Is English Harmony GOOD and All the Rest is BAD?

By Robby

If you are new here please read this first.

If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you’ll know that I’m all against the traditional, mainstream English studies.

They focus mostly on writing, reading and learning grammar rules – needless to say, spoken English fluency gets neglected big time and so hundreds of thousands of English students keep struggling with their English without even realizing why it’s happening.

That’s why I started this website, and that’s why I created the product – English Harmony System – which is the only product out there that uses the spaced repetition approach and video technology in order to imprint natural English sentence structures into people’s minds so that they can start speaking natural, more fluent English.

One day I got an e-mail from Francisco, however, in which he asks me to be a bit more ethical when talking about the issues mentioned above.

He thinks that:

Not ALL schools are bad and that there are plenty of good schools where English is taught in a way that facilitates English fluency;
Conversational fluency is fine, however, there’s more than that – one may want to acquire an academic, deeper English knowledge and why would I claim it’s all bad?
There are so many needs for foreigners – passing English tests and exams, business English etc., and surely my English Harmony System doesn’t cater for those needs!
I’m taking advantage of those who are let down by the traditional English teaching system by shoving my product in their faces and taking their money;
I’m claiming my product to be the BEST one in the market but there are more products like mine out there; why am I not being honest?

Now, here’s my take on the whole thing:

ALL mainstream education bodies are the same – languages are taught the same grammar-translation way to this very day!

Academic English knowledge? Sure enough, if one aspires to become an English teacher, for example, it’s totally understandable there are certain requirements and a degree is one of them. You’re not going to convince me, however, that you can become a more fluent English speaker just because you’ve gained a degree in English and you know your way around super-advanced English grammar. The same level of fluency – and even bigger! – can be achieved if you pursue a degree in YOUR PROFESSIONAL FIELD!

Tests, exams – it’s all done in order to comply with standards issued by educational bodies. I strongly believe that if you pursue oral fluency, your writing, reading and comprehension is going to be developed to a fairly high degree as well (unless you purposefully ignore it, of course!), and while the EH System won’t specifically help you prepare for an exam, the bigger problem is still going to be there for you if you don’t improve your spoken fluency – you’re going to pass the test, and another one, but you won’t be able to speak fluently which is going to leave you frustrated and unhappy…

As for me taking advantage of those in distress – well, by the same token you can accuse a food supplier for taking advantage of people who want to buy food to feed themselves!

And lastly – is EH System really the BEST product out there? I strongly believe so because it’s pretty much the only one known to me where you’re required to MEMORIZE AND THEN USE natural English sentences in a dialogue. Other products will provide you with content which you’re going to listen to, but there’s no strict demands for you to actually SPEAK OUT LOUD which is the only way to develop one’s ability to speak!

Now, this is my response to Francisco’s e-mail, and you can also watch the video where I’m elaborating on certain aspects of this article.

Any comments welcome!

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!

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

Robby Kukurs

Thanks Sunny for the good wishes! And yes – I’m lucky to have twin daughters although sometimes it can be double trouble! 😉
Sunny Liu

Yes, it is indeed useful! Robby!
and Happy birthday to your twins daughters! how lucky you are to have twins!

All the best,

Sunny
Robby Kukurs

Thanks a lot Sunny, I’m glad you’ve started listening to my podcasts – I remember how eager you were to watch my videos and I always kept your wishes in mind!

Matter of fact – I did the podcast largely thanks to you; you were the first person who contacted me saying that you can’t access YouTube content and it got me thinking – “Hold on, there must be more people like her out there, so creating audio files would be a really useful addition to the traditional text / video content!”

So thanks for inspiring me, and I hope you’ll find my podcasts useful!!!

Cheers,

Robby
Robby Kukurs

So you did repetitions, right? Well, then indeed it’s not so different from the English Harmony System!
Sunny Liu

Long time no see, Robby, how’s it going?
Thanks a million for your great job! Today I have got a big surprise to listen to your podcast for the first time! It is as easy to understand as your post probably because I have prior knowledge of your great take on this gorgeous site.
and it’s pretty much the only one known to me Robby is the first successful non-native speakers sharing his experience. Very very kind of you! I just label you a native speaker like English Teacher Melanie and Rachel’s English if you don’t tell me you’re non-native speaker as me! I prefer your website now simply because i could listen to you now and i highly appreciate your great ideas!

Best regards,

Sunny Liu
August

Yes! Absolutely!! I didn’t even force myself to speak after, everything was happening as if by itself (effortlessly, exactly how it was promised))). Moreover listening wasn’t the only condition. I stayed focused doing a lot of repetitions of the same stuff, material was fun and very easy to understand. Actually there was no way not to make significant improvements by doing this programme, all the method is based upon the latest research and real-life experience of many people, not just AJ. Actually there are lot of similarities between your ideas and his, although the main focus can differ.
Robby Kukurs

Thanks August, and I totally agree that me being a non-native speaker give me an edge over native English speaking teachers; I’ve actually written about it on my blog – you may want to check it out: http://englishharmony.com/foreigner-has-an-edge/

As for learning to speak fluently by listening ONLY – you already know my take on it: http://englishharmony.com/listen-your-way-to-fluency/

So please forgive me for being a bit sceptical, but I’d really like to ask you the following question – did you really not speak at all while doing “Power English”? Did you really ONLY listened and felt a significant improvement to your fluency?

Looking forward on your response,

Robby
August

I’m absolutely sure that Robby’s doing a great job! Actually he’s the only one who overcame all the difficulties of learning a foreign language by himself and at the same time sharing his experience with us. It’s kind of unique, ’cause all the other great and useful stuff is made by native-speakers/teachers who don’t have such experience as Robby simply because English is their mother tongue and they just have no real experience in many language learning issues, they can only guess how hard it is.

About all the rest : a couple of years ago I got amazing results by using “Power English” by AJ Hoge, it played wonders on my speaking. All I did was listening, listening and listening. And following his other directions. Literally in some weeks I was surprised by how fluently I could speak, automatically. No grammar, no analyzing, just having fun with material. There are many ways to start speaking fluent English. I’m sure that EH is one of them, Robby is proving it to us on a regular basis.