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By Robby Kukurs
http://EnglisHHarmony.com
Chapter 1 - My Story and How It Can Change Your Life
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And then one fine day he hooked a VHS player to the TV. I was
able to watch hours upon hours of Tom & Jerry cartoons – it was my
favourite past-time for a long time. There wasn’t much English in
those cartoons but that didn’t prevent me from writing down all the
cartoon titles and translating them!
But what you want from a twelve year old kid? I tried to get by
with what means I had available at the time. So I kept on watching
Tom & Jerry and writing down meanings of English words in my
notebook.
I’m not sure about my mom – I think she completed just a few
of the 30 lessons from the book. However, I was quite resolute to
learn English and started doing the 30 lesson course.
What Basic English is all about? It’s a simplified
version of the English language developed by Charles K. Ogden
and was released in 1930. The concept is quite simple – you
can say all you need using just 850 English words.
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However, I’m still not fluent. I’m still mixing up the words, I still
stop during a chat when my mind blanks out and I still lack the
confidence of a fluent English speaker.
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However, the same old issue with English fluency would occur
again and again, and again! There are days when I can speak really
well, my confidence is soaring and I feel like I’ve finally accomplished
my lifetime dream of speaking fluent English! The next day, though, I
could be struggling to get by in a conversation with my team leader
over a topic I could so well discuss just a few days ago! Damn, will I
never become a fluent English speaker? Why am I cursed with this
issue, why me?...
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you kind of know what you INTEND to say but the first thing
that comes to mind is a word from your native language;
Does it all sound familiar? I’m afraid – way too familiar! I was
constantly having the mind chatter. Sometimes it would go away and
on those days my English would be much better. But usually it would
be there and it affected my speech to an extent I couldn’t speak out
the simplest sentences. Remember how I was trying to ask how much
chicken cost in a supermarket? You see – if I didn’t have the mind
chatter, I would be able to ask the question just the way I wanted. But
the problem arose because the way I formed the speech was unnatural
in the first place.
Important! Linking separate words together is one of the
reasons why foreign English speakers have mind chatter while trying
to speak English!
After years of doing mostly written exercises your brain has got
used to forming English sentences on paper. You can pick up the right
words, put them in correct order, apply the correct grammar tense and
give it the final touch-up so that the resulting English sentence is
perfect. In a live speech, on the contrary, you haven’t got time to do it
all! The speech is supposed to happen instantly, with the sentences
and phrases coming out of your mouth just as they appear in your
mind! Once you can’t really do it, your brain is constantly under an
immense pressure to cope with the necessary output – live English
speech. And the end-result – mind chatter – is what you get as a
result of your brain working in a paper-English mode.
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This state of mind isn’t always actually present. You just might
have the mind chatter with many parallel layers of thoughts moving in
your head. However, at some stage you will discover that you rather
try to consciously choose the proper English words than allow them to
surface up in your mind as you speak.
This problem is especially prevalent among those who are
using dictionaries or flash cards to learn and repeat English
words. You see – I believe that all new vocabulary has to be learnt as
part of live English speech. And you don’t necessarily have to speak to
some other person to practice them, by the way. Remember me – I
was speaking for hours every day to improve my spoken English!
Every new word that you’re learning can be put in a context so that
when you’re memorizing its meaning it’ll be automatically associated
with other words. That in turn will help your mind to automatically
recall the new word when a certain situation arises!
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Some might say that all the English fluency issues I just
mentioned are quite normal. They’d say – common, be easy on
yourself! The more you speak English, the better the things are going
to get!
You can thank the English fluency issue for making you create
awkward sentences that aren’t used in natural conversations. For
instance, you might say a sentence like this: There is an inscription
written on the box that the content is fragile. Now it sounds completely
mad to me – but that’s exactly the way I used to speak a few years
ago! I had an entry in my dictionary explaining the word inscription
which describes a written message. I would have memorized this word
and repeated it a few times until a strong link would be created in my
mind between the English word inscription and the respective Latvian
word.
The problem caused by this translation mode (you can also call
it thinking in the native language) is that sentences you create are
direct translations rather than actual phrases used in the English
language. Had I been wiser I would have memorized the word chunk:
It says on. Whenever I’d have to say to someone that there’s
something written somewhere my mind would pick the corresponding
phrase It says on…
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Let’s take running for example. Quite a simple activity with huge
health benefits – something that I’m into for a number of years. If we
look at the running process in the very detail, I presume we could
spend a lot of time analyzing the running technique going as deep as
looking at how human bone and muscular structure is built. We could
structure the whole running studies by the respective topics and spend
considerable time learning about the separate processes. And when
you’d go for a run, it would be something like the following. You’d
learn about the knee movement during running and how the different
running grounds impact the stress that’s put on the knee. Then you’d
run a couple of hundred yards and then repeat the theoretical
knowledge again till it’s settled in your mind. And then you’d sit down
at the desk and write a test about today’s topic and score 9 out of 10.
Superb! You’re getting there! Your running is progressing and very
soon you’ll be able to do 6 miles in 30 minutes!
But who really cares if you’re no good at using English in the real
world? Spoken English has never been priority of the
institutional bodies of English teaching – they put too much
emphasis on writing and workbook exercising. And if you’re no good at
it – you are deemed to be a bad student. But the real life tells us
different stories – and the worst students can become the best when it
comes to acquiring the language in a natural way.
It’s wrong. It’s really wrong because you get trapped into this
translation mode forever. It’s wrong because you’ll always keep on
building the English sentences using separate words and only lots and
lots of real-life speaking will re-build the way your brain works. It’s
wrong because your English speech will actually be some kind
of a writing-in-head speech. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if English
students would be taught to speak grammatically correct phrases first
and THEN – how to put your speech down on paper?
By the way – here’s something else for you to think about. And it
doesn’t necessarily concern English studies – it can be applied on
writing in your own language as well. So think back to your school
days when you had to write essays. Weren’t you having issues with
how to actually put it all down on the paper? Weren’t you sometimes
just staring at the blank paper for 20 minutes without writing down
anything? I think we’ve all had similar issues and here’s why. We were
taught at school that writing is something special, something
completely different from the spoken language we use to communicate
with each other. It wasn’t probably put exactly like I just said, but we
just got this feeling for some reason in our heads. I had this issue. My
wife told me she had this issue. My friends have told me the same
thing. There is this general consensus that writing requires special
skills. You are made to believe that you just can’t take a pen
and put down all you would SPEAK… Although it’s EXACTLY
what you should do!
OK, I’ll stop giving out about the traditional way of teaching and
learning English. Instead I’ll give you a break-down of a method of
learning the English language that will make you a fluent English
speaker!
For instance, you can say bad quality, but it’s not a naturally
occurring word combination. Poor quality is what native speakers
would use to describe something that doesn’t meet certain quality
requirements.
So once you’ve got the basics done and you’re able use the
phrases in your daily conversations, your English fluency improves
radically and now you can build upon it.
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Now I’m going to ask the last question to those who represent
the English teaching industry: why haven’t these learning methods
gone mainstream? Well, actually I can give the answer on this.
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The main point I’ve made so far in this chapter is about focusing
on learning ready-to-use English phrases and collocations instead of
putting the words together like building bricks.
Massive books have been written about this principle and its
application to personal development and business life. But I’ll have to
try to explain it to you in a few paragraphs. Well, it’s not going to be
that hard, because the main concept is very simple.
So how do you apply this 80/20 rule in the real life? Well,
whenever you decide to learn and memorize some aspect of
English grammar – ask yourself – have I heard anyone speak
like that in the real life? If not – the chances are you’re just wasting
your time on learning something that’s not used in the 95% of spoken
English; therefore it’s to be eliminated. Let’s take, for instance, Future
Progressive tense – he will have been speaking. When on Earth have
you heard such syntax in the real life? I haven’t. Honestly. So it’s
definitely not worth remembering. Unless, of course, it’s required by
your work of study specifics, then it’s a different story altogether.
When I’m reading, I’m doing the same. If a meet a new word a
number of times, I look it up and that’s it – the work is done. No real
need to write it down!
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Tip: if you’re not sure which words your new word goes together
with, type it in the Google search bar. Google will tell you the most
searched keywords starting with that word and you’ll be easily able to
see what the naturally occurring collocations are.
For instance, the word detrimental. Just type it in into the search
bar and the following list comes up:
As you can see from the list, the collocation is detrimental effect.
The rest of the entries don’t pass for collocations – they’re just
different terms people have been using to look up on Google and it
should be quite easy to spot the difference.
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The 80/20 approach will save you loads of time. Whenever you
find yourself learning something new related to the English language –
whether it’s new words or a new grammar rule, pause and ask yourself
– is this the 80 or 20 part of the English language? If it’s the
80% of the stuff that’s going to be very rarely used, the chances are
you don’t actually need it. As I previously said, such analysis can
literally mean difference between months and years to improve your
English to the desired level.
To heck, you just read how it was bugging me for years and that
I finally dealt with it! And selectively re-organizing the English
language that you’ve acquired by now can do wonders to your English
fluency, too!
So to cut the long story short, I’ll tell you honestly what I think
you should do. Go back to my website by clicking on the link below:
Sincerely,
Robby Kukurs
http://EnglishHarmony.com
English Harmony – Insider’s Secrets is Copyright of Robby
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