By Robby
If you are new here please read this first.
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.
No Way I Can Improve English Only By Speaking, Right?…
Improving English the natural way – by communicating with others and enjoying activities using English as a medium? That’s sooo boring and surely it won’t produce fast results, will it? Better find some unconventional way of improving English so that it happens fast, effortlessly, and there’s little work involved, right?
After all – you have to compete in today’s modern work labor market and you have to constantly stay ahead in terms of your competitiveness as a foreign English speaking employee. English improving? How could you do it without the help of English teaching industry and the right tools, right?
So the foreign English speaker spends hours of his time browsing the Internet and seeking answer for the following question: “How can I improve my English?”
His mind is already set to expecting some sort of a surprise solution, something that does the job super-fast, super-easy, and yields brilliant results.
There’s no silver bullet.
You can use smart methods and techniques to help you along the way, but you can’t defy the nature and inject a dose of anabolic English improving steroids that would help you gain English fluency fast ❗
Of course, if you start spending plenty of time communicating with English speaking people you will indeed improve your English FASTER compared to your usual learning curve indeed, but it’s by no means super-easy or without any effort.
You can sit in an evening English course for a full year and get that diploma which officially acknowledges that you’ve acquired a certain level of English fluency. But it still won’t do the trick and make you into a real English speaker.
There’s no magic solution to improving your English that would take away the need to go out there and face the real world. You will still have to face a thousand embarrassing situations and make ten thousand mistakes along the way before you gain satisfactory English fluency. I suppose that deep down inside that is what every foreign English learner/improver fears, so they’re prepared to do everything what it takes to avoid facing similar challenges.
The Reality is Quite Simple – NO PAIN – NO GAIN!
Even pro-bodybuilders on steroids DO use the same old basic strength exercises – bench presses, squats and dead lifts to build 90% of their heavily muscled bodies. The rest 10% does consist of the more advanced scientific stuff, but muscle magazines make the impression as if the 90/10 ratio is actually quite the opposite. Why? It’s simple – they want your money! 😉
English teachers need to survive, so they also charge money for English classes. And if you stick to their old-school methods, you’ll be just wasting your time and money. That time would be so much better spent if you went out and made English speaking friends instead of re-writing stuff that you’ll never use in real-life conversations in your copy-book.
If you want to gain real results in English improving, you have to be prepared to endure some pain. It’s EASIER to put on the earphones and just listen to another English improving mp3 lesson. It’s FASTER indeed to use English vocabulary building software and build massive vocabulary that seemingly gives you the edge over other English speakers.
But the chickens always come home to roost, and eventually you will be hit with the realization that your REAL English performance still sucks.
Who do you blame?
Can you blame the collective mindset which dictates that to achieve tangible results you just HAVE to use some sort of ARTIFICIAL method (which quire often works in a confined environment and delivers results in a very narrow sub-niche of your particular area of interest but not in real life)?
Yes, you can, but that’s not what a typical foreign English speaker would do. He’d blame himself for being not so smart rather than dissect the problem thoroughly. He’d rather keep searching for the perfect English improving method that will substitute hundreds of hours of real English practice with real people.
“How can I improve my spoken English, improve my grammar, reading and writing (and do it while sitting in my room because I’m afraid of real-life communication)?”
YOU CAN’T! There’s No Silver Bullet!
“Robby – you’re a liar! Your English Harmony System is also a piece of software, promises fast results and eliminates real-life conversations!”
Hold on, hold on.
There’s a huge difference between my spoken English improving system and other solutions that promise you to LEARN English language FAST and EASY.
English Harmony System 2.0 is not an English learning system. It’s designed to FIX your spoken English issues by restructuring vocabulary and grammar that you already have. In other words – you can use it only if you already speak English but still struggle with spoken fluency on a regular basis.
There’s a significant difference between a FAST fix and FAST results from scratch ❗
I’m not making empty promises to teach spoken English to you in a month’s time. I can, however, help you deal with severe English fluency issues in a relatively short time, and it’s all about reorganizing your existing knowledge in a more natural way.
To put it in context of driving a car, for example, I don’t teach people how to drive a car. I deal with those drivers who are still terrified to drive to the City because they think they’ll definitely get into a car accident!
But let’s go back to the previous topic about FAST and MASSIVE gains.
More = Better?
There’s another aspect to this consumerism-driven mindset I want to mention. Namely – OVERDOSE. No, no, I didn’t mean drug overdose. I meant overdoing whatever activity is required from you to achieve the desirable end-result.
Nearly any industry takes an advantage of a common misconception that more is better and it makes people do stuff they don’t really need.
And as far as English improvers, future childcare workers, martial arts practitioners and just about any student of any discipline is concerned, they just have to follow advice of the “industry professionals” and accept it as a God-given truth.
So here’s a nice example of how this fits in the whole picture.
A foreign English speaker who lives in an English speaking country decides to start seeking a better-paid job. In order to achieve that he decides to improve his English to stand a better chance at job interviews.
Having studied English at school his mind is already inclined towards traditional English improving methods, so he decides to figure out how to build massive English vocabulary fast (surely if you have massive vocabulary you’ll speak fluently, right?). He goes on the Internet and buys a top-quality five-star reviewed piece of English vocabulary building software.
Having spent a couple of months building up his English vocabulary, however, he realizes that his actual English fluency hasn’t improved that much…
Where did it go wrong?
First of all, he wanted fast and EASY results. Software that makes you learn 20 new English words a day? Sounds brilliant, worth trying out! Little did he know that despite delivering actual results (building passive vocabulary – this is the sub-niche of the much broader end-goal – gaining real English fluency) the software won’t help him achieve real English fluency.
That’s where we come to the second point – he was led to believe that once a special technical solution (the vocabulary building software) is out there then it’s going to do the job properly (marketing slogans – “build massive English vocabulary and become a fluent speaker!”). The only problem is that building massive passive vocabulary isn’t what the foreign English speaker necessarily needs, but he wasn’t aware of it. He’s basically being fed the wrong information but the poor person assumes that it’s correct once such information is out there and moreover – if special technical solutions have been created for that purpose, it must fulfill his end-goal.
A piece of modern technology in a form of a piece of software coupled by a desire to achieve fast and easy results – and the poor foreign English speaker ends up wasting his time and money without even being aware of it!
So basically what this means for you is – you can do a certain task very productively and achieve seemingly fast results, but it might not be what you actually need to achieve the actual end-result ❗
By trying to find one silver bullet you’ve ended up having found a number of them. While every single technical solution taken seperately – grammar textbooks, English listening CDs, mp3 lessons and vocabulary building software – sort of fulfills their purpose and deliver results, the overall goal – improving one’s spoken English – might be left unachieved. Why? Simply because the wrong sub-goals were chosen! You can’t improve your English fluency by focusing on passive input and neither can you build fluent English sentences using separate words.
By picking the wrong methods you can become counterproductive and those seemingly fast and effective gains might actually hamper your real progress ❗
By chasing the silver bullet you can miss your real goal altogether because you’re being lead astray by dozens and dozens tempting offers along the way.
You see, sometimes the most natural methods work best. Just going out there and speaking with people will do wonders to your English fluency. And getting into a street fight will probably equal five years martial arts class experience 😉
Robby
P.S. Are you ready to get on the fast track to spoken English fluency? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!
P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!