English Harmony Podcast: Improve English Fluency | Improve Spoken English | Learn English

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:

Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog. Today I’m bringing you another English idiomatic expression video but unlike other English idiomatic expression videos where I’m focusing on typical English idioms and phrasal words and collocations today I’m bringing you what I like to call a grammar construct. And the grammar construct in question is “couldn’t have been”.

At first if you just look at “couldn’t have been,” it might confuse you. You might try and figure out what it means in grammar terms. What the English grammar tense represents and all that sort of thing but you don’t have to do it. And you may actually want to read this article where I’m talking about it that you don’t have to try and figure out what exactly something means in grammar terms, okay? All you’ve got to do is just repeat that particular grammar construct, memorize it and then you’ll be able to use it in relevant situations without knowing what it represents, right?

And the funny thing is that prior to recording this video I was kind of thinking to myself “Hold on, I have to look it up and see what it actually means, what kind of tense it is.” But I’m not going to get bogged down on these grammar terms just like I told you because it serves no purpose whatsoever, okay? So all you’ve got to do is just repeat it, memorize it and then you’ll be able to use it.

And the first example sentence that I’m going to give to you containing “couldn’t have been” is “couldn’t have been done without”, right? And typically you would use it when describing when a particular thing, some sort of an assignment or something couldn’t have been done without the help of someone else or without using some tool or some piece of software or whatever.

So for instance your boss is asking you how you got done with the job, simple as, and you tell them “Listen, yeah, I got it done but it couldn’t have been done without the help of my colleague here. So a lot of credit goes to him. It wasn’t just me who got the job done because it couldn’t have been done without him.” Okay? And this is a typical way of using this particular grammar construct, right?

So you have to do some spoken practice whereby you come up with your own fictional scenario. Obviously you use your own workplace or college you attend or whatever and then you kind of put yourself in that situation when you are communicating with someone and then you use that phrase. And then next time around when such a situation presents itself you’ll be quite automatically able to use that phrase, okay?

Next example. Couldn’t have been more pleased. And it’s a typical way of saying that you were very, very pleased. I couldn’t have been more pleased. Or I couldn’t have been happier. When someone asks you “Did you enjoy when your work colleagues congratulated you on your birthday?” Then you can tell them “Listen, I couldn’t have been happier because I was totally shocked, that was a complete surprise, I didn’t even expect that and I couldn’t have been happier”, right?

And the third example is “couldn’t have been prevented.” Often times people talk about some disasters or catastrophes or incidents and people wonder whether they could have been prevented or not and then unfortunately sometimes the conclusion is that despite the fact that in retrospect we can think of a lot of things that kind of could have prevented that particular catastrophe from happening, sometimes it couldn’t have been prevented because there are certain things that are just bound to happen.

And for instance the tsunami that happened all those years ago – 10 years ago at this stage I would imagine – that wiped out so many people’s lives in Southeast Asia. It couldn’t have been prevented. A lot of the fatalities probably could have been prevented but the actual catastrophe, this tsunami itself couldn’t have been prevented, you know, it’s one of those things that just happens that we have to accept that reality of life.

So I hope that you’re going to be using this particular grammar construct “couldn’t have been” and just like I told you don’t try and figure out what it represents whether it’s passive or active voice or what kind of tense it is. It serves no purpose. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you can use it. Okay?

So I hope that you enjoyed watching this video and just like I told you a million times before do some spoken English practice. If you just watch this video without any practice whatsoever, this video is not going to serve any purpose. Okay?

So if you have any questions obviously publish them in the comment section below. And chat to you soon my friends. Bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Happy New Year 2017 my friends foreign English speakers and all my followers!

I’m wishing you a very happy, prosperous and successful New Year!

Personally for me this last year has been very challenging and full of surprises, but I can proudly say that I accomplished what I set out to do and I secured a job in the IT sector as a foreign English speaker.

Have you got similar dreams and ambitions?

Everything is possible.

EVERYTHING!

Just set your goal for the year 2017, come up with a simple action plan and follow through with it.

It really is THAT simple my friends!

Have a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2017!

Your English fluency coach,

Robby

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED!

Video Transcript Below:

Hi guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear foreign English speakers. That’s me, obviously Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and you are very welcome back to my video blog! Now, today I decided to record a video dedicated to a particular English idiomatic expression, namely “to take something for granted”.

And the reason why I decided to record this particular video is because I got a comment on my blog recently. To be more specific it’s only 6 minutes old, right? And here is what it says. As a matter of fact, it was published on another English idiomatic expression page, The Big Picture and the commentator says this is an incredible video, really got the meaning very quickly and here’s the request: Robby, can you make a video for this idiomatic expression “to take something for granted”? Thank you.

And guess what? You’re lucky, my friend, tonight I’m in a good mood so I decided hey, why not? You know what I mean. And as a matter of fact, I wanted to record a video anyway so I was like okay, I’ll do a video about this particular idiomatic expression.

So if you are interested in finding out how to use this particular one and what kind of situations it can be used in, please bear with me for a few more moments. Did you hear how I kind of started stumbling upon words?

Bear with me for a few mo – mo – mo more moments or something like that? It’s all part of the English Harmony philosophy, my friends. Even if you make a little mistake, even if you stumble upon words a little bit it doesn’t matter. Just keep pushing on, you know what I mean? Keep pushing the envelope and keep speaking with yourself because that is the surefire way to English fluency.

Now, welcome back. So here is the first scenario, right? And before that I actually have to give you a little history. One morning I was driving to work on the highway and all of a sudden there was a massive traffic pileup and I was like “What’s going on?” Normally just after 6 o’clock in the morning there’s very little traffic, you know what I mean?

It’s moving very well. All of a sudden there’s a massive pileup and then there were emergency vehicles driving by, then I realized that there must have been an accident further down the road. And true enough, after a couple miles I witnessed a terrible accident scene. Somebody had crashed into the ditch and there were some trees as well and that car had plowed down the trees and they must have done it at a great speed, you know.

That made me realize that oftentimes we take our lives for granted. We go about our daily business, we just wake up in the morning, go to bed at night and obviously just because we’ve been doing so throughout our entire lives we just think that that’s given, you know, nobody can take it away from us. But in reality it’s quite the opposite, my friends. In a split second, in a car on the road at a high speed can change your life and as a matter of fact, it can take away your life.

So never take your life for granted. Always stay cautious and think twice before you do something, right? So that was the first scenario, right? You should never take your life for granted. Which means that you never should take it as given, as something that can ever be taken away from you. Because it can, you know? It can.

Now, the next kind of scenario is say for instance your friends or your family members, we take people for granted which means that we don’t really appreciate that they are in our lives. Oftentimes we are a bit grumpy towards our partners or our children or our friends even. We don’t really think about how grateful we should be that those people are in our lives in the first place, right?

So now as you can clearly see the meaning of the expression “to take something for granted” starts revealing itself. Basically it means that you shouldn’t take it as something that is always going to be there. You have to appreciate it, right?

And the last example is going to be about for example the safety of our lives. You know, we live in certain conditions, in different countries the economy is better and in other countries it’s worse or whatever but for the most part we live in safety.

We can walk out on the street and we can rest assured that we’re not going to get killed. But for some people on this planet it’s not the case. Where there’s war happening people are just getting shot and killed in their homes or getting bombed and people are dying every day of the week.

Therefore we should not take our country’s safety for granted. We just assume that nothing can happen, that law and order is always going to be there but it’s sometimes very fragile. We don’t really realize what larger forces are at play and how quickly the situation can change.

Just think about Syria where there’s war happening now at the moment. A few years ago that was a country where people went about their daily business, they lived normal lives and all of a sudden their lives changed 360 degrees. There’s thousands upon thousands of people being killed, it’s crazy.

So never take your country’s safety situation for granted. Don’t. And basically appreciate. Don’t complain about stuff, you know. Oftentimes we complain about like really, really irrelevant stuff like – and it’s actually called first world problems, you know? There might be some potholes on the road or whatever and we start complaining about the local council that looks after the roads or whatever but just think about how irrelevant it is.

And it’s a weird phenomenon, the better our lives are, the higher our standards, the higher our expectations and we start taking everything for granted, that that’s the way it has to be, that that’s the way it’s going to be forever and it’s going to get better and better and better. But the history has shown us on multiple occasions that our lives can change within a heartbeat.

So never take anything for granted, appreciate your situation that you’re in every day of the week, be grateful to the God and stay safe, right? So that’s the message today, don’t take anything for granted and appreciate everything.

So I hope that now you’ve got the gist of how this expression can be used and what it means but obviously if you have any more questions in relation to this particular idiomatic expression, feel free to publish them in the comment section below my friends. Chat to you soon. Bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED!

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 foreign English speakers. Welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog and tonight I’m going to record a video as a video response to one of my YouTube commentators. But just before that, allow me to take a sip of my evening decaf coffee, right? Cheers my friends!

So this person, Triple H and he is as a matter of fact, one of the most prolific commentators on my channel and I really hope that you don’t mind Triple H me reading out your comment because it’s going to help everybody, the whole audience for that matter.

So Triple H shares a very embarrassing moment that happened to him at the embassy. So basically the woman or personnel asked him who was going to collect his passport. And basically he didn’t get her accent, her pronunciation so she had to say it 4 times over and he couldn’t get it. And she pronounced basically the word “when” as “wha” and “who” as “he”.

Yeah, well, there are certain distinct accents whereby native English speakers pronounce words completely differently to what you would have expected, right? So after that incident his fluency went down the drain, out the window and afterwards he couldn’t say one word. So the question is do you think it’s common?

Triple H, don’t worry, right? You’re not the only one. This is the typical English fluency issue manifesting itself. Basically you are experiencing this embarrassing moment when somebody doesn’t get you or you find it hard to get someone and then you just can’t speak, you know. And it’s all because you are kind of trying to say something to fix the previous problem. So you’re trying to speak better.

So basically here’s the level of the communication, right? So something goes wrong so in your mind it’s like okay, now I’ve got to really show that I can speak really well so you’re immediately increasing the standards for yourself, right?

You’re raising the bar really, really high, super high, and you’re aiming for that but you can’t even say a word because your mind is full of the different things you could say and the different grammar structures and whatnot and eventually you can’t say a thing because you’re overthinking. You’re like “Well, I need to save the day, rectify the situation.” But what happens in real life is quite the opposite. You’re aiming so high that you can’t say a word!

And as a matter of fact, I’m noticing this kind of phenomenon every day. Even in my workplace where there’s plenty of foreigners. As a matter of fact, there’s probably only a handful of Irish at my work. I apologize guys, there’s something in my eye, I’ve got to get it out. I’m sorry.

So yeah, there’s all sorts of different nationalities: Germans, Italians, Spanish people, you name it, from all over the world and we all obviously communicate in English and we use the English language to communicate with our customers and our managers and so on and so forth.

So oftentimes I’m witnessing guys that are super fluent when talking to each other or with me or whatever and then when I see them speak with the manager which is somewhat a more formal form of communication or when they have to get on the phone with a customer, their  English becomes worse, you know.

And even today, as a matter of fact, I noticed one guy, he had to take over my case because I’m the level 1 technician and he is a level 2 technician, so basically I couldn’t deal with the issue so I had to engage him and when he started speaking with the customer I noticed that he was a little bit nervous, a little bit on the edge and he was saying things wrong. He was trying to speak quite fast which is another mistake that we all make, right? When we’re trying to match the native speaker in terms of the speed of the speech, right?

So he started speaking too fast and he was kind of finding it difficult to pronounce words because the faster you’re trying to say something, the more difficult it actually becomes after a certain speed, you know what I mean? You have to find the right speed for you that’s comfortable with you. And even if it’s slower than average, so what? No big deal, you know!

But obviously the pride kicks in, you’re comparing yourself automatically with the native English speaker, you’re trying to match their level of fluency and your fluency deteriorates drastically. And as a matter of fact, in the most critical situations, such as the one that Tripe H described, you might be able to – quite the opposite, you might not be able to say a word, you know.

And it has happened to me in the past. I’ve been getting myself into loads of different situations and it’s all due to my own fault, you know what I mean? Because of myself. Because of my unrealistic expectations. I didn’t have the concept of saying something simple in mind. I always wanted to sound sophisticated. I was trying to say the right thing. You know, something that would have been expected from me. And when you’re speaking like that immediately this phenomenon kicks in whereby you actually can’t say a thing!

So simplicity is the key if you find yourself in a situation like that. Obviously you’re going to be stressing out, when you can’t even expect yourself to perform at a normal level so you have to lower your standards. It’s quite the opposite, right? So you have to start saying like very simple things. Speak like a baby, you know. Two word sentences and you will be understood and you will get out of the situation. Whereas if you’re trying to kind of say it all at once, eventually you can’t say a thing.

So yeah, to answer the question, it’s very common and it’s not that easy to deal with. And I dealt with that and after a long time having figured out all those fluency management techniques and strategies and if you’re interested in that, then you may want to click on this link here: englishharmony.com/english-fluency-management/

It’s going to take you to the page on my blog where I’ve listed a number of those strategies and they will come in indeed very handy when dealing with situations like Triple H just described!

All right. So thanks for watching this video, my friends. Chat to you soon. Bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED!

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 welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. Currently I’m having my Monday morning tea. Cheers! You see how big, how huge this mug is? This is the kind of mug I like, you know what I mean? This is what I call proper tea drinking. You can make yourself almost a liter of tea and drink it, right?

Anyhow, in today’s video I’m going to look at the following topic:

And this is, as a matter of fact, a thing that confuses the hell out of so many foreign English speakers, right?

And ironically enough I haven’t actually recorded a video about this particular topic in the past which is kind of weird because I’ve been publishing my videos for years on end. At this stage it’s actually 8 years since I’m running the English Harmony blog or actually 9 years. Yeah, going 9 years this year to be honest with you. I started it in 2007 if I’m not mistaken so next year going 10 years, you know what I mean? It is going to be a big anniversary.

Anyhow, it’s surprising that I haven’t actually touched upon this particular topic comparing the simple past “I did it” for instance against present simple “I’ve done it” and when you use one or the other, you know what I mean? And the reason I’m saying that it confuses the hell out of so many foreigners is because I’ve had first-hand experience dealing with people who are not really sure on how to use these two tenses, right?

As a matter of fact, one of my Fluency Star students served as an inspiration for this video because that person was kind of not really sure on how it’s done and then I explained it to her and she was very happy about my explanation because it’s pretty straight forward if you boil it down to the very basics, right?

So first things first, “I’ve done it.” For instance “I’ve been to London” which is not really true in my case because believe it or not, I’ve never been to London, right? And it’s very weird because I live in Ireland which is very close to England, so it’s just one small hop with a plane, like a half an hour flight or something and you’re in London, you know what I mean?

And with these days’ prices where you can go to London just paying literally 20 or 30 Euros, you know what I mean? It’s no excuse not to go there but on the downside obviously when you go there you have to book a hotel and so on and so forth. And then you have to go sightseeing and all those costs add up and eventually you end up spending a fortune, you know what I mean? So I guess I’ve just kept putting it off and off and off.

And anyhow, I’m going to do it one fine day I would imagine but anyhow, going back to the subject; “I’ve been to London,” right? And then you can also say I went to London, okay? So what is the difference? First things first, you don’t have to be kind of analyzing your English language – language? What did I just say? Language.

See, I just made a mistake but it just goes to show that making mistakes is a crucial part of the whole fluency improvement thing, right? Anyhow, you see, today I’m all over the place. I just keep varying up the subject and touching upon random things.

So “I’ve been to London, right?” It’s a general statement. You’re not specifying a specific point in time. And mark this guys, point in time. This is the crucial bit, right? Whenever there is a time mentioned, a specific time, a year, a day, month, week, whatever, that’s when you use simple past.

I went to London last year. I went to London 10 years ago. I went to London last Monday. That’s simple past, you know? You don’t use the present tense, the simple present, “I’ve been to London” when it’s followed up with a specific time. And when I say specific time, please don’t be thinking that I’m talking about a very specific like time of the day; even a year is quite specific, right?

So you use perfect simple only when you don’t refer to any time at all, like I mean there’s no time reference mentioned basically. No years, nothing, you know. “I’ve been to London.” And you can obviously say I’ve been to London 5 times but this time reference, you know, 5 times is not the same as referring to a particular year or a month or a day, you know? It’s just saying how many times you’ve been to London.

So I think the best way – excuse me, I’ve got to take a sip of tea. So I think that the best way of kind of wrapping your head around this concept is by kind of getting used to the concept of using the perfect present in the beginning of a story when you don’t use any time references. So basically you would say “you know what? I’ve been to London a good few times” or “as a matter of fact I’ve never been to London,” you know what I mean? And then after that point you can start using the simple past, right?

And here is how it happens. “You know what? I’ve been to London 10 times at this stage, you know. I’ve been there 10 times. Las time I went there was last summer and before that I went there every, every year for 10 years in a row,” you know? So you use the perfect simple – no, present. Sorry I’m getting all mixed up in these grammar terms but it’s just because I’m not using these grammar terms.

I’m not all about these grammar terms. If I were a traditional English teacher that would be all about the grammar terms, then I imagine I wouldn’t be getting mixed up in these terms. But I said it wrong; I said perfect simple or something. No, it’s perfect present that I wanted to say, right?

So you use perfect present “I’ve been to London” in the beginning of the story when you’re making a general statement. You’re basically stating the fact that you’ve actually been to London, you know? And then you start using the simple past.

I went there with my friends, so that’s kind of a storytelling, you know what I mean? When one event follows another. We went there and then we actually had booked a hotel beforehand. And now I use the past present tense.

And you may want to click on this link where I’m explaining how that would be used, basically when you’re referring to a point in time which had happened before the general story-line, right?

And then we went sightseeing and then we went to different restaurants and all the different museums and we visited the Big Ben and – what’s the palace called where the Queen lives? Westminster Palace or whatever? I’m not really familiar with these terms but anyway, you get the drift, right? So you make the general statement in the beginning and then follow it up with simple past where you tell the story, where you went, when you went there, who you went with, what you did there and so on and so forth, right?

So to recap the whole thing, present perfect is used to make general statements about what you did or what you didn’t do in the past. But it’s very general. It’s lacking any references whatsoever to years, days, months, weeks, whatever, you don’t mention about it, right? But then when you start talking about specific times, that’s when you introduce the simple past, right?

So I hope that this video is going to clarify this whole issue for you and just to let you know there was a comment recently. Oh yeah. Actually 9 hours ago at this stage posted where one of my blog readers asks me where to use “gone” and “went,” right? And actually this one was the reason I actually recorded the video right now because I read the comment and then I realized hold on a second, I haven’t actually addressed this particular issue in a video. And then I remembered my Fluency Star student who had the same issue and I was like okay, let’s make a video about it!

So I hope that this video is going to be useful for you my friends. And obviously if you have any further questions please feel free to publish them in the comment section below. Thank you and bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED!

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:

Hey guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! This is me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog!

Today I wanted to tell you something interesting in relation to English fluency obviously because this whole project is about English fluency so what else could I be possibly telling you about, right? Other than English fluency related matters.

Anyhow, the particular thing that I wanted to bring up today was the phenomenon of you being able to perform quite well when it comes to spoken English performance on days when your English is kind of suffering a little bit but still you have those particular situations during those days when you’re capable of performing very well.

And here’s a typical example just to make it a 100% clear to you what exactly I mean by saying all this, right? Let’s say for argument’s sake I go to work in the morning and for some reason my English is not a 100%. My brain is not firing on all cylinders for whatever reason, you know, and my English is kind of sluggish. So it’s basically one of those bad fluency days.

And if you think that my fluency is a 100% at all times, well, nothing could be further from the truth, you know. It doesn’t even hold truth when it comes to your native language. You can’t perform a 100% at all times even in your native language. It’s just the fact of the matter. And you may believe that it’s not true but if you analyze all those things a little bit deeper you will realize that you can’t always have that clarity of thought and flow of words and everything.

Anyway, let’s say for argument’s sake I go to work and I can’t speak a 100% with my colleagues. I hesitate a little bit maybe but then comes a moment when I have to take a phone call. And the moment I take the phone call from a customer my fluency just comes back just like that, you know what I mean? And the reason being, at that particular moment in time I have no other option but to perform. And I think that all of a sudden all your abilities get mobilized and your fluency goes back up just because you have no other option but to perform well!

Basically when you’re speaking with your colleagues, even if it’s a conversation between you and your manager you still don’t have that – what way to put it? – that demand on you to speak super well, you know what I mean? So you can kind of afford to make a small mistake here and there but all of a sudden when you’re on the phone with the customer you have no other option but to be a 100% fluent.

And obviously there’s always the chance that you’re going to make a small mistake even when speaking with a customer but I hope that you get the drift, right? When your fluency is slightly below the average you still have those events on that timeline when the fluency has to go back up, no matter what.

And if you think about it, speaking in a camcorder which is exactly what I’m doing right now at this particular moment in time is a similar event. It has the same effect on one’s fluency. Before I turned the cam recorder on my fluency wasn’t the best. I’ve been obviously speaking with myself all day long but I noticed that today is one of those days when my fluency is slightly lagging behind, if you know what I mean.

But now that I have to actually speak in the camcorder for you guys, I have no other option but to force myself even to pronounce the words clearly, to make myself understood, to get the message across so it just has to happen.

Well, obviously there’s always room for error as they say and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve made a mistake or two during the recording of this video but I hope that you get the message. I hope you get the drift, right? Basically the message is that during a below average fluency day you can still mobilize your abilities, your strengths and you can force your brain to fire on all cylinders when you have to perform, you know?

But I’m not trying to claim that it’s going to happen all the time. Obviously I remember back in the day when I was for example going for different jobs at that particular moment in time and I was doing a lot of interviews and I got this phone call, and this is an event that I’ve actually mentioned before in one of the videos, right?

But it’s an event that has imprinted itself into my brain so vividly that I’ll always remember it. I got this phone call and I had to do an interview over the phone and I was trying but for some reason I just couldn’t speak, you know. And then eventually I was told that my English wasn’t good enough for the job and that first I should actually improve my English and then go back to them looking for the job, right? And I was mortified to be honest with you guys.

But anyway, that was the situation when I should have performed but I couldn’t. And we are all having those days, you now. But what I’m trying to say is that there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. And more often than not when you have these pressing situations when there’s a bigger than normal demand on you, you will be able to mobilize your strengths as an English speaker and deliver the kind of speech that you are expected to deliver.

You’ve just got to believe in yourself and you’ve just got to do it, just the way I did when I took my first phone call in the new job. It was around 6 weeks ago at this stage, right? I was dreading the moment that I couldn’t get rid of the feeling “what is it going to be like if I take the phone call?” Like what I if I screw it up? What if something happens? What if I say something wrong? And I had to get over it.

I took the first phone call and I got over it. I realized that it’s a walk in the park, right? And every next phone call reinforces that feeling. And now I know that even if I don’t feel a 100% on that particular day, if I’m a bit tired coming into work, still when I take that phone call, when I answer the customer I can deliver just at the level I’m expected to deliver.

So that is today’s message basically. The power of your brain cannot be underestimated my friends. So you’ve just got to trust yourself that even in situations when you kind of freak out and you think that you’re not going to be able to deliver, you actually might surprise yourself.

But it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to prepare for those situations. It doesn’t mean that at all. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m not trying to say that you can just rely on the fact that somehow you’re going to pull through. It’s not the case if you’re going for an interview for example or some other speech that you have to deliver and you’ve got to speak for a long period of time there is no other way to prepare for it other than by way of preparation, you know what I mean? You have to prepare it for days just like the way I did when I was going for the job interview, you know. I spent long, long hours on a daily basis to repeat all the questions that I might be asked and then the answers and everything. There’s a lot of preparation but eventually it paid off.

So what I’m trying to say is that all those situations where you have to do preparation apart, if you have moments during the day when you feel that your English is not a 100%, when you have moments when you have to deliver, more often than not you are going to be able to deliver. You just have to believe in yourself.

That’s the message. And thanks for checking out my video blog and obviously if you have any questions please feel free to publish them in the comment section below, my friends. Chat to you soon. Bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED!

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!

Transcript Below:

Hello everybody and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. It’s been a while guys since I recorded my last video for the simple reason that I’ve been really, really busy at work and I have to study on top of my daily duties at work as well so it’s really hectic lifestyle to say the least. And then when I’m coming home at night it’s quite late as well and then I have to do all the other stuff, prepare for the next day, pack my food, prepare my clothing, walk the dog, whatever, respond to my emails, right? You guys are asking a lot of questions on a daily basis!

So unfortunately my video recording days when I used to record at least one video a day or every few days are over. But it doesn’t mean that I’m stopping it altogether. Not at all. It’s quite the opposite actually, right? I’m actually enjoying this process immensely and for too many reasons. First of all, I love helping you guys. I love talking to my audience and obviously you love it, too. And secondly, it helps me improve my own spoken English, right? That’s the way it goes.

Anyhow, I’m having my morning coffee. Morning to you all! Cheers!

This time around it’s real coffee just to get my day kick-started, right? And today I wanted to talk about one problem that a lot of foreign English speakers have in common. Basically, when we are asked something or probably not just asked but when we want to explain something in English to the other person the first thing that we’re trying to do is we’re trying to explain it all in an abstract way.

So let’s say for argument’s sake you are asked about animal rights or something, right? Why I picked that topic about an animal? Because I have a cat lying right there next to me on the bed. So let’s say for argument’s sake you are asked what’s your stance on the whole animal rights issue or whatever.

And obviously that’s a very, very broad subject, right? So you might actually have like 20 different opinions on the certain aspects of the whole thing, right? But if you’re trying to grasp the whole thing at once and provide a prolific all-encompassing answer to that person it becomes mission impossible for the simple reason that it’s pretty much impossible even in your native language to manipulate with all those abstract concepts that might be popping up in your mind when it comes to the whole animal issue.

So what you need to do in order to handle such conversations is instead of being general, instead of trying to generalize stuff and provide an answer from a bigger perspective you’ve got to be very, very specific!

So specific is the key. Just pick one example, right? And it might sound like a bad idea on certain occasions. You may think “Hold on a second, Robby but if I’m asked a general question what good is it if I’m trying to tell that person a specific situation that I had or heard about or read about or whatever.”

Well, here’s the deal. That is actually the best way to illustrate a point and to get the message across, right? All too often people go on and on about some general things failing to focus on the specifics, right? So it’s not actually such a bad thing at all, quite the opposite. It’s the best way to communicate.

So if I were asked something, I would probably try and remember what my daughter told me because she’s big into the whole animal thing. She wants to be a vet, the other one wants to be an architect but one of my daughters wants to be a vet and she’s been helping in places like animal shelters, veterinary clinics and so on.

So I would have probably picked a specific situation that my daughter had that she told me about and that’s how the conversation would start developing. I would tell that particular instance and then my conversation partner would probably respond with something and that’s how the whole thing develops, right? And that’s a normal conversation.

Whereas if I were to try and use some sophisticated terms describing the fact that the animals have rights and then being abused and it’s important to set up and maintain and sponsor all these animal foundations and animal right organizations and what not and ensure that it happens at a government level, you know. You’re getting into very tricky area so to speak. And because you cannot talk about it confidently, you might in fact have a very vague understanding of the whole thing and you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot by trying to – it kind of ties in with the whole concept of not trying to speak using some sophisticated language, trying to sound too smart. Get down to earth, you know. Use simple language.

And in this connection I want you to check out this article and there’s a video as well. Click on it, right? Click on the link, it will take you to the respective page on my blog “Speaking in Short Sentences? It’s Normal!” So it kind of ties in with the whole thing, right? There’s no need to try and speak in long sophisticated sentences because more often than not you will end up not being able to say anything. Whereas if you stick with using simple words, simple sentences it’s going to be much better for your fluency.

And the second one I want you to check out is planning your answer – click here:  “How to Answer Unexpected Questions?” And being specific is one of those points I’m making there in that article, right? So just a couple of refresher links. In case you haven’t read them at all it’s going to be all good for you. My friends, it is going to serve as an eye-opener for you, I promise, right? Because this is a big deal.

So many people and a lot of my former Fluency Star students had this issue as well. I would have a conversation and then that person is trying to say it all at once, kind of be very general and then use those abstract concepts. It’s very difficult. It’s a very, very gray area to wander in. So you’d be much better off just sticking with specific situations. If you have to think about it take your time 5-10 seconds. Use some hesitation phrases such as “Well, let me see… I have to think about it…. Hold on a second…” or something like that, right? Or even the typical sentence starters “Well, to be honest with you… If I think about it I can actually remember this particular situation.” Or something along those lines and that’s when you start talking about that specific situation, you know.

Even if sometimes it might sound like a bad idea, trust me, being specific is going to help you, it’s going to make your speech way more fluent, it’s going to organize your thought process and it’s going to serve as an ice breaker in different social situations. And that’s how the whole conversation develops. You know, you mention something specific and it leads to the next thing, to the next one, then the conversation partner responds with something.

And if you think about it, more often than not, casual conversations are about specific things. Obviously we would be sometimes mentioning some abstract or generic concepts or whatever but more often than not, just like I said people talk about specific stuff. So that is the key to your fluency my friends.

So thanks for watching this video. If you have any further questions obviously please feel free to post them in the comment section below. Thank you. Bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

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!

Hi guys, hello my dear fellow English speakers and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog! In today’s video we are going to look at the following topic: full English immersion and its importance in your spoken English fluency development. And sometimes you may think “what’s the big deal? Why would I have to necessarily surround myself with English 24/7? Surely, if I want to improve my English I can just do certain things and that will improve my spoken English, right?”

Well, you’re right to a certain degree. Yes, you will definitely improve it because doing something is better than doing nothing, right? But here’s the deal: if you immerse yourself in English 24/7, it’s going to provide even additional benefits for your overall spoken English fluency development.

And I noticed that, a few years ago, when I went back to my home country, obviously when you land in the airport, you exit the aircraft, enter the airport and you immediately get surrounded with Latvian which is the language spoken in Latvia, right? And that’s the country I come from.

That is my home country and I noticed that it’s a bit more difficult for me to focus on my inner thoughts. Obviously if you have been following my blog you know that I’m doing constant spoken English self-practice, I’m trying to think in English when in public and speak with myself in slight whisper when there’s no one around and I find it a bit more difficult to do it when in my country because I’m surrounded with all things Latvian.

And like with a wave of a magic wand, when I land back in Ireland in Dublin and I exit the aircraft and I’m walking along the corridor in the airport and I read all the posters in English and everything, everything is sign posted in English obviously, like with a wave of a magic wand, my ability to think in English clearly and speak with myself in English returns back.

And I think it’s all because your surroundings determine a lot when it comes to your own performance. And it’s not necessarily a language performance, it can be a lot of different things.

For instance, I think one of the reasons why people fail to exercise at home is because the home setting doesn’t necessarily evoke the necessary emotions associated with working out. When you work out in a gym, it’s a whole lot different story. There’s other people working out, you see all these different machines, there’s up beat music going bam-bam-bam-bam.

So all those surroundings make you want to work out yourself and makes the whole process more enjoyable and more sufficient. Whereas if you want to work out in your own room where you’re mostly used to watching TV, right,  that’s what you want to do in that room. You don’t even want to work out so you’re forcing yourself to work out in your room but it just doesn’t happen for some reason.

So it’s all about the surroundings, right?

I actually like drawing parallels between the fitness world and your language performance because I strongly believe that your ability to speak is just another practical skill. Just like your ability to perform physical exercises for example.

Anyway, going back to full immersion and being surrounded with all things English, is definitely beneficial because just as I said, if you’re surrounded with all things English, it will facilitate your English performance.

You are so much more likely to speak better, to understand better, to write better, read better, if you’re surrounded by English the whole time. And obviously, what I mean is not sticking posters on your wall in English or things like that. Well, to a certain degree, yeah, is true. If you’re sticking post-it notes on a whiteboard in front of you, obviously, do it in English. Do as much as you can in English.

But I’m not saying you have to totally redo your whole environment and go great lengths but things that you do on a daily basis, I strongly and warmly suggest you to do in English. If you keep a diary, if you keep notes, a simple notebook, do all your notes in English.

If you read fiction, choose English fiction.

If you read news websites, go for news websites in English. If you watch some TV, why not watch English channels? And the list goes on and on. You get the drift, right?

But obviously you don’t have to tear down posters that are on your wall in your native language and a calendar that might be hanging in there which is all in your native language and things like that, right? You don’t have to go extreme but all I’m saying is you have to make sure there’s a little bit of English everywhere and that will facilitate your own English performance and that’s why the full immersion is of the utmost importance if you want to maximize your potential as an English student, English learner, English speaker, right?

Alright my friends. That’s about it for today! I really hope that you enjoyed watching this video and if you have any comments, please feel free to publish them in the comments section below. Thanks and talk to you soon! Bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

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!

Hi guys, hi boys and girls and welcome back to the English Harmony video blog!

In today’s video we’re going to look at the following English idiom: The BIG Picture. Or alternatively, you can say: The Bigger Picture. It doesn’t really matter which one you go for, whether you say “The big picture” or “The bigger picture”, these two word combinations are pretty much interchangeable, they mean the same thing.

Now. In reality when you’ll be using the phrase “The big picture” you would be putting it in different contexts, such as: “When looking at the bigger picture” or “If you look at the big picture” or your ability to see the bigger picture, right?

You’d be using it in different contexts but the very two-word combination “The big picture” always remains the same and it’s very idiomatic by its nature and if you are curious as to what it means, when to use it, how to use it, place bear with me for a few more minutes and everything’s gonna become crystal clear to you, I promise!

Hi guys and welcome back! So, the BIG picture. Let me ask you a question. Do you possess the ability to see the bigger picture? If you do, then that would be one of the characteristics needed to become a truly successful manager. Why? Because a manager makes strategic decisions and he has to see the bigger picture. To see the whole operation, because a typical employee wouldn’t necessarily see the big picture.

They would be focusing on their tasks, on their duties, they will see the little details, but not necessarily the bigger picture. So, can you guess from this example what the bigger picture means? Well, I suppose that you might’ve guessed that it means the ability to see everything at once, to take it all in, to understand how everything works as a whole, right?

Whether we’re looking at a company or some process, doesn’t really matter. Well, typically it’s used when talking about some strategic thinking in terms of running a business or something similar. The ability to see the bigger picture. This is basically used when you’ll be going for a job interview and then you will be describing your strengths and you will say that one of my strengths is the ability to see the bigger picture.

And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense cause quite literally, when you look at a picture… Imagine yourself standing in an Art Gallery and looking on a picture. Looking AT a picture on the wall. I said “looking on a picture” or something like that. I made a mistake, I’m sorry about that but if you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know that making mistakes is crucial, it’s a crucial and integral part of your overall fluency improvement.

So I just corrected myself. The proper way of saying it is: we look AT a picture on the wall. OK? Then if you’re too close to it you will be seeing the individual details but you wouldn’t be necessarily able to take the entire picture in. You wouldn’t be able to see it as a whole.

So you’d have to take a step back and only then you will be able to observe the whole picture and take it all in as a whole. So that’s where this idiom comes from and if you think about it, you would probably come to the same conclusion.

But it’s not always that easy, that straightforward and it’s not always that you can guess their meaning. So you have to know what it means.

And another way of using this idiom would be… Imagine yourself in a company meeting for example. Then you are given the word, you have to say something and then you would start your speech by saying: “If we look at the bigger picture“. That’s a very good sentence starter, right? Meaning, if we look at everything as a whole, if we ignore the little details and try and encompass the whole operation as a whole and basically see it in a strategic perspective.

That’s a very good sentence starter. If we look at it… If we look at the bigger picture, basically, we can clearly understand that the slides drop in sales figures and the months of November and December aren’t really so drastic because if we go back two years ago, something similar happened and then we bounced back and made even more sales the following year, so I would say this is all seasonal and basically if we look at the bigger picture, this figures aren’t really so worrying as you may think at first.

So that was the second example of how to use this particular English idiom and let me come up with a third example. Obviously that’s what I always do in these Idiomatic Expression videos. I give you three examples, all right? Now, let me see. I’m drawing a blank, which means, I can’t really think of anything. That’s a good one. That’s weird because I always brainstorm something. Something crosses my mind on all occasions and now all of the sudden, I can’t really think of anything else, you know?

So you would have to do with two examples. The first one was when you describe yourself in a job interview and then you say you possess the ability to see the bigger picture which distinguishes you from all other candidates, that’s what sets you apart from the other candidates.

And the second one was during a company meeting when you said that if we look at the bigger picture, OK? So the two examples would have to suffice for now and maybe I’ll think of something after recording this video but that’s what always happens, right? You think of something when that moment has passed. That’s typical!

But anyway… I hope that you will benefit from this video and obviously, as always, if you have any questions, of any nature, preferably something that’s got to do with this particular idiom – The big picture or English improvement in general, just let me know in the comments section below the video. Thanks for watching and bye-bye!

Cheers,

Robby

Another English Fluency Question and Answer session – this time around it’s all about me speaking with a foreign accent and free vs paid English learning resources!