30-day Vocabulary Acquisition Course- Day 18- Suspicion

This article is part of the 30-day Vocabulary Acquisition Course. Sign up here to get every lesson in your inbox for free: (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//forms.aweber.com/form/28/1528169428.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "aweber-wjs-gh9mm2tmz")); Hello everyone out there, How are you all doing today? Welcome back again to another chapter of “Free 30-day Vocabulary Acquisition Course” where you'll learn something new every day about a topic with context and examples, and so will you today. So without further ado, let's get down to the business and pick some vocabulary out of the given context: (more…)

Do You Get Intimidated by Eloquent English Speakers? You Shouldn’t!

Using Perfect Simple And Passive Voice In Spoken English

9 Friday Expressions You Can Use… Guess When? On Fridays!

There are plenty of phrase-lists published on this blog – starting from phrases using the word “thing” and ending with small talk phrases which has actually turned out to be the most popular article on this blog! This time around let’s look at something that would come in handy for every single foreign English speaker out there. Well, it’s not that those other phrases wouldn’t be useful for everybody, it’s just that I’m trying to point out the fact that the phrases we’re going to look at today can be definitely used by all of us at least once a week! Why once a week? Well, guess what – Friday happens once a week, and for as long as you’ve got some work colleagues to talk to, you can always make sure to use this Friday phraseology to the best of your ability! So, without further ado, let’s start looking at the different Friday expressions you’ll be able to use at work – and not only! (more…)

Another 3 Reasons Why Learning English at School Sucks!

Recently I published a blog post called “4 Reasons Why Studying English at School Won’t Make You a Fluent English Speaker” where I discussed drawbacks of the traditional way of studying the English language.Â I’ll give you a quick overview of the previous article but of course if you haven’t read it you’d better check it out – it might prove to be quite an eye-opener for you! So why am I so much against the traditional English teaching methods? :!: First of all, the grammar translation method which is still prevalent even in this day and age, was founded back in the 18th century. Back in the olden days foreign language learning was still in its infancy and academics assumed that it had to follow the same pattern as other disciplines – Math, Physics, and Chemistry. Fast forward to the 21st century… and they still teach English at school with the same grammar translation method that is unnatural and uses students’ native language as reference medium to acquire the target language! :!: Second reason – school English studies focus on STUDYING the language rather than LEARNING English. English students are required to know all about grammar constructs, word types and syntax but real, spoken English is being neglected at the same time. This doesn’t make any sense to me; it’s like learning all about your leg muscle fibers and leg movement kinetics if your main goal is to learn how to dance! :!: The third reason is something even you might find hard to agree with, namely – English grammar difficulty levels. What I’m saying is – there’s no such thing as difficult or easy grammar, if you learn English naturally all grammar already comes with it and the ability of speaking efficiently is mainly down to every individual’s vocabulary size. The old school supporters argue that it’s not the case and one has to spend long years studying English Grammar from the beginner’s level up to advanced. But you’d better go back to the original blog post to read about it in depth and figure out where you stand on this. :!: Lastly I presented a number of counterarguments to approaching English and exact sciences with the same teaching methods. To put it simply, it’s all about recognizing that in the word driven by technological advancements during the Industrial Revolution, exact sciences where in the biggest demand and the modern educational system still mirrors those old, archaic assumptions about how students are to be taught subjects at schools and colleges. But why am I returning to the same topic again? Well, I simply couldn’t pack all the information I wanted to in a single blog post because there’s a whole lot more to say about the traditional way of teaching English! So here we go again with another 3 shocking reasons why academic English studies inhibit your English learning progress. (more…)

English Improvement Trend & Inevitable Fluency Fluctuations – Why Is It Happening to Me?

Just to Let You Know I’m Still HERE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFloterSVOc Hi Guys! ;-) Just to give you a quick update on what I'm doing now and why I haven't published any videos lately - I'm busy as hell preparing new content for the website, and I want to make sure there's plenty of articles lined up for publishing. Soon enough you'll start hearing more often from me, and I promise you this - all the videos and articles I'm preparing are going to be really useful and actionable! Chat to you soon, Robby

My Own Struggling With English Fluency is What Drives Me!

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 Doesn’t Mean Being Able To Speak About EVERYTHING

Terrible English Fluency Issues? You’re Not Alone In This!

The Best English Class for Improving Your English Fluency

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d_Z-q2e63c

SUPER Important for English Fluency: SLOW Down Your Speech!

I can’t stress enough how important it is NOT to try and speak very fast! I’ve been doing it myself for a long, long time – mostly to impress others and HERE you can read why trying to impress others is a really stupid idea. You know yourself how it goes – you’re speaking with someone and you want the other person to feel how good your English is. It’s as if you are COMPELLED to speak as fast as native English speakers, which is also a very stupid idea on two accounts: First – people will notice that you’re a foreigner ANYWAY, Second – you should NEVER COMPARE your English with that of others because it will always make you feel inadequate! I wouldn’t be wrong in saying that speaking too fast is one of the BIGGEST mistakes all foreign English speakers are making all over the world :!: It’s the reason #1 why non-native speakers get stuck for words in English. It’s the reason #1 why we mispronounce words when speaking in English. And it’s the reason #1 why we think we suck at speaking in English. The solution to this issue is quite obvious, as a matter of fact – it’s staring right in your face: SLOW YOUR SPEECH DOWN! In real life, however, it’s easier said than done. Unless someone tells you: “Hey, just slow down a bit and you’ll be able to speak so much more fluently!”, for some strange reason you’re unable to figure it out for yourself. And even when you know you should be speaking slower, you still catch yourself trying to speak faster than your natural ability allows you. It’s like a vicious circle that you find very, very hard to get out of. So, keep reading this article and you’ll learn: Why you’re trying to speak in English very fast; Why fast speech is very detrimental to your fluency; What you can do to overcome this problem! (more…)

The State of “The Flow” and Its Importance When Improving Your English

3 Basic Rules of Effective English Communication

Whether you find it difficult to get fully involved in simple English conversations or giving speeches in front of a group of people, the same basic rules of effective English communication apply in virtually all situations. Without further ado, let’s look at the 3 basic rules of effective English communication: Rule #1: Know WHAT you want to say! Rule #2: Have EFFICIENT vocabulary and phraseology! Rule #3: PRACTICE as much as you can! Sounds too simplistic? I bet you’ll be surprised to find out how much there actually is to these simple 3 rules! Yes, it’s common sense that one needs to know WHAT to say, but if you think about it in depth, you’ll realize that on way too many occasions you’ve actually tried to say something despite NOT HAVING A CLUE as to what exactly you’re going to say! The rule about having efficient English vocabulary, however, is multifaceted. While superficial thinking might result in a simple conclusion: “Yes, of course I need to have enough means of expression to explain myself properly, what’s so surprising about this?”, there’s another dimension to this problem. Namely – the average foreign speaker often lacks confidence and isn’t aware of how much he or she actually knows, and if you know how to use your English vocabulary right, you can talk about almost any topic! This brings us to the third rule – frequent practice. Yes, also a very simple and common-sense suggestion; yet way too many foreigners expect to be effective communicators without trying hard enough. Just because you’ve spent years studying the language doesn’t mean you’ve become a fluent English speaker, and frequent practice is paramount when it comes to English fluency! (more…)

Watch Breaking Bad If You Want to Improve Your American English!

30-Day Vocabulary Acquisition Course- Day 7- Meals

This article is part of the 30-day Vocabulary Acquisition Course. Sign up here to get every lesson in your inbox for free: (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//forms.aweber.com/form/28/1528169428.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "aweber-wjs-gh9mm2tmz")); Hey everyone out there, What did you eat today? Cheese Sandwich? Burger? Pizza? Or Burritos? Did you know what types of meals they were? Everyone knows that the food we take in the afternoon is called the lunch, while what we take at night is dinner. So I thought why not expand our knowledge even further and let you know what types of meals you are taking. Welcome back again to another chapter of our "Free 30-day Vocabulary Acquisition Course" and today we will learn a little more about the meals we take. (more…)

How English Learners Can Use Mobile Phones to Improve English

My Experience in a Polish Beauty Salon & What Foreign English Speakers Can Learn From It!

Having English as the ONLY Language in the World Would Be a Disaster…

A while ago I published an article called It’d Be Great to Have English as the Only Language in the World in which I looked at a purely fictional scenario of a world where English would be the only language spoken. Now, in that particular article I looked at the positive aspects of such a scenario such as lower levels of discrimination and higher levels of integration. Today let’s look at why such a scenario would be a total disaster, so basically we’re going to look at the cons of having English as the only language in the world. And please bear in mind, in my scenario English hasn’t conquered other languages, we’re basically assuming that English has ALWAYS been spoken all over the world and nobody would even think of the possibility of speaking a different language because no-one would even know what it’s like. In other words, we’re assuming that since the dawn of time there’s been a uniform language development all around the world and this language happens to be English. So, without further ado, let’s start looking at the negative aspects of having English as the world’s language when compared to the actual situation when we’re having literally thousands of languages spoken on this planet! (more…)

English Collocation: The Worst Case Scenario

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlQEewQET5I Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers :!: In today’s English Idiomatic Expression video we’re going to look at the following collocation: THE WORST CASE SCENARIO. It’s a way native English speakers (and also fluent foreign English speakers, of course!) refer to the worst possible turn of events, and traditionally we discuss such possibilities when: Trying to persuade someone to do something (Common, why are you afraid to go to the event, the worst case scenario is you being asked a question, and it’s no big deal really!) Discussing the various eventualities and trying to prepare for the worst (So, the worst case scenario is the whole computer network going down, see we need to buy another backup server!) Want to find out more about this particular English collocation? Then watch the video above (or listen to the audio just above the video!) and don’t forget to use this new English collocation in your own English conversations! Regards, Robby ;-)

Look Among Young Adults Fiction for Easy-to-read Books!

FREE eBook – Truth about Traditional English Studies – Download Below!

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.af-header,.af-footer{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding:10px;} .af-quirksMode .af-element{padding-left:0!important;padding-right:0!important;} .lbl-right .af-element label{text-align:right;} body { } Your Name: Your e-mail: Your e-mail will never be sold or rented to a third party. I hate spam as much as you do and I’ll contact you only to send news about improving English fluency! Right after the request you’ll receive an e-mail with a confirmation link which will bring you straight to the download page. And here’s the good news – you can read this eBook on your computer or laptop as a PDF file, you’ll get a MOBI version in case you have a Kindle eBook reader, but if you have an iPad – you can make use of the EPUB file! In the eBook “Truth About Traditional English Studies” I’m going to introduce you to a concept you’ve probably never heard before - ‘WRITING MODE’ OF A FOREIGNER’S MIND. This ‘writing mode’ explains why you’re having all these problems with oral English fluency, and it’s all got to do with the way you’ve been learning English so far. The chances are, if you’ve been learning English the traditional way, you’ve been mostly doing grammar tests and writing. After long years dedicated to writing English sentences and filling blanks in English textbooks your mind has gone into a permanent ‘WRITING MODE’! Don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with writing as such. I’m not saying literacy isn’t important. What I’m having a problem with is the following: our teachers and the whole English teaching industry have led us to believe that a lot of reading, writing and grammar studies will somehow magically result in oral fluency. Nothing could be further from the truth, my friends! When you write, you have enough time to plan everything in advance; you can choose the best fitting words, arrange them carefully according to grammar rules and create almost perfect English sentences. When you have to speak, on the others hand, all of a sudden there are no rules! You’re in an unchartered territory, and you’re afraid of making mistakes because you don’t have a textbook in front of you anymore! I know how it feels because I used to have the same sort of English fluency issues, and I tried to improve my spoken English for years to no avail because I kept resorting to the same old methods – vocabulary building, grammar studies, and reading. Now, do you want to find out how to make a smooth transition from the ‘writing mode’ of your mind into a ‘speaking mode’ when you can speak automatically, fluently and without much thinking about what you’re going to say? Then make sure to request the eBook using the form above, and you’ll find out how you should change your English improving routine in order to improve your ability to speak fluent English! Robby ;-)

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

Don’t Look for a Silver Bullet when Improving Your English!

In these modern times everyone expects FAST and EASY results. Just look around you – celebrities go on crash diets and lose weight FAST (and EASY, too). Bodybuilders pile on massive poundage within a couple of weeks during the bulking phase of their training regimes (with a little help of anabolic steroids, but – hey, does anyone mind as far as the gains are big and FAST?) Enormous, record-breaking and futuristic-shaped buildings are built in Dubai under very tense deadlines – and it also has to be done in a record-short time and FAST. These days they build faster trains, faster planes, faster food processors and faster computer processors. There’s hundreds of thousands of interlinked industries operating on our planet 24/7/365 and – you guessed it right – they operate under strict regulations, tight deadlines, and people have to work damn FAST to make everything happen. Did you truly believe a couple of decades ago that modern technology-driven world will eventually give us more free time and robots will perform all tedious and time-consuming tasks? I’m sorry to ruin your dream, but the harsh reality is that the more you can accomplish, the more free time you have for being even MORE PRODUCTIVE, so eventually you’re forced to learn how to get things done FASTER (and EASIER – as enforced by modern advertising, so the gullible crowd falls for yet another improved washing powder which helps them achieve impeccably white clothes compared to the old, crappy product X). Not surprisingly, the very technology we design and produce helps as along the way, and these days getting fast results in any aspect of life is irrevocably linked to using special equipment, professional advice, special courses, or a piece of software. Want to have a perfect six-pack abs? You definitely have to use one of those thousand abs machines. If you don’t – you’re guaranteed to sustain spinal injuries or at least a sprained neck trying to do the same ol’ abs crunches (never mind Rocky never used one in any of his films…). Want to make some extra money by doing part-time cleaning job? There’s no way can you start doing it unless you have passed a special course teaching you how to use a brush and mop up the floor! Do you see where I’m going with this? These days the world has gone mad by trying to optimize, standardize, streamline and super-size. These basic assumptions – that one has to achieve things FAST and use a set of sophisticated, very technical METHODS – has been deeply ingrained into our society’s collective awareness :!: The very same goes with English improving. (more…)

Developing Your Ability to Use All Those Phrases & Idioms in Real Conversations

The English Language is Multidimensional Indeed!

Don’t Learn Some Obscure English Words that Even Native Speakers DON’T KNOW!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld6b7-NeD58 If you’re obsessed with building a MASSIVE English vocabulary (just like I was all those years ago!), you might have fallen for the trap of learning some pretty sophisticated English words taken from English fiction you might be reading, or from any other source of information. Now, while there’s nothing wrong with learning such vocabulary words for as long as you acquire them contextually, there’s another aspect to contributing vast amount of time and effort into the process – namely, USEFULNESS. You simply have to ask yourself the following question: Is this particular English word going to come in handy in my everyday life? More often than not, little known words just aren’t used in daily English conversations; just because they’re used by authors in order to illustrate this or that particular concept in the very depth in their pieces of literature, doesn’t mean they’re used in colloquial English (which is the main focus of us – foreigners who aspire to become fluent English speakers!) Let’s take, for example, a couple of words so that you get the full picture on what exactly I’m talking about here (I’m heading straight to Dictionary.com website to pick some recent “words of the day”): (more…)

“Beat – Beat – Beaten”: Learn Irregular English Verbs Through Expressions!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dsvsomHg_c Hello my friends foreign English speakers! I’m back with another English irregular verb, and this time around it’s TO BEAT. As you know from my previous videos (if you don’t, please watch it HERE, it’s super-important!), you shouldn’t be learning English irregular verbs by repeating and memorizing word strings such as BEAT, BEAT, BEATEN (these are the respective Present, Past and Past Participle forms of the verb TO BEAT). Instead, you should learn each of those verb forms as part of a word combination and that way you’ll achieve all the following: You’ll avoid getting mixed up when using BEAT and BEATEN in real life; You’ll be able to use these irregular verb forms without much THINKING; You’ll INSTINCTIVELY feel when to use them – just like a native speaker! So, without a further ado, let’s look at the phrases containing the various forms of the irregular verb TO BEAT, and alternatively you can watch the video or listen to the podcast above to gain even more insight into using the following phrases: It BEATS me; I BEAT the traffic on the way to; BEATEN to death. (more…)

Did You Realize That Being Tired Affects Your Fluency?

English Phrasal Verb “To Pull Off”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j33HVSejemE “To pull off” is a very handy, informal way of saying “to manage to do something”. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you’re witnessing an incredible feet being accomplished. Let’s imagine that you’re working out in a gym with your friend and he does a 150 pound bench press which is totally off the charts! Now, the natural question you want to ask your friend is the following: “Hey dude, that was crazy, how did you pull it off?!” This phrasal verb can also be used when someone is engaged in some risky undertaking and their venture ends with success; basically what I’m talking about here is doing something risky and managing to do it without getting caught. (more…)

English Harmony