30-day Vocabulary Acquisition Course- Day 5- Striking Appearance or Resemblance?
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 there everyone, I know you are enjoying this series. I know that. . . . It is for this reason I bring a new chapter every day of this Free course called “30-day Vocabulary Acquisition Course” where we learn some vocabulary daily about a topic with context and examples, and that’s we are going to do today too. (more…)
How Words Hook Up With Each Other in Spoken English
Collocation “Scour the Web” & Why the Word “Scour” on its Own is Useless!
Speaking in English Made Super Easy – Follow my Tweets and Just Stick Word Chunks Together!
I’ve been blogging for what seems forever about the importance of learning English collocations. I’ve been always saying that the basic components of English speech are word combinations and expressions rather than separate words. And I’ve also been repeating myself ad nauseam that English fluency can be acquired much quicker if you mimic, repeat, memorize and use all those idiomatic expressions used by native English speakers in your own speech instead of sticking separate words together and applying grammar rules as you speak. I’m even making effort to highlight idiomatic expressions in my blog posts in red so that you can clearly see which English word chunks are worth memorizing! Today, I’m going to make it even easier for you. I’ll start publishing on my Twitter account any English word combinations that are worth memorizing ! Basically here’s what you have to do: (more…)
English Harmony Highlights of August 2011
Personally for me the whole month of August just flew by because of a single reason – I was MAD busy at work! The moment I would come in and the moment I finished work in the evening felt like just a couple of hours apart because of the massive workload! It’s a good complaint though, considering the way things are at the moment on the jobs front in Ireland, and I hope that whatever your personal circumstances are, you’ve managed to keep your job and hopefully you’re getting plenty of spoken English practice in it! All right, I think I just veered off topic so let’s cut the rant and get down to discussing this month's blog posts! Yes, despite being extremely busy and tired I still managed to find enough time to write quite a few articles, and if you haven’t got round to reading them – now is the perfect time to invest a couple minutes of your time into reading some stuff about improving English fluency. The main blogging topic this month was English collocations, and I wrote three articles dedicated to this very important aspect of English fluency. I started off with a blog post called Unnatural English Collocations and Wrong Mental Associations. It’s probably the most important article in the whole month of August because it sheds light on issues like saying the wrong English word despite being aware of what the correct word is. It’s all about having created wrong associations between English and also your native language’s words, so it’s extremely important for you to know what to avoid in order to stop creating unnatural English collocations in your mind! (more…)
3 Ways of Hard-wiring Unnatural English Collocations into Your Brain
Unnatural Collocations and Wrong Mental Associations
I've highlighted the importance of learning English collocations in many of my previous blog posts; this time let’s look at what happens if you create wrong associations in your mind between words in English as well as in your own language. If it doesn’t sound believable, just think of such quite a realistic situation. An ESL student is learning how to conjugate the verb ‘to be’ so he’s reciting the string of words “I am, you are, he, she, it is, we are, you are, they are…” in order to memorize the personal pronouns with the respective form of the verb ‘to be’. Now, when the student has repeated the aforementioned sequence of words for a good number of times, it imprints itself into his mind, and the desired effect has been achieved. Of course, for those words to stick with the student permanently, he needs to go back to them the next day, and then after a few more days – that’s the basic principle of spaced repetition. Anyway, the job is done, and the English student is now capable of using the verb ‘to be’ in real life conversations, isn’t that right? All right, fair enough! But now let’s try to remember how many times you’ve heard a foreign English speaker mix up the two personal pronouns – ‘he’ and ‘she’ – when speaking? I would say it happens quite often, and by the way – haven’t you made the same mistake at some stage during a quick chat in English? I have, and I have my own theory on why it happens. It’s all because wrong association has been created between the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’ when repeating the words “… he, she, it is…” :!: You’re training your mouth to pronounce those two words together in one phrase and later on even years after you were just a beginner English learner, you may catch yourself saying things like “You know, I haven’t seen her before. He… sorry, she… hmm… she is Jennifer’s sister and is going to work here for the next half year while Jen is away.” Had there been a strong separate connection created between words ‘she is and ‘he is’ followed by a contextual example or an abstract image of a male and female, you wouldn’t be making such mistakes. Your subconscious mind would be used to describing activities where females are involved as “she is…”, so I’ll say it once again – it’s all about unnatural collocations, and I have loads of advice in store for you on how to avoid creating wrong associations in your mind! Did it pique your interest? Then read on! (more…)
Mimicking – The Best Way to Learn English Collocations!
How To Make Your English Sound Right? Use Collocations!
If you ask an average English speaker what a collocation is, they’ll probably shrug their shoulders and will ask you to provide an explanation. Well, I’ve no problems doing it for you! Collocations are words that normally go together in written and spoken English. They make your English sound more fluent and native-like, and it’s when you get a collocation wrong when people would say – “Well, it doesn’t sound right, they don’t say it like that in English…” The tricky part is that there are no English Grammar rules stipulating how and when certain words go together, you simply have to develop “the feel” of how words are naturally used. Basically you have to learn English collocations and incorporate them into your spoken and written English. For instance, when you go back to work after a few days illness, you’d tell your work colleagues that you’re “fully recovered”. If you use any other word with “recovered” – “completely recovered”, “absolutely recovered” or “totally recovered” – it doesn’t sound as good as the natural collocation “fully recovered”. The two words – “fully” and “recovered” are the ones that naturally go together in English language, so we can say that those words collocate with each other. Collocations are somewhat similar to English idioms. Just like idioms they’re word combinations that are used by native English speakers and you just have to learn those phrases to be able to use them; you can’t just translate the same meaning from your native language and stick relevant English words together :!: However, it won’t make you a better English speaker if you only KNOW what a collocation is. Knowing alone doesn’t make you fluent, and that’s obvious to me now after my years long pursuit of English fluency! So let’s cut the rant, and let’s get straight down to the business! ;-) (more…)