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:

Hi guys, hello boys and girls, hello my dear foreign English speakers and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog!

In today’s video I’m going to address the following topic: how to learn English synonyms and antonyms effectively.

And the reason for me recording this video I got asked this question by one of my blog readers and I decided that I have to record this video because I haven’t actually addressed this question in any of my videos or articles over the last 8 years if I’m not mistaken.

So synonyms and antonyms. Let’s address the synonyms first. And I’ve taken a simple word which is CONTROVERSIAL in our case. And I’ve entered it up in a website called thesaurus.com where you can find a large number of synonyms and antonyms for any word imaginable, right? So controversial, and the synonyms as per this website are as follows: contentious, disputed, dubious, questionable, arguable, argumentative and so on and so forth.

So it begs the question how can you learn them all, right?

So first things first, you don’t have to approach the whole thing from this perspective. You don’t have to think that you have to learn a lot of synonyms for every single English word out there.

Because if you start thinking that way, if you go down that road, you are done as an English speaker. And the reason being you’ll get so overwhelmed because of the sheer number of words that you don’t know, it is just going to overwhelm you. And it’ll make you feel as if you’re a useless English student, English learner for that matter.

And here’s a good example. A couple of days ago I was doing some research online for one of my blog articles that I was creating at that time and I came across some word list or something and I realized that when I was looking at the word list I didn’t know more than half of those words. It wasn’t a synonym list but it was some sort of a – I can’t actually remember, right? But it’s irrelevant at this stage.

Suffice it to say that for a first split second I started kind of feeling that way. I felt a bit overwhelmed. I was thinking, hold on, how come that I didn’t – that I don’t know this word or that word.

But obviously me being me and knowing how all these English fluency issues manifest themselves and how to keep my fluency in check, I just dismissed it immediately. I just told myself “Robby, your English is perfect! It’s good enough for you. You don’t need to know those words.”

And that’s the truth guys. You don’t need to know hundreds upon hundreds of synonyms for various English words, right?

All that you need is to know how to use this number of words comfortably in your speech, in your writing and then you build upon it overtime.

You don’t necessarily have to make it your goal to learn like 5 synonyms for each and every single English word you know. It serves no purpose, okay? If you have this idea that you have to enrich your vocabulary and that that’s going to make you into a real intellectual – well, here’s what I’m going to answer to that.

Over time, over the next like couple of decades, provided that you constantly deal with the English language, that you enjoy your life through English, that you get exposed to plenty of English content, films, music, whatnot, read in English, speak in English; your vocabulary will naturally grow. Okay? It’s not if you have to accomplish some life mission now. Right now, within the next couple of months you have to learn hundreds upon hundreds of synonyms. You don’t have to do that. Okay? So make it easier for yourself!

But when it comes to learning a few synonyms and now let’s forget about the whole massive task of building vocabulary consisting of thousands of synonyms, let’s talk about something manageable, learning a couple of words here and there. How to manage it?

Bear this in mind my friends – each synonym normally goes in a different context. So never ever – this is rule number 2 – never ever learn a number of synonyms at the same time. Never write them down just like in this case – don’t write controversial, contentious, dubious or argumentative. Don’t write them in a single line and then learn them all because it will serve no purpose. It will all get mixed up in your brain!

You have to compartmentalize that knowledge. You have to take each individual word and learn it as part of a different context. Because all English words normally go together with other words, forming phrases, word collocations, word groups; the so-called collocations.

So that’s what you’ve got to do. Take the word for instance DUBIOUS and learn in what context it’s used. Do a Google search and see what sentences the word DUBIOUS comes up with.

And then learn how to use that word dubious without associating it with other synonyms. Because just like I said, if you start doing that, your fluency will go down the drain. You know, whenever you start to speak, you’ll be constantly analyzing, trying to choose between those synonyms. You’ll be thinking “Which one should I be using now?”

And that’s not fluent speech! That’s very bad hesitant speech when you get stuck for words. And that’s the kind of issue we want to eradicate, not facilitate, okay?

So only learn each word individually in its relevant context and actually in relation to this I want you to check out this article called “Learn Only One Way of Using New English Vocabulary Words at Any Given Time” which is pretty much the same thing I just told you, right? And there’s a video as well, click on the link.

So don’t learn multiple synonyms at the same time and don’t learn multiple meanings of the same word at once. Okay? Only one meaning, one word at any given time. So that it gets compartmentalized. I struggled with the pronunciation of this word a little bit, right?

There has to be an individual compartment in your brain for each word. And obviously they would go together with other words but you can’t just mix them all up with other synonyms in different meanings. Okay? Because if you start doing that, just like I told you, your fluency will go down to drain definitely.

So that’s the synonym, it’s pretty much covered, right? Don’t try to learn a huge number of them because it will happen over time anyway that you will pick up different words here and there and build your vocabulary quite naturally. And secondly, learn only one word at a time, okay?

And as for antonyms – it’s definitely advisable that you never learn synonyms and antonyms like word pairs, the synonym and the antonym. In this case “controversial” and “certain.” Never learn, never memorize the word pairs because what it’s going to do is it’s going to create the so-called unnatural vocabulary associations in your head. And in this regard I want you to read this article called “3 Ways of Hard-wiring Unnatural English Collocations into Your Brain” Click on that link, read the article.

But how the whole antonym thing ties in with what I’m saying now is it’s also a non-natural word string. If you learn “questionable, arguable, certain, definite” – it’s an unnatural word string. And then when you speak and when you try and pick one of those words, antonyms will start getting mixed up with the synonyms and all that kind of issue will happen, right?

So as for antonyms, you have to make sure that you never learn them grouped with synonyms basically, right? And also take one antonym at a time, one word at a time and learn it within the context, in its relevant context, in a phrase, collocation, you know the drill, right? You’ve been following my blog I would imagine for quite some time now so you’ll know how important these collocations, phrases and English idiomatic expressions in general are, right?

So you don’t really have to be looking at the whole antonym and synonym thing from the synonym and antonym perspective. You just have to perceive each word the way it is. It’s just a new word! That’s all.

And then going from that you’ll learn what context it’s used in. You’ll learn relevant phrases and collocations containing that word but forget about the whole connection between that word and some other word. Okay? Because the more connections you create, the more difficult it’s going to be for you to speak fluently, right? Because the only real connection that you want to learn is how that word acts in a sentence, in a phrase, right?

That’s the only connection you want to build in your brain because when you speak, one word will lead to another word and that’s how fluent speech happens.

But when you learn a word string like “certain, definite, sure, agreeable and then questionable, arguable, dubious, disputed”, you learn those words and then they will all go together in your brain. And that’s not what you want, right? You don’t want to be a struggling English speaker!

So I hope that I’ve made this whole picture clear, that I painted a clear picture which is another English idiomatic expression.

But if you have any further questions about antonyms and synonyms, please don’t hesitate to publish them in the comment section below my friends.

So thanks for watching 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!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Hi guys. Hello boys and girls. Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers. It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! Today I’m going to respond to a particular question that I received from one of my blog readers. And let me read it first and then we’re going to address it. Okay?

So “When I speak in English without translating from my native language…” which is the right way to do it, right? If you translate, you just can’t speak normally. So rule number 1; stop translating!

So “If I speak that way, I face the problem of tenses. Basically I cannot decide immediately which form of the verb should be used and all of that. So please let me know how I can deal with it. If you have any articles posted on your blog and if yes, send me the links or else please let me know of the solution.”

Now, here’s the deal. I have a number of articles that are related to this particular issue. But I’m going to wrap it all up in a single video here, right? Because I haven’t actually created a single article or a video addressing this particular question; how can I decide which tense or which form of the verb I have to use when I speak when I do it on the go basically. How do I decide? Okay?

And here’s an interesting thing my friends. Over the years I’ve actually – I would imagine I’ve covered like all imaginable aspects of the English language and the fluency issues. All aspects imaginable, right? I just made a small mistake. Forgive me for that but that’s what I’m all about. I’m making mistakes just like you guys. I’m a human being. I’m not perfect. Okay?

So what I was going to say is I’ve covered hundreds and hundreds of different things when it comes to English fluency improvement. But there’s always a specific question that I haven’t answered. And that’s how I create these videos. Because when I read the email I realized immediately that this would make the perfect video because I’ve never actually answered this particular question, how do I decide what tense to go with and which form of the word to go with.

So first of all let me just tell you when – obviously you would be familiar with the whole concept of collocations and phraseology and word groups, right?

That’s what our English language is built from, word groups. And we have to learn those word groups that would enable us to speak fluently. We don’t just stick words together. Well, if we have the fluency issues whereby we stick the words together as we speak, we do it but that’s the wrong way.

If you want to speak naturally just like native English speakers do, then you would be using ready-to-go phrases and sentences and word groups. Okay?

So as you go about your phraseology acquisition, first of all what I’m going to tell you is you would be learning word groups that would already contain all the tenses and the correct forms of verbs in them. That is the main point basically. The most important thing to bear in mind. And here’s a typical example.

Conditional sentence type 3, okay? Had I – I would have.

And let me give an example right off the top of my head. Had I not started running all those years ago I would have stayed – I would have remained an overweight man. Okay? But just because I’ve been running now for 8 years in a row – or something like that – I’m maintaining this physique and I’m maintaining a healthy body weight. So had I not been running all these years, I would have remained a fat person basically, right? Let’s call a spade a spade!

And you may think when you look at this particular grammar construct had I – I would have, that’s a very difficult grammar construct. How to wrap your head around it, right? But all you’ve got to do is just memorize it. Had I – I would have. And then when it becomes your second nature, you don’t have to think about when you have to use that tense.

You will automatically know when to use it just because you’ve memorized that particular grammar construct. Okay?

And the same goes with simpler expressions such as “I would have thought.”

It’s a typical expression used when – by the way you can click on these links right here because I’m changing them as I’m going along and basically I’m inserting the relevant links and you can click right on them in the video and it’s going to take you to my blog article and you’ll be able to read it and watch the relevant video and all that.

So I would have thought. Native English speakers use this expression to express the simple fact that they thought that something was the case but it turned out differently, right? So I would have thought that Jimmy was gone on holidays but I saw him at work yesterday. What’s the deal? Why is he back? I would have thought that he was gone on holidays, right?

So once you memorize that phrase “I would have thought”, it contains all the necessary grammar, all the tenses, the verb forms and all that in it. You don’t have to decide anything if you know what I mean!

The decision making is taken out of the equation so to speak. Once you memorize a ready-to-go phrase, it’s all wrapped up in a single package. You just memorize it and use it. And then there’s no decision making!

But here’s the deal, right? Obviously it’s all nice and well but when you speak, when you speak at great lengths, obviously at some stage down the line you will come across the situation when you have to make that decision.

Because obviously you wouldn’t be just using word groups and collocations and phraseology constantly. You will be making sentences as you go along because there’s no possible scenario whereby you can take like a hundred different phrases and create your speech purely out of them without using a single additional word, right? Obviously you would be using those phrases all the time but you would have to join them together to make sentences. Okay?

So how would you decide then which tense to use when the situation demands? Here’s the rule of thumb that I would go by, okay? The present progressive tense. And this is something that I haven’t actually heard anyone else saying.

No English teacher would have told me that and I haven’t actually read it anywhere. But over the years as I’ve been working with my own English and I’ve been creating hundreds of articles and videos for my blog for you guys to enjoy, I’ve realized that the present progressive tense, basically “I’m doing something”, “I’m doing” is the most universal tense so to speak. You can use it to refer to any event happening in the past, in the now and in the future!

And here’s exactly what I’m talking about, right? I’m talking about the present actions; obviously you’re going to be using the present continuous tense, okay? And this is the link you can click on “Can present continuous substitute present simple tense?” right? Because obviously we are all taught that when describing actions that are ongoing at this particular moment in time, we would definitely have to use the present progressive tense.

But what about general activities that you engage in on a regular basis? They teach you that you have to use the preset simple – basically I work in such and such company, I go to work every day by bus blah-blah-blah.

So all those actions have to be described using present simple tense and only that tense, right? But here’s the deal.

Conversationally people use present progressive interchangeably with the present simple tense!

And just like is said, click on this link. Read the article. Read it once, read it two times till it registers and then you’ll realize what I’m talking about, right?

Basically I can easily say “I’m always driving to the college on the motorway. I’m always taking the motorway because it’s easier.”

I just used the present progressive tense. I didn’t say “I always take the motorway| even though I could have said it. But just because I chose to use the present progressive doesn’t make it incorrect!

So here’s a typical example how the present progressive works in both situations, whenever you’re referring to typical actions or actions that are on-going at this particular moment in time.

Speaking of past events you may want to read this article “English Conversational Past Tense”, right? Conversationally when people talk about past events, they oftentimes kind of imagine themselves in that event and they kind of bring all those memories back and they talk about them as if they’re going on at this moment in time.

So the past becomes the present and obviously you can use the present progressive tense to refer to past events. Okay?

And just like I said, read the article, listen to the video, watch it and it’ll all make sense.

And speaking of the future – where is the article? Yeah. This is the article. “Forget about Will Future Tense, Use Present Progressive Instead”. Basically this is one of the biggest mistakes made by you guys, you’d be using the WILL future, basically “I will do it” all the time when referring to future events.

But more often than that, native English speakers wouldn’t be actually using the WILL tense. They would be saying either “going to do something”, right? I’m going to do it. I’m going to go shopping today, right? Or “I’m going” which is more about events that you planned.

But you don’t necessarily have to analyze the whole thing and think about “hold on, is that an event I planned or is it something I didn’t really plan but I’m going to do it anyway?”

You can just stick with the rule of thumb of using present progressive. Okay?

I’m going shopping tonight. Tonight we’re going to the movies. Tonight we’re getting takeout and eating burgers and tacos, right?

So whenever you’re in doubt, stick with the present progressive. And this was the second point I was trying to make. The first one was – learn ready-to-go English speech patterns, collocations, phraseology and all that and they will already contain all the necessary grammar in it. You won’t have to conjugate anything!

And then when it comes to these decisions as to which tense to use as you join sentences together and as you talk about things that you wouldn’t be normally talking about then there would be less phraseology to use in those types of conversations, just go with the present progressive. I’m struggling to pronounce the name of the tense for some reason, right? Present progressive or present continuous. Different sources refer to the same tense differently, right? But it’s the same thing.

So use that one as your basic tense. Okay? And you won’t go wrong with it. All right? So that would be laying the ground rules so to speak.

And then there’s a few more. Yeah. You can read this article “3 Basic Grammar Rules Necessary for Fluent English” Okay? So the first one is how to use the past perfect “I had done it” basically, when talking about events that happened before a specific timeline. Then you use the past perfect. Okay?

And the second rule is the first conditional. If I do it, I will. A lot of foreigners would make the mistake of saying “If I will do it, something else will happen” but it’s wrong. Whenever you use words such as IF and WHEN, you have to use the simple present tense in that clause and then followed by a WILL future, right? That’s the second rule.

And the third one was – oh yeah – future tense! The same thing I already told you about, right? Basically you don’t have to use the WILL future tense which is way overused among us foreigners.

You just have to go with the present progressive. I’m doing it or “going to” future which conversationally becomes GONNA. I’m gonna do it, right? And that’s actually what people use in conversations on the street all the time. “I’m gonna” would be even more used than the present progressive, right? But just like I said if you use present progressive as your basic tense, you won’t go wrong with it. Okay?

So I hope that this is helpful to you. Thanks for asking the question.

Now, obviously if you have any further questions you are welcome to post them in the comments section below my friends.

Thanks for watching, 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!

This one may come as a shock to you, my friends, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes those terrible problems we experience with our English fluency are our own making.

Yes, you heard me right – we create a lot of our fluency issues for ourselves, and there’s no-one else to blame for it but us!

Sure enough, we’re not even aware of the fact that we’re contributing to our inability to speak fluent English, but the good news is that it is relative easy to get our fluency back on track if you know the right techniques and methods, and that’s exactly what today’s video is all about.

So don’t despair, watch the video and you may just learn the right approach to fix your fluency issues on 5 occasions out of 10!

Chat soon,

Robby

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 my dear fellow foreign English speakers!

It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog.

Here’s the thing my friends – I’ve been struggling with my English fluency for the last couple of days and what I wanted to tell you is despite the fact that is happens I don’t regret it.

I don’t really wish to have been a completely fluent English speaker at all times. And guess why?

It’s quite simple.

If I didn’t have these fluency issues I wouldn’t have created the blog EnglishHarmony.com in the first place, right?

So I wouldn’t be able to help you guys! I wouldn’t be in a position to create all these blog articles and videos and whatnot and helping thousands and millions probably of other foreign English speakers worldwide. So basically if not for my fluency issues, none of this would have happened!

And here’s the deal. When I don’t experience any fluency issues for a number of days, say for a week or two, I kind of stop being motivated to create content for my blog. Because everything is fine and dandy, there’s no issues in terms of my English fluency so there’s not much I can say about it, right?

And eventually I run out of ideas to write articles about and make videos about. And as soon as I start having some fluency issues again, that’s when I have a lot to say. Because when I’m trying to come up with different strategies and methods to overcome my fluency issues, that’s when I can actually share them with you and help you guys to overcome your own fluency issues, right?

So in a weird, twisted way I don’t really – on the one hand I don’t wish that I was fluency issue-free. But obviously on the other hand it would be nice not to have any fluency issues like at all. Because that would actually save me some of the – some of my nerves basically because whether you want it or not but you do get stressed out a little bit at least every time you experience those fluency issues.

And despite the fact that I’m advising you guys not to take it personally, don’t let it get under your skin, just accept it and rest assured in the knowledge that your fluency is going to get back to normal at some stage in the near future, despite all that it’s easier said than done.

And sometimes it really gets you down and I won’t deny that it’s happening to me as well. You know, I’m only human. Despite the fact that I’m trying to embrace everything that I preach, I’m still human and I’m not successful at all times, you know? I’m probably successful 7 or 8 times out of 10 but as for the other 1 or 2 times out of 10 – I am suffering a bit.

So from that perspective, yes, I would have wanted to be a complete – completely fluent at all times. But that’s what it is, it is what it is basically. And I’m still experiencing these fluency issues and that’s what makes me human. And that’s what drives me to create more content for you guys to enjoy. And yeah, that’s about it!

There’s one more thing I wanted to mention. There’s this article I created a couple of years ago called “7 reasons why having been born a foreigner is one of the best things that ever happened to you”. And in this article – you may want to click on the link right here and it’s going to take you to my blog, to the respective article, right?

In this article I’m looking at all the reasons why you shouldn’t actually regret having been born a foreigner, right? Because sometimes just like me, I’m pretty sure that you probably have also wished “What if I could have been a native English speaker? Then I wouldn’t be having all these issues, right?”

So read this article in case you’re having a down moment right now and it’s guaranteed to set you back on the right track and lift your spirits. Okay?

So thanks for watching this video my friends. If you have any comments or questions, please 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!

Now, did it convince you guys that speaking with yourself really IS a very, very powerful technique in your array of tools when working on your English fluency?

I bet it did!

Chat soon,

Robby

Video Transcript Below:

Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to my Fluency Gym which is the only gym in the world where you work out your fluency, your mouth basically, instead of your muscles!

But in case you’re new to this whole Fluency Gym thing and you’ve never heard me talk about it before, I want you to read this article first where I’m talking about the fact that your mouth is just another muscle of yours.

Therefore your ability to speak is a very, very practical skill. It’s all about your ability to move your mouth in a certain way and produce sounds in a certain sequence for the English word combinations, sentences which results in a very fluent speech.

You see, the traditional approach is that your speech is kind of happens in your brain, that you think first, you analyse, you string a sentence together and then you kind of speak but it’s not like that. It’s more got to do with the way language is actually wired in your mouth.

Obviously there is a very strong mind and mouth connection but your mouth is basically the most important part. That’s what I strongly believe in and that’s the kind of attitude that has helped me to achieve a very decent level of fluency myself, right?

And what I wanted to talk about today is the fact that just like your body, your fluency changes, right? And you may have not noticed that before but your body changes.

Your body in the morning is not the same as your body in the evening because the water content in your body changes over the course of the day, you know. So when you look in the mirror in the morning, you may look a bit different.

And as a matter of fact, even your weight fluctuates during the day. So there’s a whole lot of factors impacting your weight, your body composition and everything.

And your fluency is no different. It changes during the day. You may get up in the morning not being able to speak very well and then come the afternoon, you can speak very fluently all of a sudden and then it may change towards the afternoon again.

And then come the evening you may struggle a bit and then you may find come night time that you can speak fluently again, you know. And it’s totally natural.

So why I’m saying all this is in case you’re wondering why it’s happening and that it’s not really normal,  I’m saying it is normal!

It is very normal because that is the very nature of any human being, of any living creature for that matter because everything constantly changes, nothing is static. Your physical performance changes overtime. And I’ve spoken about that before but this is something that I never touched upon before in my videos. And I actually thought that this is a very interesting concept.

And what let me to realize this is because I’m working out.

You may not know that but I go to the gym quite frequently and obviously when I look at myself sometimes even during the same day, your body changes and it’s obvious.

You look in the mirror in the morning and you may be quite well, let’s see what way would I put it? A bit skinny. And then during the workout obviously your muscles they get bigger and then come the afternoon, your body has more water content in it and it again looks a bit different.

So I thought that this is a very good way of explaining to you guys why your fluency fluctuates. It does so because it’s part of you, right?

Just like your body represents who you are obviously because that is you. Your fluency and your physical performance they’re very correlated. They’re very interlinked. And everything that’s got to do with living being such as us humans is changing overtime. There is no such thing as a static performance; over time everything changes!

So it’s a very natural thing but obviously it’s no reason to give up on your fluency improving efforts. You’ve got to be pushing yourself hard. You’ve got to be constantly trying to improve your fluency. And obviously one of the better ways of doing that is to constantly speak with yourself, do the so called spoken English self-practice which I personally do on a daily basis the whole day from the moment I get up in the morning till the moment I hit the sack and I go to sleep at night, right?

So if you haven’t checked out the Fluency Gym program yet, I really, really suggest you do because it’s a very great way of getting yourself motivated and regaining that so much needed confidence that you may have lost.

If you really don’t believe in yourself as a foreign English speaker and you think that your fluency just sucks and that your English is no good, you definitely may want to check it out because it’s stuffed full with motivational videos. And there’s an action plan that you can follow and it’s going to set you on the right track to your English fluency, right?

So check it out HERE and if you have any questions obviously you can post them in the comment section below my friends!

Thanks and I’ll chat to you soon, bye-bye!

Robby

In today’s video we’re going to look at the following expression:

OUT OF THE QUESTION

This expression is typically used when you want to say that something is totally impossible, that you can’t do it, or that some other person can’t do something.

And here’s an example:

“Robby, we’re going out tonight, are you coming with us?” – “Sorry guys, but I have to hand in the assignment tomorrow, so I’m staying in and doing some serious writing!” – “Common Robby, just come with us for an hour or so!” – “Guys, seriously, it’s OUT OF THE QUESTION so just drop it.”

But now watch the video above to see me use this English idiomatic expression in a number of different scenarios, and don’t forget to do some spoken English practice with yourself by incorporating this phrase in your speech!

Chat soon,

Robby

Video Transcript Below:

Hi guys, hello boys and girls, hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers!

It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog. Let’s talk about the subject of spoken English self-practice again for the millionth time.

But in case you’re thinking “Robby, come on, you’ve been talking about it in every single video for the last couple of months.” Hold on a second, just bear with me for a moment and you’ll realize that today I’m going to reveal a certain aspect of the whole spoken English self-practice thing that hasn’t been talked about before.

And to be honest with you guys, I didn’t even realize that it existed up until today, when I happened to receive an email from one of my blog readers. And I actually sent him an email a couple of days before that, telling him that spoken English practice, basically speaking is the only way that’s going to develop his fluency, his ability to speak for that matter.

And I didn’t explicitly mention in the email that speaking with himself is one of the options. I only spoke about speaking in general terms and then I went on to give him a few tips and tricks on how to approach the whole speaking thing but I never explicitly mentioned that if you don’t have anyone else to talk to, you can do self-practice in the comfort of your own home. Okay?

Next thing I know that person responds by saying “Listen Robby, it’s not going to work. I can’t, I can’t heed to your advice because I can’t speak. There’s no one for me to speak with!”

And only then I realized – it was some sort of a light bulb moment, I realized that for some people speaking is only associated with communication with other people, right?

And when you think about it, it actually makes an awful lot of sense because when you grow up as a human being, when you develop from the stage of infancy and then you start pronouncing the first words, repeating what you hear around you and then you start speaking with your parents and friends and all that, you don’t probably even think about speaking with yourself because you only speak with other people. That’s the most natural thing.

And then at some stage in your life when you start learning the second language, if it happens so that you learn it by way of speaking – the natural way. If you live in a bilingual country for instance, just like I did, in my country they speak Latvian and Russian, so I learned Russian by way of speaking.

I can’t actually remember when I learned the Russian language; I just kind of know that I always spoke it. But it’s because I was playing with Russian kids as a little kid myself, so I just learned it the natural way.

But if you start learning the second or the third language in school, in the traditional language teaching setting where you only do textbook exercises, filling gaps in the different exercises and read a lot and listen, you don’t – nobody tells you that you can practice your speech with yourself, right? You only assume that you can do the very same thing you’ve done in your native language, maybe in your second language – speak with others, okay?

And just because there’s no opportunities to speak with others when it comes down to the English language, you’re lost. You don’t even realize, there’s no concept of self-practice because you just never knew that it existed.

So it can’t even cross your mind. It can’t occur to you. And this is something that I didn’t even think about because for me personally, the whole concept of spoken English self-practice has become second nature.

And it’s been like that for long, long years now and I can’t actually imagine myself without it, you know. And just because I’ve been communicating about the whole thing from my videos for years on end now, I assume that everyone who I come in contact with will quite automatically realize what I’m talking about.

But the fact of the matter is that most people out there who haven’t heard about the concept of spoken English self-practice, even if you tell them that you’ve got to speak which I thought was just enough information to make them realize that they can speak with themselves, even then they don’t realize it! You have to explicitly tell them!And when you tell them that, most people are shocked because the whole concept seems something weird, something strange.

And I want you to read an article that I published a year ago. You can click on the link right here and it’s called “Why it’s so hard to realize you have to speak in order to speak?” Right?

And back then and up until now obviously I thought that this is the only issue that for most of us it’s difficult to realize that you have to speak in order to develop your fluency because of the bad job that the traditional English teaching study has done to us, right?

We’ve been brainwashed and now we believe that we can read, write, listen and that way become fluent English speakers, right? So that’s why it’s so hard to realize that you’ve got to speak.

But here’s the thing that I’m talking about today. Here’s a whole new issue. Basically, even if you convince a person that they have to speak, it requires an additional effort to make them understand that they can speak with themselves and that there’s so many advantages to do spoken English self-practice such as zero stress levels and you can make as many mistakes as you want and you can record your speech on a camcorder, go back and self-correct and all those sort of things. So there’s a million advantages and no disadvantages at all, right?

So that’s the message I wanted to send to you guys. In case you happened to be that person who didn’t realize up until now that you can speak with yourself, please start doing that on a daily basis. And if you know some other people who would benefit from this advice, don’t hesitate to tell them that. Tell them Robby told you to speak with yourself and that’s the only way to improve your English fluency if you don’t have any opportunities to speak with other people, right?

So I hope that what I was trying to communicate with you guys makes an awful lot of sense!

So obviously, if you have any questions or comments of any nature – preferably something that’s got to do with spoken English improvement – post them I the comment section below.

Chat to you soon 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!

Hi Guys!

How about getting out of your comfort zone and practice your English by calling people you don’t know?

Does that sound scary?

Well – it is! But that’s the thing about real life conversations – they’re always a little bit scary because there’s always a certain amount of stress involved.

And where there’s stress, there’s always the chance you’ll be making some mistakes, start hesitating a bit or maybe you’ll even forget a very simple word in the middle of the conversation.

But it’s alright because guess what?

If you do it by calling random companies, you’ll be speaking with PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW so you shouldn’t care of what they think of your English

They may think you’re the worst English speaker out there, but who cares?

The moment you drop the phone, that person is gone from your life!

So, watch this video where I’m showing you how I contact some random company and speak with their sales agent. You may notice that I’m slightly stressed out when speaking and I’m making a few small mistakes here and there, but it’s all part of the game!

You can’t expect to speak fluently with real people in real life if you don’t PRACTICE this skill, and calling some random companies and making inquiries is one of the best ways of doing it!

Related articles:

Robby

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

Video Script Below:

Hi guys! It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! In today’s video we’re going to talk about job seeking and I chose this particular subject because I received an email off of one of my blog readers where he talks about his struggles with job interviews.

And it happens so that I’m actually looking for a job at the moment, right? I attended an IT course for 9 months straight. Now I’m a fully qualified PC technician and I’m trying to kick start my career in IT as a matter of fact.

So now I’m firing off a number of job applications every day and my goal is to attend as many job interviews as possible to find the perfect job. And basically this email is also very good because the person in question has described all the typical fluency issues that most of our foreign English speaking counterparts experience all over the world.

And it ties in with the whole job seeking aspect. And I have to tell you that most of my blog readers are interested in finding a better job or get the so much wanted promotion in their current job. And obviously by improving spoken English skills that would – that dream would come true, right? So it’s very relevant to all of you guys, right?

Now, let me read the email and I’m going to comment on each section as I see fit. So basically he’s saying that prior to looking for a job there weren’t many situations in his life when he had to communicate in English, only a few occasions and somehow he managed it. And that’s the way it was in my life pretty much, right? I thought that my English skills were decent and those relatively few chats that I had with some random English speaking people went kind of okay. So I thought that my spoken English fluency was just great, right?

And then he says “For the first time I went to an interview after getting my degree.” So after graduating from the university, this person goes for a job interview, for a job in a call center, right? That’s something that I’m very familiar with. I worked in two different call centers previously. “And I was so embarrassed that I wasn’t fluent in English and got rejected. The question was simply “Tell me something about yourself.” but I was afraid to speak and I replied in a few broken sentences with grammatical errors in it…

And this is so typical. I was pretty much the same, okay? And more interestingly, he writes that “Normally I don’t make many grammatical errors in writing but when I’m speaking, words don’t even come out of my mouth.” That’s typical as well, right? “And I find some others who are all attending interviews with me they’re bad in grammar but they’re confident in talking.” And then he goes on to say that if he was asked to write the answer, he would have written a page at least but when it comes to speaking he can’t talk.

So the answer is first of all, why is it happening? It’s all because obviously you’ve been learning the English language primarily based on textbook studies, writing, reading, all that kind of stuff. So it’s all basically passive. Well, writing isn’t really passive but you know what I mean. It doesn’t involve speaking, right?

So your speech is simply not developed. And it’s totally natural. It’s not a mental issue or anything like that. You’ve developed your writing to a good level which your e-mail clearly displays. Your writing is brilliant, right? But just because you can write doesn’t mean you can speak. They are two different aspects of the same larger thing which is the English language skills. You can write but if you haven’t done much speaking, it’s only natural that you can’t speak.

You don’t have to be thinking, what’s wrong with me? Why can I write and why can’t I speak? The answer is simple.

Because they’re two different skillsets!

Writing is your ability to construct sentences in your head, string the words together and put them down on paper, right? Or when you’re typing on the screen of a computer for that matter.

But when you speak it’s a completely different process. Your English speech patterns have to be wired in your head, in your mouth. And you have to be able to speak without much thinking. It’s completely different from writing. And it’s only natural that you lack in that department if you haven’t done much practice, right? And the only key to that is to do a lot of spoken English practice. And then you’ll get better at it, right?

And yeah, so what else is he saying in the email? Now, he basically wants to get a job within a month and he asks whether I can give some advice. So here’s what you have to do. And listen up, everyone who is looking for a job right now and wants to nail the job interview; the key to doing a successful job interview is preparation.

Basically, what you’ve got to do is you have to come up with a list of questions, right? You can do a Google search. There’s hundreds of websites that will give you the typical questions asked during a job interview. You have to write them down. Say 20 to 30 questions. And then you have to write down your answers, okay?

But you have to write as if you were speaking. You don’t have to write in a very formal matter but just provide an answer, right? The normal kind of conversational type of answer. And here’s a resource that will come in handy. Click on this link that will take you to my blog where you can find 45 must-know phrases to land a job. And there are very, very useful collocations and word combinations and phrases to be used during a job interview, right?

So use these phrases to answer those questions and then do spoken English practicing whereby you pose as the interviewer and the interviewee in the same person. Ideally get it recorded on a camcorder, just the way I do my recording right now. Position a camcorder in front of you and then you kind of read out the question and then you pretend that you’re actually attending the actual interview and that the interviewer sits in front of you and then provide an answer.

First, when you do the first repetition, you will be looking at the sheet from time to time but make sure that you learn those specific collocations, specific phrases, right? Actually, you have to memorize them beforehand, that’s the first step. You have to memorize all those phrases that you took from the list, from the link that I just gave you. And obviously you can do some research on top of that and anything that is worth memorizing, very specific phrases, word combinations, memorize them first.

And then do the first round of the interview. Provide your answer but obviously you’re not going to memorize the whole lot. You just provide an answer and have a quick peek on the sheet to make sure that you’re on the right track and then do it once, do it 2 times, 3 times, 4 times. Do it a 100 times.

Do it – you don’t care about how many times you do it but you have to get it right. You do it for days, for weeks, right? You have to do it constantly because obviously you’ll be attending a number of interviews. And you have to be completely comfortable with providing those types of answers. You have to be able to provide them without any thinking whatsoever.

So that when you walk into the real interview, obviously the stress levels are going to be very high and you’re going to be making a few mistakes here and there but at least speech automation is going to be there. All those long hours you would have spent with yourself recording the speech on a camcorder and then coming back obviously you’d be reviewing to see what needs to be improved and all those sort of things.

All that will insure that no matter the stress levels, you will still deliver a fairly decent interview speech because just like I said the automation is going to be there in place. All those speech patterns are going to be wired in your head. And obviously you’re going to make a few mistakes here and there but it’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on the process, on the speech, focus on delivering what you’ve already been talking about with yourself in comfort of your own room hundreds of times before.

Preparation is the key. It actually doesn’t matter whether it’s English or some other language, even your native language. If you go for an interview, for the very first time without any preparation whatsoever, you may as well fail being a native speaker of that language.

So it doesn’t really matter that it’s the second language or a third for that matter, you have to do preparation. It’s the key. And that is the best answer that anyone could ever possibly give to you. So you better bear that in mind and start doing the preparation right now. Just like I said, click on this link, take all these industry specific collocations and phrases and use them when creating the answers for your job interview questions. Okay?

So if you have any questions and comments, you’re welcome to publish them in the comment section below. I’ll chat to you soon my friends 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!