions about your English vocabulary; I’ll be doing my best to pick out a few English words that aren’t heard that often in normal daily conversations or in media.

Now, please read the following five English words with the corresponding explanations and try to do your best to memorize those words and their meanings:

Detrimental – causing damage, harm or injury.

Untenable – being such that defense or maintenance is impossible.

Precarious – dangerously lacking in security or stability.

Impertinent – rude, lacking good manners.

Adverse – opposite to one’s interests or welfare; harmful or unfavorable.

So, these were the five adjectives and I have to confess that I purposefully chose these words because they all describe something negative just to make it more difficult for you to memorize them!

But if you think it was unfair and I should have given you words describing different concepts so that you’d have a better chance of memorizing them, wait till you see how EASY it’s going to be for you to remember these new English words if you learn them contextually!

So now read the descriptions of those words and try to recall what the respective adjectives were. Write them down on a piece of paper and number them 1 to 5. And please don’t cheat – focus only on the paragraph below and don’t try to look down where the answer is written!

Rude, lacking good manners – …
Causing damage, harm or injury - …
Opposite to one’s interests or welfare; harmful or unfavorable - …
Being such that defence or maintenance is impossible - …
Dangerously lacking in security or stability - …

Now, please compare your answers with the list below and see how many of the adjectives you got right:

SCROLL DOWN

Impertinent
Detrimental
Adverse
Untenable
Precarious

Well, how well did you do? I hope you got some of them right – and well done if you could remember all five adjectives despite my attempts to make if as difficult as possible!

Anyway, what I’m trying to prove here today is that it’s very important to acquire new English vocabulary in context, so I’d like you to think about how effectively you could use these five words in your English conversations, or in writing.

How likely do you think it is that you will start using these new English words when you speak with other English speakers?

Do you think you could easily blend them into sentences as you speak?

I hate to disappoint you, but personally I think you couldn’t, and I guess you’ve come to the same conclusion yourself, am I not right?

So where’s the problem? Why is that we, foreigners, when learning new English words the traditional way, struggle to use them in actual conversations? And why if we do use them, our speech is quite often very hesitant and we keep thinking of what would be the best fitting word to use when describing a certain concept, event, person or a thing?

The answer is quite simple, my friend! When you learn a meaning of a new English word just on its own, it’s very difficult for your mind to create a relationship between that word and other English words in your mind

There are probably dozens of very similar English words that you already know and most importantly – you’ve been using them in certain situations and certain context so it’s much easier for your mind to stick with what you already know than to use that new English word.

Also, you may find it hard to speak fluently when trying to use such new vocabulary words because you have to spend too much time analyzing if that particular word can be used in a certain context. You basically have to go back to that word’s description like a dictionary entry in your mind and see if it fits in the particular sentence.

And another huge problem is – how do we know that we use the particular word right? I guess you already know that we can’t use English words the same way we’d use the respective words in our native languages because every language has its own unique way of using certain words and if you just create word strings as a direct translation from your language, you may come up with silly things in English!

So the million dollar question is:

How can we memorize new English words effectively and then use them like native English speakers?

Before I answer this question, let me introduce you to a new concept.

Imagine that every word in the English language has little hooks attached to them and when you form a sentence, words are hooking up with each other. Now, imagine that certain words are more likely to hook up with each other and less with others, so, for instance, a word combination ‘keep in touch’ is what native English speakers would say because these three words are normally hooked up with each other. If you try to replace the word ‘keep’ with other words like ‘stay’, or ‘remain’, it would be understandable what you meant but it wouldn’t sound right.

So, now we can go back to the original question – how we can memorize new English words effectively and use them like native speakers do.

The trick is to memorize what other words your new word is usually hooked up with and that is going to make it an awful lot easier for you to memorize it! And you won’t have to refer back to that word’s description in your mind to use it in a sentence because you’ll already know what words it goes together with

So, let’s do our little experiment once more, but this time I’ll give you a word combination instead of a description and you’ll see how easy it is to memorize new English vocabulary if you go down this route:

Detrimental effect – a negative effect.
Adverse weather conditions – bad weather conditions.
Precarious work – part-time, temporary and fixed term employment where there’s less certainty and stability for the employee.
Untenable position – a position you can no longer hold.
Impertinent behavior – rude behavior.

Now, what should have happened when you read these adjective and noun combinations is – new relations should have formed between the adjectives you weren’t familiar with and the nouns that are very well known to you. Of course, it would take more repetitions to make sure those word combinations or so called collocations get imprinted into your mind, but I hope you’ll feel the difference in terms of your ability to remember those specific adjectives before and NOW!

OK, now let’s do our memory test once more, and this time you have to write down the word combos I gave you a minute ago.

Negative effect – …
Bad weather conditions – …
Part-time, temporary and fixed term employment where there’s less certainty and stability for the employee – …
A position you can no longer hold – …
Rude behavior – …

And here’s the answers, please compare the collocations from below with the ones you wrote on your piece of paper:

SCROLL DOWN

Detrimental effect
Adverse weather conditions
Precarious work
Untenable position
Impertinent behavior

How did you fare this time? Did you feel the difference between memorizing those words purely by their descriptions and now, when you memorized them contextually?

I bet you did, and that’s what you have to keep doing when learning new English words in future. Forget about hammering new words just on their own into your mind – the chances are, you won’t be able to use them as part of a fluent English speech. Your new approach has to involve memorizing any new English word you hear within context!

Remember about the hooks – every English word has a pair of hooks to hoop up with others and your aim as an English improver is to learn work combinations as opposed to single words

Robby

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

English Harmony Highlights of January 2012

Robby — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:26:04 +0000

Hi my fellow foreigners, it’s been another month at English Harmony and here I am again to deliver another monthly highlights report to those of you who didn’t get a chance or were too busy to read my blog posts regularly.

First of all, I’d like to tell you about a motivational poster I created on the New Year’s Day. Many of my mailing list subscribers and blog visitors have already printed it out and stuck it up on the wall, and you’re welcome to do the same. Just Click HERE to Open the Poster, and a large format image is going to open up so that you can conveniently send it to your printer.

The poster consists of the main premises of the English Harmony project such as – “Focus on what you CAN say instead what you CAN’T” and “Don’t mind your mistakes. Even native English speakers make plenty of them!” and many more; and the whole point of having the poster printed out is to keep yourself motivated to improve and maintain your English fluency throughout this year.

As you might have noticed, my approach towards English improvement is a bit different than you’d see elsewhere. I don’t preach grammar perfection and I don’t promote sophistication when it comes to speaking in English. Basically what I’m saying is – stop giving yourself a hard time, have an open mind and you’ll stand a much bigger chance to succeed as a foreign English speaker, and this poster is the essence of my English fluency philosophy.

A very important part of the whole English fluency improvement thing is acceptance of your mistakes made when speaking with others, and I want you to read this blog post to understand better what I mean by that.

In this article I’m sharing quite a funny yet very embarrassing personal experience with you, and I’m sure you’ll remember similar situations having happened to you in the past. This particular blog post adds to the traditional storyline of us, foreigners, making mistakes while speaking in English by highlighting the fact that even native English speakers can experience moments of confusion and inability to speak properly. As you can imagine, the whole point of this article is to make you realize that you’re not unique, and that such situations aren’t limited to foreign English speakers only.

It can happen to anyone, and the key in dealing with such embarrassing moments is in accepting them as part of our lives, and moving on instead of getting stuck in the moment and re-living the shameful experience all over again.

On a more entertaining note, I want you to read an article I wrote about one of my favorite TV shows – Mythbusters. Personally I don’t miss any new episodes when they’re released on the Discovery Channel, and in case you’re not a big fan of theirs, I want you to read this article and find out for yourself why watching Mythbusters is not only great fun, but also a way of passive English immersion and improving your English!

The five Mythbusters – Jamie, Adam, Tory, Grant and Kari – are covering a wide range of topics on their show and testing different widespread beliefs to see if they hold true, and it’s all done using quite a simple and easy to understand language so that the average foreign English speaker will find it fairly easy to enjoy the program without much difficulty.

You see, if you’ve followed my blog for some time, you’ll know that I’m in favor of enjoying life through the English language rather than using conventional language learning methods. Speaking as much as possible with others and with yourself, using English to enjoy your hobbies and also spending your free time doing things that involve the English language will be very beneficial to you as a foreign English speaker, and here’s another example – reading English newspapers.

When I just came over to Ireland 10 years ago, I made it my habit to read a newspaper every morning and build my English vocabulary, and it’s a decision I’ve never lived to regret. Phrasal verbs, expressions and simple English language used in tabloid newspapers is what you need to communicate effectively with people at work and on the street. On top of that, you’ll keep up-to-date on current affairs and other news which will serve you as source of conversation starter topics – in case you ever run out of things to talk about with your English speaking friends or if you don’t know how to start a conversation.

Making small-talk and discussing simple topics actually is often problematic to many foreign English speakers, because real life conversations require you to be able to improvise and produce speech instantly.

It’s something that I was struggling for a long time, and it took me years to realize that speaking is a completely different process from writing. You see, when you write, you can carefully pick the best fitting words, choose the most appropriate English Grammar Tenses and construct nice English sentences. When we speak, we can’t do it because we simply haven’t got time for it, so it’s hardly surprising that our English writing is much better that speech.

It’s normal, yet I keep seeing the question popping up regularly – “Isn’t it weird I can write better than speak?”

If you’ve been wandering the same thing please read this article I wrote in the beginning of January – it will shed light on the issue and give you a piece of mind in case it’s been troubling you lately.

The last blog post I want you to look at today is about how I use every available moment to practice my spoken English, and you can do the very same to get your English going. It’s called “How to improve spoken English while entering sales orders on a PC” and it’s yet another article dedicated to the topic of speaking English with yourself.

It’s how I keep myself immersed in the English language for long periods of time during the day, and you can do the same to drastically improve your English fluency!

These were the English Harmony Blog highlights of January 2012, and I hope you’ll find at least a few of my articles worth reading! I also hope that you’ll gain something for your own English fluency improvement in the process, and you’re welcome to post your feedback in the comments below!

Robby

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!