Learn English the Smart Way - Blog by Richard Hill English

November 30, 2018December 3, 2018

Nejlepší způsob jak se naučit anglicky

Have you set goals to improve your English?

If you want to know nejlepší způsob jak se naučit anglicky then two of the most important things you need are motivation and goals. I have discussed motivation in another article so today we will talk about how to set specific goals to learn English. Click here for a link to my vocabulary list for the highlighted words. Let’s begin…

In all my years of helping people with their English and trying to learn Czech myself, the one thing that I have learned, is that no magic potion can make you the master of a language overnight, it takes time, dedication and a systematic approach. Luckily for you, I’m here to help you set those goals and also follow them religiously, so that you can converse with confidence in English. Keep reading to find out how to get this week’s free Goal Setting Creation Sheet.

Aren’t Motivation and Goals the same thing?

The difference between motivation and goals is that motivation is subjective and varies from person to person, but goals are objective. They are set according to your learning skills and retention capability. Today I’ll help you learn how to set great goals that you can follow to learn English more effectively.

You may have heard the saying ‘work hard, play hard, but the modern era needs something more than hard work, it needs smart work. Working smartly has become such a vital attribute today that it has been revered as a benchmark for doing everything in your life. Our phones have become smarter and our essential amenities are run by technology-driven systems, so let’s incorporate this smartness into our learning. By the way, if you would like to know more about working smartly in the office, have a look at my friend Jiří Benedikt’s site.

nejlepší způsob jak se naučit anglicky, English learning goals

S.M.A.R.T Goals je nejlepší způsob jak se naučit anglicky

Of course, there are many different systems and techniques for setting goals but my prefered method is one that uses the acronym SMART. Setting SMART goals will help you achieve them and by writing them down and ticking them off you will be able to measure your progress. (Guess what the M stands for!) So, without further ado, here’s what the letters of the acronym SMART stand for:

S- Specific

Be specific when you set your goals. Who is going to do it, when and where is it going to happen, how will you do it. What do you need to happen in order that the task is finished. Some of these questions may not be relevant to every task you set yourself but ask them anyway just to make sure.

M- Measurable

You need to set goals which are measurable. Devising long term plans is a good start but if you can ‘chunk it’ and break it down into smaller and more easily measureable tasks it will encourage you to continue learning the language. What you want is both a long term measurabe goal AND a series of shorter term goals that are equally measurable. An example might be to set the job of reading and finishing a book by a certain date; and then by chunking the longer term task into weekly (3 chapters) and daily goals (15 pages) you can more easily measure your progress.

A-Attainable

What’s the point of setting tasks if you cannot complete them? Instead, your tasks should be attainable on a hourly, daily or weekly basis. Consider this, you start with a task to write 5 essays this week on various topics. By the end of the week you were only able to complete 2 essays; this would surely demotivate you to work on it further. In its place, you can ensure that at least one 500 word essay is completed by a particular day of the week, and in it, you will try to use some of the new words that you learned earlier. Not too easy, not too hard!

R-Relevant

Making your goal relevant will help you learn better and faster if the daily tasks are more orientated towards your field of interest or your daily activities. For Example, if there is going to be a festival in your town next month, you can read material related to it or learn words that are associated with festivals. This will assist you in learning new words and allow you to converse more easily with people at the festival.

T-Time based

Time is your greatest acolyte while learning anything in life, so set limitations for your goals, like “I will … by the end of this month.” It will help you organize your tasks and daily routine. The important thing is to push yourself, but not beyond the limit. There is no rush, remember “Slow and steady wins the race.” I have been thinking about playing a gig (concert) for friends and family for a long time now. Just a few songs on the guitar, most of which I already know, but I’m still procrastinating about it because I have’t booked a venue and made it a concrete, time bound plan. When I have the date, I’ll put the time in to practise.

Today’s Freebie – SMART Goals Creation Sheet

Develop an action plan: I have developed a chart to help you create your SMART goals. On the top of the sheet write your biggest English goal, on the line underneath write a shorter term goal. Use the questions on the sheet to help you develop a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound goal. Finally use your answers to write a short statement of comittment to achieve your goal. I have included an example sheet where I outlined how you might achieve the goal of reading a book in English.

Finally

Remember that goals are not ‘the be all and end all’ (all that matters). The journey is what is important. Enjoy the learning process. Celebrate when you achieve your goals but remember the joy will soon fade and you will be looking for another goal. If you are still struggling with a reason why you need to learn English, take a look at my motivation article.

October 25, 2018December 21, 2023

How to Improve Your English Speaking – Part 3 – What’s Your Motivation

If you have just arrived here read this first – Almost Everything You Need to Learn English. It will give you the best overview to answer the question: ‘How to speak better English’. To find out more about how you can find your motivation, read on…

How to Speak Better English? – Motivation

From my point of view, motivation is so closely linked with number two on our list, goals. (If you haven’t seen my list of Almost Everything You Need to Learn English, click here.) However, to me, goals are concrete, specific, measurable things whereas motivation is a more general concept. For example, your motivation might be; to be able to speak English well enough to use it on holiday, but, a goal would be; to hold a conversation with an English speaker for 10 minutes, talking about particular topics of interest, by a certain date. So to answer our question ‘How to speak better English’ we need to know…

What is motivation? What motivates you to do anything?

In scientific terms, it is said that motivation has two parts; directional and activated. Directional motivation is that which moves you either towards a positive outcome or away from a negative one. If you want to be a fluent English speaker or at least speak better English, that is positive, going to English classes at work only because your boss will fire you if you don’t is negative motivation.

Activated motivation is the seeking (looking for) and consequent liking of the process and is dependent on the amount of dopamine in your system. Anyway, I’m not a chemical scientist so I’ll stick to what I know best and concentrate on how motivation relates to learning how to speak better English.

What motivates you to learn English?

I don’t know! However, I can tell you what motivates me to learn Czech. Firstly, I live in the Czech Republic so being able to understand what is happening around me is immensely important. To be able to really understand your culture, I have to better understand your language. I love playing football and talking to people who are interested in football and this is a huge motivation for me to get better at Czech. I want to have deeper conversations about the culture of football as well as discussing the game itself. (The photo is of me with my friends from Berlin watching 1.F.C. Union Berlin.)

I also love films and would really like to be able to watch more Czech films without English subtitles. I am a big fan of Svěrak and Smoljak and, as well as watching their films, I would like to understand the Cimrman plays. I have been to the Žižkov theatre but to the English performances, which are excellent, however, to fully understand a Czech performance and be part of a Czech audience would be magic! I’d like to help you find your motivation to speak better English but…

How can you find your motivation?

Think about reasons why bettering your English is a good idea, think about your interests in life, the things that really turn you on, and then try to connect the two together. If you really, really can’t think of something, maybe you have no reason or motivation, maybe you just don’t need to learn English after all. Make sure to read the action point at the end of this article so you can begin to learn how to speak better English. But before that, I thought this might be interesting for some of you…

Etymology of the word motivation.

Click here to go to the Etymonline site to read the etymology of the word ‘motivation’.

A dictionary definition of motivation

“that which inwardly moves a person to behave a certain way”

Czech translation

motivace;

Synonyms

Reason

Stimulus, motivator = stimul/podnět (stimulus in English)

What motivation does.

Motivation drives us forward, makes us get up in the morning, keeps us going when the going gets tough, prods us to take action, inspires us to be creative, and gives us a positive, happy feeling (when it’s that positive motivation – striving towards something better). Learning a language is really a lifelong lesson, even in your native language, so having positive motivation is the base on which to build all the other aspects of striving to speak better English.

Action to take to speak better English.

Right now, take out a pen and paper and start to ‘brain dump’ your ideas. Anything you can think of that might be a reason to learn English, write down all your interests and look for connections between the interests and the reasons. Think about and write down how your life could be improved by improving your English and how you could positively affect the world, or at least your small part of it, by being a better English communicator. I’d love to know how you get on, so let me know in the comments below.

OK, so that’s today’s article all wrapped up. I hope you have found some inspiration in it and will ‘get yourself motivated’. As we say in English, ‘there’s no time like the present’. Unless of course, you are Homer Simpson then you’d say ‘Why do today what can be put off ’til tomorrow?’

Look out for next week’s installment on goal setting to speak better English.

October 18, 2018December 29, 2023

How to Improve Your English Speaking Part 2 – A Deeper Look

This is an updated version of my Almost Everything You Need to Learn English post from 2017.

Today I am going to tell you what have I learnt (or learned) about the best ways to learn English (or any foreign language). For the last five and a half years I have been living in the Czech Republic, helping Czechs and Slovaks to learn English. Mainly, I have focussed on spoken English because my clients want to improve their speaking and there is no better way to do that than to simply speak. Or is there?

Here is a vocabulary list of the words in bold and their English definitions

During these last six years, I have learnt a huge amount about how to teach and how we learn. It is my intention, over the next few weeks, to tell you just what I have learnt and to go in-depth into each of the ideas. Today I will give you an overview of what to look forward to in the coming weeks and it is my hope that you can use this information to create some kind of personal plan for learning. First things first, have you read my introduction to Speaking Better English? Great, so now let’s take a look at the main areas I want to focus on…

Motivation

Before you even start to learn English, you need to have motivation, a reason for learning. This could be as simple as wanting to take a holiday in a foreign country, where you know English will be indispensable, or it could be because you want a new job and English is a prerequisite for getting the position. If you have a solid reason for learning it can help motivate you to learn. If you are studying English because your boss told you to, I recommend you find some real motivation to spur you on and give you a reason to learn English. To continue reading more about how to motivate yourself, click here.

Goals

Having difficult but attainable goals will also spur you on. Long-term goals are good but you also need more short and medium-term goals, which, when you achieve them, will give you a boost and show you that you are making progress. I suggest even making goals for each learning session and gamifying the tasks you have. Then there’s the Pomodoro technique. You can read more about that and other goal-setting ideas here.

Habits

Decide to have good habits. That is a choice you must make; to practise regularly and frequently. You simply must make time and prioritize your English. It doesn’t have to be THE most important thing in your life but it must have a prominent place. More on habits here. To get into the habit of improving your English regularly get my FREE English Habit Blueprint here.

Repetition and Review

I know this is one of the 150 year old schooling methods that I mentioned earlier but it does have it place within an ultimate learning method. There are two reasons why it has remained the mainstay of the mainstream school and that is primarily through laziness/conservativeness of the school system in general but secondly, because it does work as a way of fixing information in your memory. A future blog post will go into more detail on the pros and cons of how you can utilize this technique.

Confidence

Build your confidence right from the start. There are numerous ways you can do this, even if you are a really shy person or someone who is ashamed of their level of English. One quick tip for you today is to make a list of all the words you can find that are the same or similar in Czech and English. You immediately then have a ‘go to’ vocabulary. Start using these words as often as possible to send your brain the message that these words are OK! You can meet with a native speaker, read books and watch videos/TV/films; label everything in your home or office; Take risks and get out of your comfort zone. Take a holiday in a native speaking country and use what you know. Read more about confidence in speaking English here.

Make Mistakes

I am always telling people to STOP APOLOGIZING when they make a mistake. This is a terrible learned habit from your childhood when you were chastised for your errors by your parents and teachers. You were only trying to answer a question or do some task and because you got it wrong they shouted, scolded, punished, restricted, and withheld. It is difficult to overcome these feelings but it is possible. Visualization is the key, more on that later. Basically, be able to laugh at yourself when you make mistakes. Make mistakes your friend. RELAX, it’s OK, but DO LEARN FROM THEM. I also have a video course to help Czechs and Slovaks correct some of the most common mistakes they make when speaking English.

Grammar (Oh no!)

Don’t learn English grammar in the traditional way (unless you’re a polyglot and find it easy), use my Faster Grammar For Speaking method. I will explain more about this is a later post but essentially it is a mixed tense way of learning that focuses firstly on the grammar you need to speak about yourself. This is a system I have been developing for some time and I hope will be a massive help to anyone who considers themself a false beginner. For those of you who are struggling with the Present Perfect tense here is a little freebie for you. Just fill in your name and email address and I’ll send you the Easy Guide to the Present Perfect ASAP.

Jak se nejlépe naučit anglicky? — Easy Guide to the Present Perfect FREE ebook

Visualization

Without doubt, the biggest elephant in the room that the education system, the world over, is ignoring. Visualization is the best way to remember vocabulary, full stop (or period if you want to speak American English)

Learning Styles

I have written and spoken many times on the subject of learning styles and thankfully it is something that is creeping into education systems. Using as many learning styles as possible and finding your most prominent learning style will increase your learning effectiveness. I will write more on this later but for now, you can check out this older post of mine which will give you a basic understanding of what learning styles are for the uninitiated.

Listen

Unfortunately, I find this to be the one area most neglected by Czech and Slovak English learners. You should try to listen to native speakers as much as possible. Radio, TV, films, podcasts, music, documentaries, and real people. If you are lucky enough to live in Prague you have an unending supply of native speakers. Teachers of course, but also on the streets, in the pubs, restaurants, shops, and cafes. Get out there and listen.

Immediate Action

When a word randomly comes into your mind, immediately (or as quickly as possible) find out its meaning, write it down, and visualize it. Start using your new words in your writing and in conversation frequently to fix them in your vocabulary.

Ask for Help

When you don’t understand something, write it down and ask your English teacher/helper to explain it. If you have no one, find someone or at least try to find some advice on YouTube.

Learn English language online with a personal native teacher! Register to italki now.

Get Creative with Your Notes

Write down anything interesting you find in English, new nouns, verbs, phrases, grammar rules, idioms, expressions, or just interesting facts in English. But don’t stop at just writing in the usual boring (school-taught) note-taking way. Get creative with your notes. Fill the page with your own drawings, cartooning the vocabulary and using different font styles, shapes and sizes.

Copy What You Hear

Imitate what you hear. Copy the speaker instead of just pronouncing words as you read them. If you really want to have something like a native speaker’s accent you need to copy what you hear. Don’t just say things the way they’re written or the way you learned them, listen to how a native speaker says it. Be consistent with your pronunciation though and choose a particular accent rather than mixing and matching because this will lead to misunderstandings for sure. There exists an idea of a generic or stereotypical British and American accent when there really is no such thing. Both countries have a multitude of different accents. If you are interested here’s a funny picture

Next week I will expand upon motivation to learn English and try to help you find yours and give you actionable steps to find it.

Do you have a plan for learning? A method? A system? Tell me how you learn English in the comments below.

October 11, 2018December 29, 2023

How to Improve Your English Speaking – Part 1 An Introduction

Bean can improve your English speaking

“The pen is mightier than the sword”, but is it better than the spoken word? In today’s article we are going to look at how to improve your English speaking.

If speaking English is more of a problem for you than writing, then you want to read this article. I explain the best ways to improve your speaking, from my own experience and from knowledge gleaned (got) from the highest authorities on the science of learning. And, there’s going to be one or two new idioms and phrases for you, so, as always, pen and paper at the ready to take notes. (Sketchnotes preferably) Read on…

Knowledge or Confidence?

First things first, do you lack knowledge? I mean vocabulary, tenses, how to pronounce things? Or, is it a question of confidence? If your reading and writing are good but you feel you are unable to communicate verbally then you may need to improve your English speaking confidence. As you are reading this article, you must have a decent level of understanding and because I believe it is much more inportant for communication than being a grammar expert, let’s start with confidence.

Confidence

Confidence is the key to beginning to improve your English speaking. Without it you will continue to struggle with self doubt and it will be a mental barrier blocking you from being able to effectively input, retain and recall new information. There are many ways you can increase your confidence in speaking English but they all require practice. Actually speaking, whatever level you are at, is the key. So, are you too shy to speak or have you not found the opportunity to speak English? The answer to the second question is easy (see my free tips sheet), but to answer the first question you will have to do a little personal psychology. Shyness comes from either a fear of failure or a fear of success. It’s therefore about mindset and how you think others percieve you. Try to start focussing on enjoying the journey of learning, ‘every day’s a school day’, and the results will take care of themselves.

Download this free list of practical ways to help you improve your English speaking.

Knowledge

On the other hand, we can all improve our speaking somewhere, so even if you are a very confident speaker, what else should you focus on to improve your English speaking? Without doubt I would argue that the most important area is your pronunciation. When you start to hear that you are sounding better, it will boost your confidence and enthusiasm. It will also make you more intelligable and less frustrating for others to listen to, leading to better conversations.

The best way to better pronunciation is to listen more, and I mean listen more in two ways. Firstly, actually spend more time listening to native speakers of English. Secondly, listen more intently and make real improvements to your English speaking by then copying what you hear. Take my free 5 day challenge on some of the basic English pronunciation areas to start to improve your English speaking. One great quick tip to check your pronunciation is to try using something like Google Translate’s microphone. See if it recognizes what you are saying.

How to Improve Your English Speaking – In a Nutshell

By listening more, you will improve your English speaking vocabulary and pronunciation. By asking yourself some deep questions and forcing yourself to practise speaking more (with a constantly improving pronunciation), you can increase your confidence.

Take action now: Download this free list of practical ways to help you improve your English speaking confidence and knowledge and take the 5 Day Basic English Pronunciation Challenge

Next week: Part 2 – A Deeper Look at how to improve your English.

October 1, 2018December 21, 2023

Help for English Learners

You are Czech or Slovak, right? Learning English? Hmmm, I thought so 🙂

I’m Richard, a native British English speaker.

Improving your English is not just about learning grammar, studying books and taking exams. Firstly I believe it should be fun and have a purpose. That’s why I offer help for English learners starting with conversations about motivation, reasons for learning English and goals. I’m not so much of an English teacher in the classic sense but more someone who coaches you to help yourself, listens to what you want and instructs and teaches where needed. See my previous posts here.

A scientific approach is my method and I like to use techniques that give you space and freedom to think for yourself; the only real way to learn anything properly.

“It’s not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick

Today’s article is for intermediate and more advanced English learners. Those of you who would like some tips on improving your understanding when native speakers speak quickly. Let’s get started…

How do I better understand fast English speakers?

Well, that depends on whether you are listening to real people in the physical world or if you mean watching tv/listening to the radio etc. Also, if it’s real people, are you listening to engage in conversation with them or just to listen to what they say? Sometimes you have no option!

Quick tips for improving the speed of your listening comprehension

So, when you are listening to podcasts and cds or watching dvds or on demand video etc. you obviously have the option to be able to pause and rewind to playback sections until you understand. If you use something like Audible for listening to audiobooks you have the option to slow down the speed. This is the key to learning to understand faster speech. How do you that? Read on..

Step 1 –

Start by listening through to a short section, maybe only a sentence or two. Try, and I know it’s hard, to NOT translate into your native language as you’re listening. Just listen for words you understand.

Step 2 –

Then listen again and try to pick out words that you may recognize but don’t know the meaning of. Write them down, find out their meanings and listen again. This is where zou may encounter a few of the dreaded phrasal verbs. Fear not, I will have an article for you soon on the most used phrasal verbs and the best way to memorize them.

Step 3 –

So now you should be starting to understand a little better but there are still parts that you can’t work out. Firstly, don’t stress about this because as a native English speaker I often find situations, usually in music, where I realize that, after 30 years of listening and singing along to a song, I was singing the wrong words! The reason for this is that English is a language that has such smooth connected speech that it’s difficult to pick out one word from another. This is why it is not recommended to learn vocabulary in single isolated words. Although sometimes it’s fine to learn a new word in isolation, it’s much better if you can learn new vocabulary in collocations (words that often go to together such as ‘Football match ‘ or ‘Best regards’. When you learn the word ‘best’ you hear it as b-e-s-t however in connected speech, in a collocation like ‘best regards’, the last letter T is usually dropped and what you hear is ‘besregards’. “Give my besregards to Jim”

Step 4 –

After you’ve had another listen and tried to work out some more of the connected speech you can then go ahead and look at the subtitles if available. Then as you continue your practice, begin to speed up the audio.

But what about listening to real people in the real world?

in the case of listening to real people whom you are actively engaging in conversation with, you have to ask them to slow down and repeat.

“Can you repeat that please?”

”Would you mind speaking a little slower please, it will give me a better chance of understanding you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, please could you say it again for me?”

if you’re talking to native English speakers and they don’t understand you they may use…

”say it again” but often. At least where I’m from in the north of England, it will sound like “sayagen”

The traditional and more polite version is “pardon?”

So, that’s a long answer but I hope it helps. I have a lot more help for learners of English here: Almost Everything You Need to Learn English.

November 30, 2017October 1, 2018

Jak Mluvit o Fotbale v Anglictine – Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham

How to avoid sounding like a football novice

How to pronounce English football team names properly (jak mluvit o fotbale v anglictine). A quick guide to not sounding stupid in the pub. I bet you think you know how to say Chelsea, right? What about Aresenal and Tottenham? Easy? Read on…

Instead of trying to read the letters you see in the English spelling, try to pronounce what you see from the Czech spelling (including some phonetics). I have also added an audio file for each club name so you can hear how a native (northern British, English, Yorkshire – West, Leeds – North Western) speaker says it.

Arsenal

ásnl – We don’t pronounce the e or the a at the end.

Bournemouth

boónməth – Some people may say the mouth part like the word mouth but most of us replace the vowels ou with the short schwa sound ə.

Brighton & Hove Albion

brajnənhouvalbýən – To be honest most people just call them Brighton so you don’t need to learn the whole name (only f you want to sound really clever). Some people, those who have better (more standard) pronunciation will say the letter T in the middle but in my accent and for many others, we drop the T but leave a glottal stop.

Burnley

bɜnli – The schwaa sound that replaces the UR is the long version. It sounds like the noise we make in English urrgh when in Czech you say fuj (something is disgusting).

Chelsea

čelsi – The most common error I hear is people pronouncing the S as a Z. It should be pronounced as an S.

Crystal Palace

kristəlpaləs – Again, change the letter A at the back of both words to a short schwa.

Everton

evətən – As with Brighton, the T in the middle is optional but remember to replace it with a glottal stop if you omit it.

Huddersfield Town

hudəzfíltawn – Many speakers with my accent (West Yorkshire) would actually drop the H from the beginning and as well as the D from the end of HuddersfielD and as Huddersfield is also in West Yorkshire, you’ll sound like a real local if you pronounce it this way.

Leicester City

lestəsiti – Or just lestə. A perfect example of the letters in the word being more confusing than helpful.

Liverpool

livəpůl – Try to take out your rolled R from the middle and replace with a schwa. Also, the double O is a long sound like in the word ZOO not short as in look.

Manchester City

mančestəsiti – Not so hard but do try to replace the rolled R at the end of Manchester with a schwa.Or just simply ‘site’ to their local supporters.

Manchester United

mančestəjůnajtid – Or just simply jənajtid (optional T/glottal stop) to their northern born supporters. With united you can also pronounce it jənajtəd.

Newcastle United

ňůkasljůnajtid – The N in Newcastle is said more like an ň or nj, something called an intrusive j sound. It’s the sound of a letter that we don’t write. It’s the same sound you make when saying words like, you, universtity and Europe. (Jolanda and Jachim)

Southampton

sawthamptən – The OU part of SOUTH is said in the same way as when we hurt ourselves and say OW! (cow, coward).

Stoke City

stouksiti – This has been the most difficult one for me to work out how to pronounce using Czech sounds so listen carefully.

Swansea City

swonzisiti – Ok, so the word SEA is a soft S sound and yes, it looks the same as in ChelSEA but here it IS pronounced like a Z.

Tottenham Hotspur

totnəmhotspɜ – This club has the unfortunate title of ‘Most Overpronounced Football Club Name in the World’. You do not need to pronounce every letter you see, if you do you will sound quite ridiculous. To sound more like a native, remove the E from the middle of the word, don’t pronounce the H in the first word and if you REALLY want to sound good, replace the TT with a simple glottal stop. If this is all a bit much for you, try calling them just SPURS (spɜz).

Watford

wotfəd – Simply right? Optional T, replace with glottal stop, the A sounds like an O and the OR becomes a schwa.

West Bromwich Albion

wesbromičalbíjən – NEVER EVER, I repeat, EVER pronounce the W in BromWich, the same can be said for Norwich City or Harwich. However, you do say it in Northwich Victoria (8th level of English football league system). Also drop the T from WesT.

West Ham United

westhamjůnajtid – Here we do pronounce the T in West but sometimes drop the H from Ham to make Westam.

And so to the end of this piece on how to pronounce English football club (Premier League) names. The final recording is a reading of the English Premier League results from the weekend of Fri-Sun 24-26th November 2017. You can hear how I naturally read them. Note, this is slightly different to how I would pronounce them when I talk. During this reading, my pronuncation is more of an attempt at a BBC standard.

Here are the English Premier League fixtures for the weekend of December 2nd 2017. My challenge for you is to see if you can pronounce the names a little beter than before. If you’re feeling really brave, make a recording of yourself and send it to me :-). Remember I love to read your comments so please, post them below. If you want more help with pronunciation, take my free video course.

Richard.

Chelsea v Newcastle
Brighton v Liverpool
Everton v Huddersfield
Leicester v Burnley
Stoke v Swansea
Watford v Tottenham
West Brom v Crystal Palace
Arsenal v Man Utd
AFC Bournemouth v Southampton
Manchester City v West Ham United

March 29, 2017December 28, 2023

Almost Everything You Need To Learn English

Here is a vocabulary list of the words in bold and their English definitions

During these last five years, I have learnt a huge amount about how to teach and how we learn. It is my intention, over the next few weeks, to tell you just what I have learnt and to go in-depth into each of the ideas. Today I will give you an overview of what to look forward to in the coming weeks and it is my hope that you can use this information to create some kind of personal plan for learning. First things first…

Motivation

Goals

Habits

Repetition and Review

Confidence

Build your confidence right from the start. There are numerous ways you can do this, even if you are a really shy person or someone who is ashamed of their level of English. One quick tip for you today is to make a list of all the words you can find that are the same or similar in Czech and English. You immediately then have a ‘go to’ vocabulary. Start using these words as often as possible to send your brain the message that these words are OK! You can meet with a native speaker, read books and watch video/TV/films; label everything in your home or office; Take risks and get out of your comfort zone. Take a holiday in a native speaking country and use what you know.

Make Mistakes

I am always telling people to STOP APOLOGIZING when they make a mistake. This is a terrible learned habit from your childhood when you were chastised for your errors by your parents and teachers. You were only trying to answer a question or do some task and because you got it wrong they shouted, scolded, punished, restricted and withheld. It is difficult to overcome these feelings but it is possible. Visualization is the key, more on that later. Basically, be able to laugh at yourself when you make mistakes. Make mistakes your friend. RELAX, it’s OK, but DO LEARN FROM THEM. I also have a video course to help Czechs and Slovaks to correct some of the most common mistakes you make when speaking English.

Grammar (Oh no!)

Visualization

Learning Styles

I have written and spoken many times on the subject of learning styles and thankfully it is something that is creeping into education systems. Use as many learning styles as possible and finding your most prominent learning style will increase your learning effectiveness. I will write more on this later but for now, you can check out this older post of mine which will give you a basic understanding of what learning styles are for the uninitiated.

Listen

Immediate Action

When a word randomly comes into your mind, immediately (or as quickly as possible) find out its meaning, write it down and visualize it. Start using your new words in your writing and in conversation frequently to fix them in your vocabulary.

Ask for Help

When you don’t understand something, write it down and ask your English teacher/helper to explain it. If you have no one, find someone or at least try to find some advice on YouTube.

Learn English language online with a personal native teacher! Register to italki now.

Get Creative with Your Notes

Write down anything interesting you find in English, new nouns, verbs, phrases, grammar rules, idioms, expressions, or just interesting facts in English. But don’t stop at just writing in the usual boring (school taught) note-taking way. Get creative with your notes. Fill the page with your own drawings, cartooning the vocabulary and using different font styles, shapes and sizes.

Copy What You Hear

Imitate what you hear. Copy the speaker instead of just pronouncing words as you read them. If you really want to have something like a native speaker’s accent you need to copy what you hear. Don’t just say things the way it’s written or the way you learned it, listen to how a native speaker says it. Be consistent with your pronunciation though and choose a particular accent rather than mixing and matching because this will lead to misunderstandings for sure. There exists an idea of a generic or stereotypical British and American accent when there really is no such thing. Both countries have a multitude of different accents. If you are interested here’s a funny picture.

No photo description available.

Next week I will expand upon motivation to learn English and try to help you find yours and give you actionable steps to find it.

Do you have a plan for learning? A method? A system? Tell me how you learn English in the comments below.

February 28, 2017October 1, 2018

Why Video Is King For Learning English

Video is without doubt the best way to learn. I’m not just saying that because I have a free English video course for you but because I know from first hand experience that I personally retain more information from watching a well made piece of video, than I do from any other way of learning. Why is that? I’ll tell you later, first of all I want to share with you another of your common mistakes and explain how you can correct it.

We are going with Petr.

If you want to tell someone that you are going somewhere and you are not going alone, it is quite right (correct) to say that you are going with them. The mistake is made here when you refer to both yourself and the other person by saying; ‘we’ are going, and then also saying the name of the other person. For example;

You are going to the cinema with your friend Petr. Only the two of you are going. The first time you tell me about this trip to the cinema you should say:

“I am going to the cinema with Petr.”

Not ~~“we are going to the cinema with Petr”~~ or ~~“We’re going with Petr to the cinema.”~~

This is because if you use we are going with Petr, I assume you mean you and I and Petr (three of us). The we would refer to you and I.

If I know, for example, that you have a husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend and you say “We are going to the cinema tonight” then I assume you mean you and your partner, so, you don’t need to say who with. In this case just the first time you mention your trip to the cinema you would say just:

We’re going to the cinema tonight.

I would understand from that sentence that you mean you and your significant other (boyf/girlf/husband/wife etc).

If you want to say at the first mention who you are going with, refer to yourself (I) and then who with, so:

I’m going to the cinema tonight with Petr.

See if you can remember this and compare how well you retain the information (just from reading it) with how you are able to recall information from my free English video course. Read on to find out more about the benefits of using different learning styles.

Learning Styles

As I talked about in my previous blog, the traditional ways of learning all have their plus and minus points but the most important of those points is that they all have mainly only one learning style, with the exception of meeting somone face to face. The thing is, with video, not only do you have video and audio, but, it allows for still pictures, written words for you to read and it can be tactile (kinesthetic) if the video has physical action points for you to carry out.The fact that you can stop and repeat certain parts of the video also give it an advantage over meeting a person in real life. Can you imagine asking your English teacher to repeat the same thing as many times as you need to fully understand it?

When I am recommending or explaining new ideas to my clients, invariably (usually) they come from something I have remembered from a video I have seen. That might be TED talks, documenaries or online courses, ok there are many things I have recommended from books too but I find things much harder to remember if I have only read them. And there is some science behind that, here it is…

The Science Behind the Idea

On the site socialmediatoday.com Eric Schwartzman gives these reasons why learning online is king.

Here are 4 big advantages of online learning:

Automatic Retention – You don’t have to take notes. When all the material is recorded, and people are spared from having to retain everything themselves, they can focus on trying to actually understand the key concepts and on demoing tools and services without having to write it all down simultaneously.
The Knowledge You Want First – When information is presented from a lectern, it’s shared in a linear fashion. You have to sit through long, drawn-out explanations, some of which you know, and some of which you don’t. But since everyone knows different things, the linear approach serves the group, but not necessarily the individual. When on-demand content is broken down into bite-sized chunks, and tagged appropriately so it can be easily found, participants can laser in on what they want.
Learn at your Own Pace – Everybody picks things up at different speeds. Good instructors try and teach to the center of the classroom, which under serves fast and slow learners. When you can stop and rewind demos as many times as you like and learn at your own pace, everyone can learn and fast or slow as they like, and no one gets lost or bored.
Anytime, Anywhere – There is no longer a need to schedule time out of the office, wait until the right course is available, be forced to consume 6 hours of course material in a single day or board a plane. Online social media training allows you to time-shift and place-shift your professional development when you want, where you want.

My Opinion

While I agree with the majority of what Eric says, I would still argue that writing down and taking notes plays a valuable part in commiting information to memory (when used simultaneously with other learning styles). What makes note taking even better is when you add colour, pictures and different styles. Check out Mike Rohde and his sketchnotes for some amazing inspiration.

If you haven’t tried learning English from a video course before, I suggest you give it a go. You will find a multitude (tons of stuff) on You Tube to help you learn English and of course you can take my free English video course by clicking here. If you have tried video learning before and weren’t impressed, do still check out my course as I assure you, it will be like no other video course you’ve taken before (it’s not just a talking head course).

See you next week with a winter holiday special, yes, I’m going to learn how to snowboard! Leave a comment below and tell me if you’ve tried video before as a way to learn English.

February 3, 2017December 21, 2023

The Most Common English Mistakes You Make.

How can you recognise and correct your most common English mistakes?

So, you’ve got a lecture or class to take in English next week. Maybe you’ve got an interview coming up for a job that requires English. You want to improve your basics fast, cut out the most common English mistakes you make, and not sound like an idiot. What about those English emails at work? They aren’t going to correct themselves and you told your boss you can speak and understand English, right?

You need to know two things. One, what are the most common English mistakes you’re making. Do you know? I bet you know some of them but others you are not even aware of. Two, how do you correct those mistakes and bad habits (like forgetting to put an S on the end of verbs for he/she/it, etc.) and how do you remember them?

Now, you know me. I like mistakes, it shows that you’re trying and not afraid. That’s great of course, but, if you really want to improve quickly, one thing you can do is correct a few of those nejběžnější chyby v angličtině. I’m sure I made plenty of mistakes in my last post, which I wrote in Czech.

So what can you do about your most common English mistakes?

Luckily for you, over the last five years, I have made notes on the most common English mistakes that my students make and I’ve made an online video course to help you correct many of those.. You can sign up for the mini-course for FREE here and find out three more of your most common English mistakes and how to fix them. To find out how to correct one error I often hear, read on…

Come, Go and Get

Today, I’m going to focus on one of your most common mistakes. Confusing when to use come and go, and came, got and went. An example of a typical mistake would be when we are sitting in a cafe and you say to me, “I came home at 6 from work yesterday.” This is wrong because we are not in your home, we are in a cafe, and where you are dictates which verb to use.

In order to ‘come’ you usually need to be in the place you are referring to. ‘I came home at ten yesterday.’ This means you are at home now.

English Exceptions!

Of course, this being English, there are exceptional cases. If I have planned to meet some friends in a restaurant and I also want to invite you, I would say ‘Why don’t you come and join us? Or, ‘Come to the restaurant tomorrow.’ In this instance, I am not in the restaurant now but I am planning to be there before you arrive and you will therefore come to meet me.

If you are not at home we would naturally say ‘I got home at ten yesterday. (not ‘I came home’) but you can also use got if you are at home.

However, if you talking about the time that you left somewhere (not the time you arrived home) then we would use went. ‘I was at the party but I went home (left the party) at midnight.’

go-sign-16620 If you want to send somebody somewhere and you will not be with them then use go. ‘Go to the cinema on your own, I don’t like Star Wars.’ (not come to the cinema). If you are inviting me to go with you to the cinema then you can use either come or go. ‘Will you come/go to the cinema with me tomorrow?’

Compare these similar situations:

‘Will you come to my house for the party next week?’ (I will be there)

‘Will you go to my house to pick up my keys please?’ (I have forgotten my keys and left them at home. I am not there now and I will not be there when you get there to pick up the keys.

‘They went home at 11.’ (They are not at home now and you are talking about the time they left the place you are in)

‘He came home at 11.’ (He is at home now)

‘I got home at 11.’ (You could be either at home or not at home)

If you want it explained in Czech, HelpforEnglish.cz has a good explanation here.

Next week

‘What are the best ways to correct your most common English mistakes and other ways to learn?’ I’ll talk again about learning styles and if you liked today’s content but prefer video to reading then sign up for my FREE Most Common English Mistakes Mini Course, open now. video-player-richard-hill-english

I know that you will get massive value from this course and it will benefit you in many ways, not least by making your English sound a little more native, smoother and more intelligible.

That’s all from me for today. Remember, ‘every day’s a school day’ so let me learn from you by telling me what you think are the most common English mistakes you make when speaking English. Leave a comment below. Richard.

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January 11, 2017October 1, 2018

Muj Špatný Češtinu

Pamatujete že ja jsem Anglický rodilý mluvčím? Tak že, tadz mám problěm protože dneska musím napsát vaše blog v Čestině. Asi, ne, určitě, poynáte že muj řada slovu je jako Anglickz.

Ahhh… musím vzpnout 4esk7 kl8visnice kvůli muj y a z je správný.

Pokračuju… Zkouším napsát bez používajici slovník i překládač tak uvidíme jestli umíte mi rozumět. A, proč udělám Český blog kdzž vždycky psám v Angličtině? Odpovězda je ukázat že nemusíte být perfektní být rozumění.

Jestli vaše gol je být rozumění je to duležitý jenom že máte důvěra zkoušit ynova a znova (Sakra!) Mnohu Český lidi vubec říct ani nic protože “to není perfekt”, “to není dobrý”. Slište mě! ear-clip-art-McLLy6RXi Ne bude lepšit bez zkoušení. Nevadí jak špatně vás Angličký jazýk, většinu rodilý mluvčí vy pomoc s trpělivostem.

Dneska ten blog bude krátký protože pro mě napsát na počitač trvalo mi hodně dlouhá. Měl jsem nějáký knihy se učit Česky ale pro mě nefungovat. Ja vím že dělám hodně chyby. Máte nějaký jiný nápady pro mě? Doufám že ano. Dolu mužete mi pomoc v commentsu. Dík. 🙂

Přes přístí dva týdnu budu napsát o vaše nejběžnější chyby a jak je opravit. Těšte se na videa mini kurz Zdarma.

Dolu řeknete mi co myslíte co je nejběžnější chyby.

Čau for now.

P.S. Mužete mi sledovat kliknutím na FOLLOW.