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Learning English or learning about English?
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Learning English, learning about English, “tomEYto” “tomAHto” you might think. Unfortunately, most English learners spend 70% of their time learning about English. They learn about grammar rules, vocabulary, how to write an essay or pass an exam etc. but hardly learning English as in fully immersing themselves in the language. Look, needless to say,…
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The stubborn pronunciation problems of Japanese learners
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Japanese are stubborn, so are their pronunciation problems Japanese students of English struggle with their pronunciation problems. No matter how advanced the speakers are, no matter how long the learners have been learning or speaking English for, some (phonetic) mistakes are real stubborn aren’t they? They keep happening over and over and Japanese students…
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What grammar book is good to learn English?
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None! It does not exist. You never learn a language by studying grammar. Grammar books should only be used as a reference, just like a dictionary. You use a dictionary to look up the meaning of a word, that is to improve your vocabulary, and you should use a grammar book to help you…
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Being great at English: How bad do you want it?
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Not only English, being great at anything pretty much all comes down to how bad you want it. You’ve got to want it! You’ve got to want it so bad that you wouldn’t want to exist in this world without it. It’s the food you eat, the water you drink and the air your…
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Native English or Native American
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They’re not the same. You can be speaking native English without a purely American accent, British accent, Australian accent, Kiwi accent, Canadian accent, Irish accent, Scottish accent or South African accent. It can be a mix of all these accents. Your English could borrow different attributes or characteristics from each one of the accents…
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You’re done memorizing the dictionary, now what?
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Isn’t that what many learners do? Literally study and memorize the dictionary from cover to cover? And how many learners study every grammar rule in the textbook? Some learners seriously know about the structure of the language more than many teachers. I have also met so many of them who are extremely fluent, and…
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Putin’ up with Putin!
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Not that my website has anything to do with politics but when Mr. Putin decides to get himself into the kind of mess he’s gotten himself into, one’s got to pause and try to figure out why this man’s just lost all his marbles, invaded a country with thousands of troops and hundreds of…
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The 9 most important sounds for fluent English!
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Aren’t all sounds important for fluent English? Yes absolutely. Yet, there are 9 sounds or phonemes which, in my opinion, are crucial for clear and fluent English. The reason that I consider these phonemes to be critical is their frequency. In other words, they are more common than other sounds, hence important. If you…
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How adult learners of English go wrong!
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Language is a complex set of utterances or sounds humans use to decode each others’ messages. Allow me to use the following metaphor: You turn your PC on, it asks you to log in. You punch in your password, a series of letters and numbers which the computer has to recognize and read to…
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Are you good enough to sell in English?
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We are all selling something aren’t we? We sell our skills and experience to future employers. We sell our vision to potential investors. We sell products to consumers and services to clients. Some of us even try to sell Gods to non-believers. Never before has the ability to sell been more critical for survival…