I thought I’d help you today with something I’ve heard a lot of people make a mistake with; that is when they try to use ‘ hardly ‘ as the adverb of hard.
Hard
Hard means something that is either solid like beams, bricks and concrete or it can mean something that is difficult, challenging or perplexing.
For many years I have been trying to solve the Rubik’s Cube but it’s proving too hard for me.
The confusion comes because we usually make an adverb out of an adjective by adding the letters ly to the end of the adjective eg.
Confident – Confidently
Strong – Strongly
Quick – Quickly
Expectant – Expectantly
Brave – Bravely
Precise = Precisely
Or where the adjective ends in a y we remove the y and and add ily eg.
Needy – Needily
Heavy – Heavily
Hasty – Hastily
Unfortunately ‘hardly’ doesn’t follow this rule. Hardly actually means:
almost not / almost never / almost none
and sometimes we use it to mean:
absolutely not or completely not
I’ll give you a couple of examples:
Almost not (hardly +verb)
I had hardly begun when she burst in through the door.
(it means that I had begun but only just)
Almost never (hardly ever)
‘Hardly ever’ can mean that something almost never happens:
I hardly ever go to the football.
(it means I don’t go very often but I do sometimes)
Almost none (hardly any)
I just went to the fridge there is hardly any milk left
(it means there is some milk left but not very much)
I often hear people say ‘I’ve been hardly working’ – what that really means is that you were almost not working. If I’ve been hardly working it means I was doing a little bit of work but only just enough work to call it work.
Certainly not Absolutely not (hardly +verb)
You go to ask for a pay rise:
“Hi Boss, I would like a pay rise.”
Your boss says:
“Well, you can hardly expect a pay rise because you haven’t been working hard enough.”
It doesn’t mean that I arrived in well-dressed way, or that I scrubbed off all the dirt after a particularly muddy football match. It means that I’m about to tell you the truth about something. And, I feel there are a few things I need to come clean about. This year I turned 42 years old and to be honest it hasn’t been a good year. It’s the first year I have ever felt the aches and pains of growing older, my eyesight is worse and I’ve made a few mistakes. I feel I should tell you about some of those mistakes if you’ll hear me out. Each of these mistakes has a moral for me to learn from, I’ll give you that at the end of each short tale. I’m not going to hang out all my dirty laundry to dry but I am going to air a few things and show you how we use modální slovesa v angličtině. So, today is about modals and morals, shall we begin?
Rail journey to Berlin (and a lesson in how to use modální slovesa v minulý (would HAVE BEEN)
A month ago, I made a last minute decision to go to Berlin to visit my friends and watch a football match with them. By last minute I mean, the day before. I’m from Yorkshire and Yorkshire people (like the Scottish) are stereotyped as being a bit tight with their money. While I don’t consider myself tight I have to admit that I love to get the best deal. So it was I set about finding the most economical way of getting to and from Berlin. I knew about a railway ticket that allows you to travel in both regions on either side of the German border ie. Last year I had a ticket for Plzensky Kraj and Bavaria when I went to watch Union Berlin’s match with Jahn Regensburg.
This time I thought I would buy a ticket for Ustecky Kraj (300kč) which allows you to travel in Saxony. I had already found and bought an online ticket from Deustchebahn to allow me to travel in Brandenburg and Berlin for 22Euros. The whole deal would cost me just over 1000 including travel to Prague and from Prague to the Usti region. A standard Prague-Berlin return would have been over 2000kč. Are you still with me?
So, once on the train it transpired that I couldn’t use these tickets on the express inter-city trains and so I had to buy two 42 Euro single tickets to and from Dresden on top of the 1200kč Prague Dresden ticket. Of course, I could have simply used the slower regional trains with my original tickets but I wouldn’t have been able to get back home on the same day. In the end I spent about 4000kč! Imagine where I could have flown to for that money!
The moral of this tale is an easy to learn from – Don’t try too hard to be clever. Let’s continue with my next and more serious mistake…
Car bump
The most serious of these mistakes happened just two weeks ago. I was busy in the morning writing some emails and it all went successfully. I got everything done that I needed to do before lunch and in time to be able to take my older daughter to gymnastics. She’s gymnastics mad and loves going to her class twice a week. All in all it would have been a great day but for what heppend next.
So, we jumped in the car and she was asking how fast I could say the alphabet in English (very fast) as we approached the junction on the edge of our village. I saw a car in front of me waiting for a space and as I pulled up behind him he set off. I glanced to my left and saw three cars coming but far enough away that I had time to join the road. Before I turned my head back to look in front of me, I set off and then …SMASH! The other car was still there. He must have decided that he didn’t have enough time to get out. Of course, it was my fault, though I felt a little unlucky, but I accepted the blame and have been without a car since as we await it’s repair. The other man is similarly waiting for my insurance company to pay for his repairs.
The moral and my opportunity to learn? Pay more attention, especially with things that are habits that I do automatically. Funny/ironic really, as I have been reading Eckhart Tolle’s New Earth for the second time which is a book all about paying attention to what you are doing AT ALL TIMES!
Compounding injuries
I’m a runner, or at least I like to think of myself as one. Not a great one, but, over the last few years I have seen some improvement with regular training. As I mentioned in my intro this year is the first year I have started to feel the aches and pains of age and after a knee injury at an orienteering event in July I should have taken a rest and given myself time to recover. That’s no my style though, as I pride myself on my endurance and believe that continuing as normal is the best way to overcome small niggles. This wasn’t s so much of a small niggle however and it was soon compounded by a compensatory injury in my other knee. That has lead to back pain and … You don’t really want to read about the grumblings of an old man now do you?
Moral? Curb my enthusiasm and come to terms with the fact that I’m not as young as I used to be. Sad but true.
Having a Cleaner
I’ll let you in on a dirty secret that I know many of you don’t like to admit to anyone. We have a cleaner. There, I’ve said it. I struggled with this decision because I don’t like the idea of paying someone else to do my dirty jobs, I’m quite happy doing them myself. However, with both of us working, the responsibility for keeping the house clean is down to me and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. I look after and play with the kids, feed and clean the animals (sheep, hens, duck, rabbit, fish, dogs, cat and hamster), see face to face Engish clients, run my online business and keep the house in a liveable state. My mistake? I’m sure you can appreciate that a bit of help in that department was absolutely required. Why didn’t we do this before? We could have done it ages ago?
Admit when you are overwhelmed and be brave enough to ask for help.
Modální slovesa
What did you notice about those modální slovesa v minulém čase? – That’s correct! the past tense version of a modal verb has the same structure as the present perfect; verb + HAVE + Past Participle I could have written this quicker but it wouldn’t have been better. Now there’s a habit to correct 🙂
To come clean about something – to tell the truth about something that you have been keeping secret: I thought it was time to come clean (with everybody) about what I’d been doing. Admitting & confessing.
to hang out your dirty laundry – To talk to other people or in front of other people about personal things that should be kept private. You can also say “wash your dirty linen in public” and in America they use “air your dirty laundry/linen in public”.
to air a few things – to make opinions or complaints known to other people: Putting a complaint in the suggestions box is one way of airing your grievances. He’ll air his views on the war whether people want to listen or not.
to hear me out – to listen to someone until the person is finished speaking: Hear me out and then tell me what you think of the plan.
So there you have it. A few of the mistakes I have made this year. I’ve come clean about them, aired them and admitted them. Now it’s your turn. Don’t be scared, I only want to know about your English mistakes 🙂 Do you know which mistakes you are making? If not, take my free video course and start to correct a few of the most common mistakes Czechs and Slovaks make when speaking English. I suppose, if you’re feeling brave, you could tell me about your other mistakes in the comments below 😉 Look out next week for a review of the year and anything you might have missed.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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!)
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.
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. 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
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 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.
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.
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?
Today, I’m going to focus on one of your most common mistakes. Confusing when to usecome 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.’
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)
‘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.
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.
I thought I’d help you today with something I’ve heard a lot of people make a mistake with; that is when they try to use ‘ hardly ‘ as the adverb of hard.
I’m a runner, or at least I like to think of myself as one. Not a great one, but, over the last few years I have seen some improvement with regular training. As I mentioned in my intro this year is the first year I have started to feel the aches and pains of age and after a knee injury at an orienteering event in July I should have taken a rest and given myself time to recover. That’s no my style though, as I pride myself on my endurance and believe that continuing as normal is the best way to overcome small niggles. This wasn’t s so much of a small niggle however and it was soon compounded by a compensatory injury in my other knee. That has lead to back pain and … You don’t really want to read about the grumblings of an old man now do you?
Immediate Action
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?’
