English Language Archives - Learn English the Smart Way

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.

June 1, 2016December 21, 2023

3 Ways to Boost Your English Confidence

It seems to me that every Czech person can speak at least a few words of English even if that is only ‘Hello, how are you, I’m fine thanks, goodbye’. So why is it that many of you are scared, too shy or even ashamed to use the English you already know? (Note that there is a difference between shy and ashamed) So what can you do about it? How can you overcome your shyness or reluctance to speak English?

Click here to go to my vocabulary.com list of words for this article.

Improving your spoken English and your ability to understand other English speakers requires you to practise, a lot. So, putting yourself in situations where you have to listen to and speak English is certainly one way of doing it. This takes courage though, and that means overcoming your fears. So what are your fears? Do you think you will be laughed at? Misunderstood? Make mistakes?

Growing your confidence is the key thing. Here are three ways you can do that..

1. Allow yourself to make mistakes and try new things.

School teachers, peers, and for most of us, our parents, started from a very early age to point out our mistakes and chastise us for making them without thinking of the future consequences this has on young children. We are conditioned to feel bad when we make a mistake and not to use it as a learning experience (which is exactly what it should be).

I may be wrong here but I would suggest that your shyness or fear to speak English comes from your upbringing. As a child were you given red Xs in your school books, shouted at or worse and generally made to feel very stupid for not knowing something? Addressing these issues to conquer your fears is the way to building your confidence and allowing yourself to speak and understand more.

If your English teacher is someone who tells you off for making mistakes, I would consider looking for someone new to help you. You want a person who will pleasantly explain your mistakes and help you to practise corrections a few times. If you are consistently making the same mistakes, take some time to look at each one individually and work on it until you feel confident you have corrected it.

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You should also be going outside of your comfort zone in terms of the vocabulary and grammar you use. Yes, you can stick to the same words and phrases you already know but it’s much more exciting and rewarding to try out new things and not be scared to make mistakes when doing so. I know this personally from learning your Czech language.

2. Put yourself in situations where you have to speak.

This could be finding someone to practise with; a native English speaker (anyone English, American, Canadian, Australian, Irish or from New Zealand) or someone who speaks English as a second main language like Indians, Mexicans and many Africans. You will of course encounter many different accents and dialects within this diverse group of people. My wife has excellent English precisely because she worked in a pub in Cambridge, England where there were Americans and Irish people as well as others from all over the UK with very different accents (yours truly included). So that’s two more ways you can go out of your comfort zone; visit a native country for an extended period of time or go to one of the many Irish and English pubs in the Czech Republic’s bigger cities. If you already have a native English teacher then why not practise what you learn on other natives who you will usually find happy to tell you about their homeland.

3. Ask for help.

This can come in two forms; firstly, ask people to slow down and repeat things if you don’t understand what they are saying and secondly, ask them for specific words that you don’t know by using alternative words to describe it. Don’t stop at just using the word once though, repeat the word aloud a few times and use it again in the same conversation to help it stick. As soon as you can, write it down and think of a mnemonic for it; a drawing or visual image or put the word/phrase into a poem or song. If you don’t know about mnemonics go here to find out.

If you follow these three steps you will soon notice a big difference in your ability. You should become more fluent, more confident and even take pride in your level of English, whatever stage you are at.

So why do you think you are shy or embarrassed to speak the English you know? Let me know in the comments below and subscribe to this blog. Good luck with your English and feel free to ask me any questions. Richard.

January 5, 2016March 1, 2017

Happy New You.

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones. I hope you had as relaxing a Christmas as I did, or at least enjoyed eating all the food you spent so long slaving over!

My Christmas was a strange one for me as it was the first time in my life that I didn’t see any of my relatives over the Christmas period. We didn’t have a totally Czech Christmas though as Father Christmas (Santa Claus) visited our house on the night of the 24^th/25^th and we cooked a traditional English Christmas dinner which we took and ate at Radka’s father’s house. I know most English people have Turkey at Christmas but that became a tradition with the arrival of American soldiers during the second world war, before that any bird would do; chicken, goose, pheasant, turkey or duck. Radka’s father cooked a duck and we did the vegetables – carrots, parsnips, leaks in white sauce, as well as my favourite ‘pigs in blankets’ (sausages wrapped in bacon and roasted in the oven). Anyway, enough of that, it’s making me hungry.

So it’s that time of year when everyone makes hugely unrealistic New Year’s Resolutions; the promises you make to yourself about how to improve your life over the next 12 months. So hands up who has joined a gym? Given up smoking? Stopped drinking alcohol? Coffee? Decided to eat healthier or go running? Have you bought a new bicycle with the intention to start cycling? You get the picture.

I have never stuck to mine, EVER! I’m pretty sure (quite sure) that’s down to my habits but that’s another topic for another day. This year I have decided to keep it simple, so instead of giving myself the unrealistic target of running three times a week (which I would like to do) I will run just once a week and it’s in my diary because if it’s not in my diary it won’t get done! I will be better organized this year and have timetabled a space every week to plan the following week and look at the month ahead. This might sound obvious and very normal to you but to someone as spontaneous as me it has always seemed like a spoiler, a curtailment of my enthusiasm for the unexpected surprises of life.

Have you made any New Year’s Resolutions? Leave a comment below and share your commitments with me, it’s easier to keep your promises when you tell someone else!

So what can you look forward to from me in 2016?

My continuing support of your English learning will be enhanced with the offering of some one-day and weekend Masterclasses in specific areas and themes of English, I’m working on a free e-book to help you with the Present Perfect Tense, I’ve started writing my first book and of course I will continue to write you beautiful emails with tips and explanations. There’s also an idea forming in my mind for a V.I.P. Text and email service. Oh! and look out at the end of the year for my new 2017 calendar which will help you develop the habit of ‘little and often’, improving your English everyday.

So I wish you all the best for 2016 and hope it brings you all the happiness and love you deserve and keep working on your English. Don’t forget to leave me your New Year’s Resolutions below in the comments. I read them all, I promise.

Richard.

November 11, 2015March 1, 2017

The Importance of Starting Young

OK, I’m sorry, I know it has been over two weeks since my last post but we’ve been busy with the new baby! Did I tell you the story of how we almost didn’t make it to the hospital? I did? Well I’ll tell you again anyway…

So, we were originally booked into Podoli hospital in Prague but when we went for a check up at 11am the doctor didn’t think anything would happen soon and sent us home even though Radka was having contractions. We live forty kilometres from Prague so in an emergency we would go to Kladno as it’s closer. Later in the day her contractions had got stronger and more frequent and by 9.30pm they were unbearable. “Take… Me… To hospital… Now!”

We took Daisy (our first daughter) from her bed and put her into the car and then dropped her off at a friend’s house down the street. It took about 20 minutes to drive to the hospital with Radka’s waters breaking on the way. I parked right outside the reception and we went inside not knowing which way to turn to find the maternity ward.

The lady on reception did the bare minimum and without breaking a smile gave us directions that neither of us heard or understood, but we did hear the number of the ward and so followed a sign. At this point my wife’s contractions were so strong she was crawling on all fours along the corridor. As we could no longer see any signs telling us which way to go, we headed outside to see if we could get into the right building and found a map that was upside down and back to front (not helpful in a stressful situation).

We decided to go back into the building as it had started to rain and Radka was clearly very close to giving birth right there outside the deserted hospital. I wasn’t totally unprepared for that as I had delivered a lamb in springtime! However the door had locked behind us so we couldn’t get back in!

I spied another door and went to investigate; it was open and went into the right part of the hospital so I ran back to Radka’s aid. Slowly helping her along we made it into the lift and up to the maternity ward where two very kind and helpful nurses took us straight into the delivery room. Taking one look at my wife they decided she needed to get straight onto the bed and start pushing. She did and 10 minutes later Lucy was born. Ahhhhh. Here’s another picture for you.

So it has got me wondering how my new daughter’s English will compare to my first as Daisy was born in Cambridge and spent her first one and a half years living in the UK (plus the all important 9 months in the womb). She was surrounded by the English language from day one and her first words were indeed English. Lucy on the other hand was born here in the Czech Republic and won’t be exposed to the same amount of English as was Daisy so that means I need to do a bit more with her.

If you don’t have very young children or plan on having any soon you may want to skip on this email but please do forward it to your friends who have a little one or are thinking about having another baby!

Just click reply and put No More Babies! as the subject if you don’t want to receive any more baby emails.

So Daisy’s English is very good (she’s not yet 6 years old) but Czech is now her first language. She has been going to playschool in our village since before her third birthday and so hears and speaks Czech for most of the day. The only time she uses English is to communicate with me and sometimes her English grandparents via Skype, however we read books and watch TV and films in English as well as listen to a lot of English, American and of course Australian music (AC/DC anyone?).

She has said that she wants to teach her little sister English which I am very happy about as I love to see peer to peer learning taking place and the less adult interference the better. Children have much more ability to learn and teach themselves and each other than we adults give them credit for. If you don’t believe that, watch this video.

So what can you do to help your young children with their English if they don’t have a willing older sibling?

Start young and by that I mean before they are even born! It’s known that babies still inside their mothers can hear what’s happening in the outside world, starting around 16 weeks into the pregnancy detecting some sounds and by 24 weeks babies have been seen to move their heads in response to exterior sounds.

Whatever level of English you have it shouldn’t stop you from talking or singing to your child. Their brains need to make the neurological connections that will help them in the long-term to learn new languages.

If you feel you can’t do this you may have to ask yourself one or two difficult questions. Shyness often comes as a result of an authoritative style of parenting which while it may have got instant results has left you with a lack of self confidence in this area. Many people tell me that it must be wonderful to have a bilingual child but there’s nothing stopping them from raising their children bilingually, only your own fears holding you back from learning or expressing yourself. There is research to suggest that being bilingual helps children to focus on tasks better than their monolingual peers and may even delay the onset of age-related dementia.

Spend some time every day talking in English around or better still to your child. Little and often is the key here, better 5 minutes every day than 35 minutes once a week.

As they get a little older and start to speak themselves you can begin to play games with them in English. The key here is FUN! Learning should be fun, something we all do every day because… well… why not? It shouldn’t be a boring obligation to prepare you for some dream job in the distant future. Children have an innate will to learn that is too often stifled or even killed by traditional schooling and aggressive parenting. Let’s face it, as parents we worry what other people will think about us if our children don’t perform well at school, so we take it out on them. If maths and English are not their strong points but they’re great at art, music, drama or dance go with it, the world would be a very boring place without artists. Really we should be asking ourselves “is this right for my child at this stage of her development?” If the answer is no, accept it and move on.

When you’re having fun in English with your child, vary what you do by often changing activities. Don’t do anything for more than about five minutes unless they have a particularly long attention span. Simple games like Pexeso are brilliant for vocabulary, hide and seek can be used to count and learn simple phrases (Where are you?, here you are etc), sing and act out silly songs like ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’ and find other English nursery rhymes to learn together (you have You Tube so there’s no excuse!). And don’t be shy of technology; your kids will love some of the online games I’ve found over the last few years. Have a look here.

So I’ll leave you with this…

If you feel silly then it’s probably funny and if it’s funny then it’s definitely fun and fun equals learning.

Do you have any ideas for other games and ways to play and help your youngsters learn? Leave your ideas in the comments below so we can share them with one another. Oh! and look out for the chance win a ticket to see the new Star Wars film, I’ll email details soon.

Bye for now, Richard.

September 30, 2015March 1, 2017

The Easy Way To Pronounce TH. (The, These, Think, Thursday)

How to Say Th, the, these, that, those, and Thursday

When I started to learn Czech (I’m still learning, albeit very slowly!) I had to learn some new letters and with them some new sounds. Č was not too difficult, neither was Š or even Ž. You know where this is going right? But when it came to Ř it was another story.

I can remember just after our first daughter Daisy was born, practising the sound over and over while she looked at me from her cot as though I was a crazy person. (She’d thank me now though as her pronunciation is perfect!) Indeed it took me many, many months to get something sounding close just from listening to you native speakers. I was fortunate enough to have my future wife and all her Czech friends to help me, though somehow I still wasn’t able to get my tongue around it. “It’s like a rolling R with a Ž at the same time“ they’d say. Rolling Rs is difficult enough for many British people, the Scottish excepted of courrrse.

So it wasn’t until a visit to Prague a few months before we moved lock, stock and barrel (idiom explained at the end) to the Czech Republic that Radka’s sister showed me how it should be done. Letting me look closely at her mouth (she’s very trusting!) as she curled her tongue behind her teeth, rolled the R and blew air from her windpipe. This was the moment I finally understood and made the leap from something that sounded like a sneeze to something much more pronounced and close to what I was looking for. Now I am told I have a super sounding Ř. Test me on Křivoklát, křižíkova and řeřicha! Ok maybe not perfect but better than a Slovak’s! Sorry Ivana 😉 That said I still have trouble with pronouncing a simple rolled R when it follows a T or D for example. That makes it pretty hard for me to pronounce my own sister in law’s name Petra.So why am I telling you this?I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I understand how hard it can be to master a new sound that is not of your native tongue. I’m talking here about TH. Many of you have a problem with this sound as it doesn’t exist in Czech. Neither does our English J (as in juice) but you can easily compensate for it with a DŽ. However there is no way to make the TH sound using other Czech letters so I’m afaid you will just have to learn it.

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Here is my best explanation of how to position the various bits of your mouth in order to make a good attempt at it and below you will see a link to a video with a close up of my mouth (I apologize!).

But first are you aware that there are two TH sounds? One we call a voiced TH and the other unvoiced or voiceless. Let’s start with this unvoiced sound as in Thursday, a word which I know causes considerable discomfort and embarrassment as well as missed meetings and dates down the pan. And believe me I know what it’s like because I had to learn how to put five consonants in a row when I learnt čtvrtek. In English we like to use a vowel every now and again!

So the TH as in Thursday is produced by:

a) placing the tip of your tongue behind your slightly parted teeth. (If you put your finger to your teeth you should just feel your tongue between the gap.)
b) simply blowing air through the gap in your teeth over your tongue.

Click here to see the video.

Some explanations will tell you to stick your tongue out a bit between your teeth. While you do get an almost identical sound I think keeping your tongue back a bit makes the sound much cleaner and clearer.

At no point do you need your lips in this process. You can even hold them out of the way while you are practising to get the correct sound. I don’t want to hear any DZZZ or SSZZZZ o r SSS or T ok?!

Right, now you have mastered the unvoiced sound (Thursday, think, thought) you can move onto the voiced sound as in The, This, These, Those. The instructions for this sound are exactly the same as for the unvoiced sound but with one addition. You are also going to use your vocal chords/voicebox to produce a sound. That sound is the same as when you can’t think what to say and you ERRR as we say in English. For example “I don’t know anything about Van Gogh, eerrrr, maybe he was French? Eerrrr, I really don’t know.” So follow theses instructions as follows:

a) place the tip of your tongue behind your slightly parted teeth.
b) make the eerrrrr sound and continue making it as you start to…
c) blow air through the gap in your teeth over your tongue.

Click here to see the video.

And there you have it. The perfect TH sound, both voiced and unvoiced. Congratulations. I can’t wait to here the improvement the next time we talk. Here are the two idioms I used explained.

Idioms:

lock, stock, and barrel

The entirety; all of something. For example, Richard moved out of the house, lock, stock, and barrel. This expression alludes to the three elements of a firearm (gun) -the lock or firing mechanism, the stock or handle, and the barrel or tube. [Early 1800s]

down the pan

Completely and irreversibly wasted, lost, or destroyed. Primarily heard in UK. In an instant, we saw all our hopes for our business go down the pan. All those years of research down the pan. I guess it’s back to the drawing board.

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September 28, 2015December 21, 2023

How Are You Learning English?

Originally posted by Richard, Sep 23 2015 10:10AM

What Techniques Do You Use For Learning English?

Are you a textbook only person or do you like to practice conversation too? Are you one of those people who writes Czech words down one side of the paper then folds it over and writes the English on the other side? (just like my dad – yes he’s learning Czech!) Do you go to evening classes? Are you listening to CDs? Is watching films your favourite way to listen to English or are you more of a song person?

Learning Styles

Each person learns differently in their own way. There are many theories telling us of ‘Learning Styles’, that is that we all learn in a variety of different ways. It’s said that we are usually more dominant in one learning style than another. Here’s an example:

Neil Fleming’s VARK model suggests that there are four discernible ways in which we learn.

Visual learning

Auditory learning

Read/write learning

Kinesthetic learning

Fleming said that Visual learners prefer to see something more than just words in order to assist their learning. Aids such as graphs, diagrams, symbols, and pictures for example). Auditory learners by listening to lectures, discussions and audio recordings, etc.). Kinesthetic (or tactile) learners like to learn with real first hand experience that is to actually BE moving, touching, and doing things. (exploring, experiments and physical activity etc.).

More Styles

In recent years this theory has been developed and according to the Institue of Learning Styles Research the list now contains seven different learning styles: Print, Visual, Haptic, Intereactive, Kinesthetic, Aural and Olfactory. You can find out more here: http://www.learningstyles.org/

It’s true also that there are scientists out there who claim that these learning styles don’t exist. However whether you believe it or not surely covering all bases and using as many different techniques as you can (to aid your learning) can only be a good thing. If nothing else it keeps you interested and enthusiastic.

Share Your Styles

So share with me your prefered ways of learning English, I’d love to know what has and hasn’t worked for you. Tell us by leaving a comment below. Sign up for my weekly English Tips email here.