What does it mean to be fluent in English? How do you know if YOU can speak English fluently? First of all, English fluency isn’t an exact or precise thing. But there are ways to decide if you are more, or less fluent. Here are seven things that you can do when you are fluent.… Read More
To speak English fluently, you first need the confidence to speak. If you aren’t confident, it’s more difficult to speak regularly or try new words and phrases. (These are really important if you want to make progress in your English speaking!) The way to become more confident is to change your mindset (= beliefs). Here… Read More
Here are more than thirty common English idioms with numbers. You’ll hear these idioms in conversations, and also see them in newspapers, blog posts and advertising. Make a note of any idioms that you have never seen before (or for which there isn’t a translation in your language). English idioms – One be one step… Read More
There are some simple ways that you can add interest and impact to your English. I call these “easy but elegant” because you don’t need to learn a lot of complicated English to use the tips. Here are three ways to sound advanced (without the hours of study!) Add ‘drama’ to your voice We focus… Read More
Being an advanced English speaker doesn’t mean you always need to use advanced level grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. In fact, some of the things that make you an advanced speaker are “simple, but genius”. They’re so simple that you wonder why you never did them before! Here are three of them. Repeating words You can… Read More
One of the easiest ways to become an advanced English speaker is to copy what other people do. For example, you should copy (and use) collocations and standard phrases, as these will help you speak English more fluently and more automatically. But there are other things that you can copy which will make you feel… Read More
What do you need to be an advanced English speaker? I asked my Twitter followers in a quick poll, and their answers were interesting. Being an advanced English speaker is MUCH MORE than just knowing the right phrases! Here are the five things that you need. Conversation Skills How do you even start a conversation… Read More
Often, it’s more difficult to speak in a group of people who also speak English as a foreign language, than it is to speak in a group of native English speakers. Why is this? Perhaps because it’s more difficult to understand different accents, or perhaps because some people feel less confident about their English. However,… Read More
When people ask us “How are you?” we often reply with a standard phrase like “Fine thanks, and you?” But what if you aren’t OK? What if you want to use a more advanced phrase when you reply to greetings? Here are ten other natural phrases to say how you are – plus a fun… Read More
To make sure that your grammar is correct, you should know which preposition to use with verbs. Verbs can be followed by various prepositions, such as “on”, “in”,”for”, etc. However, the preposition you use for a verb in your language might not be the same as the preposition used in English. Here’s a list of… Read More
