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!

Hi Guys!

In today’s video I’m going to respond to a number of e-mails sent by my blog readers, and here’s exactly what I’m addressing in this video:

Robby

P.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!

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!

Anyway, today’s topic is about combining the strategy of slow speech, right? You may want to click on this link to find out more about the benefits of slow speech as opposed to trying to speak very fast and you basically can combine that strategy with another strategy which is improvisation. And you may want to click on this link here to hear and read more about improvisation. That’s obviously when you’ve become really comfortable with your speech and you can just improvise on the go, right?

You can, you can – and now this is actually the moment when I’m going to put that combined strategy of the two strategies into practice, right? I was saying “when you can” and actually I didn’t know what was going to follow, right? So it’s the improvisation coming into play, right?

But why the slower speech also comes in handy in this particular strategy is because if I were to be speaking – I said it wrong. If I were to speak – I could have probably said if I were to be speaking but it doesn’t sound right. This is how I question myself, you see, when I say things sometimes I realize that I might have said something wrong and then I actually question myself and analyze my speech a little bit but I don’t analyze it beforehand. I don’t analyze before speaking out loud because that’s when your fluency goes out the window.

Anyway, going back to the subject, if I were to speak very fast I wouldn’t be able to stop the flow of words and I would have definitely said something totally wrong. I would have messed up my speech altogether. But now that I’m speaking slowly I can pause for a split second and I can actually think of something new to say to continue on the same note.

So basically I said “and then you can” and then I realized kind of okay, I didn’t really intend to use the word “can”, it just came out of my mouth by itself somehow, you know, these things happen but I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I can improvise and I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I’m speaking quite slowly, right? And I don’t have to be freaking out about it but I can just take a moment to break and figure out what I can say to continue on that note, right?

Basically I said – I actually forgot what I said, I would have to rewind it back in my head. So I was saying I can combine the two strategies and then I can or you can, I forgot the exact wording, then you can implement that strategy in situations when you say something unexpected to yourself, when a word comes out of your mind by itself but it’s the wrong word which doesn’t kind of go together with the thought process that you had previously in your head so here you go.

And I was going to give you more examples so that you can actually clearly see what I’m talking about, right? So for instance if I want to say that I would never think even about doing a certain thing, right? And then I start the sentence by saying “Listen, this is definitely something that I would never do, you know.” But imagine if I said the word “will” instead of the word “would”, right? So my thought is – the thought process is as follows: I would never do such a thing, right? So it’s something that I would never do.

But it could happen so that the word “will” comes out of my mouth for some reason instead of “would”, right? So the sentence starts as for my intention so I’m saying “This is something that I never will…” and then I realize, hold on a second if I were to say it’s something that I will never do, it’s not really on, you know, because if I say “it’s something that I would never do” basically you’re talking about something that hasn’t even happened, right? You’re just contemplating various possibilities, okay, with regards to the future.

Whereas if you were to say “it’s something that I will never do”, yeah, it’s kind of the same meaning but it kind of implies that there is a certain possibility that you would do it at some stage in the future and then you’re saying that “no, I will not actually do it”, right?

So if I started the sentence “this is something that I never…” and then said the word “will” then I would probably change the continuation of the train of thoughts, right? I would kind of switch over to something slightly different and say things like “this is something that I never will even contemplate”, right? In other words, it’s something that I would never do, you know.

So I hope you get the drift basically. By combining the slower speech and your innate ability to improvise, I actually believe that every one of us has that ability to improvise. We just have to reach a certain English fluency development and then provided obviously that we do a lot of spoken English practice and everything we can develop that ability, you know. And then that improvisation combined with slower speech avails you of correcting your speech so that the other person doesn’t even know that you said something wrong.

Well, not necessarily wrong in grammar terms or whatever but wrong in terms of you saying something that you didn’t really intend to say in the first place as you opened your mouth. For the first time you never intended to say certain words and then they just come out of your mouth and then you can stop for a split second and change your sentence, change the flow of thoughts and maybe even change the whole conversation, you know. Because sometimes these things happen for a reason. You say something and you think why did I even say that word? But it does happen for a reason maybe.

And I hope that you got the drift. I hope that I got the message across quite successfully and obviously if you have more questions about this particular strategy and how it works maybe you can actually mention some of your own examples. I’m pretty sure that some of you guys might have experienced something similar while speaking in English yourself. So feel free to publish everything in the comment section below. Thanks for checking in, thanks for watching the video and chat to you soon again, 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!

Recently I got contacted by one of my blog readers and she told me that the more she thinks about the various English grammar tenses, the more confusing the whole thing gets…

On a lot of occasions it seems that you can use a number of different Tenses, for instance – “I’m going to the movies tonight”, “I’ll go to the movies”, “I’ll be going to the movies” – so how do you know which one is right?

And the more you analyze all this kind of stuff, the more confusing it gets and eventually you start feeling that you know nothing about English grammar!

Now, watch this video above where I’m giving precious advice on how to approach such a state of mind, and if you’ve got any questions – don’t hesitate to publish them in the comments section below!

Robby

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 boys and girls, hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! It’s Robby here obviously from EnglishHarmony.com and today I’m bringing you another daily English idiomatic expression video.

Well, I guess by now you would have noticed that these idiomatic expression videos are not being published on a daily basis. That was the original intention a few years ago but as you can imagine I just haven’t been able to keep up with that production schedule, publishing one video a day simply because of my Fluency Star students and everything but I just stuck with the name daily English idiomatic expressions, right?

So I’m just going to give you a new one today, right? Because God only knows when is the next one going to come up, when I decide to publish the next one. But to tell you the truth I have a bunch of them recorded and then I publish them as I see fit, every now and then I would publish another one for you guys.

Anyhow, today we’re going to look at the following English idiomatic expression “along the lines of”, right? And obviously if you want to find out what exactly it means, when you can use this particular phrase then bear with me for a few more moments and everything is going to become crystal clear to you my friends!

Welcome back. So “along the lines of.” What exactly it means. Well, let me give you an example and that will paint a pretty clear picture and you’ll figure it out for yourself what exactly it means and when you can use it in your speech, right?

So here’s reported  speech, basically something that someone told me or something that I just overheard being said by someone else, right? And you are the person I’m talking to and I’m saying what I’ve heard the other person say, right?

“Listen, I was passing by when Julie was talking to Mark today and I can’t actually remember word by word what she said but it went something along the lines of listen Mark, I’m fed up with your attitude and I’m done with it, you know what I mean. I’m not going to put up with it for much longer!”

So that’s what she said. Just like I said I can’t remember exactly what she said but it went something along the lines of I’m fed up with you Mark. I’m not going to put up with you anymore so I’ll leave the rest to yourself, to your imagination to understand what exactly was going to happen next, right?

So as you could clearly see in this particular example I used the English idiomatic expression “along the lines of” to describe reported speech that I wasn’t quite sure exactly how it went, exactly what words were used but I’m just paraphrasing, right? So that’s the type of situation when you may want to use this particular idiom.

So how you use it? You use it by sticking “it went” in front of it so it went along – or something as well, right? So it went something along the lines of. So that’s how you describe particular person’s speech that you’re not a 100% sure of but you’re just putting it in your own words.

So I’m not really sure what Mike said to Jodie but I think it went something along the lines of “Jodie, you’re the best worker so I think you deserve a pay rise. Just don’t say it to anyone else, right?” But I happened to be passing by the door and I didn’t even want it but I just heard that conversation and just like I said it went something along the lines of “Jodie, rest assured that your wages are going to be increased but not a single word to anyone else because others are going to ask me if the same thing, right? They will ask me for pay rise but I can’t afford it. I can only remunerate you like that because you’re the best employee, right?”

So that was the second example. It’s all about reported speech as you could clearly see and when else would you be using this particular idiom?

It’s when you want to remember something in the exact words for instance, a saying, a phrase or an English idiomatic expression for that matter but you can’t remember exactly how it’s said, right? But this particular situation kind of demands that you remember how it was said. For instance if I couldn’t remember the phrase “along the lines of” so I could have used that expression to describe how I remembered it.

So “it went something along the lines of” obviously this particular example doesn’t even make sense because obviously I know how to use it but let me just give you an idea of what I’m trying to say here. I know this phrase but I can’t actually remember the exact words but it went something along the lines of… with the lines of if you know what I mean, right?

So I was trying to describe that phrase not being exactly sure what way it was put, what words were used. And then normally when you would describe something to the other person like this, with almost the exact words it would make the other person maybe remember what exactly you are trying to say, right? Whether it’s a phrase or some quote for example.

Let’s say for instance you’re talking about songs and song lyrics and you’re saying “I can’t actually remember the chorus part of that song but I think it went something along the lines of… And then you’re saying it and the other person will probably help you out with that in case they remember the exact words, right?

And on the finishing note let me just tell you that you can use it – I mean you can use this particular idiom “along the lines of” in combination with some other words. It doesn’t always go with “it went something along the lines”. You can say it was something – no, sorry. It was along the lines, right? It was along the lines, yeah, you can say that, surely, right?

And obviously there’s a whole lot more ways of using it. I just can’t think of them all and that’s a very well-known phenomenon, right? If you’re asked to come up with all ways of doing a certain thing, surely you can’t do it because it’s only the context that will bring out that particular thing that you’re looking for, right? And in this example if I were to speak and use that phrase in a different way, that’s when I would remember it, right?

But suffice it to say that these example sentences that I’ve given to you today should paint a pretty clear picture of how to use this particular English idiomatic expression so please make sure to use it in your daily spoken English practice sessions and also real time – real life should I say conversations with other people, right?

So thanks for watching this video, thanks for your time and don’t forget to like the video obviously if you liked it and don’t forget to subscribe for my channel if you haven’t already done so my friends. Thanks and chat to you soon. Bye-bye!

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 boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog!

Today I decided to bring another English idiomatic expression video to you and this time around the video in question is – no, not the video in question, the phrase, the expression in question!

Sorry guys for making this mistake but I’m just going to leave it here on record so that you can see that Robby is not really afraid of making mistakes, he practices what he preaches and that’s the path that you should be going down as well if you’re anything serious about your English fluency improvement that is, right?

So basically don’t be afraid, don’t be embarrassed of making mistakes, saying something wrong, going back, correcting yourself, it’s all part of the game.

Anyway, going back to the original subject, the expression in question for today is “to the best of my knowledge”, right? So if you’re interested in learning how to use this particular English idiomatic expression, just bear with me for a few more moments and everything is going to become crystal clear to you my friends!

So welcome back guys. Now, basically how to use the idiomatic expression “to the best of my knowledge”? Let me give you a very simple example sentence, right? To the best of my knowledge I haven’t actually recorded a video about the English idiomatic expression “to the best of my knowledge”, right? It’s like a joke but anyway, I hope I made you laugh!

So I hope that you could clearly understand what way the phrase “to the best of my knowledge” is used in this particular example, right? It’s basically as if I were to say as far as I’m aware, right? Same thing, right? Much of a muchness which is an expression I learned years ago which means that the two things are pretty much the same, right? Much of a muchness. It doesn’t matter which way you go, right?

So as far as I’m aware I haven’t recorded a video about the phrase “to the best of my knowledge”. “To the best of my knowledge” I haven’t recorded and so on and so forth. So pretty much the same meaning, right is carried by both of these phrases. Speaking of which, I actually recorded the videos about similar phrases, right? Such as “if I’m not mistaken” and “correct me if I’m wrong”, right? And you may want to click on this link which is going to take you to the respective page on my blog where you’ll be able to watch a video about those two phrases.

And actually all these four phrases “to the best of my knowledge”, “as far as I’m aware”, “if I’m not mistaken”, “correct me if I’m wrong” they’re pretty much interchangeable. Having said that, I have to admit that “if I’m not mistaken”, “correct me if I’m wrong” kind of involves a little bit more doubt factor, right? In that particular situation I’m probably only 50-50 sure that what I’m saying is right or 60-40 or something like that, right?

But “to the best of my knowledge” that’s quite a big certainty, right? So whatever you’re saying, whatever statement you’re making you’re pretty sure of that, right?

And now let me just give you a few more example sentences so that you can develop the feeling, the instinct for using this particular phrase, right? Let’s say you’re showing someone how to install a Windows operating system, right? As a matter of fact that’s something that I did today in the college, right?

I was guiding one person through all the steps necessary to install – what was it? – rooting an active directory services on the Windows 2012 server machine, right? And I was going through the wizard and he was asking “Hold on a second, do you see those options there, Robby? Do you not have to tick them as well?” And I said to him “Listen, to the best of my knowledge you just ignore them. You just go next, next, next, bam, bam, bam, install, that’s going to be done for you.” Right?

So that was a typical example. So you’re basically saying to someone “Listen, to the best of my knowledge this is the way it’s done.” And this is basically when it comes to certain procedures and whatnot. That’s when you typically would be using this phrase in your work environment, right? Someone asks you for advice and they kind of slightly doubt that, they question it and then you say “Well, to the best of my knowledge that’s the way it works.” If you’re in doubt you may want to ask someone else but to the best of my knowledge, as far as I’m aware that’s the way it is, right?

And let me think… can I think of another example? I suppose you could use this one when talking about some facts, right? When you’re saying something that you might have read before, that someone might have told you before but you’re not a 100% sure of that you can say “Well, to the best of my knowledge you’re not supposed to pour boiling water over tea. If you put your teabag in a tea cup you’re not supposed to boil water and pour it immediately over the tea, right? You have to – I suppose – cool it down for something like 2 or 3 minutes or something like that so that its temperature drops from a 100 degrees Celsius down to 95 or something. And I think I’m pretty sure that I read it somewhere. So to the best of my knowledge that’s the way you go about making tea in the ideal set of circumstances, right?”

And to finish off this video I should probably come up with another example. Well, let me see, let’s say for example that you’re chatting with a friend of yours and that person – basically it’s an informal conversation – that person, that friend of yours is saying that he thinks that – let’s assume for argument’s sake that your friend’s name is Mark and you’re talking about Sally. And Mark is telling you that Sally is going out with someone, right? And then you’re saying to your friend “Now listen, buddy, that’s not the way it is. To the best of my knowledge Sally only broke up with Peter last week so there is no way she could be possibly going out with someone. It’s only been a week since her breakup. So to the best of my knowledge that’s not true. I don’t know who might have told you that but that’s just rumors is all, right?”

So this was the last and final example of using the idiomatic expression to the best of my knowledge in a conversation. So please make sure that you do a lot of spoken English self-practicing where you use this particular phrase and also if you happen to have conversations with other people don’t hesitate to use this particular phrase in your conversations to make sure that that speech pattern is imprinted into your brain and into your mouth which is the most important part of the whole English fluency thing, right?

So thanks for watching this video! Obviously if you have any questions post them in the comment section below. Don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already done so and chat to you soon again. Bye-bye!

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!

One of my blog readers posted a piece of English writing on my blog here and asked me what was wrong with it. Having taken a closer look, I quickly realized that the author of that piece had used quite sophisticated language, but the words just didn’t go together which was a telltale sign of lack of contextual English learning!

So here it is:

Now, it’s no secret that in order to learn to speak and write in English in a native-like fashion you have to embrace the concept of contextual English learning.

Well, I guess I should put it this way – it’s no secret to those who’ve been following my blog and watching my videos.

If you’re new to this whole English fluency thing, chances are that you’re not really up-to-speed with these concepts, so please do the following 2 things:

Any comments or questions?

Publish them in the comments section below!

Cheers,

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 boys and girls and hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! It’s me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! Now, in today’s video I’m going to give you two new English idiomatic expressions which is somewhat unusual because normally I’d be giving just one.

The reason being, if you learn a number of expressions all at once, especially if they describe a very similar concept, oftentimes you would get confused when we learn them all at once and then we try to speak all those expressions would mix together kind of.

So that’s why I normally suggest only focusing on one particular expression at a given time.

But in this particular case the topic that I want to touch upon today is discussing past events, all right? The reason being, a lot of my blog visitors have contacted me in the past asking me “Robby, can you tell me ways of simplifying my speech when I talk about past events because I oftentimes get confused about using the different tenses or whatever?”

And on top of that, a lot of my Fluency Star coaching clients have also expressed the same wish that we incorporate some storytelling basically into our programs. And by saying storytelling don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about some old style storytelling whereby the storyteller gets in front of the crowd and entertains everyone by telling entertaining stories. It’s not about that. It’s just about talk about past events, right?

So basically provided all this I have a pretty clear picture basically. A lot of you guys are struggling with talking about past events and that’s exactly the reason why I’m going to be touching upon that subject today.

And the two phrases will come in very handy because the first one “there was this time when…” is a great way of initiating the story, right? And then the phrase “next thing I know…” is a very handy way of making the transition from the past tenses into the simple present.

The reason being, you can use simple present when talking about past events. Surprise, surprise, a lot of you guys probably didn’t know that, right? And chances are that you didn’t because nobody really tells you that. You wouldn’t find that information in an English grammar book. Nobody would write in it that simple present can be used to talk about past events, right? But in reality it happens a lot. Native English speakers use this strategy a lot but nobody – I suppose nobody really thinks a great deal of it. You know what I mean, people just speak that way, okay?

But if you want to learn exactly how to use these two phrases “there was this time when…” and “next thing I know…” and how to make the transition from past tenses back to simple present to simplify your speech and get your story going, please bear with me and you’ll find it all out, my friends in a couple of moments!

Hi my friends and welcome back. So here’s the first story. Basically today you’re going to be getting 3 stories involving 3 different ways of using these expressions. So there was this time when I was – as a matter of fact I was very young. It must have been like 20 years ago or something.

So there was this time when I was walking, it was quite late at night and I was walking to the shop, I remember now. Yeah, it was the local grocery shop. And there were two guys arguing and I didn’t think much of it and I was just walking past them and next thing I know I get a punch in the face, okay?

And then I turn around – and did you notice how I made the transition from using the past tense, I was walking to the shop and then I was walking past the two guys arguing and then I started using the present tense. Next thing I know I get punched in the face, I turn around and the guy is confronting me in the traditional boxer stance ready for a fight. And thankfully his friend jumped in between us and dragged the guy away, apologized and he said that that guy was having a big argument with his wife or something and he’s not himself really, right?

So he apologized to me and I just let the matter go and I continued on my way to the grocery shop. And did you notice how I went back to the past tense, right? I didn’t even notice that transition myself but that’s the way you do it, right? You start the story by saying “there was this time when…” and then you use simple past or progressive past depending on what kind of action you’re actually describing. I was walking to the store obviously it’s progressive, right? It’s “I was walking” not that “I just walked”, okay?

But anyway, then I said “next thing I know…” and then I made a transition into the simple present. And that’s exactly the way you can do it guys. It will simplify your speech big time, right? That was the first example and the next example is going to be – oh yeah, there was this time, again, grocery store. For some reason I picked two stories that involve going to the shop. There has to be something about those grocery shops, right?

Anyway, there was this time when I was walking to the grocery shop with my dog. And as I oftentimes did back in the day I just left him out. No. I walked – I remember now. My memory is not what it used to be, my friends, right? So forgive me for constantly changing my story but that’s the way it happened. I thought that I left the dog outside which I didn’t, I just stayed outside with the dog and my kids went into the shop. Basically it was me with my daughters and a friend of theirs as well if I’m not mistaken.

And then next thing I know this guy comes over with his dog and pits his dog against mine and this crazy fight breaks out. And I was like what on earth is going on? I was totally taken aback and I didn’t even notice how I went back to the past and so obviously for me it’s no big deal. I can actually use past tenses, future tenses, whatever, you know what I mean because at this stage in my life I’m quite comfortable using all the different English tenses. But as a matter of fact having said that I have to admit that some tenses aren’t actually used, right?

So don’t take these words literally and don’t try to learn all the tenses and incorporate them into your speech, right? You have to be selective basically. There’s some tenses that aren’t actually used even by native English speakers. But what I’m getting at is that at this stage in my life I’m quite fluent, I’m quite comfortable with using different means of expression and talking about past and present and future or whatever, it’s no big deal to me. But if you struggle with that after the phrase “next thing I know…” you can definitely keep using the present tense throughout the rest of the story basically, right?

That was the second story and the third story… but before getting into the matter let me have a little bit of water please. My mouth is getting dry, right? Now, the last story is going to be about what my wife experienced.

There was this time when she was driving to work and the roads were blocked for some reason. There was some sort of a military activity in the area or something. I’m not really sure. The simple fact of the matter is that there’s an army base nearby so they might have closed the road for some reason or another.

So she had to drive around some back road to get to her work, right? And then she’s driving there and this guy drives towards her and next thing she knows this guy suddenly tries to make a U turn and cuts her off and if not for her good reaction there would have been an accident for sure, right? Just because she slammed on the breaks she avoided the collision and basically the guy just turned around and drove off but she got a great fright, okay?

So that was the last example where I used the phrases “there was this time when…” and “next thing I know…” Or you can actually – if you talk about some other person you can say next thing she knows or next thing he knows. But basically that’s a great way of transitioning from the past tenses into the simple present and that’s when you can talk about past events using the present, simple present or present progressive, you know.

But the fact of the matter is that that simplifies your speech big time. You can talk about the past event as if it’s happening right now. It’s as if you are actually taking yourself and putting yourself into the past and you’re actually bringing the past back into now, into the present and you’re basically experiencing all those things all over and over again. And that’s how you tell the story, okay?

So if you have any questions guys please don’t hesitate to ask them in the comment section below. And yeah, thanks for watching my video and 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!

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 boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog!

I’m obviously Robby, your English fluency facilitator. Yes, that’s the term that I came up with myself, facilitator means obviously someone who facilitates your fluency. I’m not a teacher, because I really hate the term teacher. It kind of implies a traditional setting whereby the teacher is looking down on their students, right? But I’m not looking down on you guys, I’m just merely facilitating your fluency and improvement!

I’m accompanying you on your journey to English fluency, that’s all I’m doing, I’m giving you the right advice, the right tools and then it’s up to you guys to decide whether you take my advice on board and take some action or you don’t in which case obviously your fluency won’t improve. It’s as simple as that!

As a matter of fact, I’m getting plenty of questions almost on a daily basis asking me to help people with their fluency. And the question is posed in a way that makes me kind of wonder whether that person actually realizes that it’s actually down to them to make all the effort, do the hard work and actually work on their fluency because they almost expect me to kind of magically transfer all my skills unto them but it just doesn’t happen like that in real life.

And it’s another one of those things that I blame the traditional English teaching industry for – basically they’ve created this notion out there that if you just attend an English class, you will improve just because you have attended the class. The teacher has all the qualifications and it’s enough to have that kind of setting and you will automatically improve. So it kind of takes away all the hard work and effort that you have to do. And it makes it look as if it’s very easy but in real life it’s quite hard, right? It’s hard work.

But a lot of people don’t realize that and they think that Robby will somehow make them fluent which is not the case. I’m merely facilitating your own journey to fluency. I’m giving you the right advice, the right tips and tricks, so that’s how it happens, right?

But anyway, today’s video is all about how I find all these English idiomatic expressions and collocations and phrases, you name it. How I come up with them. Because I’ve been cranking out all of these idiomatic expression videos – well, lately I haven’t published too many of them because of my high workload, I’m currently engaged with a couple of students that I took on. My Fluency Star students and I still had a few left from the previous round.

You see, I open this Fluency Star coaching program in rounds. I take on a few students and then I close the program because obviously there is only so many hours in my day. I can’t be possibly handling dozens of people at the same time. It’s just not possible, right? So I close it down, then I deal with those students and then I open the program again. And currently I took on two more students but I had a few more left, so it’s very hectic to say the least. I’m very busy these days but I still try to make a few videos here and there just to keep you guys engaged, okay?

So where were we? What was I saying? I have a bad trait of veering off the subject the whole time. You might have noticed that in my previous videos, right? I’m constantly veering off the subject, then I’m like hold on a second, what was I talking about?

Yeah, how I find these expressions, yeah, there was a time when I used to publish almost daily idiomatic expressions and that’s where the actual name comes from, daily, that was my original intention, right? To publish these expressions on a daily basis but now you’re lucky to get one a week if you’re lucky, right? Sometimes once a month or something like that. But to be honest with you, I’ve recorded a few of those and I have them stored on my hard drive and then I will publish them in the weeks and months to come. So I will serve you guys more of those expressions, right?

But basically the question was how do I come up with all these phrases? Where do I find them, where do I source them? And if you read my blog, you’ll obviously realize that I’ve highlighted all these collocations and idiomatic expressions in my blog articles. And there’s dozens upon dozens of those collocations in each and every single one of those articles. And that’s actually how you can use my blog for your own English improvement. You can read them, you can memorize them and you can do spoken English practice around those collocations. That’s how the whole thing comes together, right?

So where I find them? You may be surprised guys but I don’t purposefully go looking for them. Okay? The fact of the matter is that over the years – I’ve been living in an English-speaking country for 14 years now – almost 14 years, it’s going to be 14 this August. But I like to tell myself that it’s 14 years, okay? Even though it’s a few months short.

So over the last 14 years I’ve been exposed to a huge, huge amount of information in English. Because I basically live my life in English. There is very little Latvian, which is my native language, right? But there is very little of my native language in my daily life. Except for communication with my wife and kids, I do everything else in English. If you walk into my home office, everything is in English.

I have English books, notes, the white board is all covered in English notes, obviously the whole English Harmony thing, teaching my students, I’m doing spoken English self-practice, everything is in English. So I’ve been exposed – and I watch a lot of, well, lately I haven’t been watching a lot of TV because I just don’t have time for it but whenever I get a chance, I would consume some English material. Whether it’s an English film or some YouTube video or something. And over the years I’ve been exposed to such large quantity of information that I have developed a massive passive vocabulary.

And as a matter of fact, I realized today that I haven’t published a blog post called basically what is the difference between the passive and the active English vocabulary. So I went ahead with it, I decided to write it, I wrote it today and by the time I publish this video I’m pretty sure that that blog post is going to be published as well.

So you may want to click on this link here. So the funny thing is the post isn’t even published yet but I know for a fact that I’m going to publish it within the next few days so you can click on this link here, it’s going to take you to my blog or you will read about what is the difference between a passive and an active vocabulary.

So basically in a few words your passive vocabulary is everything that you recognize, all that you know. All English vocabulary, phraseology, expressions, terms, all that that you know, that you recognize but that you can’t use. If you were to speak or write, you wouldn’t be able to use that. So basically speaking, writing, that’s your active vocabulary.

So as you can imagine your passive vocabulary is way bigger than your active one. It’s huge, it’s enormous. You can’t even probably think of how many words you know. I can’t think of a specific figure. Maybe I know 20,000 English words, 30,000, nobody knows really. But believe me, even if you think that it’s relatively small, it’s actually 5 times bigger that number, okay, that you had in your mind, right?

So my passive vocabulary is huge, so when I write content for my blog, I instinctively know all those collocations and phrases. It just comes naturally. I have developed the so-called gut feeling for correct English and you may want to click on this link here which is going to take you to the respective page on my blog where I’m talking about the gut feeling and developing it.

Basically it’s intuition for correct English. And I’ve been exposed to English for so long, and obviously I’ve been actively involved in speaking and writing and all of that, but the exposure has insured that all that kind of content is in my head. It’s already in there. I just have to tap into it!

And by constantly writing and speaking with myself, I just transfer some of that passive vocabulary into my active one. All those collocations and phrases, even if I didn’t use a specific collocation previously, the moment I start using it, it becomes part of my active vocabulary. And just like I said in this article about the active and passive vocabulary, you can read quite interesting questions which is all about re-activating your active vocabulary for instance and is it possible to forget words from your passive and your active vocabulary? Quite interesting stuff, so I really suggest you read it.

So yeah, that’s how I source them. And obviously now that I’ve been working with my own students, I constantly check for stuff online, I use all these dictionary websites, make sure that I’m always giving my students the proper collocations because I wouldn’t just run the risk of giving people a phrase or a collocation that’s not really valid. So I validate each and every one of those expressions to make sure I give my students the best.

So I’ve developed this gut feeling of knowing, instinctively knowing what way native speakers refer to this or that particular thing. So there’s a large database of expressions and idioms in my head. I just have to tap into it and that’s how I source them for you guys to publish on my website and on my video blog.

As for you, you don’t necessarily have to do that. While it’s great if you can achieve that level whereby you have developed the gut feeling for correct English and you can instinctively feel what way you have to say certain things and then you have to check whether you said it right or wrong and then you can solidify that knowledge in your active vocabulary.

But you can just use my blog for starters because it’s stuffed full with these collocations and idiomatic expressions like thousands of them, literally. You can just read my blog posts, watch my videos basically and if you click here, you’re going to be able to check out my blog sitemap page where you’ll find more than 600 articles and videos. That’s a massive number, just think about it. Can you even wrap your head around it? 600!

I can’t even – sometimes I find it hard to believe myself that I’ve created so much content, right, that – I don’t want to sound like bragging but it is an impressive figure, right? So as you can imagine, if you went through them all, it would take you probably even months or years to read them all and to consume all that content, to take it in. So there’s hundreds upon hundreds, thousands, if not tens of thousands of collocations ready for you to learn from my blog alone.

So that’s your starting point and obviously consume English content. Passive exposure isn’t something that I’m totally against. I’m always emphasizing the importance of spoken English practice and active usage of the English language because people tend not to do it.

Basically if I told you that you have to expose yourself to English, the lazy human nature within you and don’t be insulted guys, I’m the same, we are all lazy by our nature, that’s very human, right – to exert the least amount of effort to achieve something!

So if you could choose between consuming passive English content and doing some spoken English practice, then obviously the lazy nature within you would dictate that you would rather watch something and listen to something instead of speaking with yourself, right?

But we have to possess the intelligence, we have to be intelligent enough to understand that if we don’t engage in active English practicing, our fluency is not going to develop. It’s just not going to happen. So where was I?

Yeah, I was going to say that you have to expose yourself to a lot of English, basically surround yourself with English. Come to think of it, I recorded a video about it, it’s not published yet so it’s all about immersion, surrounding yourself with English and it’s all about the fact that if you live English, quite literally, do everything in English, then you just can’t not pick up all these expressions and collocations because you’ll be exposed to them for a long period of time just like I was, you know, over these last 14 years and then you will quite instinctively feel what way things have to be said and what those collocations and phraseology entail.

So I hope that that answers the question, obviously I went into a very long-winded rant, you know, probably more than 10 minutes or something, but this is actually one of those ways I improve my spoken English myself. I record a video like that and it improves my spoken ability big time to tell you the truth guys. Big time!

Now if you have any more questions, please publish them in the comment section below and if not, then you’re welcome obviously to check out my blog at EnglishHarmony.com and see if there’s anything else that catches your eye. Alright. 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!

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 boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. Now, in today’s video I’m going to tell you about the fact that sometimes what we say to the other person or in my case what I write on my blog or I talk about in my videos sometimes it can be perceived differently, right?

Basically I mean it in one way but the other person or a group of people perceive the message the wrong way. Maybe it’s because of the way I communicate the message or sometimes it just happens, you know.

Miscommunication just happens despite your best efforts to make sure that the message is sent out very straightforward and clear and despite the fact that you’re trying to get rid of all the ambiguity it just happens sometimes, right?

And what exactly I’m talking about here in this video is the fact that sometimes I talk about grammar and how it’s not really necessary, right? But at the same time I’ve always emphasize the fact that you have to self-correct that any intelligent person would not just try and get away with speaking grammatically incorrectly, they would try and to self-correct and over time as you keep correcting yourself – and you may want to click on this link to read more about the self-correction.

And this is actually a big deal, right? Because a lot of people get in touch with me asking me “Robby, how can I be sure that whatever I say is correct, especially if there’s nobody else around to correct me?” And that kind of ties in with the whole spoken English self-practice concept.

I keep telling my audience that you’ve got to be speaking with yourself so it begs the natural question if I’m speaking with myself who is there to correct me? And my answer is always self-correct! Don’t forget the fact that you have the natural ability to correct your own speech, right? Give yourself more credit than you do, right?

And here’s the link – just like I said, click on it, read about it and that is how you develop the instinct for correct speech and that’s how you improve your English over time, right? And yeah, what I was going to say is that the message that is sent out there, the message that I communicate with my audience by saying that grammar is not really that necessary, don’t think about grammar, forget about grammar, some people think that what I mean is that you have to be careless in the way you speak, that you can speak however you want and you don’t have to pay any attention as to the correctness of your speech, right?

To a certain degree it’s true. You don’t have to be afraid of making mistakes, right? And I suppose this message kind of gets what’s the word – magnified, you know what I mean by the fact that sometimes I say that you don’t have to be afraid of making mistakes so people kind of think “Hold on a second, Robby says that grammar is not necessary. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. So what it means is you have to make a lot of mistakes. Don’t care about grammar, speak however you want, right?”

That’s not way I mean it guys! And I’m basically recording this video to send out a strong message to you that what I mean by saying that don’t care about grammar and make a lot of mistakes is first of all, you don’t have to be afraid of making mistakes.

It’s going to happen so you have to accept the fact that you’re going to make mistakes no matter what way you approach the whole thing, right? More often than not, if you try not to make a mistake you’ll end up making more of them so you may just embrace the concept that you’re going to make them anyway.

So don’t limit yourself, just go about your speech the way you normally do, right? And what I mean by saying not to care about grammar is that you don’t have to analyze your speech as you speak because that’s what we were taught in the school, in our English class that you’ve got to be creating grammatically sound sentences as you speak but that flies in the face of the whole fluency concept which is all about speech automation. You can’t be analyzing your speech. It can only happen by way of imprinting those speech patterns into your brain, into your mouth and being able to speak automatically and improvise as well, okay?

So, you don’t have to care about the grammar aspect in that sense. But I’m not saying that you have to keep speaking the way you speak in case you’re making a lot of mistakes. You have to self-correct over time and provided that you’re intelligent enough I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t go down that path, right?

Look at me, I was speaking very, very bad 10 years ago, right? 10-9-8 years ago but then I kept working on my speech especially focusing on the phrases and idioms and all that kind of thing. And over the course of the last 8 years or so a lot of those speech patterns have been imprinted into my brain which makes me speak pretty much without any mistakes.

I’m not saying that I’m not making any mistakes at all, right? All I’m saying is that the number of mistakes have come down drastically and now my speech is more like that of a native English speaker, right? But it’s all because of the self-correction. Constant adjustment, constant feedback. Just speak and then go back to what you said and most likely you will notice when you say something wrong and so you have to look it up later on what way you have to say it correctly.

So this is what I mean by saying that you don’t have to care too much about grammar. Don’t care about it at that particular moment and time, at the moment of speaking but then you kind of have to analyze your speech a little bit after it’s happened and correct it for later use. You know what I mean? The feedback has to be there. You can’t just go about it totally carelessly, thinking that it’s no big deal, right? That’s not really what I meant by saying that.

So I just wanted to go on record by saying that you have to care about the correctness of your speech, you have to care about grammar but not in the traditional meaning of the word, right? When traditionally people would say you have to improve your grammar then you would jump right into your grammar studies, read the text books, start filling in gaps and cram the grammar rules and word lists and what not, that’s not going to improve your speech.

It’s going to improve your ability to pass certain tests and what not, but as far as your speech – you’ve got to be speaking grammatically correct speech patterns. If you make a mistake, no big deal. Don’t care about it, don’t care about the grammar and making mistakes at that particular moment in time. But going back after the speech you have to analyze your speech, you have to realize what you’ve said wrong. You have to self-correct, adjust your speech and going forward a few years down the line your speech is going to become way more fluent and way less errors are going to be happening as you speak, right?

So that’s exactly what I mean by saying that. So that’s about it my friends. If you have any questions obviously, feel free to publish them in the comment section below. And 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!

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!

Today is Saturday and I’m having my Saturday afternoon decaffeinated coffee here. You know, this is actually the second cup of real coffee. Well, in this case it’s actually not a cup, it’s a proper mug, right? A huge mug for that matter. Guinness, right? But I’m not drinking beer, I’m having my second cup of coffee. I just said cup again, right? Second mug of coffee, right? But the fact of the matter is that you wouldn’t be normally saying second mug of coffee, second cup of coffee, that’s an expression. So I would say that I’m not really wrong in saying that this is my second cup of coffee. That’s what people would normally say. That’s how people would understand you best, right?

Anyway, cheers!

And let’s start focusing on the actual matter I want to discuss in today’s video. But just before we get down to business let me just tell you that today I met up with a friend of mine and he’s an Irish fella, right? I’m a Latvian living in Ireland, been living here for 14 years and I have an Irish friend named Will.

And as a matter of fact he is my good luck charm in terms of spoken English fluency. What it actually means is that whenever I meet with him I can give my fluency free reign and I speak just like a native English speaker, right? He is the one person that brings out the best in my fluency, right?

As I go about my daily business, dealing with people in the college and my students and so on, obviously I speak a lot in English with others but this particular person, my former co-worker Will for some reason or another is the one that I can speak with best, right? I’m so familiar with him that I just lose any awareness of the language boundary so to speak.

So you may want to click on this link. And the article in question is called who is your  English good luck charm and it’s all about what a good luck charm person is in terms of spoken  English fluency and that if you find, if you manage to find one then you may want to hold on to them, right?

Now, the actual topic for today’s video is moving to an English-speaking country. Let me just read out the comment asking me to record a video, right? So 17 hours ago at this stage I received a comment saying “Would you consider making a video on the subject of emigration? I think a lot of expats like myself are watching your videos and it would be really interesting. For example pros and cons of living in a foreign country, possibility of moving back and so on, right?”

And then I promised to that person that I would record a video on the subject just because it’s something that I’m constantly dealing with, right? You see, I’m an expat myself, right? I live in Ireland. Originally I’m from Latvia and there’s a good few Latvians living in this country as well, right? So as you can imagine over the years I’ve realized that there’s a lot of issues faced by foreigners living in an English-speaking country and I can actually go through them with you.

With that being said I’ve got plenty of content published on my blog as well, right? They’re not videos, they’re articles. Actually a video or two as well so I will mention them as we go along throughout this video, right? I’ll just point you to those links. You’ll click on them, read the respective articles, watch the videos – so as to paint a completely clear and full picture of the whole subject matter which is a foreigner moving to an English-speaking country, right?

First of all, let me just tell you that moving to an English-speaking country is like recovering your eyesight if you’ve been blind for your entire life. You may want to click on this link here where I’m discussing this whole subject in the very detail. Suffice it to say it’s all about you having gotten used to certain ways of using your English language, right? Traditionally you would be just reading, being exposed to English as opposed to using it actively and then when you move to an English-speaking country it’s like recovering an eyesight and not being able to actually function properly.

Because what happens with those people who’ve been blind their entire life and then they recover eyesight for some reason obviously through surgery or something like that they can’t even function because their brain can’t process what they see, right? And the same goes with a foreigner have moved to an English speaking country. You can use the English language in a certain way but when you have to speak with real people in real life you just can’t. So that’s a big issue, right? And on a lot of occasions you have to kind of re-learn what you’ve already learned, right?

So what I did is – I created this English Harmony system which is a great product for those who want to restructure the English language in your brain so that you can actually speak with others fluently, right? And yeah, that’s exactly what happened to me. When I moved to Ireland I spent a good few years constantly reading, writing, learning grammar, building my vocabulary to no avail, I still couldn’t speak, I couldn’t figure out what’s going on. And only a few years down the line I realized that it’s all down to the lack of spoken English practicing and lack of natural spoken English speech patterns, right? So I went ahead, did all that job and there you go, I can speak pretty much fluently at this stage and I’m helping my foreign speaking counterparts all around the world to achieve the same success, right?

But anyway, that’s not the biggest focus of today’s story. The biggest focus is that when you move to the English-speaking country and you discover all these fluency issues that you’re facing and you’re working on it, it’s all nice and well but a lot of people don’t do it.

A lot of people just stick to their own. Basically expats sticking with each other and not making a lot of effort to improve their English. And the language is the biggest thing when it comes to integration. I’m a strong believer in integration basically. When you go to that English-speaking country you have to do your utmost to integrate.

Obviously integration is not going to happen, like I mean you’re not going to integrate fully. In order to do that you would have to marry into a local family and spend your entire time among native English speakers, right? Make friends and go out with them and so on and so forth. So that would be the full integration. As a foreigner in an English-speaking country I only know too well that that is rarely the case, right?

But still you have to make effort. You have to find some friends, you have to form relationships, and you have to go out there, meet people and speak with them. And that’s what integration is all about but if you just stick to your own, you’re just forming these islands of your own country within that English-speaking country whether it’s Ireland, the UK or America or Australia or whatever, you know what I mean.

And that’s what I’m totally against, right? I know that it’s human nature. I know that it’s going to happen no matter what I say now but I believe that any like really intelligent person should work against that human nature of theirs just to stick with your counterparts, with your native counterparts and you should actually do the utmost to improve the language, to go out there, to meet locals, to make friends.

I know it’s sometimes really like problematic because people have biases and they will judge you for your foreign origin and all that kind of thing and that’s what I’ve been encountering myself, you know what I mean. I’m not alien to all these issues but I’m not claiming to be some super integrated foreigner, you know, I have a lot of issues just like everyone. But the point is you have to make effort, you know?

And funnily enough one of the biggest things is watching TV, right? As you all know guys these days everyone watches TV, right? The typical person would spend 2 to 3, maybe 4-5 hours, a night watching the box, right? And these days you can watch TV online and movies and TV programs and so on and so forth. So when it comes to watching TV and I’m basically not going to be referring to like online streaming. I’m not going to differentiate between the two, I’ll just say TV but you’ll know that I mean just consuming this audiovisual media, be it YouTube or whatever, right?

So watching TV, you have to make sure that you do it in English. If you live in an English- speaking country why on earth would you be watching your own like TV channels from your country?

But believe it or not that a lot of people do that. As a matter of fact, like all my Latvian friends – well, to be honest with you I don’t have a lot of like real friends but out of the Latvians that I know and that I’m in touch with they all order Latvian TV channels online and they don’t watch the local TV channels which is crazy to think about it.

They don’t know what’s going on locally, right? They live in this country but they know everything about Latvia it’s as if they live in Latvia, just being physically away from it, you know what I mean? And I think it’s a bad thing.

I’m not saying that you should be totally ignoring your home country. Obviously not. You’re going to be maintaining a relationship with those who’ve stayed there, with your relations, with your parents, whatever, extended family members. And you’re going to be keeping on top of the news maybe as well.

And that’s what I do as well every day, I would check the Latvian news websites to see what’s going on in my country, right? But the fact of the matter is that if you live here, you have to live here fully. And there’s no better way of integrating than exposing yourself to the TV channels in the local language and then watch English TV shows, programs, movies, all that kind of stuff and thus improve your English.

Obviously your ability to speak is not going to be directly influenced by the exposure. That’s what I’ve been going on about on my blog for years now, right? You can’t be just watching TV and then expect yourself to improve in the spoken department, right? But it will help. It will help, right? If you isolate yourself in your native language bubble and live in it for 10 years in a foreign country, guess what? You’re not going to integrate! You will barely be able to string a sentence together in English and that’s not the right way to go, right?

So I want you to click on this link which is all about stopping watching TV in your language, right? And as a matter of fact there’s another article that I published at this stage 5 years ago. You may want to click on this link and it’s called Top 15 Invaluable Pieces of Advice for Foreigners Settling Down in an English-Speaking Country. So there’s a good few tips and tricks that I’m giving to you guys who are moving to an English-speaking country, right? What to expect, what approach to adapt when living there and so on and so forth, right?

And also I want you to click on this link and there’s a video about what to do if you can’t speak with natives in an English-speaking country, right? Integrating yourself, all nice and well but sometimes you just find yourself in a situation where you’re surrounded only with your native people so what to do in that case, right? Just watch the video just like I said but in a nutshell the solution is to practice spoken English yourself.

That’s what I’ve been doing for years and that’s one of the biggest reasons why my English is so fluent. I’m not bragging, I’m not saying that I’m just like a native English-speaker but I consider that my fluency is decent and it allows me to function in the local society properly. And that’s what we all should be aiming for. I’m not saying that everyone is going to achieve the same level of fluency as I have achieved, right? But provided that you work hard enough you will get there, you know. You will get a better job down the line, you will quite naturally make local friends and so on and so forth.

So you can make your life easier for yourself you’re going to make better impression of your like native background in eyes of the locals. They will see yourself as a really good person as opposed to someone who just isolates themselves living in the native language bubble and barely going out on the street and trying to integrate in the local society.

You just have to make that effort so that it could reflect well on your nationality, on your home country, right? That’s just the way it is. You can say all you want about like native English speakers judging certain nationalities just because of their lifestyle and just because they stick together but I can clearly understand where they’re coming from. If I look back at my own country there’s certain issues surrounding the same kind of lifestyle that some ethnic minorities are leading. Leading a lifestyle or doing a lifestyle? See I got a little bit mixed up.

Anyway, you get the drift, right? Certain ethnic minorities don’t really integrate in the Latvian society. They speak their language only and Latvians don’t really like that. And I can definitely tell you guys that you would be thinking the same of some ethnic group who moved over to your country and didn’t want to integrate, didn’t want to learn the local language. You would be against that. So try to put yourself in the native English-speakers’ shoes and see it from the other perspective, right? Try to see the bigger picture. It is bad if you just moved to an English-speaking country and don’t make any effort.

So basically that’s the moral of today’s video that’s the message I wanted to get across to you guys. If you move over to an English-speaking country live there and try to integrate, try and do your utmost to embrace the local culture, learn the language, make friends.

Obviously I’m not saying that everyone will achieve full integration but that’s something that we should aim for instead of just sticking to your own and just keep talking about your native place, your home country which is as a matter of fact what a lot of Latvians do!

They’ve come over but they knock the local traditions, the local culture, everything that’s got to do with Ireland they’re kind of against it. They’re only here for the money, you know? And they keep talking about the day when they will return back home.

I’m totally against that approach. If you will go back home at some stage down the line, so be it, right? Life goes on. You constantly – plans change and that’s just human, right? But while you’re living here you may want to just embrace it. Embrace the fact, take full advantage of the fact that you’re living in a different country, try to settle down, right? And who cares about what happens 10 years down the line? But don’t be living here and just constantly go on about the fact that in 10 years’ time you’ll go back home and you don’t care about what happens in this shithole. You know what I mean? That’s very bad. I’m against it, that’s my personal opinion.

If someone of you guys don’t agree with me, well, guess what? Anyone is entitled to their own opinion for as long as it’s the same as mine, right? Obviously that was just a joke but you get the drift, right?

So I guess that this is enough for today’s video. I would imagine that it’s gone over 10 minutes at this stage. So if you have any questions 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!