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If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me how they could improve their spoken English I’d be rich. I’m going to try to avoid wasting time with the most obvious answers: Spend more time studying, spend more time speaking, bla bla bla. Everyone knows those basic things. Let’s look at the slightly less obvious answers.

1. Practice saying new things:

It’s easy to get into a habit where you always express your ideas the same way. Native speakers use different ways of saying things to spice up their language. Pay careful attention when you hear native speakers speak English. They will often use phrases that you don’t use. You will understand what they say, but you probably wouldn’t think to use those words yourself. Make a note of what they say, repeat it to yourself a few times, and try to use that same expression the next time you have a chance.

2. Spend more time listening.

Listening to native English will help your spoken English in two ways. First it will give you a chance to hear the expressions native speakers use. It will allow you get a feel for the grammar. The more time you spend listening, the more fluently you will speak. (Of course, listening alone isn’t enough. You really do need to practice speaking.) The second way it will help you with your spoken English is that it will improve your accent over time. It may be impossible to get a 100% pure native accent, but that certainly doesn’t mean your accent can’t be improved. Pay close attention to the way native speakers sound and how you sound. Notice the differences and try to constantly improve them. Many ESL learners get lazy with this, and once they are understood, they stop trying to work on their accent. It’s not necessary that you sound like a native speaker, but remember that you can get closer to that goal if you want to.

3. Read and think out load.

You will probably feel weird while doing this but It could actually help. Just because no one is there to listen, it doesn’t mean you can’t practice. Pretend someone asked you a question, and answer it out load.

4. Record your voice.

Buy a tape recorder and record your own voice. Listen to native speakers say something and then record yourself saying the same thing. Play it back and notice any differences. Record yourself several times, each time trying to sound closer and closer to the native speaker.

Most ESL learners get lazy and don’t take these steps. Try them for yourself and let me know how quickly your spoken English improves.

Andy

Learning and Improving English

Add and I love having this website free for everyone to use. We just hope that it becomes more and more popular. There are literally millions of people around the world who would benefit from this website, but they just haven’t heard of it before. So sad! We hope that you guys, our fans, could help us out by going to online english learning forums and recommending our site and putting a link to it. Some people have done this already and it is a huge help for us. We really appreciate it! If each of our listeners made one forum post a month, we would have amazing results. Please consider taking a few moments right now to recommend this website. Thanks in advance! As usual, love reading your comments!

Andy

I’ve been getting really interested in health these days and I thought I’d share some of what I’ve been learning about.

I found out that millions of americans are living with pre diabetes or diabetes and they don’t even know they have it. Diabetes is a disease where your blood sugar levels are too high. Even if you don’t have blood sugar levels high enough to be diabetic, they are probably still higher than they should be for optimum health. It’s really easy to get your blood sugar levels tested. You just have to go to the doctor’s and give them a small blood sample. The only thing you have to do to prepare is not eat for 8 hours. Normally you get your blood tested in the morning so it’s not a big deal. It’s easy to prevent or reverse diabetes through diet and exercise, but the western medical system seems to prefer to prescribe drugs. This is one of the diseases that is worse in the richer countries, because people in those countries eat too much sugar and junk food. They also tend to exercise less.

I thought it would be a good idea for you to start reading from some other websites about particular topics. They may be a bit more challenging, but if you are going to really improve your English you need to challenge yourself. This link below called “Diabetes prevention diet” should be a good start. There are 8 articles about diabetes and I think you shouldn’t have too much trouble reading them. They are interesting. Let me know how it goes. Maybe it will also encourage you to eat healthier as well. Good luck.

Diabetes prevention diet

Health

Finally it’s here after the long wait. I guess I wanted to keep everyone in suspense.

First I’d like to say that I can’t really take credit for the drink since I found out about it from a family friend back in Canada. I’ve been drinking it ever since I tried it. I like to experiment with it and make lot’s of different varieties. Ie. Try mixing different kinds of juice. You should play around with it and make it according to your personal preferences. Here is what I like:

1. Make some green tea. Don’t use sugary store bought tea. Make it fresh yourself.

2. Allow the tea to cool.

3. Get a 3 Liter (approx) empty plastic or glass jug you can keep in the fridge.

4. Put some Ice cubes in the jug.

5. Pour the cool green tea in. (about a third of the jug should be green tea)

6. Pour a little natural orange juice and a little natural grape juice into the jug. (The jug should have about 10% orange juice and 10% grape juice). Apple and grapefruit juice are good too. You might think it tastes better with more juice, but there are too many calories if you use too much juice.

7. Fill the rest of the jug with drinking water.

8. Keep in the fridge until cool.

9. Drink it.

10. Let me know what you think and if you tried any other mixtures.

Good luck!

Even if you’ve never experienced it, culture shock seems quite natural and not very surprising. Culture shock is basically the feeling you get when you live with people from another culture. They think differently and act differently than you are used to, and it feels a little strange at first. You need some time to adjust. You expect to experience culture shock when you go live in another country where they speak a different language and have a totally different culture than what you are used to.

Reverse culture shock is more unusual. Reverse culture shock is the uneasy feeling you have when you return to your own culture after having lived away from it for a while. Obviously, the longer you’ve lived away, the stronger reverse culture shock is. When I first learned about reverse culture shock I didn’t give it much thought at all. I couldn’t even imagine that I’d ever have these feelings. I’ve since learned that reverse culture shock is much stronger and more unusual than I’d ever imagined.

Imagine coming back to your own country after living somewhere else for several years. You see your old friends and family and try to catch up (catching up means to talk to someone you haven’t seen in a long time. You need to make up for lost time and share all the stories that have happened since you last spoke). Things change slowly so you don’t really notice how you’ve changed over the years. After talking with your friends and family, you realize that things aren’t quite the same as you remembered. They seem to think differently than you do now. They talk about different topics than you do. They have a different understanding of the world than you do. It can be quite difficult to fit in with your old culture. I find that it’s a very weird feeling, especially since I never really believed it could happen to me.

Add and I are back in Canada for the summer. We’ve already been here for over a month. I’m starting to get used to life here again, but it was really hard at first. In some ways, I forgot what Canadians are like.

One of the biggest things that surprised me was how much people here talk about houses.  A lot of people are always commenting on how someone else’s house is really “sweet” (sweet is slang for amazing), and what they plan to do to make their own house even sweeter.  They love to make their house and yard look really nice.  I’m not saying it is a bad thing, but it’s something I’d never really noticed before.  When people start talking about this, I find that I’m quiet because I have nothing really to say about it.

Please share any of your own culture shock or reverse culture shock experiences.

East West Cultural Differences Phrases and idioms

This can be applied to making any improvement in your life but here I’m going to use improving English as the example.

A lot of people tell me they want to improve their English. I ask them how they are going to do it. They tell me something like, “spend more time studying”. Their intentions are good but they are likely to fail. Their plan is not specific enough. They don’t have a plan for how they will study and when they will study. You need to know exactly what you will do and when you will do if you want to be successful.

Let’s look at this plan: “I’m going to read for 1 hour every night”. Is that a good plan? It’s better than the first one but still not good enough. You need to know what you are going to read and when exactly you will read it. If you say you will read at 8:00-9:00 every night then if it is 8:05, you know that you should be reading. If you just say you will read for an hour every night, what is likely to happen is you will keep delaying the reading until you are too tired, and then go to bed thinking that you will just start tomorrow.

Here is an an example of a good plan: “I will listen to one English podcast everyday starting at 8:00 pm. I will then go on the China232.com forum and ask any questions I have about the podcast, and if I have no questions, I’ll practice writing by answering one of the other questions, or writing my opinion on one of the topics”.

Now you have a good plan that you can put into action. Use this plan or make another one equally specific for your English study. Make sure you write down exactly what you will do and when you will do it. Try it for 30 days. See if you can do it everyday for 30 days. Once it becomes a habit it will be easier to maintain.

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

Andy

Learning and Improving English Phrases and idioms Self Improvement

Mutually exclusive is a term that pops up all the time in books I read. This is a mathematical term with a very precise meaning, but in general English it is used to mean that two things can’t happen at the same time.

For example, being in a relationship and being single are mutually exclusive. In other words, you can’t be in a relationship and be single at the same time. (unless you are a good liar. haha).

Often this term is used by saying that two things are “not mutually exclusive”. This means that the two events can, at least in theory, happen together.

Doing well in school and having a fun social life are not mutually exclusive if you know how to manage your time well.

Knowing how to use this term well will impress native speakers. I even know some native speakers who don’t know what it means.

Andy

Grammar and Word Usage Phrases and idioms

A “critical mass” is an important term to understand. I believe it was first used in physics but it also comes up often in a business context.

A critical mass is basically the smallest amount of something you need before a major change occurs. Don’t worry, I don’t blame you if you are still confused. Here are some examples:

Think about the discussion forum of this website. I’ve been thinking about ways to make it more popular. You’ve probably noticed that people don’t post very often at the moment. Since this is true it will make a new user less likely to sign up and make a post. Why? Because they can see that there is a good chance that no one will comment on their post. If the forum was more popular, it would attract more users. The biggest problem is that we haven’t reached our “critical mass” of users yet. I’m not sure what that magic number is, but I’m sure you can imagine that once the forum reaches a certain level of popularity, then it will grow quickly by itself. If the forum remains below the critical mass, then not much will happen. A critical mass is basically the magic number that causes a major turning point.

Epidemics (major diseases that spread throughout a population) need to reach a “critical mass” before they can really spread. Scientists know that if a certain percentage of the population gets a disease (the critical mass) then the disease will spread throughout much of the population. This is why it often seems like many people catch a cold at the same time. If many other people have a cold, the more likely you are to catch it.

People in business know how important it is to have many people know about their product. The more people who know about a product the more friends they can tell about this product. This is one reason that advertising is so important. Sometimes having the best product is much less important than having a popular product in terms of making money.

Hopefully China232.com reaches a critical mass soon and everyone knows about us.

Help us reach a critical mass by telling your friends and writing in the forum.

Thanks,

Andy

Business English Phrases and idioms

Take the high road.

This expression means to handle a situation in a kind and ethical way instead of retaliating and seeking revenge.

Here is a common situation where this expression is used:

Imagine your boss was in a bad mood one day and started yelling at you for no good reason and complaining about your work. You’d probably be upset by this and might want to retaliate by saying something negative to him. Let’s say that you discuss this with your friend and your friend says to you; “He’s just in a bad mood. Of course he shouldn’t have yelled at you, but if you get upset and yell back then you are just as bad as he is. You should take the high road and forget about it.”

Imagine your ex-girlfriend sees you and tells you that she never loved you and hated the whole time you were together. You could retaliate by saying something horrible to her, or you could take the high road by disregarding what she said or saying something like, “I’m sorry you feel that way”.

I know from experience it’s difficult to take the high road (I don’t always do it) but it’s certainly something we should all try to do.

Andy

Phrases and idioms

Juno, a teenage girl with a very sarcastic sense of humor, gets impregnated from her best friend. She’s faced with several tough questions like whether or not to keep the baby, how to tell her parents, etc. I don’t want to tell you too much about Juno except that she is hilarious and you should watch the movie.

I love this movie. I think it’s absolutely hilarious. I’d say it’s somewhere between a comedy and a drama. If you can understand the comedy than you should feel great about your English abilities. The English level isn’t too difficult but the comedy is quite sophisticated. It’s not a slapstick comedy. A slapstick comedy is one really old kind of humor. Something like someone throwing a cake in someone else’s face is an example of slapstick comedy. Slapstick is a very physical type of comedy. I personally don’t usually find slapstick comedy very funny.

I’d love to hear what you think.

Share your thoughts here: Juno Discussion

Andy

Andys movie reviews