Which do you love more?
Phrasal verbs or visiting the dentist?
I know, phrasal verbs are confusing.
Miscellaneous
Bad things happen when you don’t understand English
Karel was The Big Boss.
I taught English at his company every Tuesday and Thursday.
And while his employees got group lessons in the conference room, Karel got private lessons in his office.
English Is A Magic Key
“What’s that strange sound?”
“It sounds like…”
“Could it be…?”
“Yes, it is — an American accent!”
Not many Americans in Prague these days.
The city used to be full of them, or rather, full of us. 550,000 visited in 2019.
But not these days. Americans are not allowed into most European countries. Nor the Brazilians, nor the Tanzanians, nor the Mongolians.
In fact, these days, the streets are empty except for the locals.
But I’m an exception.
I have something that the other 328 million Americans don’t…
Behind A Closed Door
In October I returned to a very closed Euorpe.
In December I went home for Christmas.
Can you find the mistake?
“You can’t make an omellette without breaking some eggs.”
Have you heard that expression before?
That’s how I feel about speaking.
20% Stronger Brain in 20 Minutes ?
This week in
Vitamin V…
We’re talking about what you should do in a conversation.
And… what you should not do.
My students who make FAST progress – Their big secret
Yesterday I told you I made a discovery in 2006 – two years after I started teaching.
I told you how some of my students made a little progress…
While others made A LOT of progress.
The BIG DISCOVERY
February 2006.
U Sudu pub, Prague 1.
Have you been there?
The Mr Vig Method
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When I was a kid I wanted to be black belt in karate.
So I signed up for lessons.
Got my yellow belt.
And then quit.
Oh well.
Like a lot of 11 year-olds, when I discovered it was hard work I chose to ride my bike with my friends instead.
Anyway, my point here is that everyone in karate or kung fu or tae kwon do knows you first get your white belt. And much later you get your black belt.
You learn to punch before you learn to kick
And you learn to stand before you learn to jump.
There’s an order.
There are steps
Logical. Makes sense. Sequential.
And… it’s the same with a foreign language.
But most students are skipping steps.
They’re jumping to the last steps or they’re starting in the middle.
And they have problems with speaking and understanding and they don’t know why.
THIS IS STEP NUMBER ONE
If you already have basic grammar and basic vocab, this is the step I give my private students first
It gives them the fastests results in the shortest amount of time.
It’s easy. They do it in their free time. And it only takes a few minutes a day.
And it makes everything else you do in English much, much easier.
So what is it?
Vocabulary.
But not just any words.
Specific words.
A New Discovery
Do you know how many words are in the English language?
English has the largest vocabulary of any language.
171,476 words are in the Oxford English dictionary.
And that’s a depressing number for an English student.
But here’s the good news: you don’t need to know them all.
In fact, you don’t need to know half.
You don’t even need to know 10%.
If you want to understand native speaker conversation you only need to know 0.8%.
That’s just 2,144 words.
How Is That Possible?
Native speakers like to repeat themselves.
It’s true.
Even native speakers who went to college and have big vocabularies and interesting things to talk about.
We say the same few words again…
And again.
And again.
In fact, we love these words so much, 90% of our conversation is just these words.
These 2,144 words are 90% of the words I use, the words the Queen uses, and the words your customer from Manchester uses.
And if you understand 90% that’s good enough.
It’s not perfect but it’s enough to understand and to communicate. (I have British friends and sometimes I think I understand less than 90% of what they say!)
These are what I call “super words.”
So would you like to learn a short list of English vocabulary words and understand 90% of English?
…90% of TV
……. 90% of film
……… And 90% of native speaker conversation?
Good!
There’s just one problem…
The Super Word Story
People have been counting words for a long time.
And when the computer was invented, suddenly word lists became big.
In fact, some were huge!
20,000 words…
100,000 words…
But an English student doesn’t need all those words.
He or she just needs the most important.
What we call the “high frequency words.”
That’s why an English teacher named Michael West decided to make a simple list just for English students.
It’s called the General Service List and it contains only the 2,000 most useful words in English.
But there’s just one other problem…
West published his vocabulary list in 1953 (he started making it in the ‘30s).
And as you know, a lot of things – and conversations – have changed since then.
For example, in his list you can find a lot of words about farming and religion.
Which, of course, could be very useful if you’re looking for a job on an Amish farm.
But for the average English student living in the 21st century, the list wasn’t ideal.
Until…
And Then… The Discovery
Finally, in 2014 a new group of English teachers made a new vocabulary list.
And this time they made some improvements:
- More Accurate: 200+ million words analyzed with computers
- Modern Words: Sources are recent conversation transcripts and modern TV shows, films, and magazines.
- For Conversation: Other word lists are 90% written English. This list focuses mainly on spoken English.
And then… they made it even better!
How can you improve a list of words?
Good question.
Somehow they found a way to make it shorter.
In June 2016 they released a new version that has 24% fewer words; and with this list you can still understand the same 90% of TV, film and conversation.
Not bad.
Here’s How To Get Your Super Words Checklist
Ready to find out how many super words you know?
1) download my Super Word Checklist here.
2) print it out.
3) check/tick any word which
- You’ve never seen before
- You don’t know how to explain or use in a sentence
Ready to start?
Click here to download your copy.
How A Bookstore Can Make Your English Better…Or Worse
Greetings from the US!
I went home to Virginia for the holidays this year.
And while visiting my sister, I decided to check out a local book store.
Of course, I went right to the language section.
What did I find?
The same boring grammar books and lists of idioms I see students in Europe reading!
If you know my blog, then you know that one of the basic ideas I teach is that you should run away from anything boring.
And run away fast.
Because boredom is the enemy of learning and remembering.
We pay attention to what’s interesting and forget and avoid whatever is boring.
And if you choose a boring book – like A Dictionary of American Idioms (zzzzzz) – that’s a bad idea because you’ll quickly become bored, you’ll stop reading, and your English will get worse.
So what’s the solution?
Every bookstore sells books which can improve your English vocabulary.
Just reading one of these books will help you learn and remember useful, native speaker vocabulary.
But these books are not in the language section…
Where are they?
They’re everywhere else!
They’re fiction books… biography… humour… personal growth… fantasy… yoga for mothers…
In fact, any book that’s not in the language section!
Why?
Because although reading is one of the best ways to improve your English vocabulary…
(According to one research study, adults learned 45 words from reading just one short novel. *)
It MUST be something you’re interested in.
If it’s not, then you’ll become bored, stop reading, and your English will get worse.
Make sense?
Good!
Two Book Recommendations From My Sister
Because I stayed with my sister and her family last week, and because she’s a school teacher, and because your reading should also be easy, I asked her to recommend some books.
These are her top two choices for easy reading:
Little House On The Prairie
One of my sister’s favorite books. All her kids read it, and I read it too when I was little. (I liked it, but I think it’s more of a girl’s book.)
It’s the true story about a girl who moves with her family to the American frontier (out west) before there were railroads or electricity.
The TV show based on the book was something my family watched every week.
Old Yeller
This one, I remember, I liked more. It’s definitely a boy’s story.
In the 1860s, when Europe still had kings and queens, a boy and his dog hunt in the wilderness of Texas.
Happy reading!
*Saragi, U., P. Nation, and G. Meister. 1978. Vocabulary learning and reading. System 6: 70-78
The 1,700 English Words Every Business Owner Needs
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(NOTE: The link for the words is at the bottom of the article. Or click here to get them now.)
How many words are in the English language?
The answer: a lot!
171,476, to be exact.
(At least that’s the number of words in the Oxford English Dictionary.)
And that’s a little depressing for any non-native speaker who wants to improve his or her vocabulary.
But here’s the good news.
You don’t need to know all those words.
You don’t even need to know half…
or 25%…
or 10%…
If you want to read about business, talk about business, and do business in English, you only need to know less than 3% of the English vocabulary to understand 97% of business communication.
How is that possible?
A Strange Fact About Native Speakers
Native speakers like to repeat themselves.
We say the same words over and over again.
When it comes to choosing our words, we’re all vocab environmentalists recycling our words.
So while this is how most people think of the English language:
In fact, it’s more like this:
And it’s the same in the business world.
A Recent Discovery
Earlier this year, a team of English language researchers in Japan discovered that if you know only 2,144 English words you can understand 92% of conversation.
And an additional 1,700 business words will buy you 97% understanding.*
But…they have to be the right words.
Here’s the story:
The researchers took a lot of business magazines…
They took a lot of business books…
They took a lot of business newspapers and websites…
(And by “a lot” I mean 64 million words in total.)
And they dumped all these business words into a blender.
(Or maybe it was a computer…)
And they asked the question:
“What are the words that rise to the top?”
They wanted to know the most common…the most frequent…the most valuable words for business in the English language today.
The Answer
A list of the only English words a businessman or woman could ever need.
Researches call them “frequency lists.”
But I call them “super words.”
Ready to find out how many you know?
Click here to get you Super Business Word Checklist.
*https://www.newgeneralservicelist.org/
Image of The Economist by Lynette taken from Flickr, under Creative Commons licence.
Image of The Effective Executive from Harper Collins.