English Armony Podcast 52a2e

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! Hi boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. I welcome you to this video on this nice Sunday afternoon. However, let me draw your attention to the fact that it might not be a Sunday that this video is published on YouTube, simply because I tend to record a bunch of videos and then I publish them as I see fit, basically, right? And, if you notice that I used this phrase that we’re going to be talking about today, “let me draw your attention to the fact”… I used it, previously, a couple of seconds ago there. And that was pretty much the first example scenario, how would you use it, right? It’s simply to draw somebody’s attention to a specific fact, right? And also, let me draw your attention to the fact that this phrase is somewhat more professional, formal, if you know what I mean. You wouldn’t be, probably, using this phrase when chatting with your friends in a very, very informal setting, you know? You might use it, it won’t hurt, you know? But, it’s just that it’s probably, typically used in a professional environment. Imagine giving a presentation, or giving a speech, and that’s when you would use this phrase. But if you want to hear more example scenarios when this phrase is used, please bear with me for a few more moments and you will hear more from me, right? Hi guys and welcome back! But before we continue with looking at this phrase, “let me draw your attention to the fact”, how to use it, what kind of situations you would be using it in, let me just have a quick sip of my Sunday afternoon coffee. Cheers, my friends! And, let me draw your attention to the fact that this is only the second cup. Well, as a matter of fact, it’s not a cup, you know? Because cups tend to be of smaller sizes. This is a massive jug, you know? For all intents and purposes, this is almost like a pint jug that you drink Guinness, you know? So, yeah, let me draw your attention to the fact that is only the second one, because, why I’m saying only, the simple fact of the matter is lately I’ve been kind of stressed out, you know? There’s been a lot going on in my life and I started drinking coffee in ever increasing amounts. And lo and behold, I started developing a slight headache, you know? And it’s been troubling me for the last couple of days. And that’s human nature, you know? That’s human nature. You don’t change your behavior unless something starts troubling you, you know? So I cut down on the amount of coffee that I’m consuming. This is the second day, if I’m not mistaken, and I’m feeling much better, gotta tell you. So my resolution is, when I go back to work tomorrow, I will only have two cups max, you know? Two cups max. But now I’m enjoying it. And let me draw your attention to the fact that I added some chocolate almond milk to it. And it tastes just, just wonderful, you know? You may want to try it yourself, right? Anyway, going back to the fact that I mentioned previously there, that you would be using this phrase, “let me draw your attention to the fact”, more in formal settings, I want you to click on this link here, right? And it’s going to take you to my blog, where I’ve published a number of phrases that are very useful when giving a presentation, right? And this phrase, let me draw your attention to the fact, is actually listed there, it’s one of those phrases, and I gotta tell you that they are very, very useful. Basically, the whole principle is you just memorize such and similar sentences and then, when you have to give a presentation, it’s so much easier to do it, you know? And you can actually use several phrases throughout the presentation, thus making yourself sound smarter, giving more substance to your speech, you know? And at the end, you just end up killing the whole event, you know? And I gotta tell you that I’ve been trying it out in real life myself, and it works like charm. This whole concept of learning a number of phrases and then using them throughout the conversation, you know? Not the conversation, but the presentation. So just like I said, check out that link and let me draw your attention to the fact that all these presentation phrases have been actually used by real professionals. When I was coaching my own students, there was one student that I in particular and I prepped him for professional presentations, conferences to be more specific. And he improved big time. Largely due to the fact that he was simply memorizing these sentences and then he delighted me with great, positive , saying that it helped him big time, you know? So going from unable to say the right thing to complete speech automation, just like that, just because you memorized these phrases, right? So let me draw your attention to the fact once more, that success that comes with one’s improvement can be largely attributed to memorization, repetition and practice. So practice your spoken English on your own. You don’t necessarily have to find a speech, like a conversation partner, or whatever, you can do it in comfort in your own house, in your own room, just like I do right now. Just talk, talk, talk and there’s an important presentation coming up, learn, basically write a script and obviously, you wouldn’t be memorizing the whole script off by heart, but you would be inserting these phrases every so often throughout the whole script, you know? And they would kind of separate the whole script into chunks, into paragraphs, you know? Main bullet points, so to speak, and then when you start each of those points, you would be able to produce that starting phrase, you know, let me draw your attention to the fact, which is the phrase that we’re focusing on today, right? You’ll be able to produce it just like that, totally automatically, you know? Without any thinking whatsoever, you know? So, that’s about it for today, my friends. If you have any questions, obviously, please feel free to post them in the comments section below and talk to you soon again. Bye-bye! 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! Last night I received an e-mail from one of my blog subscribers asking me how to break through the fluency plateau. Basically the nature of the problem that the person in question has encountered is that they feel that the English fluency improvement has all but stopped and they’re just not progressing. Time is ing by, but it just feels that you’re spinning your wheels getting nowhere in of how well you can speak in English… Sounds familiar? Well, to be honest with you guys, this is nothing new to us – being the English fluency improvement blog that English Harmony is, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that I’ve discussed all such and similar issues before: How to deal with English fluency fluctuations; Why such sudden drops in fluency occur; How to manage your fluency and speak fairly fluently at all times; I have to it though, that I haven’t touched upon this issue from this particular angle so far – namely, how to break through such a PLATEAU-LIKE STATE. So, I just recorded a video addressing this question, hope you’re going to enjoy it! 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! Hello my fellow foreign English speakers! The other day one of my YouTube followers asked me a question about my pronunciation and accent, here it is: Hi Robby, once again I’ve watched one of your first videos and compared to this one. The progress is amazing! But I want to ask you something – in your first videos you speak in a kind of casual, relaxed way but yes, your accent was much more significant. Though it didn’t affect the clarity of your speech. Now you have moderated you speech and some people may take you for a native speaker. But I bet this current way of speaking requires more energy and self-control so you don’t slip back into your native accent. Please, let me know if that is the case! Now, it’s a very good question, so I guessed it definitely deserved a video response from me. Watch it above and enjoy my friends! 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! Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. And today I’m going to respond to an email that was sent in to me 19 hours ago at this stage and I think that this particular email merits my video response because it kind of highlights a general issue that happens in the larger foreign English speakers’ community, right? So I’m not going to be reading the whole email word by word but I’m just going to kind of summarize the email in a few sentences. So basically this particular blog follower of mine says that he was one of the best in the class in of English literature when he was in high school and then he says “which evidently means that I should be able to write and speak the language.” But in his case he could write. It’s the typical English fluency issue whereby you can write, you can understand, you can read but you cannot speak. And then he attributes certain percentages. So basically he says that he would be able to write at 80% in of efficiency or whatever and speaking would be only 20%, lagging behind big time, right? And the particular thing that I want to focus on in this video is, “which evidently means” so it kind of even goes without saying that once you are good at writing and reading and the literature lessons or whatever, it means that you should be able to speak full stop. There’s no further discussion. There’s no debates. No further investigation required so to speak, right? Why We Automatically Assume That Good Reading & Writing Skills = Good Speaking Skills? So why is it that we just automatically assume? It’s because the traditional English teaching methodology has created this myth because English is perceived as one big subject. So this myth has been perpetuated over decades and even centuries and so we just blindly believed, without even questioning, we just believed that once we are good at reading and writing and understanding that we should be automatically good speakers and if that’s not the case then there’s something wrong with us. And this particular person finds a problem with himself further down the email, right? He says that he thinks that his biggest issue is the fear of making mistakes and that’s why he can’t speak. Well, obviously that’s also a symptom of the typical English fluency issue but that’s not the reason, it’s just the symptom. You see? The reason, in a typical English class, in a typical literature class or whatever you do a lot of reading, writing, listening, all that kind of stuff but you don’t practice your speech. You don’t speak a lot and that’s the whole point. There are so many aspects of the English language and they should have been divided into different classes, right? So when you go and learn English literature you read and write or whatever and then there should be a specifically dedicated class to practicing spoken English. And then if that were the case then you would clearly see that. Okay, I’m lagging behind in my spoken department but it’s all because I haven’t been doing enough practice in the spoken English class or whatever. Then you would clearly see the division between the different aspects of the English language. But if it’s all bundled up in one big English lesson, we cannot distinguish the different aspects of the English language. And as a matter of fact, I’ve been going on about this thing again and again and again but I had to revisit it because people have been ing me on a regular basis and this particular email I think was a very good representation because the person said that it evidently means that I should be able to write and speak. And it’s kind of ironic because there is no evidence but we are just led to believe that yes, it should be happening. But it’s not the case. Just because you can read and write, there is no correlation between your reading and writing skills and your spoken English ability. Maybe some remote, remote correlation. Obviously if you cannot understand and read and write at all obviously you’re not going to be able to speak and vice versa. If you are very good at reading and writing you would be able to say something, right? It’s not as if you won’t be able to say anything at all. So there is obviously a relationship between those aspects of the English language but the whole point is that – the bottom line basically is that you develop specific aspects of the English language and you are what you do. – You Are What You Do! If you are an English reader and that’s all you do you become fluent at reading. If you speak a lot and practice your spoken English, then you become a very good speaker. You become a fluent speaker. If you write a lot and spend a lot of time writing then you become a very, very good English writer. Those are the different distinct aspects of the English language. So hopefully this video is going to clear that up for you my friend. And yeah, basically on the finishing note let me tell you that the fear of making mistakes is not the reason you are unable to speak fluently. It’s a manifestation if the fluency issue if you will. It’s one of the symptoms but the true reason is you haven’t been practicing your spoken English. If there’s enough practice behind you, no fear will stand in the way of your success. Yes, it will hamper your performance somewhat but provided that you’ve been doing a lot of practicing and preparing for a specific event for example, no amount of fear is going to render your spoken English facilities totally unusable so to speak. So thanks for watching my friends and chat to you soon again. 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 hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers. That’s me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog. And this is going to be one of those question and answer sessions whereby I’m answering to emails that my blog visitors have emailed me obviously. Reader’s Question: I’m Fluent, but Not Fluent Enough! What to Do? So the first email is about a particular problem faced by this person and he described the problem the following way. So he can have conversations with anyone and he can understand and reply but he is not as fluent as he would like to be. And in his own words “I’m not able to use a lot of vocabulary because it’s very difficult for me to memorize words, therefore my written skill is also very bad. I commit a lot of mistakes in spelling when I write something.” So he basically requests me to give some advice. So first things first, it’s of the utmost importance not to perceive all aspects of the English improvement at a same time. So you’re saying that you are not as fluent, meaning you can’t speak as fluently as you would like to and then you kind of make the connection between that and your written skill, right? So you’re saying that therefore my written skill is also very bad, right? So I’ve got to let you know that there is no direct correlation between your overall fluency and your written fluency. Obviously, obviously, if you can’t speak at all for instance chances are that your written fluency is also going to be very bad and vice versa. But what I’m trying to say is that there’s a lot of people who can speak no problem while at the same time they struggle with writing and quite the opposite which is actually the most typical case scenario. A lot of foreigners are very good at writing – I was going to say at speaking but that’s wrong, at writing – just because the traditional English teaching methodology revolves around writing, you know? Grammar, writing, all that kind of stuff and speech is neglected. So typically you would be able to write much better than you would speak. But your situation is – your fluency is somewhat lagging behind and your writing skills are also not the way you’d want them to be so you’re kind of making the connection “therefore my writing skills are also bad and I make a lot of mistakes in spelling.” You have to first of all perceive each area separately, right? When you’re talking about your overall fluency skills, focus on speaking only. When it comes to writing, that’s when writing practice comes into the equation, you know? In order to be good at writing you’ve got to do a lot of writing practice. To be good at speaking you’ve got to speak a lot, okay? And when it comes to vocabulary, when you write it’s most likely that your ive vocabulary is going to manifest itself in the process, okay? Whereas when you speak, that’s when you would use your active vocabulary, okay? Because speaking is normally associated with being able to improvise, being able to say something without much thinking. Whereas when you write you can tap into your ive vocabulary, choose better words and stuff like that, you know what I mean? But yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say basically. First of all, perceive each area of your English improvement separately on its own and work on it separately. Obviously one can follow another, you can do some writing and then you can talk about it. You know, you can exercise your speech even as you write. And that’s actually the best case scenario. You write as if you were speaking and that’s how I learned to write and I realized that that’s the best way to write and I’ve been giving this advice to my followers on my blog for years and people find that technique really, really useful and helpful. So basically focus on each area. Don’t fall for the trap of thinking that if you somehow magically improve your general vocabulary skills then you’ll be able to speak better and write better. There is no such thing as general skills, it is what you do. If you require certain vocabulary while speaking you’re going to be able to use that vocabulary when speaking and also writing, but predominantly speaking. If you acquire certain vocabulary while writing – okay, maybe you read something and then you write about it and you use the same vocabulary, chances are that that word is going to be committed to your ive vocabulary meaning that you may not be able to use it when speaking. But the fact of the matter is that you’ve got to be practicing. There’s no two ways about it. You cannot just expect somehow magically absorb some knowledge and then use it, you’ve got to be practicing. When it comes to fluency you’ve got to speak a lot. When it comes to writing you’ve got to write a lot. And when it comes to vocabulary building you’ve got to do it contextually, you know. Phraseology, word combinations; contextual learning is the key here. And you may want to click on this link to check it out and see how easy it actually is to acquire new vocabulary words as part of context. Contextual learning is the king. So that pretty much answers this question. I’m moving onto the next one. I’m not going to bore you my friends for too long; I’m not going to make this into a half an hour long video. This is the second email and we’ll call it a day after that. Reader’s Question: How Come I’m Confident on My Own but Not When Facing Others? So this person expresses the following problem, right? When he is on his own he feels like he can achieve anything and he is super, super confident and I can totally relate with that. Oftentimes when I’m considering a specific problem and I imagine how I would go about it in real life I feel on top of the world. I’m feeling super confident but then what he says is that whenever he’s dealing with real people, face-to-face interaction his confidence get shattered. And he says that other people’s presence affects him and basically how to deal with it. It’s not actually something that unique. I would imagine that everybody, the most confident person in the world gets ever so slightly affected by other people’s presence. It’s only normal that you would behave slightly differently in front of other people compared to the way you’d be behaving just when you’re on your own. Even now when I’m talking to you I’m kind of on my own but I know for a fact that this video is going to get published on my YouTube channel so therefore there’s this expectation, there’s this kind of feeling as if someone’s watching me a little bit so I do behave slightly differently. When I speak completely on my own, when I don’t even use the camcorder I would imagine I’m even more confident because there’s no restrictions whatsoever. So it’s completely normal to feel somewhat different. But it becomes a problem when you feel it’s affecting your ability to perform big time. So if you were not able to – and obviously this person has that particular issue, right? They can’t talk in front of others, it’s very difficult. So the solution is first of all, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice an awful lot whenever you have chance to interact with others, talk in front of others just do it. Try and tell yourself that who cares? Who cares what the outcome is going to be, you know? What is the worst case scenario? Always try and figure out the worst, the absolute worst case scenario, right? So imagine yourself facing a shop assistant in a shop for instance. A very simple and plain scenario, right? So you might be freaking out speaking with a shop assistant and I can totally relate to that. Years ago I was the same, right? I would be able to speak on my own whereas speaking with people in shops and other institutions was a challenge to say the least, right? So you’ve just got to do it. Just jump in. Head first, jump into the deep end as they say. So it’s a sink or swim situation, right? And the worst case scenario would be – what would it be? That you wouldn’t be able to say anything and that the shop assistant would be laughing at you? And if you think about it obviously it’s not the case. Who would be laughing at you? That would be very rude. Obviously, there is a remote possibility that that might happen but in reality that is not going to happen because people have to be, especially in professional environments, they have to be quite friendly and they have to respect their customers and stuff like that so they would not laugh at you. So the worst, if you think about it logically, the worst case scenario would be that they would just ask you a question. Ask you the question twice, the third time, whatever, but the point being, it’s not as bad as you think. It’s the fear from the unknown! If you just have that concept in your head that you’re faced with another person and then you’re thinking what is it going to be like, what’s going to happen, they’re going to laugh at me, I’m not going to be able to talk or whatever, you know. There is this abstract fear so that is your biggest enemy, the abstract fear of the unknown and that terrifies people. That terrifies even me! Be Specific About Your Fears and They’re Going to Go Away! So what you’ve got to do is be specific. Try and think about it, try and imagine the real life scenario and then try and outline the worst case scenario. What’s the worst that could happen and then tell yourself okay, if this is the worst thing, if the worst thing is whereby I can’t say anything and then the person is kind of going to give me some more pointers as to what I may want to say or whatever, it’s not that bad now, is it? It’s not as if someone is going to punch me in the face or whatever, it’s not that bad. And chances are you’re not going to see that person ever again, anyway. So by employing this particular strategy you can alleviate a lot stress and anxiety and actually start putting yourself in those situations. You know, I’m not saying that you have to put yourself in front of an audience and start talking without any preparation or whatever. I’m just talking about like simple scenarios, having a very small chat with people and stuff like that and then gradually you would be building your confidence. And obviously when it comes to events such as interviews and speeches and presentations and so on and so forth, that’s when you’ve got to do some real preparation. But as far as simple face-to-face communication goes you’ve just got to distance yourself from the abstract fear, think of the worst case scenario and then just do it, okay? There is no two ways about it, you know? If you don’t do it you’re not going to get over it, you know? It’s as simple as it sounds. Well, obviously it’s easier said than done, it is difficult, I know that. Been there, done that. However, if you just come up with the worst case scenario and this descends yourself from the abstract, from the bigger fear of the unknown it’s going to become way easier. It’s going to be much easier my friends. Okay, so I hope that this video is going to serve some purpose and that you’re going to find it useful and thanks for watching my friends 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! Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog! Today let’s talk about THE FLOW. And I read about the concept of flow or should I say THE flow? Because it’s a particular state of mind. And I read about that concept a while ago while I was doing a little bit of research into the subject of procrastination. We all – I suppose – have that quality to procrastinate sometimes. You know, it’s a vice because it’s a terrible feeling, you know? You know exactly what you’ve got to do but you just can’t do it for whatever reasons. You just find yourself constantly getting distracted. For instance if I had a task of writing an article for instance I would find myself making cups of coffee every 15 minutes and checking my email and checking my website’s stats and whatever. And then 5 or 6 hours later the article still wouldn’t be even started. I would have only 1 or 2 paragraphs. And so that’s the typical case of procrastination. And I’ve been guilty of that at certain stages in my life. And I was doing a little bit of research into it and I found out that people who don’t procrastinate they can achieve the state of mind whereby they are fully immersed into the activity at hand so their mind doesn’t even wander. And that’s the so-called state of THE FLOW. When you’re in the flow you are super creative, you are enjoying that particular activity to the fullest, right? You don’t even think about anything else. Nothing else exists. So drawing parallels with creating written content for example for my website, that would be just me just writing about the subject, right? I would be fully immersed into it. I would know exactly what I have to say, obviously a little bit of planning goes a long way, and that would have to be done beforehand to know what you want to say but for as long as that’s done I would be into it and nothing would stop me. I would be totally unstoppable, right? So how does this concept of the flow relate to spoken English performance? Well, it’s the same thing. We all have that particular state of mind which is triggered by whatever reasons, right? When we can speak in English almost like native English speakers. And it doesn’t matter, our level of English. Well, obviously if you were a total beginner, you wouldn’t have that ability to even speak fluently. But then again, you wouldn’t be able to listen to this video anyway, right? So this whole English Harmony project is obviously geared towards those foreign English speakers who’ve already achieved a decent level of speech and understanding and that sort of thing. So it goes without saying that all you guys have that ability to be in that flow, in that state of mind whereby you can speak just like native English speakers but oftentimes external factors prevent you from doing that. And those factors are multifaceted such as people making you anxious. Obviously you don’t have to blame others, it’s all on you, kind of, but those people play a big role in the whole thing, in your ability to speak and deliver your English speech. So if people make you anxious, if you are trying to compare your speech with the other person’s, especially if they’re a native English speaker, that will have a detrimental effect on your fluency. And if you want to impress others with your speech, if you’re under pressure to deliver, for example you have to deliver a speech or whatever or you’re attending an interview or you just start a new job and you want to deliver in your position and you’re speaking with your colleagues, your customers, your superiors and you want to achieve that level of fluency and deliver that speech that’s required for your particular position. And obviously all those factors would have sometimes a detrimental effect on your fluency. It can kind of backfire on you and you will find yourself not being able to deliver it. So if you can eliminate all those factors you will be able to achieve that state of the flow where you can speak totally unhindered, you wouldn’t even have to think about how you say it or what you say. Well, obviously you have to know what are you talking about, right? But the point I’m trying to make is that we all have that ability to achieve that state of mind where we can perform just like native English speakers, just like I do now, right? I’m not, obviously, bragging. I’m not trying to say that I’m speaking just like a native English speaker but I’m talking about the feeling that I have, you know? I feel like I’m speaking like one, you know? I feel totally unhindered; I’m giving my fluency totally a free rein so to speak. And in order to achieve that in my opinion the best way to go about it is just do a lot of spoken English self-practice when you are on your own. It kind of goes back to the same again: on your own you are totally unhindered. There’s nobody to prevent you from speaking just the way you want. And you can experiment with different types of speech, different speeds, different ways of pronouncing certain words and so on and so forth. And eventually, you will be able to nail it. Through a lot of experimentation you will be able to nail that state of the flow. And once you’re in it you will be like “Wow, this is it. This is the real deal. I can speak fluently!” So once you’ve achieved that state of the flow you can carry that feeling with you at all times. And whenever you feel like you’re not performing well, whenever you have that bad fluency day for instance you can always go back in your mind and that, yes, I know how to achieve the flow feeling and if I practice on my own again I will be able to go back there and that will reinforce your confidence as a foreign English speaker. So that’s my message for you today, my friends. I hope that you enjoyed it. And obviously if you have any further comments please don’t hesitate to publish them in the comment section below. Thank you and bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

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, that’s me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! Currently I’m having my morning tea. As a matter of fact, it’s green tea with lemon. One smart person suggested a while back that I drink green tea with lemon as a way of boosting my immune system and whatnot and it actually helped, you know what I mean? So that was a very wise suggestion on that person’s part. Anyhow, today we’re going to look at the following English idiomatic expression. As a matter of fact, I forgot what the expression was. Seriously, what’s wrong with me? It just slipped my mind. I cannot believe that, it’s unbelievable. I it now but it just goes to show that my head is full of different thoughts and everything and it’s all too easy to me to forget the stuff that I actually wanted to put in this video, right? So today’s idiomatic expression is a “good night’s sleep”, right? And it may sound very simple. In fact, it’s super simple, a good night’s sleep, right? When you’ve had a good night’s sleep obviously you slept very well. However, there’s a reason for me to creating a whole video dedicated to this particular idiomatic expression. And if you want to find out what the reason is, please bear with me for a few more minutes and everything is going to become crystal clear to you, my friends. So welcome back. A good night’s sleep. Last night I had a really, really good night’s sleep. Well, as a matter of fact come to think of it the day before was even better, you know what I mean? This morning I actually forced myself to wake up earlier, 6:30 which is by my earlier standards it’s still quite late, it’s just that I’m on my holidays at the moment and lately I’ve been sleeping in in mornings and I’ve gotten used to getting up at 9 o’clock or even after 9 which is super late, you know. So on those mornings when I got up past 9 actually, I rolled out of my bed at 8:30 or something I really had a good night’s sleep, you know what I mean? I slept like a baby and I cannot when would have been the last time I had such a great sleep. So when I slept till 9 or even past that, I really had a good night’s sleep. Last night I can’t really complain. It was still better than getting up at 5:30 in the morning which is my typical getting up time in the morning on my working days but I still had a good night’s sleep. And now, speaking of the reason why I decided to dedicate a whole video to this phrase, the reason is simple enough. A lot of my students as you may know and for those of you who didn’t know, yes, I’ve been coaching people via Skype face to face. It was a program called Fluency Star and the website is still there, FluencyStar.com, it’s just that I’m not taking any more students currently because I just can’t handle it, you know what I mean? There’s only so many hours in my day and I come home very late at night and I just cannot do that. But anyhow, a lot of those students and when we talked about sleeping and related matters I actually think that none of them could use this phrase “good night’s sleep”. And they tried describing the concept of having had a good sleep in a different way and obviously it came across slightly awkward because as you may know, native English speakers refer to things in a specific manner, you know what I mean? So a lot of concepts are described in a specific way and if you’re trying to describe them in a different way it just doesn’t sound right. And “a good night’s sleep” is one of those examples, you know? No matter what other way you put it, you know, my sleep was good or whatever, it doesn’t kind of come across as a native-like speech. So that’s the reason why I decided to record this video. So next time around when you have to tell someone that you really had a good night’s sleep, that you slept really, really well you have to use this expression “I had a good night’s sleep.” And that’s another tiny little step towards your English fluency, towards your goal of speaking just like a native English speaker. Thanks for watching this video, my friends! If you have any further questions obviously, please feel free to publish them in the comment section below down there and chat to you soon again. 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: Hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog. Today I’m bringing you another English idiomatic expression video but unlike other English idiomatic expression videos where I’m focusing on typical English idioms and phrasal words and collocations today I’m bringing you what I like to call a grammar construct. And the grammar construct in question is “couldn’t have been”. At first if you just look at “couldn’t have been,” it might confuse you. You might try and figure out what it means in grammar . What the English grammar tense represents and all that sort of thing but you don’t have to do it. And you may actually want to read this article where I’m talking about it that you don’t have to try and figure out what exactly something means in grammar , okay? All you’ve got to do is just repeat that particular grammar construct, memorize it and then you’ll be able to use it in relevant situations without knowing what it represents, right? And the funny thing is that prior to recording this video I was kind of thinking to myself “Hold on, I have to look it up and see what it actually means, what kind of tense it is.” But I’m not going to get bogged down on these grammar just like I told you because it serves no purpose whatsoever, okay? So all you’ve got to do is just repeat it, memorize it and then you’ll be able to use it. And the first example sentence that I’m going to give to you containing “couldn’t have been” is “couldn’t have been done without”, right? And typically you would use it when describing when a particular thing, some sort of an assignment or something couldn’t have been done without the help of someone else or without using some tool or some piece of software or whatever. So for instance your boss is asking you how you got done with the job, simple as, and you tell them “Listen, yeah, I got it done but it couldn’t have been done without the help of my colleague here. So a lot of credit goes to him. It wasn’t just me who got the job done because it couldn’t have been done without him.” Okay? And this is a typical way of using this particular grammar construct, right? So you have to do some spoken practice whereby you come up with your own fictional scenario. Obviously you use your own workplace or college you attend or whatever and then you kind of put yourself in that situation when you are communicating with someone and then you use that phrase. And then next time around when such a situation presents itself you’ll be quite automatically able to use that phrase, okay? Next example. Couldn’t have been more pleased. And it’s a typical way of saying that you were very, very pleased. I couldn’t have been more pleased. Or I couldn’t have been happier. When someone asks you “Did you enjoy when your work colleagues congratulated you on your birthday?” Then you can tell them “Listen, I couldn’t have been happier because I was totally shocked, that was a complete surprise, I didn’t even expect that and I couldn’t have been happier”, right? And the third example is “couldn’t have been prevented.” Often times people talk about some disasters or catastrophes or incidents and people wonder whether they could have been prevented or not and then unfortunately sometimes the conclusion is that despite the fact that in retrospect we can think of a lot of things that kind of could have prevented that particular catastrophe from happening, sometimes it couldn’t have been prevented because there are certain things that are just bound to happen. And for instance the tsunami that happened all those years ago – 10 years ago at this stage I would imagine – that wiped out so many people’s lives in Southeast Asia. It couldn’t have been prevented. A lot of the fatalities probably could have been prevented but the actual catastrophe, this tsunami itself couldn’t have been prevented, you know, it’s one of those things that just happens that we have to accept that reality of life. So I hope that you’re going to be using this particular grammar construct “couldn’t have been” and just like I told you don’t try and figure out what it represents whether it’s ive or active voice or what kind of tense it is. It serves no purpose. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you can use it. Okay? So I hope that you enjoyed watching this video and just like I told you a million times before do some spoken English practice. If you just watch this video without any practice whatsoever, this video is not going to serve any purpose. Okay? So if you have any questions obviously publish them in the comment section below. And chat to you soon my friends. Bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Happy New Year 2017 my friends foreign English speakers and all my followers! I’m wishing you a very happy, prosperous and successful New Year! Personally for me this last year has been very challenging and full of surprises, but I can proudly say that I accomplished what I set out to do and I secured a job in the IT sector as a foreign English speaker. Have you got similar dreams and ambitions? Do you feel like you’re kind of stuck and you would really like to change things? Do you plan to move to an English speaking country to study? Do you finally want to find a better job where you can realize your full potential and also use the English language? Or maybe you want to start your own YouTube channel about a specific topic and publish videos as a foreign English speaker? Everything is possible. EVERYTHING! Just set your goal for the year 2017, come up with a simple action plan and follow through with it. It really is THAT simple my friends! Have a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2017! Your English fluency coach, Robby

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED! Video Transcript Below: Hi guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear foreign English speakers. That’s me, obviously Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and you are very welcome back to my video blog! Now, today I decided to record a video dedicated to a particular English idiomatic expression, namely “to take something for granted”. And the reason why I decided to record this particular video is because I got a comment on my blog recently. To be more specific it’s only 6 minutes old, right? And here is what it says. As a matter of fact, it was published on another English idiomatic expression page, The Big Picture and the commentator says this is an incredible video, really got the meaning very quickly and here’s the request: Robby, can you make a video for this idiomatic expression “to take something for granted”? Thank you. And guess what? You’re lucky, my friend, tonight I’m in a good mood so I decided hey, why not? You know what I mean. And as a matter of fact, I wanted to record a video anyway so I was like okay, I’ll do a video about this particular idiomatic expression. So if you are interested in finding out how to use this particular one and what kind of situations it can be used in, please bear with me for a few more moments. Did you hear how I kind of started stumbling upon words? Bear with me for a few mo – mo – mo more moments or something like that? It’s all part of the English Harmony philosophy, my friends. Even if you make a little mistake, even if you stumble upon words a little bit it doesn’t matter. Just keep pushing on, you know what I mean? Keep pushing the envelope and keep speaking with yourself because that is the surefire way to English fluency. Now, welcome back. So here is the first scenario, right? And before that I actually have to give you a little history. One morning I was driving to work on the highway and all of a sudden there was a massive traffic pileup and I was like “What’s going on?” Normally just after 6 o’clock in the morning there’s very little traffic, you know what I mean? It’s moving very well. All of a sudden there’s a massive pileup and then there were emergency vehicles driving by, then I realized that there must have been an accident further down the road. And true enough, after a couple miles I witnessed a terrible accident scene. Somebody had crashed into the ditch and there were some trees as well and that car had plowed down the trees and they must have done it at a great speed, you know. That made me realize that oftentimes we take our lives for granted. We go about our daily business, we just wake up in the morning, go to bed at night and obviously just because we’ve been doing so throughout our entire lives we just think that that’s given, you know, nobody can take it away from us. But in reality it’s quite the opposite, my friends. In a split second, in a car on the road at a high speed can change your life and as a matter of fact, it can take away your life. So never take your life for granted. Always stay cautious and think twice before you do something, right? So that was the first scenario, right? You should never take your life for granted. Which means that you never should take it as given, as something that can ever be taken away from you. Because it can, you know? It can. Now, the next kind of scenario is say for instance your friends or your family , we take people for granted which means that we don’t really appreciate that they are in our lives. Oftentimes we are a bit grumpy towards our partners or our children or our friends even. We don’t really think about how grateful we should be that those people are in our lives in the first place, right? So now as you can clearly see the meaning of the expression “to take something for granted” starts revealing itself. Basically it means that you shouldn’t take it as something that is always going to be there. You have to appreciate it, right? And the last example is going to be about for example the safety of our lives. You know, we live in certain conditions, in different countries the economy is better and in other countries it’s worse or whatever but for the most part we live in safety. We can walk out on the street and we can rest assured that we’re not going to get killed. But for some people on this planet it’s not the case. Where there’s war happening people are just getting shot and killed in their homes or getting bombed and people are dying every day of the week. Therefore we should not take our country’s safety for granted. We just assume that nothing can happen, that law and order is always going to be there but it’s sometimes very fragile. We don’t really realize what larger forces are at play and how quickly the situation can change. Just think about Syria where there’s war happening now at the moment. A few years ago that was a country where people went about their daily business, they lived normal lives and all of a sudden their lives changed 360 degrees. There’s thousands upon thousands of people being killed, it’s crazy. So never take your country’s safety situation for granted. Don’t. And basically appreciate. Don’t complain about stuff, you know. Oftentimes we complain about like really, really irrelevant stuff like – and it’s actually called first world problems, you know? There might be some potholes on the road or whatever and we start complaining about the local council that looks after the roads or whatever but just think about how irrelevant it is. And it’s a weird phenomenon, the better our lives are, the higher our standards, the higher our expectations and we start taking everything for granted, that that’s the way it has to be, that that’s the way it’s going to be forever and it’s going to get better and better and better. But the history has shown us on multiple occasions that our lives can change within a heartbeat. So never take anything for granted, appreciate your situation that you’re in every day of the week, be grateful to the God and stay safe, right? So that’s the message today, don’t take anything for granted and appreciate everything. So I hope that now you’ve got the gist of how this expression can be used and what it means but obviously if you have any more questions in relation to this particular idiomatic expression, feel free to publish them in the comment section below my friends. Chat to you soon. Bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED! Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Video Transcript Below: Hi guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear foreign English speakers. Welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog and tonight I’m going to record a video as a video response to one of my YouTube commentators. But just before that, allow me to take a sip of my evening decaf coffee, right? Cheers my friends! So this person, Triple H and he is as a matter of fact, one of the most prolific commentators on my channel and I really hope that you don’t mind Triple H me reading out your comment because it’s going to help everybody, the whole audience for that matter. So Triple H shares a very embarrassing moment that happened to him at the embassy. So basically the woman or personnel asked him who was going to collect his port. And basically he didn’t get her accent, her pronunciation so she had to say it 4 times over and he couldn’t get it. And she pronounced basically the word “when” as “wha” and “who” as “he”. Yeah, well, there are certain distinct accents whereby native English speakers pronounce words completely differently to what you would have expected, right? So after that incident his fluency went down the drain, out the window and afterwards he couldn’t say one word. So the question is do you think it’s common? Such Fluency Issues Are Very Common! Triple H, don’t worry, right? You’re not the only one. This is the typical English fluency issue manifesting itself. Basically you are experiencing this embarrassing moment when somebody doesn’t get you or you find it hard to get someone and then you just can’t speak, you know. And it’s all because you are kind of trying to say something to fix the previous problem. So you’re trying to speak better. So basically here’s the level of the communication, right? So something goes wrong so in your mind it’s like okay, now I’ve got to really show that I can speak really well so you’re immediately increasing the standards for yourself, right? You’re raising the bar really, really high, super high, and you’re aiming for that but you can’t even say a word because your mind is full of the different things you could say and the different grammar structures and whatnot and eventually you can’t say a thing because you’re overthinking. You’re like “Well, I need to save the day, rectify the situation.” But what happens in real life is quite the opposite. You’re aiming so high that you can’t say a word! And as a matter of fact, I’m noticing this kind of phenomenon every day. Even in my workplace where there’s plenty of foreigners. As a matter of fact, there’s probably only a handful of Irish at my work. I apologize guys, there’s something in my eye, I’ve got to get it out. I’m sorry. So yeah, there’s all sorts of different nationalities: Germans, Italians, Spanish people, you name it, from all over the world and we all obviously communicate in English and we use the English language to communicate with our customers and our managers and so on and so forth. So oftentimes I’m witnessing guys that are super fluent when talking to each other or with me or whatever and then when I see them speak with the manager which is somewhat a more formal form of communication or when they have to get on the phone with a customer, their  English becomes worse, you know. And even today, as a matter of fact, I noticed one guy, he had to take over my case because I’m the level 1 technician and he is a level 2 technician, so basically I couldn’t deal with the issue so I had to engage him and when he started speaking with the customer I noticed that he was a little bit nervous, a little bit on the edge and he was saying things wrong. He was trying to speak quite fast which is another mistake that we all make, right? When we’re trying to match the native speaker in of the speed of the speech, right? So he started speaking too fast and he was kind of finding it difficult to pronounce words because the faster you’re trying to say something, the more difficult it actually becomes after a certain speed, you know what I mean? You have to find the right speed for you that’s comfortable with you. And even if it’s slower than average, so what? No big deal, you know! But obviously the pride kicks in, you’re comparing yourself automatically with the native English speaker, you’re trying to match their level of fluency and your fluency deteriorates drastically. And as a matter of fact, in the most critical situations, such as the one that Tripe H described, you might be able to – quite the opposite, you might not be able to say a word, you know. Don’t Have Unrealistic Expectations of Your Own Speech! And it has happened to me in the past. I’ve been getting myself into loads of different situations and it’s all due to my own fault, you know what I mean? Because of myself. Because of my unrealistic expectations. I didn’t have the concept of saying something simple in mind. I always wanted to sound sophisticated. I was trying to say the right thing. You know, something that would have been expected from me. And when you’re speaking like that immediately this phenomenon kicks in whereby you actually can’t say a thing! So simplicity is the key if you find yourself in a situation like that. Obviously you’re going to be stressing out, when you can’t even expect yourself to perform at a normal level so you have to lower your standards. It’s quite the opposite, right? So you have to start saying like very simple things. Speak like a baby, you know. Two word sentences and you will be understood and you will get out of the situation. Whereas if you’re trying to kind of say it all at once, eventually you can’t say a thing. So yeah, to answer the question, it’s very common and it’s not that easy to deal with. And I dealt with that and after a long time having figured out all those fluency management techniques and strategies and if you’re interested in that, then you may want to click on this link here: englishharmony.com/english-fluency-management/ It’s going to take you to the page on my blog where I’ve listed a number of those strategies and they will come in indeed very handy when dealing with situations like Triple H just described! All right. So thanks for watching this video, my friends. Chat to you soon. Bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!  

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED! Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Video Transcript Below: Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. Currently I’m having my Monday morning tea. Cheers! You see how big, how huge this mug is? This is the kind of mug I like, you know what I mean? This is what I call proper tea drinking. You can make yourself almost a liter of tea and drink it, right? Anyhow, in today’s video I’m going to look at the following topic: Simple Past versus Present Simple. And this is, as a matter of fact, a thing that confuses the hell out of so many foreign English speakers, right? And ironically enough I haven’t actually recorded a video about this particular topic in the past which is kind of weird because I’ve been publishing my videos for years on end. At this stage it’s actually 8 years since I’m running the English Harmony blog or actually 9 years. Yeah, going 9 years this year to be honest with you. I started it in 2007 if I’m not mistaken so next year going 10 years, you know what I mean? It is going to be a big anniversary. Anyhow, it’s surprising that I haven’t actually touched upon this particular topic comparing the simple past “I did it” for instance against present simple “I’ve done it” and when you use one or the other, you know what I mean? And the reason I’m saying that it confuses the hell out of so many foreigners is because I’ve had first-hand experience dealing with people who are not really sure on how to use these two tenses, right? As a matter of fact, one of my Fluency Star students served as an inspiration for this video because that person was kind of not really sure on how it’s done and then I explained it to her and she was very happy about my explanation because it’s pretty straight forward if you boil it down to the very basics, right? So first things first, “I’ve done it.” For instance “I’ve been to London” which is not really true in my case because believe it or not, I’ve never been to London, right? And it’s very weird because I live in Ireland which is very close to England, so it’s just one small hop with a plane, like a half an hour flight or something and you’re in London, you know what I mean? And with these days’ prices where you can go to London just paying literally 20 or 30 Euros, you know what I mean? It’s no excuse not to go there but on the downside obviously when you go there you have to book a hotel and so on and so forth. And then you have to go sightseeing and all those costs add up and eventually you end up spending a fortune, you know what I mean? So I guess I’ve just kept putting it off and off and off. And anyhow, I’m going to do it one fine day I would imagine but anyhow, going back to the subject; “I’ve been to London,” right? And then you can also say I went to London, okay? So what is the difference? First things first, you don’t have to be kind of analyzing your English language – language? What did I just say? Language. See, I just made a mistake but it just goes to show that making mistakes is a crucial part of the whole fluency improvement thing, right? Anyhow, you see, today I’m all over the place. I just keep varying up the subject and touching upon random things. So “I’ve been to London, right?” It’s a general statement. You’re not specifying a specific point in time. And mark this guys, point in time. This is the crucial bit, right? Whenever there is a time mentioned, a specific time, a year, a day, month, week, whatever, that’s when you use simple past. Simple Past for Time References I went to London last year. I went to London 10 years ago. I went to London last Monday. That’s simple past, you know? You don’t use the present tense, the simple present, “I’ve been to London” when it’s followed up with a specific time. And when I say specific time, please don’t be thinking that I’m talking about a very specific like time of the day; even a year is quite specific, right? Perfect Simple For General Statements So you use perfect simple only when you don’t refer to any time at all, like I mean there’s no time reference mentioned basically. No years, nothing, you know. “I’ve been to London.” And you can obviously say I’ve been to London 5 times but this time reference, you know, 5 times is not the same as referring to a particular year or a month or a day, you know? It’s just saying how many times you’ve been to London. So I think the best way – excuse me, I’ve got to take a sip of tea. So I think that the best way of kind of wrapping your head around this concept is by kind of getting used to the concept of using the perfect present in the beginning of a story when you don’t use any time references. So basically you would say “you know what? I’ve been to London a good few times” or “as a matter of fact I’ve never been to London,” you know what I mean? And then after that point you can start using the simple past, right? And here is how it happens. “You know what? I’ve been to London 10 times at this stage, you know. I’ve been there 10 times. Las time I went there was last summer and before that I went there every, every year for 10 years in a row,” you know? So you use the perfect simple – no, present. Sorry I’m getting all mixed up in these grammar but it’s just because I’m not using these grammar . I’m not all about these grammar . If I were a traditional English teacher that would be all about the grammar , then I imagine I wouldn’t be getting mixed up in these . But I said it wrong; I said perfect simple or something. No, it’s perfect present that I wanted to say, right? So you use perfect present “I’ve been to London” in the beginning of the story when you’re making a general statement. You’re basically stating the fact that you’ve actually been to London, you know? And then you start using the simple past. Simple Past to Tell a Story – One Event Follows Another I went there with my friends, so that’s kind of a storytelling, you know what I mean? When one event follows another. We went there and then we actually had booked a hotel beforehand. And now I use the past present tense. And you may want to click on this link where I’m explaining how that would be used, basically when you’re referring to a point in time which had happened before the general story-line, right? And then we went sightseeing and then we went to different restaurants and all the different museums and we visited the Big Ben and – what’s the palace called where the Queen lives? Westminster Palace or whatever? I’m not really familiar with these but anyway, you get the drift, right? So you make the general statement in the beginning and then follow it up with simple past where you tell the story, where you went, when you went there, who you went with, what you did there and so on and so forth, right? Start With Present Perfect, Then Continue With Simple Past! So to recap the whole thing, present perfect is used to make general statements about what you did or what you didn’t do in the past. But it’s very general. It’s lacking any references whatsoever to years, days, months, weeks, whatever, you don’t mention about it, right? But then when you start talking about specific times, that’s when you introduce the simple past, right? So I hope that this video is going to clarify this whole issue for you and just to let you know there was a comment recently. Oh yeah. Actually 9 hours ago at this stage posted where one of my blog readers asks me where to use “gone” and “went,” right? And actually this one was the reason I actually recorded the video right now because I read the comment and then I realized hold on a second, I haven’t actually addressed this particular issue in a video. And then I ed my Fluency Star student who had the same issue and I was like okay, let’s make a video about it! So I hope that this video is going to be useful for you my friends. And obviously if you have any further questions please feel free to publish them in the comment section below. Thank you and bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Transcript Below: Hi guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! It’s me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com bringing you another video message which is going to be ed onto my YouTube channel and then it’s going to be embedded into a blog post on my blog EnglishHarmony.com and then I’m going to promote it for my Facebook followers, my Twitter followers, my LinkedIn partners so basically this message is being sent out for everyone who is interested in spoken English improvement basically, right? That’s what the whole thing is about. And today’s video is about the fact that not everyone, right, listen to this carefully guys, not every English speaker out there uses the very same means of expression, right? And the reason I’m saying this is because I’m cranking out all these idiomatic expressions. If you head over to my blog site map page you may want to click on this link, right? Englishharmony.com/sitemap-page if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, I’m going to look at up later on and then I’m going to embed that link right here. So it might not be not the same exact link that I just said but you’re going to be able to click right here just like I said, right? And you’ll be able to see all those hundreds upon hundreds of videos and blog posts and a good chunk of those is idiomatic expressions, right? Collocations, idioms and so on and so forth, right? It’s Easy to Get Overwhelmed by Looking at the Sheer Amount of Phrases So the reason I’m bringing up this subject that everyone uses the same expressions is that some of you might get overwhelmed, right? You might be looking at the whole list of phrases and you might be thinking “Hold on a second, does that mean that I have to be using every single one of those phrases all the time in my conversations?” And the answer is – not really, right? You may pick and choose your favorite set of phrases that you would be using on a regular basis. And if you observe the way native English speakers speak you will also realize that certain people use certain phraseology more often than not, right? When I in my last job there was this secretary and she was always using the expression – what was the expression? Let me . “That kind of a way,” right? So she would basically explain something and then in the end she would stick the phrase “that kind of a way”, right? And that was a peculiar phrase to her. I haven’t actually heard anyone else using that phrase, right? Obviously I’m not saying that just by using that one phrase you’re going to become a fluent English speaker, not at all. I’m just saying it to illustrate the fact that not everyone uses the same pool of expressions, right? And let me think of another example. My former instructor in the college that I’m currently attending was always using – what was the phrase? He used a couple of very, very interesting phrases. Can’t , to be honest with you guys. Totally slipped my mind but you get the drift, right? It’s okay to pick your favorite phrases and use them quite frequently during the speech, right? Obviously some people would say that if you just use one phrase such as “you know what I mean” and if you overuse that phrase that would be a bad thing, that would be a bad habit and that would send the wrong message to the conversational partner of yours that your English is very poor or whatever. I don’t really agree with that opinion but I can see where those people would be coming from, right? If you use one particular phrase all the time, yeah, that might be a little bit annoying for the other person. It’s Better to Sound a Bit Annoying Than Lose Your English Fluency! But then again, just think about the fact that if you do that you might keep your fluency going whereas if you don’t do that, if you analyze your speech too much, if you try to get rid of all those expressions, your speech might start to struggle a little bit. You might get stuck for words and so on and so forth. So the trade-offs of using such phrases I don’t think that they outweigh the benefits that you get by using those phrases, right? Basically I think that the benefits of using these expressions by far outweigh the possible negative consequences, if you know what I mean. What I just said was a little bit confusing maybe but all I was saying was that just go with using a couple of phrases, if that makes you feel comfortable, if that gives your fluency that so much needed flow, if that gets you into the rhythm and just stick with those phrases, okay? And if you think about it as well a lot of authors if you’re into reading and if you read different authors, you will definitely realize that certain people have certain types of vocabulary that they use. So basically everyone is unique. You can’t actually compare yourself to everyone else and draw the conclusion that your English is not up to scratch just because you’re not using the same means of expressions as the other person, right? It’s not necessarily the case; it’s quite the opposite actually on a lot of occasions. You have your own unique ways of expression that are probably on certain occasions even better than those of the other person that you’re looking up to, right? So it’s all the matter of perspective. So by all means guys, just pick and choose a few expressions. Typically they would be sentence starters that would help you to get your speech going, right? And obviously when it comes to the rest of the speech I’m not saying that you only have to use like 3 or 4 idiomatic expressions and that’s it. That’s not at all what I’m saying. I hope that you get that as well, right? All I’m saying is that obviously you have to be learning a lot of new vocabulary, phraseology and all that kind of thing but all I’m saying is you don’t have to be overly worried and concerned about the fact that you can’t use everything in your active speech. It’s not even possible, right? There’s Only So Many Phrases You Can Use at Any Given Point in Time! Just look at me. You might be under the impression that I’m using loads and loads of phrases and all that well, which is obviously true to a certain degree but then there’s a whole lot more phrases that I’m not using that I could have been using and that I could have been beating myself over but I’m not doing that. Because I know for a fact that I’m sticking to my comfort zone, to my phrases that I know, that I use and obviously a few years down the line I’ll be probably using a whole lot of more expressions. But at this particular moment in time I’m comfortable using my own pool of phrases and I can express myself freely and that’s the way I roll and that’s the way I suggest you roll my friends. So if you have any questions obviously about this topic or about improving English fluency in general, please don’t hesitate getting in touch with me right here in the comment section below and obviously if you liked this video don’t forget to like it and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already done so. 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!

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED! Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Video Transcript Below: Hey guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers! This is me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! Today I wanted to tell you something interesting in relation to English fluency obviously because this whole project is about English fluency so what else could I be possibly telling you about, right? Other than English fluency related matters. Anyhow, the particular thing that I wanted to bring up today was the phenomenon of you being able to perform quite well when it comes to spoken English performance on days when your English is kind of suffering a little bit but still you have those particular situations during those days when you’re capable of performing very well. And here’s a typical example just to make it a 100% clear to you what exactly I mean by saying all this, right? Let’s say for argument’s sake I go to work in the morning and for some reason my English is not a 100%. My brain is not firing on all cylinders for whatever reason, you know, and my English is kind of sluggish. So it’s basically one of those bad fluency days. There Are Days When Your Fluency Is Worse Than Normally… And if you think that my fluency is a 100% at all times, well, nothing could be further from the truth, you know. It doesn’t even hold truth when it comes to your native language. You can’t perform a 100% at all times even in your native language. It’s just the fact of the matter. And you may believe that it’s not true but if you analyze all those things a little bit deeper you will realize that you can’t always have that clarity of thought and flow of words and everything. Anyway, let’s say for argument’s sake I go to work and I can’t speak a 100% with my colleagues. I hesitate a little bit maybe but then comes a moment when I have to take a phone call. And the moment I take the phone call from a customer my fluency just comes back just like that, you know what I mean? And the reason being, at that particular moment in time I have no other option but to perform. And I think that all of a sudden all your abilities get mobilized and your fluency goes back up just because you have no other option but to perform well! Basically when you’re speaking with your colleagues, even if it’s a conversation between you and your manager you still don’t have that – what way to put it? – that demand on you to speak super well, you know what I mean? So you can kind of afford to make a small mistake here and there but all of a sudden when you’re on the phone with the customer you have no other option but to be a 100% fluent. …But All Of Us Have the Ability to Mobilize Our Speech When Needed! And obviously there’s always the chance that you’re going to make a small mistake even when speaking with a customer but I hope that you get the drift, right? When your fluency is slightly below the average you still have those events on that timeline when the fluency has to go back up, no matter what. And if you think about it, speaking in a camcorder which is exactly what I’m doing right now at this particular moment in time is a similar event. It has the same effect on one’s fluency. Before I turned the cam recorder on my fluency wasn’t the best. I’ve been obviously speaking with myself all day long but I noticed that today is one of those days when my fluency is slightly lagging behind, if you know what I mean. But now that I have to actually speak in the camcorder for you guys, I have no other option but to force myself even to pronounce the words clearly, to make myself understood, to get the message across so it just has to happen. Well, obviously there’s always room for error as they say and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve made a mistake or two during the recording of this video but I hope that you get the message. I hope you get the drift, right? Basically the message is that during a below average fluency day you can still mobilize your abilities, your strengths and you can force your brain to fire on all cylinders when you have to perform, you know? But I’m not trying to claim that it’s going to happen all the time. Obviously I back in the day when I was for example going for different jobs at that particular moment in time and I was doing a lot of interviews and I got this phone call, and this is an event that I’ve actually mentioned before in one of the videos, right? But it’s an event that has imprinted itself into my brain so vividly that I’ll always it. I got this phone call and I had to do an interview over the phone and I was trying but for some reason I just couldn’t speak, you know. And then eventually I was told that my English wasn’t good enough for the job and that first I should actually improve my English and then go back to them looking for the job, right? And I was mortified to be honest with you guys. But anyway, that was the situation when I should have performed but I couldn’t. And we are all having those days, you now. But what I’m trying to say is that there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. And more often than not when you have these pressing situations when there’s a bigger than normal demand on you, you will be able to mobilize your strengths as an English speaker and deliver the kind of speech that you are expected to deliver. You’ve just got to believe in yourself and you’ve just got to do it, just the way I did when I took my first phone call in the new job. It was around 6 weeks ago at this stage, right? I was dreading the moment that I couldn’t get rid of the feeling “what is it going to be like if I take the phone call?” Like what I if I screw it up? What if something happens? What if I say something wrong? And I had to get over it. I took the first phone call and I got over it. I realized that it’s a walk in the park, right? And every next phone call reinforces that feeling. And now I know that even if I don’t feel a 100% on that particular day, if I’m a bit tired coming into work, still when I take that phone call, when I answer the customer I can deliver just at the level I’m expected to deliver. The Power Of Our Brain Cannot Be Underestimated! So that is today’s message basically. The power of your brain cannot be underestimated my friends. So you’ve just got to trust yourself that even in situations when you kind of freak out and you think that you’re not going to be able to deliver, you actually might surprise yourself. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to prepare for those situations. It doesn’t mean that at all. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m not trying to say that you can just rely on the fact that somehow you’re going to pull through. It’s not the case if you’re going for an interview for example or some other speech that you have to deliver and you’ve got to speak for a long period of time there is no other way to prepare for it other than by way of preparation, you know what I mean? You have to prepare it for days just like the way I did when I was going for the job interview, you know. I spent long, long hours on a daily basis to repeat all the questions that I might be asked and then the answers and everything. There’s a lot of preparation but eventually it paid off. So what I’m trying to say is that all those situations where you have to do preparation apart, if you have moments during the day when you feel that your English is not a 100%, when you have moments when you have to deliver, more often than not you are going to be able to deliver. You just have to believe in yourself. That’s the message. And thanks for checking out my video blog and obviously if you have any questions please feel free to publish them in the comment section below, my friends. Chat to you soon. Bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Fluent English can ONLY be acquired by learning IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS – and that’s why I’m going to highlight them for you in RED! Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Transcript Below: Hello everybody and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. It’s been a while guys since I recorded my last video for the simple reason that I’ve been really, really busy at work and I have to study on top of my daily duties at work as well so it’s really hectic lifestyle to say the least. And then when I’m coming home at night it’s quite late as well and then I have to do all the other stuff, prepare for the next day, pack my food, prepare my clothing, walk the dog, whatever, respond to my emails, right? You guys are asking a lot of questions on a daily basis! So unfortunately my video recording days when I used to record at least one video a day or every few days are over. But it doesn’t mean that I’m stopping it altogether. Not at all. It’s quite the opposite actually, right? I’m actually enjoying this process immensely and for too many reasons. First of all, I love helping you guys. I love talking to my audience and obviously you love it, too. And secondly, it helps me improve my own spoken English, right? That’s the way it goes. Anyhow, I’m having my morning coffee. Morning to you all! Cheers! Huge Problem For Foreigners – Being General When Describing Something! This time around it’s real coffee just to get my day kick-started, right? And today I wanted to talk about one problem that a lot of foreign English speakers have in common. Basically, when we are asked something or probably not just asked but when we want to explain something in English to the other person the first thing that we’re trying to do is we’re trying to explain it all in an abstract way. So let’s say for argument’s sake you are asked about animal rights or something, right? Why I picked that topic about an animal? Because I have a cat lying right there next to me on the bed. So let’s say for argument’s sake you are asked what’s your stance on the whole animal rights issue or whatever. And obviously that’s a very, very broad subject, right? So you might actually have like 20 different opinions on the certain aspects of the whole thing, right? But if you’re trying to grasp the whole thing at once and provide a prolific all-encoming answer to that person it becomes mission impossible for the simple reason that it’s pretty much impossible even in your native language to manipulate with all those abstract concepts that might be popping up in your mind when it comes to the whole animal issue. So what you need to do in order to handle such conversations is instead of being general, instead of trying to generalize stuff and provide an answer from a bigger perspective you’ve got to be very, very specific! Be Very Specific Instead of Being General! So specific is the key. Just pick one example, right? And it might sound like a bad idea on certain occasions. You may think “Hold on a second, Robby but if I’m asked a general question what good is it if I’m trying to tell that person a specific situation that I had or heard about or read about or whatever.” Well, here’s the deal. That is actually the best way to illustrate a point and to get the message across, right? All too often people go on and on about some general things failing to focus on the specifics, right? So it’s not actually such a bad thing at all, quite the opposite. It’s the best way to communicate. So if I were asked something, I would probably try and what my daughter told me because she’s big into the whole animal thing. She wants to be a vet, the other one wants to be an architect but one of my daughters wants to be a vet and she’s been helping in places like animal shelters, veterinary clinics and so on. So I would have probably picked a specific situation that my daughter had that she told me about and that’s how the conversation would start developing. I would tell that particular instance and then my conversation partner would probably respond with something and that’s how the whole thing develops, right? And that’s a normal conversation. Whereas if I were to try and use some sophisticated describing the fact that the animals have rights and then being abused and it’s important to set up and maintain and sponsor all these animal foundations and animal right organizations and what not and ensure that it happens at a government level, you know. You’re getting into very tricky area so to speak. And because you cannot talk about it confidently, you might in fact have a very vague understanding of the whole thing and you’re basically shooting yourself in the foot by trying to – it kind of ties in with the whole concept of not trying to speak using some sophisticated language, trying to sound too smart. Get down to earth, you know. Use simple language. Don’t Be Afraid of Using Simple Language and Short Sentences! And in this connection I want you to check out this article and there’s a video as well. Click on it, right? Click on the link, it will take you to the respective page on my blog “Speaking in Short Sentences? It’s Normal!” So it kind of ties in with the whole thing, right? There’s no need to try and speak in long sophisticated sentences because more often than not you will end up not being able to say anything. Whereas if you stick with using simple words, simple sentences it’s going to be much better for your fluency. And the second one I want you to check out is planning your answer – click here:  “How to Answer Unexpected Questions?” And being specific is one of those points I’m making there in that article, right? So just a couple of refresher links. In case you haven’t read them at all it’s going to be all good for you. My friends, it is going to serve as an eye-opener for you, I promise, right? Because this is a big deal. So many people and a lot of my former Fluency Star students had this issue as well. I would have a conversation and then that person is trying to say it all at once, kind of be very general and then use those abstract concepts. It’s very difficult. It’s a very, very gray area to wander in. So you’d be much better off just sticking with specific situations. If you have to think about it take your time 5-10 seconds. Use some hesitation phrases such as “Well, let me see… I have to think about it…. Hold on a second…” or something like that, right? Or even the typical sentence starters “Well, to be honest with you… If I think about it I can actually this particular situation.” Or something along those lines and that’s when you start talking about that specific situation, you know. So The Bottom Line Is – Instead of Being General, Be Specific! Even if sometimes it might sound like a bad idea, trust me, being specific is going to help you, it’s going to make your speech way more fluent, it’s going to organize your thought process and it’s going to serve as an ice breaker in different social situations. And that’s how the whole conversation develops. You know, you mention something specific and it leads to the next thing, to the next one, then the conversation partner responds with something. And if you think about it, more often than not, casual conversations are about specific things. Obviously we would be sometimes mentioning some abstract or generic concepts or whatever but more often than not, just like I said people talk about specific stuff. So that is the key to your fluency my friends. So thanks for watching this video. If you have any further questions obviously please feel free to post them in the comment section below. Thank you. Bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Hi guys, hello my dear fellow English speakers and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog! In today’s video we are going to look at the following topic: full English immersion and its importance in your spoken English fluency development. And sometimes you may think “what’s the big deal? Why would I have to necessarily surround myself with English 24/7? Surely, if I want to improve my English I can just do certain things and that will improve my spoken English, right?” Well, you’re right to a certain degree. Yes, you will definitely improve it because doing something is better than doing nothing, right? But here’s the deal: if you immerse yourself in English 24/7, it’s going to provide even additional benefits for your overall spoken English fluency development. 24/7 English Immersion Is ESSENTIAL! And I noticed that, a few years ago, when I went back to my home country, obviously when you land in the airport, you exit the aircraft, enter the airport and you immediately get surrounded with Latvian which is the language spoken in Latvia, right? And that’s the country I come from. That is my home country and I noticed that it’s a bit more difficult for me to focus on my inner thoughts. Obviously if you have been following my blog you know that I’m doing constant spoken English self-practice, I’m trying to think in English when in public and speak with myself in slight whisper when there’s no one around and I find it a bit more difficult to do it when in my country because I’m surrounded with all things Latvian. And like with a wave of a magic wand, when I land back in Ireland in Dublin and I exit the aircraft and I’m walking along the corridor in the airport and I read all the posters in English and everything, everything is sign posted in English obviously, like with a wave of a magic wand, my ability to think in English clearly and speak with myself in English returns back. And I think it’s all because your surroundings determine a lot when it comes to your own performance. And it’s not necessarily a language performance, it can be a lot of different things. Your Surroundings Determine an Awful Lot! For instance, I think one of the reasons why people fail to exercise at home is because the home setting doesn’t necessarily evoke the necessary emotions associated with working out. When you work out in a gym, it’s a whole lot different story. There’s other people working out, you see all these different machines, there’s up beat music going bam-bam-bam-bam. So all those surroundings make you want to work out yourself and makes the whole process more enjoyable and more sufficient. Whereas if you want to work out in your own room where you’re mostly used to watching TV, right,  that’s what you want to do in that room. You don’t even want to work out so you’re forcing yourself to work out in your room but it just doesn’t happen for some reason. So it’s all about the surroundings, right? I actually like drawing parallels between the fitness world and your language performance because I strongly believe that your ability to speak is just another practical skill. Just like your ability to perform physical exercises for example. Anyway, going back to full immersion and being surrounded with all things English, is definitely beneficial because just as I said, if you’re surrounded with all things English, it will facilitate your English performance. You are so much more likely to speak better, to understand better, to write better, read better, if you’re surrounded by English the whole time. And obviously, what I mean is not sticking posters on your wall in English or things like that. Well, to a certain degree, yeah, is true. If you’re sticking post-it notes on a whiteboard in front of you, obviously, do it in English. Do as much as you can in English. But I’m not saying you have to totally redo your whole environment and go great lengths but things that you do on a daily basis, I strongly and warmly suggest you to do in English. If you keep a diary, if you keep notes, a simple notebook, do all your notes in English. If you read fiction, choose English fiction. If you read news websites, go for news websites in English. If you watch some TV, why not watch English channels? And the list goes on and on. You get the drift, right? But obviously you don’t have to tear down posters that are on your wall in your native language and a calendar that might be hanging in there which is all in your native language and things like that, right? You don’t have to go extreme but all I’m saying is you have to make sure there’s a little bit of English everywhere and that will facilitate your own English performance and that’s why the full immersion is of the utmost importance if you want to maximize your potential as an English student, English learner, English speaker, right? Alright my friends. That’s about it for today! I really hope that you enjoyed watching this video and if you have any comments, please feel free to publish them in the comments section below. Thanks and talk to you soon! Bye-bye! Robby P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English! P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Hi guys, hi boys and girls and welcome back to the English Harmony video blog! In today’s video we’re going to look at the following English idiom: The BIG Picture. Or alternatively, you can say: The Bigger Picture. It doesn’t really matter which one you go for, whether you say “The big picture” or “The bigger picture”, these two word combinations are pretty much interchangeable, they mean the same thing. Now. In reality when you’ll be using the phrase “The big picture” you would be putting it in different contexts, such as: “When looking at the bigger picture” or “If you look at the big picture” or your ability to see the bigger picture, right? You’d be using it in different contexts but the very two-word combination “The big picture” always remains the same and it’s very idiomatic by its nature and if you are curious as to what it means, when to use it, how to use it, place bear with me for a few more minutes and everything’s gonna become crystal clear to you, I promise! Hi guys and welcome back! So, the BIG picture. Let me ask you a question. Do you possess the ability to see the bigger picture? If you do, then that would be one of the characteristics needed to become a truly successful manager. Why? Because a manager makes strategic decisions and he has to see the bigger picture. To see the whole operation, because a typical employee wouldn’t necessarily see the big picture. They would be focusing on their tasks, on their duties, they will see the little details, but not necessarily the bigger picture. So, can you guess from this example what the bigger picture means? Well, I suppose that you might’ve guessed that it means the ability to see everything at once, to take it all in, to understand how everything works as a whole, right? Whether we’re looking at a company or some process, doesn’t really matter. Well, typically it’s used when talking about some strategic thinking in of running a business or something similar. The ability to see the bigger picture. This is basically used when you’ll be going for a job interview and then you will be describing your strengths and you will say that one of my strengths is the ability to see the bigger picture. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense cause quite literally, when you look at a picture… Imagine yourself standing in an Art Gallery and looking on a picture. Looking AT a picture on the wall. I said “looking on a picture” or something like that. I made a mistake, I’m sorry about that but if you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know that making mistakes is crucial, it’s a crucial and integral part of your overall fluency improvement. So I just corrected myself. The proper way of saying it is: we look AT a picture on the wall. OK? Then if you’re too close to it you will be seeing the individual details but you wouldn’t be necessarily able to take the entire picture in. You wouldn’t be able to see it as a whole. So you’d have to take a step back and only then you will be able to observe the whole picture and take it all in as a whole. So that’s where this idiom comes from and if you think about it, you would probably come to the same conclusion. But it’s not always that easy, that straightforward and it’s not always that you can guess their meaning. So you have to know what it means. And another way of using this idiom would be… Imagine yourself in a company meeting for example. Then you are given the word, you have to say something and then you would start your speech by saying: “If we look at the bigger picture“. That’s a very good sentence starter, right? Meaning, if we look at everything as a whole, if we ignore the little details and try and encom the whole operation as a whole and basically see it in a strategic perspective. That’s a very good sentence starter. If we look at it… If we look at the bigger picture, basically, we can clearly understand that the slides drop in sales figures and the months of November and December aren’t really so drastic because if we go back two years ago, something similar happened and then we bounced back and made even more sales the following year, so I would say this is all seasonal and basically if we look at the bigger picture, this figures aren’t really so worrying as you may think at first. So that was the second example of how to use this particular English idiom and let me come up with a third example. Obviously that’s what I always do in these Idiomatic Expression videos. I give you three examples, all right? Now, let me see. I’m drawing a blank, which means, I can’t really think of anything. That’s a good one. That’s weird because I always brainstorm something. Something crosses my mind on all occasions and now all of the sudden, I can’t really think of anything else, you know? So you would have to do with two examples. The first one was when you describe yourself in a job interview and then you say you possess the ability to see the bigger picture which distinguishes you from all other candidates, that’s what sets you apart from the other candidates. And the second one was during a company meeting when you said that if we look at the bigger picture, OK? So the two examples would have to suffice for now and maybe I’ll think of something after recording this video but that’s what always happens, right? You think of something when that moment has ed. That’s typical! But anyway… I hope that you will benefit from this video and obviously, as always, if you have any questions, of any nature, preferably something that’s got to do with this particular idiom – The big picture or English improvement in general, just let me know in the comments section below the video. Thanks for watching and bye-bye! Cheers, Robby

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

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: How heeding to my advice ing SIMPLE VOCABULARY helped one of my blog readers to succeed at a job interview which resulted in securing a job 1:00 – 3:15 Is trying to build huge vocabulary and phraseology going to help overcome an English fluency issue whereby the person in question keeps constantly second-guessing themselves when speaking in English? 3:20 – 9:50 Studying English grammar for 20 years – and still can’t speak in English! 9:50 – 11:05 Struggling with English Tenses and modifying English sentences 11:15 – 13:05 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! Combine Slow Speech With Improvisation! 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 or whatever but wrong in 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!