Learn Only ONE Way of Using New English Vocabulary Words at Any Given Time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mx3cg0gSNk In this English Harmony video I’m going to respond to Meenu’s comment in which she explains her problem in relation to learning new English vocabulary words. You can see the full exchange below: I’m taking the liberty to elaborate on the whole issue in the video above, and I hope you’ll find it helpful, Meenu! ;-) So, if you’re having similar issues with learning new English vocabulary: (more…)
FGC Goal #1: American Phrasal Verb #18: See What We Can ROUND UP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_CgLyHNOOo Current Goal: Learn 50 American Phrases in 25 Days! Currently I’m reading the last book in GONE series, and here’s a sentence I came across yesterday: “See what food we can ROUND UP!” The situation in the book was the following: a kids settlement near a lake had been attacked by a monster of extraordinary powers, and half of all humans got massacred (quite grisly for a teenage fiction, isn’t it?). When the monster was fended off by one of the human mutants (you must be thinking now – “What kind of books are you reading, Robby?!”), the girl in charge started organizing their retreat to the town. Quite obviously, when almost everything you own is destroyed, first you have to see what supplies you’re left with, so that’s when this phrase “See what we can ROUND UP” comes in really handy! The funny thing is, I knew the phrasal verb TO ROUND UP in quite a different context. It’s a mathematical term and it’s used when rounding up figures. Let’s say, for example, if you’re asked to round up the number 27, you get 30. You can also round figures down, in which case 27 becomes 25 – and I’m sure everyone having even attended a primary school is familiar with this concept! Today’s video, however, isn’t about rounding figures up or down. It’s about using the American phrasal verb TO ROUND UP in a much different context, namely – when rounding up… (more…)
English Idiomatic Expression: “Down the line”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNviqdKGkok We never know what’s going to happen down the line – isn’t that right my friends? But let’s not get too pessimistic – after all, it’s time to learn another English idiomatic expression, and I actually just used today’s phrase – “down the line”! ;-) This English idiom is quite simple, and it’s just another way of saying “in the future”. Are you wondering then what’s the difference between the two phrases? Are you asking the question – “Why use ‘down the line’ if I can simply say ‘in the future’?” I warmly suggest you stop asking questions like the ones I just mentioned! They’re not going to avail you of anything apart from only getting you more confused. So please read this blog post I wrote a short while ago about the bad effects of too much question asking and analysing. So, just repeat and memorize today’s phrase “down the line” and watch the video above to see how it’s used in real life so that you can start using it in your daily English conversations! Chat soon, Robby ;-)
Funny English Phrases: Animal Related Idioms
How English Fluency Issue Manifests Itself
You suddenly can’t pronounce the words normally – although you know how a particular word sounds, it seemingly comes out of your mouth and distorts itself – letters get mixed, endings change and you have an impression that it’s another person speaking – not you! Solution: Learn Pronunciation by Equating English Sounds to Your Native Language! You can’t find the right words as you speak – you know what you want to say and normally you even don’t have to force yourself to consciously think about the words as such. However, when this English fluency issue is present, you seem to have lost it all and as you keep on speaking you can lose the whole concept of what you wanted to say – all because you concentrate on finding the right words! Solution: Incredibly Powerful and Super-Simple Way Of Using Google to Find the Right English Words to Say! You can’t maintain the clearness of thoughts – you are struggling to stick the words together but as a result the sentences coming out of your mouth are often hard to understand and lack the logical structure; Solution: Clear Your Mind and Achieve Complete English Fluency in 4 Easy Steps! No matter how good your English grammar is, sometimes you get everything wrong – tenses mixed up, incorrect forms of the verbs replacing the ones you needed to use and so on... Solution: Do You Find Certain English Grammar Constructs TOO DIFFICULT To Learn? Try This Easy 3 Step Plan! You have a notion as if hundreds and hundreds of English words are floating in your mind and it becomes nearly impossible to pick the right ones and form a proper speech. On the contrary, when your English speech is normal you just speak without having anything else in your mind! Solution: Learn How to Learn English Contextually so That Only the RIGHT Words Appear in Your Mind! To your utter dismay you can clearly notice that you think in your mother’s tongue and the resulting speech is a translation – not a normal speech! Solution: How to Develop Your Ability to THINK in English Even if you don’t think in your native tongue you experience an odd thing – as you speak, wrong words replace the right ones – even if they don’t sound similarly and there’s no other obvious connection between them! Solution: Conquer Your Fear of Making Mistakes when Speaking English! And, of course, the most devastating thing of all – your confidence is just literally draining away :oops: when you feel these symptoms take place! Solution: How To Achieve Truly Confident Spoken English! I guess by now you have certainly recalled nearly all these English fluency issue symptoms having manifested themselves at some stage in your life. This whole English fluency issue seems to be something like a mental syndrome and probably only a psychotherapist could help with it… Once I had such a thought as well, yes, but since I dealt with this speech problem myself – I can assure you that you also do it without attending a doctor! ;-) But now let’s talk about what’s happening behind the scenes when this issue occurs and let’s analyze the very roots of these sudden changes in ability to speak English normally. Robby P.S. Are you ready to get on the fast track to spoken English fluency? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!
Prepare for Important English Conversations by Speaking With Yourself!
Is It Possible To Sound Too Fluent in English?
Most of you guys visiting this blog have certain English fluency related issues, the most typical of which is the tendency of getting “stuck” while speaking. It’s the terrible feeling of “I know exactly what I want to say, yet for some reason or another I can’t seem to be able to say it out loud!” So I guess if you were to hear another foreign English speaker who can speak for hours on end in a way that it would seem you just can’t shut them up, you’d be thinking to yourself – “I wish I could speak like that…” Well, as the old saying goes – be careful what you wish for! (more…)
When You Improve Your Spoken English, You Improve Your Entire Life Along With It!
English Fluency Issues Is a Blessing in Disguise!
Are you making these collocation mistakes?
Hey there everyone, How is your fluency going? What? Good. It's awesome then, but it breaks my heart when I see my dear readers, making mistakes while speaking or writing. And please don’t get me wrong, making a mistake is a part of the learning process, but correcting them is way more important than expanding your vocabulary or scaling up your fluency. Thus, without further fuss, let get down to the job: Pay close attention to the paragraph given below and find the mistakes from the context. Let’s see how many of them you are able to observe. (more…)
Do You Speak English Enough? You’ve Gotta Speak ALL THE TIME!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLvjnC515co Are you immersed into the English language 27/7/365 - meaning you are married to an English speaker or you only go out with other English speakers? If so - great, your spoken English is probably good enough and you don't really have any fluency related issues! ;-) IF your English exposure is limited, however, you just HAVE to do some additional spoken English practicing, there's no doubt about that as it's been proven by my personal experience. What am I talking about here? Well - watch the video above and you'll find out EXACTLY what I'm on about here: * my history as a failed English speaker * importance of a daily spoken English practice to keep your fluency sharp * why MOUTH for you is the most important body part! Stay fluent, stay confident, and all kinds of comments welcome here! Robby ;-)
Improving Your English is Simpler Than You Think!
How to Reduce Clauses to Phrases in English Sentences
My last article for English Harmony was about when you can and can’t omit relative pronouns such as “who” and “that” from sentences. What we concluded is that you can omit the pronoun when it acts as an object, as in the sentence below: The dog (that) Mary is petting has brown fur. (The relative pronoun “that” is optional here.) But you cannot omit the pronoun when it acts as a subject, as in this sentence: The dog that is eating a biscuit has brown fur. However, astute reader Juhapekka pointed out that in examples like the above sentence, you can’t omit only the pronoun, but you can omit the pronoun plus the form of “to be” (in this case, “is”): The dog eating a biscuit has brown fur. (This is a well-formed sentence!) This introduces an entirely new topic in English grammar called clause-to-phrase reduction. This article will explore clause-to-phrase reduction, explain how and why it happens, and hopefully make the mysterious world of English grammar a little bit less confusing. (more…)
Passive English Input Isn’t Going to Improve Your Ability to Speak!
FAQ: How to Improve My English?
At the moment of writing this article I’ve posted more than 150 posts on this blog, and they’re all dedicated to the topic of spoken English improvement. That’s why I find it slightly strange to receive e-mails asking a question “Robby, can you help me improve my English?” Normally I would reply with another one-liner – “Please feel free to browse around my website, there’s plenty of articles and videos and they’re all about improving your English fluency!” – because I just couldn’t fit everything there is to say about improving your English in one e-mail! Also, I was under the impression that such queries are most likely asked by those who haven’t bothered checking out my blog. After all, all the information is available right here, on my website, and all you have to do is just read a few articles to start seeing the big picture, right? Recently, however, I realized that it’s probably not as easy as it looks to me. First of all, I’m dealing with a host of English fluency related issues and I have to admit not all of them are relevant to those who just want to IMPROVE their overall level of fluency. For example, if you have the typical English fluency issue whereby you can’t speak on certain occasions but you’re perfectly find on others, your main concern isn’t spoken English improvement as such; in this case you want to learn how to manage your fluency and make sure you don’t get severe anxiety and lack of confidence when you experience reduced ability to speak properly. Secondly, I can also imagine that the abundance of information on my blog might be a bit overwhelming and it’s not that easy for someone having arrived here for the first time to figure out what EXACTLY they have to do to improve their English. That’s why I decided to write this 5 step plan with easy, to-the-point instructions on how to make sure your English is experiencing constant growth and improvement. Enjoy! ;-) (more…)
My 5 Year Long Journey to English Fluency
FGC Goal #1: American Slang Phrase #23: BUSTING ON SOMEONE
How To Speak About Past Events During English Conversations
“Don’t focus on studying English grammar – go for spoken English instead!” – this is one of the few phrases you can read on my blog nearly every time I publish something. Reasoning behind this statement is that if you learn to speak correctly, you’ll also learn English grammar along the way. You see – grammar is set of rules binding the words together and determining their place in a sentence. The more you learn English in a natural way, the more you’ll start developing the special “feel” for correct English grammar and you’ll instinctively know how a particular thing has to be said. Real life conversations can sometimes go against standard English grammar rules, and it’s important for you as a foreign English speaker to be aware of such exemptions :!: Not that you’re required to stuff your spoken English with slang phrases and pose as a native speaker! It’s just useful to know that sometimes you can ignore one or another grammar rule to make your speech easier and friendlier! In this video I'm discussing how native English speakers speak about past events during a conversation, and the respective choice of English Grammar Tenses. It can be quite confusing for a foreign English speaker to get the tenses right – especially when we start looking at the Perfect Tenses and such. So watch this video to see how you can make your life easier and also make your English speech sound more native! ;-) And of course, if the video playback is hampered for some reason – have a read of the video script below! (more…)
David Gemmell’s Heroic Fantasy Fiction: How It Helped Me Define My Moral Code
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I-d8_4b8zQ Hi guys on this beautiful Sunday morning! ;-) Currently I’m still reading GONE series by Michael Grant, but this morning I decided to tell you a little bit about English fiction that has had a deep and profound impact on my personal development and my moral values. David Gemmell. He’s the man. He’s the author of over thirty fantasy fiction books, and most notably – Druss the Legend novels. Druss is the character who struck a chord with me, and ever since I got to know him through David Gemmell’s heroic fantasy fiction, my life has never been the same. It might sound like a far-fetched claim, but it’s true nonetheless. Whenever I face a tough situation in life, I imagine what Druss would have done had he been in my shoes. (more…)
7 Ways to Kill Your English before You Even Start Speaking
Why You Forget English Words and How to Avoid It
I’m pretty sure you’ve had the following happen to you many, many times: You open your mouth to say something in English; You start the sentence and then suddenly you FORGET a specific word… You’re going mad trying to remember it… As a result you can’t say a thing! It’s one of the worst experiences that any of us, foreign English speakers, can possibly have because it makes us feel stupid and worthless, and the funny thing is that the more we try to make sure it doesn’t happen, the worst it gets :!: Sure enough, there are strategies such as PARAPHRASING, for example (trying to say it in different words) or speaking in SHORT SENTENCES which can be very successfully implemented when you can’t remember the exact word you’re looking for. I mean – why try and struggle to remember something you obviously can’t remember at the risk of not being able to say anything? Simply put it in different words, and let the conversation continue! Having said all that, however, I have to agree that you might still want to figure out WHY you forget English words and how to make sure such incidents don’t happen ALL THE TIME, am I not right? So, let’s get down to business and let’s start dissecting your brain in order to see why you forget English words and how to make sure it doesn’t happen that often! ;-) (more…)
12 English Phrases Meaning Something Completely DIFFERENT to What You Might Think They Mean!
What You Think is Your WORST English Performance May Just Turn Out to Be Your BEST One Ever!
Do you sometimes get the feeling that you’re a really crappy English speaker and that your English sucks? Well, I also get this feeling sometimes, and despite having dealt with my main fluency issues a long time ago there are days when it kind of feels as if it’s not even worth opening my mouth. There are occasions when I have to record a video for my YouTube channel, for example, but I just can’t stand the way I sound on that particular day, and I can’t get rid of the feeling that I should rather stay away from it and get back to it the following day. Do you think I do that and just keep my mouth shut? No way! I simply ignore the fact that I’m feeling bad about my ability to speak in English properly, and I proceed with recording the videos. More often than not the result is quite surprising – when I watch the video I can clearly see that my English speech is by far better than I thought it was! So here’s the simple conclusion I can draw: (more…)
English Idiomatic Expression: “Run It By Someone”
Sacrifice Grammar To Improve Your English Fluency…?
Connecting Your Ideas in Written English
When you are writing in English, there are two main components that you must achieve in order to express yourself well: First, you must have strong, clear ideas. And second, you must present these ideas in a well-organized fashion. However, finding the right words and phrases to connect your ideas can be challenging. If you struggle to come up with the right transitions in your writing, don’t worry: we've provided you with a cheat sheet for various popular transitional words and phrases in English! These phrases are useful connectors that will make your writing flow in a natural and organized way. They’re also key phrases to use in the writing sections of English exams like the IELTS or TOEFL. (more…)
Terrible English Fluency Issues? You’re Not Alone In This!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4b1Ji2qFQ0
YearOfEnglish.com: 3 Reasons Why Enjoying Your Hobbies Through English is The BEST Thing You Can Do To Your FLUENCY!
English Fluency Improvement Requires a Proper ROUTINE – Just Like Your Workouts in a Gym!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGfqQWWkOsw Hello my friends! ;-) I’m back with another video dedicated to the YearOfEnglish.com audience, and this time around I’m going to focus on the importance of ROUTINE when it comes to your spoken English improvement. And to be honest with you, my friends, routine determines success in any aspect of your life. Are you really good in your job and your work colleagues value your expertise and they know they can always rely upon you? Well, it’s only because you’ve been doing certain things ROUTINELY and as a result you’ve become very good at them! Are you very knowledgeable in terms of computer hardware and all your friends are always seeking your help whenever they have their PCs or laptops playing up? Well, guess what – it’s your computer related ROUTINE over the years that has made you so good at it! And if you’re mad into fitness related activities and you can proudly claim to have a 10% body fat level and you’re staying fit all year round – isn’t it your workout and nutrition related ROUTINE that had enabled you to achieve such amazing results? Of course it is :!: (more…)
The Less Opportunities You Have to Speak With Others, The More You’ve Gotta Speak With Yourself!
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…)
Why It’s So HARD to Accept Spoken English Can Be Practiced?
What Do Small Children, Pets & The English Language Have In Common?
How To Learn A New Language In Super-short Time!
A few months ago I came across a website of an Irish guy called Benny – and I must say I was really impressed with what I found out about him! Benny speaks 8 languages at the moment... I’m saying – at the moment – because God only knows how many he will speak at the time when you read this article! Basically this is what he does – he takes on 3 month long missions to learn a new language. Yes, you got me right – 3 months! :!: While for most people it would take 3 months to get around basics of a new language, Benny masters his target language to fluency. Amazing, isn’t it? Well, if you think he’s a genius capable of acquiring tens of thousands of words in the target language and master it to a complete fluency in 3 months – it’s not really the case. For Benny as well as for me achieving fluency in a language doesn’t mean acquiring all academic grammar knowledge about the language along with huge vocabulary. (more…)