Correct Yourself When Speaking in English Without Others Noticing!
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 fellow foreign English speakers! It's Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com obviously. And welcome – I was going to say velcome. This is one of those typical mistakes that some of us make. Instead of welcome we would say velcome. Basically instead of the “wa” sound we'd be saying “w” for some reason or another, you know. And it does happen to me on the rare occasion and now you actually witnessed that occasion but I'm not going to delete it out from the video. I'm just going to leave there on record just to prove you guys that making mistakes is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a – I would even say an integral part of your development as a foreign English speaker, you know. Because getting rid of mistakes altogether is not possible, right? Anyhow, now I'm having my Saturday afternoon green tea. Cheers. And to a healthy lifestyle, right? Instead of coffee these days I'm rolling with green tea pretty much all the time, and especially when I'm at work, the workload is really, really big I would say. Sometimes even overwhelming so green tea keeps me energized and focused and I would really suggest you start doing the same thing, right? If you're drinking coffee, switch over to green tea and you're going to feel the effects of it immediately! (more…)
English Fluency Questions Answered: Q & A Session With Robby
Watch This If You Have Total English Grammar Confusion!
English Idiomatic Expression: “Along the Lines of…”
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! Hi guys, hello boys and girls, hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! It's Robby here obviously from EnglishHarmony.com and today I'm bringing you another daily English idiomatic expression video. Well, I guess by now you would have noticed that these idiomatic expression videos are not being published on a daily basis. That was the original intention a few years ago but as you can imagine I just haven't been able to keep up with that production schedule, publishing one video a day simply because of my Fluency Star students and everything but I just stuck with the name daily English idiomatic expressions, right? So I'm just going to give you a new one today, right? Because God only knows when is the next one going to come up, when I decide to publish the next one. But to tell you the truth I have a bunch of them recorded and then I publish them as I see fit, every now and then I would publish another one for you guys. Anyhow, today we're going to look at the following English idiomatic expression “along the lines of”, right? And obviously if you want to find out what exactly it means, when you can use this particular phrase then bear with me for a few more moments and everything is going to become crystal clear to you my friends! (more…)
Update From Robby: New Job, Fluency Star Finished, Spoken English Self-practice Still Going Strong!
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! Hi Guys! Today I'm bringing you a quick update on what I've been up to this summer, and you wouldn't believe how busy I've been doing all the following: Finishing my IT certification; Organizing my work experience; Preparing for a job interview; Starting in a new job; ...and all the while keeping teaching my Fluency Star students at night! (more…)
English Idiomatic Expression: “To The Best of My Knowledge”
What Happens When You Don’t Learn English Contextually?
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! One of my blog readers posted a piece of English writing on my blog here and asked me what was wrong with it. Having taken a closer look, I quickly realized that the author of that piece had used quite sophisticated language, but the words just didn’t go together which was a telltale sign of lack of contextual English learning! So here it is: Now, it’s no secret that in order to learn to speak and write in English in a native-like fashion you have to embrace the concept of contextual English learning. Well, I guess I should put it this way – it’s no secret to those who’ve been following my blog and watching my videos. (more…)
Past Events in English: “There Was This Time When… Next Thing I Know…”
Where I Source All These English Idiomatic Expressions?
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! Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog! I’m obviously Robby, your English fluency facilitator. Yes, that’s the term that I came up with myself, facilitator means obviously someone who facilitates your fluency. I’m not a teacher, because I really hate the term teacher. It kind of implies a traditional setting whereby the teacher is looking down on their students, right? But I’m not looking down on you guys, I’m just merely facilitating your fluency and improvement! I’m accompanying you on your journey to English fluency, that’s all I’m doing, I’m giving you the right advice, the right tools and then it’s up to you guys to decide whether you take my advice on board and take some action or you don’t in which case obviously your fluency won’t improve. It’s as simple as that! As a matter of fact, I’m getting plenty of questions almost on a daily basis asking me to help people with their fluency. And the question is posed in a way that makes me kind of wonder whether that person actually realizes that it’s actually down to them to make all the effort, do the hard work and actually work on their fluency because they almost expect me to kind of magically transfer all my skills unto them but it just doesn’t happen like that in real life. And it’s another one of those things that I blame the traditional English teaching industry for - basically they’ve created this notion out there that if you just attend an English class, you will improve just because you have attended the class. The teacher has all the qualifications and it’s enough to have that kind of setting and you will automatically improve. So it kind of takes away all the hard work and effort that you have to do. And it makes it look as if it’s very easy but in real life it’s quite hard, right? It’s hard work. But a lot of people don’t realize that and they think that Robby will somehow make them fluent which is not the case. I’m merely facilitating your own journey to fluency. I’m giving you the right advice, the right tips and tricks, so that’s how it happens, right? But anyway, today’s video is all about how I find all these English idiomatic expressions and collocations and phrases, you name it. How I come up with them. Because I’ve been cranking out all of these idiomatic expression videos – well, lately I haven’t published too many of them because of my high workload, I’m currently engaged with a couple of students that I took on. My Fluency Star students and I still had a few left from the previous round. (more…)
Ignoring Grammar Doesn’t Mean You Have to Speak Incorrectly!
Emigration to an English Speaking Country: My Honest Opinion
English Sentence Starter: “I Heard Somewhere That…”
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! Hi guys, today I’m bringing you yet another English idiomatic expression, and this time around it’s a super handy sentence starter: I HEARD SOMEWHERE THAT… Why am I saying it’s a super handy sentence starter? Well, the reason behind that is simple enough – it’s a perfect way of starting a conversation with someone about something that you’ve heard somewhere, which is what a lot of conversations are all about! Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you want to tell your work colleague that there’s way more bacteria on the average mobile phone than on a toilet seat. In theory, nothing could be easier than that, right? Just open your mouth and tell him about it! In reality, what a lot of foreign English speakers will struggle with is – HOW TO START THE DAMN SENTENCE! (more…)
Should We Make Sure Everything We Say Is Grammatically Super-correct? My Opinion on Correct 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, it's Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! In today's video we're going to discuss the correctness of the English language. And the fact of the matter is that there's so many things that we say in our English conversations that would be considered as incorrect if we went by the textbook English grammar rules. And if you paid particular attention to the last sentence - I said something incorrectly! I said “there's so many things” whereas in reality I should have said “there are so many things” because the noun “things” obviously is in plural in this case so the verb “to be” should have been conjugated to reflect that, I should have said “there are so many things”. And this is just one of those examples where something that's incorrect, it has been accepted in the general public and everyone speaks like that and there's nothing wrong with it. So it begs the question and as a matter of fact this particular phrase “it begs the question – to beg a question” has also been criticized as being incorrect English, right? In reality we should say “it raises a question”. But this phrase “it begs a question” is also used by everyone. And I would say that it actually makes it correct. (more…)
English Sentence Starter: “Speaking Of…”
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…)
You Think I Speak Fluent English Because I Live In Ireland? Nope!
FAQ: I’m Afraid My English Fluency Isn’t Coming Back!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmk15KSasaA
English Idiomatic Expression: “The Fact of The Matter Is That…”
English Idiomatic Expression: “As A Matter Of Fact”
Back in College: English Fluency Hitting an All-Time High!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udIiOcBeL50
English Idiomatic Expressions: “I’ve Been Meaning to… Never Get Around to…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a67Ud1QGNk
How to Learn English Synonyms and Antonyms Effectively
How to Decide Which Tense and Which Verb Form to Use?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Ftz-cnjJ4
We Create English Fluency Issues for Ourselves!
My Own Struggling With English Fluency is What Drives Me!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNN-xUwHN4A
Want Solid Proof that Spoken English Self-practice Works? Check This Out!
Your Body Constantly Changes – And So Does Your English Fluency!
English Idiomatic Expression: “Out of the Question”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeVYmuxrXLQ Hello my friends, and welcome back to yet another English idiomatic expression video! In today’s video we’re going to look at the following expression: OUT OF THE QUESTION This expression is typically used when you want to say that something is totally impossible, that you can’t do it, or that some other person can’t do something. And here’s an example: "Robby, we’re going out tonight, are you coming with us?” – “Sorry guys, but I have to hand in the assignment tomorrow, so I’m staying in and doing some serious writing!” – “Common Robby, just come with us for an hour or so!” – “Guys, seriously, it’s OUT OF THE QUESTION so just drop it.” But now watch the video above to see me use this English idiomatic expression in a number of different scenarios, and don’t forget to do some spoken English practice with yourself by incorporating this phrase in your speech! Chat soon, Robby ;-)
Why It’s So HARD to Accept Spoken English Can Be Practiced?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1se_PgJXmZM
How to Practice English for FREE? Make Phone Calls!
How to Prepare for a Job Interview In English (Tried & Tested!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vMa6Z9JVIY
English Sentence Starter: “I Can See Where You’re Coming From”
Passive English Input Isn’t Going to Improve Your Ability to Speak!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhepN3ZIQCY This is another one of those videos where I’m responding to a YouTube comment, and this time around the person in question commented on a video where I was talking about what to do if you’re living in an English speaking country without any opportunities to speak with locals. So here’s the comment: And obviously – if you’d like to hear what I have to say about it, please watch the video above! Cheers, Robby
There’s Always Someone Worse Off Than You!
What to Do If I Find Spoken English Self-Practice Boring…
Best Videos and Articles on English Harmony in 2015 + Happy New Year!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHljSmteBfU