By Robby
If you are new here please read this first.
It’s been nearly a full year since I launched my English Harmony System 2.0 – but it seems as if it happened just a few months ago, time is just flying by! Now we’re all standing on the doorstep of yet another New Year with the same dreams and expectations as every year – and I really hope many of them will come true!
For my blog readers the main dream is to achieve a level of spoken English fluency where they wouldn’t have to hesitate and experience sudden drops in ability to speak. Many of you have achieved it thanks to what I’m doing here on EnglishHarmony.com – and I can assure you I’ll keep running my website the same way in 2011 as well. Regular blog posts about improving spoken English fluency, confidence building videos, practical English Grammar videos – all of this and a whole lot more is in the pipeline for 2011!
But now let’s look back at this year’s most popular blog posts and videos in case you missed them back then or you weren’t following my blog at the time.
So here we go with the number one – the undisputed champion among my YouTube videos. To be honest, I’m still a bit surprised why this one has become the most viewed video, but apparently there is something to it that draws your attention!
What makes me even more surprised as to why it’s the most popular YouTube video of mine this year is the fact that I didn’t even prepare for it. I was just walking on bogland while my daughters were riding horses and I was speaking with myself in English as I often do when I’m on my own. My Flip Mino camcorder happened to be in my bag somehow and I suddenly had this spontaneous idea – “Why not make a quick video about the importance of speaking English with yourself?”
Obviously the popularity of this video can be attributed to the lack of practice that English speakers experience all over the world. Many of you couldn’t have even imagined that you can actually just make use of your free time and spend those 10 – 20 minutes practicing English with yourself. For some it may sound a bit weird, but if you think about it a bit deeper, there’s actually nothing new about the concept. Any person on the planet is constantly thinking something, so all you have to do is turn that thinking into English and speak it out loud!
And now – the most viewed blog post this year – English Small Talk Phrases! I created this list of popular English phrases used in daily conversations to show my blog readers that on many occasions all it takes to make your English conversation fluent is using a fitting phrase here and there. I actually love the term “conversational filler” (coined by Benny the Irish Polyglot) because it describes the role of those phrases most precisely.
The next most viewed blog post this year is about Speaking Fluent English With Limited Vocabulary. Apparently many of you also like this idea of getting the most out of what you know rather than aiming for perfection! But those who might think that I’m a proponent of some sort of a simplified form of English that lacks liveliness and means of expression – you’re wrong. I’m reiterating it many times on my blog that one has to keep adding more active vocabulary and improving upon one’s English all the time. The main point of the blog post about speaking fluently with limited vocabulary is to show you that you don’t have to wait till your English is perfect. It is possible to communicate more effectively and fluently than someone whose general English knowledge is deeper than yours!
Staying on the same topic about vocabulary we have to look at another popular YouTube video of mine – Part 1 of English Vocabulary Building:
This video focuses on one particular aspect of English vocabulary building, namely – learning new words through context rather than memorizing them seperately, just on their own. It is very important, and it’s one of the cornerstones of successful English improving. Sadly enough, traditional English learning methods still rely on cramming word lists and doing Grammar tests – activities that actually have a detrimental effect on your English fluency!
Speaking of traditional English studies – here are a couple of blog posts I want you to read:
Why Learning English at School Sucks
These blog posts highlight all problems that are caused by learning English using the wrong methods. Eventually even when achieving a decent level of English the foreign English student might have developed a terrible English speech disorder – and that is the notorious English fluency issue. I had it, many foreign English speakers still have it, and this problem is actually what this whole website is about!
I also have to mention a blog post about how to deal with this terrible English speech anxiety problem – How to Increase Your English Fluency by 100% in less than 12h. The technique described in this blog post is surprisingly simple, yet it’s very efficient and it works every time! Whenever I’ve felt the onset of another sudden drop in English fluency, I’ve resorted to this simple method and was back on track in no time! By the way, this blog post was awarded the “Most Unusual Technique” title on ReadableBlog.com.
Lastly, a couple of blog posts I really enjoyed writing. Have a read; they’re really useful for any foreign English speaker!
How to Achieve Fluent English Reading Knowing Only 70 – 80% Vocabulary
Respect Your Native Language in Order to Speak Fluent English
OK, that’s about it for now, I hope you’ve been enjoying reading my blog in 2010, so the only thing I can say is – stick with me for 2011 as well! I’ll keep more interesting blog posts and videos coming, and you can keep up-to-date in a number of ways:
- Subscribe to my blog using RSS feed (it’s very simple, you just have to add my blog’s Feedburner URL to your Google Reader)
- Subscribe to my mailing list by grabbing 3 Free Chapters of EH: Insider’s Secrets on the right hand side column
- Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
- Follow me on Twitter
Thanks for staying with me, and HAVE A GREAT 2011 ❗
Best wishes,
Robby 😉
P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!
