English Harmony:The Insider’s Secrets

By Robby Kukurs

Copyright © 2010 – All Rights Reserved

http://EnglisHHarmony.com

Chapter 1 - My Story and How It Can Change Your Life

From translating Tom & Jerry titles to speaking Romanian in two months. Also getting a cold shower when told to go and improve English after a phone interview… and eventually achieving the lifetime goal – English fluency!

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I spent my childhood in the biggest communist country – USSR. You think life was bad for a 10 year old? Sure I didn’t have access to many things that are considered essentials these days – like nail clips and junk food. But then you tend to appreciate other things in life that people seem to have forgotten these days – like running around countryside and playing cowboys and Indians.

Nonetheless, whenever I was reading (and believe me – I was reading A LOT when I was a kid!) about other countries, I felt strangely attracted to America. For some reason the huge state across the Atlantic became my dream country – I suppose you tend to develop cravings after what you can’t get… In this case – can’t get to as back in those days my world consisted of my village, and the country’s capital that I visited once or twice a year.

So no wonder that whatever things I could lay my hands on that had something to do with the continent across the big pond, I valued them as the dearest treasures!

My stepfather happened to have some relatives in Canada. Back in the old times it was nearly impossible for an ordinary person to get outside the USSR. I guess you had to prove you had relatives abroad, and you needed to have a genuine purpose for your travel and so on.

Anyway, my story isn’t about the history of the Eastern Europe in late 80ies and early 90ies. It’s about how I fell in love with the English language. As far as I can remember, it happened when my stepfather got a hold of a few technological wonders with a help from his foreign kin.

A photo camera, solar powered calculators and similar gadgets were like the 8th Wonder of the World to me back in the days! And so were their manuals which were written in a language that instantly became very special to me.

So began my days of translating every single piece of English text I could lay my hands on! I translated all the manuals of the foreign electronic devices. I also translated all the tourism and sightseeing booklets that my step dad brought back from his visit to Canada.

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!

There was one problem, though. Namely – lack of complete understanding of the texts I was translating. You won’t find slang terms and colloquialisms in a small English – Latvian dictionary that I got at that time. Also the actual meaning of sayings and phrases avoided me as you can’t get a foreign language just by piecing the directly translated words together.

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.

At some stage when I was in my early teens, my mother got an English language learning book called Basic English. She was trying to learn the English basics and someone had suggested Basic English as a good option.

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.

The concept is brilliant and I think Ogden’s made a big contribution into English teaching to those who need to learn the English language fast yet be able to speak efficiently.

However, its basic principle misses, to my opinion, the liveliness of fluent everyday English. Basic English focuses on sticking words together using a set of simplified English grammar rules. English Harmony System, on the other hand, views word chunks and phrases as basic units of the English language. This approach facilitates natural English fluency.

The Basic English book I had was focusing on writing and reading exercises. So unbeknownst to me I was already building my English on soft sand. But writing and reading was the only use of English back in those days for me, so I just didn’t know any better.

Of course, it didn’t occur to me that speaking English is crucial to develop a normal English language. I had always been surrounded with loads of books throughout my childhood and quite naturally I just loved creating notebooks writing my own stuff in them.

So it’s not surprising that many years later in my life it dawned at me that I’ve developed very good written English while totally ignoring the verbal aspect. Aspect which makes any language what it actually is – means of communication.

It should be quite obvious to anyone in the world that humans are communicating with each other by speaking. It’s just common sense that the first and foremost purpose of any language is to help people talk to each other. Yet millions of foreign language students all over the world are

making the same mistake – acquiring a language with reading and writing as the primary purpose in mind!

* * *

OK, fast forward to my mid-teens. At some stage I realize my best friend speaks better English than me. He seemed to know more words than I did and was able to say things that I couldn’t. It was a startling revelation to me as I was always the best in the class at all subjects. Did I try to analyze why it was happening? Of course not! I just assumed I was a loser and kept my notebook-English to myself in my own world.

The rest of the high-school? The English teacher did an amazing job by making us really good at doing English grammar exercises. Workbook after workbook was filling up and my English was supposedly improving. And who cared if I my spoken English after finishing the highschool was worse than that of an 8th grader?

* * *

Fast forward to my university years. When I heard the others in my group speak during the first English lesson, I just wanted to shrink very, very small so that no one would notice me. My English was terrible! Instead of analyzing the issue more thoroughly I assumed I lacked vocabulary and grammar.

Copying economics-related English books and writing the words in a dictionary made up the biggest part of my English studies throughout the university. And I remained shrunken very small in the chair during the English classes so that the teacher wouldn’t call me out to discuss some economy related topic.

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Then comes the watershed event in my life – emigration to Ireland. The moment I set my foot on the Irish soil the cold reality strikes me. I’m useless when communicating with native English speakers! Previously in my life I’d had a few conversations with English speaking people and back then it was kind of OK. However, now I’m expected to use English in day-to-day conversations and the lack of simple everyday colloquial English literally shatters my self-image.

Before coming to Ireland I thought my English was quite good. Despite not being good at speaking in class at the university I’d always put it all down to stress or anxiety. In Ireland my eyes finally opened and I saw the harsh reality. Want some funny stories? Here you go!

I spend 10 minutes explaining a shop-assistant in a cell phone store that I need to top-up my cell phone credit. To get the message across I translate the words directly from my language: “I’d like to buy a Vodafone renewal card.” The poor girl doesn’t even have a clue what I’m talking about. She’s convinced I need a new SIM card because that is the only card she can think of!

How could I say something as stupid as renewal card? Well, you see – back in the days they’d sell cell phone top-ups printed on solid credit card format cards in my country. Hence the awkward translation. OK, that might be understandable because I couldn’t know all the aspects of life in a new country.

But how about this -

I’m walking along the deli section in a supermarket. I want to ask the girl behind the counter for a price of chicken. I’m trying to say “How much does the chicken cost?” but for some reason the words start mixing together and my third attempt is successful - thanks God! How would I know that a simple “How much is chicken?” would do the trick, right?

That is one of the main issues why foreigners fail to speak everyday English, by the way. In the grammar books you’ll find only grammatically perfect sentences and that is the way you’re trying to speak. On the street, though, a dozen of common English phrases would come more useful than a whole year of advanced English grammar studies!

Important! By no means am I trying to underestimate the importance of correct English grammar! What I meant in the previous paragraph is simply that colloquial English differs from Oxford English.

It’s necessary to know proper English to be able to write correctly and take part in discussions which go beyond just recalling last night at the disco – no doubt about that. But remember – fluent English begins with speaking simple, commonly used phrases!

In Ireland, I take up a job in a huge warehouse and spend my days offloading trailers and chatting with my Romanian workmates. The result after a few months hard work – my bear-belly is gone and I’m able to chat with the Romanians in their language.

It still doesn’t register with me, though, that to speak a language fluently you need to learn most commonly used phrases instead of focusing on writing and grammar. If I ever think about why I can’t speak English fluently, I just comfort myself with a thought that deep inside my English is very good…

* * *

The moment comes when I realize that something has to be done to improve my English. After all – I’m constantly getting angry with myself about not being able to communicate with my supervisors in a natural way. Whenever I chat to any Irish I feel like a total loser barely being able to spill the words over the lips. One of my friends, on the other hand, speaks absolutely free and has no problems when chatting to the office girls, for instance. When I ask him how he learned English so well he says – he’s been working on a ship for a good while. After half year among English speaking ship crew he’s had no difficulties with speaking English with anyone!

So I decide to improve my English whatever it takes. And how would I accomplish it? Of course – by the only means known to me – reading a lot, learning new English words and studying English grammar. The very same day I buy a copy of Irish Sun and start keeping a dictionary in a notebook writing all the unknown words in it.

I’ve been thinking a lot on the following – how come that someone who’s academically well educated can’t pick up the conversational English as easily as someone who’s just learning the language from scratch. My guess - after years of language studies based on writing and forming grammatically correct sentences on paper your mind tends to work in a different way. You’ve used to taking lots of time to think about what words you’re going to use, in what order and so on. It’s not how speech naturally forms in a persons head, though! Add plenty of stress on top of everything – and you get a picture of what speaking real-life English was like for me. Hundreds of words mixing up in the head, a complete embarrassment and confusion – that’s what is was like!

By the way – how many times it’s happened to you that after a conversation you’ve thought – common, of course I know the correct way of saying that thing that I just said wrong? It’s a perfect example of how our paper-trained brain isn’t capable of coping with real-time English conversations!

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And now have a look at me around a year on. I’ve progressed from reading newspapers onto reading books. I’ve read a good few of them – starting from Irish History and ending with Book Of Meditation. I’ve a number of dictionary notebooks full of words picked from all the literature I’ve been reading. The latest dictionary is always with me and I’m repeating the words several times a day. The latest ones, then a few pages of the older ones. Every few days I’d go through the entire dictionary and once a week I’d repeat the words from my older dictionary notebooks. The end result? I’m able to remember where a particular English word stands – the book, and also the page. I’m so good at memorizing words that I don’t really need to exert my brain too much – have you heard of geniuses capable of reciting the whole Homer's Odyssey?

What about the effect on my spoken English? Well, I can use a certain number of newly acquired English words when speaking English at work, with friends and so on. But the bulk of them remain what they are – very specific English terms that are very rarely used in the colloquial language! And does it occur to me that I shouldn’t stick to my routine drilling hundreds of English words into my brain that I’m not going to use? Nope!

I guess it’s a curse of plenty of people to perceive ANY action in a certain area of life as an absolute necessity – be it work, hobby, or studies or whatever else. It’s become like a given fact and no one argues against it. Had kids at school been thought the value of filtering the importance of things in life instead of blindly following orders – I’d be able to see outside the box. But as I were I couldn’t see the 80/20 concept I’ll explain you in more detail in the Chapter 3.

And what about the overall development of my English? Do reading, studying grammar and living in an English-speaking society contribute into my fluency at all?

Well, to a certain degree. Sure I am more confident when I’m speaking but the development is happening at such a slow pace that I become convinced I’ll never be able to achieve English fluency.

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OK, let’s fast forward a couple years. I’ve achieved a complete English reading fluency. I’ve read literally dozens of books and discovered that historical fiction and fantasy is something that I absolutely love reading! Has it made my spoken English fluent? No.

I’m also constantly speaking to myself during the 8 hour working days (sometimes longer – I guess we all know what doing overtime means, right?) as my job specific allows it. I’m driving my own industrial truck picking boxes and all the time I’m on my own. As weird as it may sound I develop a habit of talking to myself in English in a quiet voice. Does it help my spoken English? Yes, it does! Slowly but steadily my spoken English IS improving – thanks to the countless hours of practicing on my own.

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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The breaking point – after a phone interview I’m told to go and improve my English. Me? Me who’s been learning the language since I was a kid? Me who’s spent years speaking about all the possible topics starting with yoga and ending with global warming? Yes, they told me my English wasn’t good enough to get the sales rep’s job. And you

know why? Simply because during the phone interview my English WAS TERRIBLE! If our positions were reversed I would have told such a candidate the very same thing!

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A few months and countless job interviews later I finally get a data analyst’s job in Dublin. I’m joining an international call centre environment and I’m really looking forward to speaking English with my new friends and colleagues!

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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Autumn 2007. Everything comes together! One fine day while I’m in traffic and as always – talking to myself to practice English – it happens! I’m finally GETTING why I’ve been unable to speak fluent English for years despite all my language learning efforts. It was always quite obvious but no one had ever pointed it out to me! So it took me half of my lifetime to understand these simple facts:

thousands of memorized English words were useless because I didn’t learn them as a part of LIVE speech;

you can’t produce fluent speech by taking separate words and sticking them together by applying grammar rules. It works very well on paper – not when speaking!

natural language consists of word chunks, phrases and short sentences which settle in your mind after repeating them a number of times. READ THIS – repeating a number of times until they settle in your mind! So when you chat, the phrase or the ready sentence

jumps out of your mouth because you know it. NOT because you know thousands of words that have to be pieced together!

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Fast forward a couple years ahead – to NOW.

English Harmony System 2.0 is ready! Years have been spent perfecting and working upon the principles that are basics of a fluent English speech.

The biggest lesson I learned:

you can spend your lifetime reading English literature and acquiring thousands upon thousands of words vocabulary – but the chances are your spoken English will still be pretty bad!

Important lessons you will learn throughout this eBook:

how to throw your grammar books away and re-design your English from the ground up;

80/20 rule and its application on learning English. By eliminating the unessential you’ll drastically shorten the learning curve!

Chapter 2 - Nature of the Beast:Why You Can’t Speak Fluent English

Allow me to introduce mind-chatter and translation mode – your biggest enemies! Building huge English vocabulary? Maybe it’s not such a bright idea at all – find out how it can do more harm than good if done the wrong way!

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You’ve done all sorts of things to improve your English fluency. But the issue is still there – the fluency keeps on avoiding you. Sometimes you feel you got it just to realize it’s gone the next day!

It’s good to analyze your mind and emotions sometimes – so no hard feelings if I remind you how miserable you feel when your mind blanks out in the middle of an English conversation, right? So here’s what you would be experiencing when you have to speak English:

you kind of know what you INTEND to say but the first thing that comes to mind is a word from your native language;

there are seemingly hundreds of English words floating and mixing in your head as you speak. It’s the so called “mind chatter” when your mind is in a state of anxiety with lots of inner speech going on which you have no control over. The effect on your speech is terrible – you start using wrong words and mispronounce them; you’re also getting the grammar wrong.

in the middle of a conversation your mind blacks out and you’re just feeling stuck in the moment forever!

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.

Let’s say for an example, you’re having a chat with your manager at work. He’s explaining you the new task that has to be completed by next Friday – entering a large number of product descriptions in a database. You’re having a query over some detail and you want to ask him if the list he’s showing you is going to come up under the drop-down menu or you’ll have to enter the details manually for every single product.

If your English is fluent, your mind would create the question subconsciously. You wouldn’t have to think – OK, well, what is the first thing I’m going to ask him, and what’s the second one? You’d just speak out the respective word chunks: Is this list going to come up; under the drop-down menu; I have to enter the details manually; for every single product. Those would be the phrases that you’d use quite a lot if you were a data input operator working in a large retail chain. So you wouldn’t have to exert your mind at all to speak the sentence, all you’d have to do is - just speak it out. The thinking and speaking process would happen simultaneously and effortlessly!

When the English fluency issue is present, on the other hand, your mind is in this paper-English mode and you’re kind of trying to build up the sentence in your head before saying it.

There also might be some words that you might have forgotten for a second and you’re trying to look them up in your inner vocabulary – wait, wait, how was that thing called? Oh yes, drop-down menu!

There’s nothing wrong with stopping for a second or two in a middle of conversation if you’re just stuck and can’t think of the right word. People do it all the time, both foreign and native English speakers. I’m just using the example above to illustrate what’s happening in one’s mind when the English fluency issue is present.

So your mind is under pressure to deliver an instant speech. Yet it works in the paper-English mode and is not capable of doing it. You want your mind to spill out the correct phrase or sentence right away, but by working under pressure it will pick up a wrong word instead. That is the reason why you’re speaking out wrong things and realize a few moments later that what you just said is totally wrong. Your brain just hasn’t been trained to speak naturally which means a simultaneous thinking and speech.

There are also a number of physiological aspects to this fluency problem – such as anxiety, fear of making mistakes and others. Ironically enough, by fearing something you’ll usually be forced to face that what you fear (by the way – it’s not just about English!). But the core problem here is your brain’s addiction to paper-English.

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Another aspect of the English fluency problem is a translation mode of your mind. It happens with many foreign speakers and its primary cause also is putting too much emphasis on studying grammar and memorizing English words.

When your mind is in this translation mode you’d try to pick the respective English word accordingly to its meaning and place it in the right place in the sentence. It’s like browsing your inner vocabulary and choosing the correct entries for the given situation.

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!

But usually the students just memorize the English word’s meaning respective to their native tongue’s corresponding word. As a result you are predetermined to refer back to your own language in order to write or speak English.

It used to happen to me quite a lot – I’d speak to someone and then every now and then a Latvian word comes up in my mind instead of an English one. Terrible, isn’t it? Well, you can say thanks to the English teaching industry! By regularly drilling a bulk of new English words in your mind you’re exercising your visual memory instead of stimulating the feedback between your mind, mouth and ears.

By the way, many technological solution providers will try to convince you that building a huge vocabulary will solve your English fluency issues. To an extent it is true – you can’t do without proper vocabulary, and you really need to know enough English words to express yourself properly and form the English speech. But whether the vocabulary learning method is based on learning the new words through your own language or using explanatory and synonym-based functionality, the bottom line remains the same. Namely – you can’t build up your vocabulary and then form the English speech using the separate words!

New vocabulary has to bee acquired as part of phrases, as part of context. Just think back to any occasion in real-life when you heard a new English word and then looked it up in a dictionary. When you heard the word being used it definitely WAS in a context.

Let me give you an example. A word jab. It has several meanings one of which is a certain way of performing a punch. I remember hearing the word in relation to swine flu vaccinations. I realized it’s a less formal way of saying injection. So from that moment and on my brain kind of subconsciously knows that the word

jab would form phrases like to get a jab or did you get the swine flu jab? simply because I heard the word being used in such a context. Had I memorized the word completely on its own on the other hand, it would be much harder to incorporate it into live English speech because its connection with other English words would be weaker. It would be linked to the respective Latvian word in my mind thus facilitating the translation mode of brain while speaking English.

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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!

Is it really so? I WAS speaking with others a lot. I live in an English speaking country after all! But even after five years of communicating with others I found it impossible to get rid of the mind chatter, mind blackouts and inability to find the right words at the right moment!

I don’t think those who say it’s normal to be in a translation mode and have the mind chatter all the time would be happy to spend years upon years practicing English and hoping that one day it’s all going to change for better.

I think any reasonable person would rather go for a smart English fluency improving method that works much faster and eliminates most of the effort! (I hope you got the hint about the reasonable person : - ) It’s you, of course!

Well, it is normal, of course, to experience ups and downs in all aspects of life. Everyone – even native English speakers have days when you just don’t seem to be up for talking to anyone. However, this mind chatter and translation mode is much more than just feeling a little bit low on a certain day.

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.

Then, when I had to describe the contents of the box, in a split second my mind would take the Latvian thought and translate it into English. The end-result – a completely wrong (not grammatically, though) sentence! Now I’d say: It says on the box the content is fragile ;-)

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…

My speech changed over time. I suppose others also become fluent because of endless practicing and eventually you WILL learn the correct phrases to use in your conversations and also other sorts of communications.

But tell me this now – which way to fluency is more sensible:

going the trial-error way that will take years OR

going the natural way of memorizing phrases so that your mind can produce a natural English speech?

I don’t think you have to be a genius to give the right answer!

* * *

So as we concluded previously – the inability to speak fluent English is caused by learning the language in the wrong way in the first place. In the English grammar books the language is broken down to the tiniest elements – grammar rules and how they work - and they’re analyzed with a surgical precision. The end-result is given to the students and pupils all around the world expecting them to learn the English language from the bottom up – by sticking the separate words together by applying grammar rules.

I’d say it’s madness to make English students perfect at doing tests but useless when it comes to the actual speaking! My highschool English teacher was just like that – plenty or writing, no or very little speaking. And also bear in mind – the English fluency isn’t achieved by the type of speech where you’re going the trial-error way. I’m talking about learning and speaking grammatically correct sentences, not just blabbering away!

Chapter 3 - Right is Wrong and Wrong is Right:Re-inventing English Learning

How by knowing 100 English words you can understand 50% of English language! Also why you’d better leave grammar books in the drawer and focus on memorizing most commonly used English word combinations.

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Quite often I’ve thought about the traditional way of English studies and why the general concept doesn’t change. Now I have the answer – and I have quite a revolutionary theory about the way things operate in all educational industries.

Let’s begin with an interesting example from another area of my life – driving. Now I regard myself as quite an experienced driver but there were times when I didn’t get to drive as often as I do now. I got my driving license at the age of 18 and got to drive my dad’s car every now and then. But I was dreading driving into towns – not to mention my country’s capital – because of the traffic in them and my inability to handle various situations that would arise on the road.

Whenever I had to merge into traffic from a minor road I was so stressed out I didn’t quite realize what was going on. I would just keep on moving until luckily I found myself driving along with the other cars. It is indeed a miracle that no accidents happened to me back then – and I’m grateful to the God he saved me!

So why was I such a pathetic driver despite having passed the driving test? It’s quite simple – actually it’s ridiculously simple! No one had told me one thing – whenever you feel unsure about what you do on the road – just STOP. Yes – simple as that, just stop! It is common sense, isn’t it? When you merge into traffic, you wouldn’t normally just keep on going until you either hit some passing car or merge into the traffic, would you? Of course not! But that’s exactly what I was doing because for some unknown reason I had this unexplainable concept in my mind that once you’re moving, you’re not allowed to stop!

It was always a disaster when I drove into circular junctions – or roundabouts as they’re called in Europe. If I was already next to my exit I didn’t stop in my lane waiting for a safe passage into the next

lane and then out in my exit. As I told you I would just keep on going thinking that if I stopped, the cars behind me would crash into me or something else would happen. So I would just keep the foot on the accelerator and drive out into my exit having been stressed out to the maximum. Luckily enough drivers like me didn’t happen to be in the other lane otherwise I surely would have gotten into an accident!

But what’s this got to do with English studies? OK – here’s my point. If my driving instructor would have explained me this simple thing of stopping, it would have saved me years of stressful situations while driving. Not to mention potential accidents!

But you see – no one told me that. I suppose it was such a common sense to everyone that they assumed that I have to know it myself.

One tiny little thing – but it makes a HUGE difference. And it’s the same in English teaching. The industry regulations don’t stress the importance of learning word combinations. It is a known fact for English teachers but it’s NOT stressed as a MAKE OR BRAKE factor. But it actually IS! The same way as stopping in dangerous situations while driving was a make or brake factor for me, learning English word chunks and phrases is the missing link for a big percentage of foreign English speakers all over the world.

And now we’re going to go through the whole language learning process again. I’ll point out at the exact things importance of which the English teachers have failed to recognize. Or even if some did – they just can’t change the way of academic English studies – and I’ll also explain you why!

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OK, so let’s look at the traditional way of teaching English. The first question that I want to ask you, my dear English teachers, is – why on Earth we have to focus on the thing called GRAMMAR so much? I’m not saying we don’t need to know what is present tense and that to be is another form of verbs am and is. Of course it is necessary to know the basics in order to understand the language in the first place. And also there’s no better way to start learning English than learning things like I am and you are, and I have. They’re essentials you can’t do without.

What I’m asking is – why the concept of English grammar is separated from the language so much that it’s rather become a subject on its own? When we speak English with someone, do we care that the words we just spoke were in present perfect simple OR we care that they were said so that the other person could understand us? I suppose the ultimate goal of any language is to provide means for a complete understanding between individuals. Learning about what the process consists of doesn’t necessarily ensure better communication!

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!

You see my point? You don’t need to learn so much about the subject – all you need is learn THE SUBJECT!

The same goes with English. The grammar is a part of the language whether we realize it or not. And by learning to speak correct English phrases we DO learn the grammar as well. At the end of the day - is it really that important if we know, for instance, what verbs are followed by gerund (I hate doing) if we just learn the actual English phrase I hate doing chores? And by the way – the real spoken English doesn’t necessarily follow those rules. Even if you were to follow the verb to hate by infinitive – I hate to do chores – it’s very unlikely it would be spotted by your native English chat partner.

So the bottom line is – once you learn grammatically correct English phrases, word chunks and expressions, understanding the syntax doesn’t really matter that much!

The next thing I want to stress in relation to the conventional way of teaching the English language is learning new words. In other words – building the vocabulary.

As I already said in the previous chapter, every new word has to be learnt in a context. But it’s not really what I remember from my days at school and university. The teachers taught us the importance of keeping a dictionary and writing the new words in it. A new word followed by its translation in my language – so we had to memorize the English meaning of the Latvian words. The process of repetition would be quite simple – I’d cover the English part of the page and go through every Latvian word and bring up its direct English translation in my mind. Then I’d check the word by revealing the English translation – and I’d be real proud of myself having learnt another dozen of words! How sad to understand now that much of that time was wasted…

My question to you, English teachers, is the following – why did you teach us to memorize English words respective to own native language translation? And also – why did we have to memorize separate words as opposed to learning them as part of live and natural language?

It’s quite obvious to me now that vocabulary acquired this way facilitates the translation mode of spoken English. When you try to speak, your mind just doesn’t know any other way of forming English sentences than translating them from your language. Just like you did when memorizing the words from the dictionary! As a result, the English language isn’t natural and it’s very difficult to use it when speaking.

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.

I know a number of people who were mediocre at best when learning English at school. After a short residence in an English speaking country they’ve become fluent English speakers – and all because they acquired the English language from scratch when speaking real, day-to-day conversations. But me, who was always so

good in the classroom, got my mind adjusted to the translation mode and it was nearly impossible to get rid of it afterwards!

The next aspect of traditional English studies – writing. Writing is important – no doubt about that. Some people write rarely, for some writing makes up the biggest part of their daily routines at work. Nonetheless, writing literacy is considered as a common sense in the modern world and I’d me mad if I said that one should neglect English writing and focus on the spoken language entirely (on the other hand - I know someone whose spoken English is brilliant but he’s useless at writing).

What happens in the English teaching industry, however, is a totally different story altogether. I think I wouldn’t exaggerate saying that 80 – 90% of the time spent in English class at schools, colleges and adult learning centers is dedicated to writing. The concept of placing the notebook and textbooks in the spotlight is so old that it would seem a heresy to suggest any other ways of teaching the language. We have to write down new words, grammar rules, examples, and we have to write exercises, essays, homework… Everything rotates around developing and perfecting the writing skills from the very first day we start learning the English language. As a result our thinking patterns get totally subject to writing process. When you have to speak English, your mind just replicates the writing process!

Once again, I have to announce a disclaimer here saying that I’m not against writing as such. There’s no way you can do without notebooks because you just need to write things down for later speaking and repetition. It’s just like grammar – it has to go hand in hand with the spoken language. But the way writing is put traditionally is something along these lines: you think in your native language and do the translation process in your head. The end result – a written English sentence goes down on paper.

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!

Speech comes first – writing second! This is the mantra you should follow if you want to be good at any language!

And, by the way, this is the natural sequence of a language learning process. When a child learns the language it all begins by replicating what he hears and he learns the spoken language first. Then come the school years and the child learns writing. And the freedom of one’s language is often restricted by telling the pupils that you have to write like a pro writer, that writing is a special art. Which is it, of course, if you want to be a writer. But for an ordinary person writing should be just a way of putting the thoughts down on paper in a nice and clean manner, no more than that!

But this whole thing is even worse for us, foreign English speakers. We are required to learn the written English language first and THEN produce English speech from the paper-English in our brain. This process is unnatural, awkward and totally wrong! The resulting language is good only for writing and by the way – it is still not going to be natural if you don’t use the word combinations that occur in a live English language.

Once most of your English would be a translation from your language, you written English would be much different from something that’s written by a native English speaker. You can learn the sequence of words in a sentence; you can learn all the grammar rules that work in the English language. But unless you acquire the special sixth sense about the language that only comes from learning phrases used in real conversations, your English will still be somewhat artificial.

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!

So here’s the English Harmony way of re-building your English language so that you can speak and write fluently and naturally.

First of all – learning English phrases, word combinations, collocations and expressions. In English Harmony System’s Modules 1 and 3 - Speech Master and Chat Assistant there are 900 of those. By repeating them over and over again you’ll cement those phrases in you brain so that whenever the situation comes the fitting phrase will just come out of your mouth – simple as that. I’ve tried to do my best and cover all the imaginable topics and life situations where you might find yourself in. Ogden’s Basic English consists of 800 Basic English words. English Harmony System consists of 900 basic English PHRASES. So you can see it’s more than enough for you to speak fluent English once Ogden thought 800 WORDS is enough. His system’s drawback was its focus on building the language from separate words – I’ve taken a step further and now you can re-build the language by learning naturally used phraseology.

Secondly – you need to know the essential grammar rules and spelling so that you can put the phrases together, work with verbs and also write good English. It would happen

simultaneously with the first step – learning the phrases. It wouldn’t make sense to learn the phrases first and then re-learn the spelling and writing and so on. But this is not really the field I’m covering in English Harmony System 2.0 because my course is dedicated to those who can already read and write very well. So for you it’s all about learning the most commonly used phraseology and which words go together in real-life English.

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.

You can learn advanced grammar if you’re really into it. You can widen your vocabulary – just mind – don’t do it the traditional way! (always note in what context the word is used and use thesaurus as much as you can!) You can read a lot – like I’m still doing because it’s something that widens your horizons and it’s also beneficial to your overall intellectual development. You can do all those things and it all will contribute into your English fluency GIVEN that you have the actual spoken language. That way you will build on it and become more and more fluent as opposed to what would happen previously – becoming more and more desperate to start speaking fluently!

This is the natural way of learning a language – learning speech first and then writing and grammar. Well, as I said previously, you already have the latter so what we’re going to focus upon in the English Harmony System’s lessons is English speech and confidence while speaking.

* * *

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.

First of all, the concept of teaching the language with the main focus on writing is very old. It’s considered as

fundamental as doing sums in math in writing so it would be really hard to change the general consensus.

Secondly – traditional studies are based on having one teacher for a class of ten to thirty students. It’s near to impossible to focus on speaking if you have twenty-odd students. Put yourself in the teacher’s shoes – you simply won’t be able to dedicate enough time speaking with everyone. But still – it doesn’t explain why the writing couldn’t be based on phrase learning rather than drilling separate words and grammar exercises.

Thirdly, many foreign English teachers aren’t themselves fluent. No offence meant – but it’s a fact. The teachers have gone through the same educational system and learnt English the same old way, so they just don’t know any better. So instead of speaking which would be sometimes a little bit embarrassing for them, they just assign the next page in the workbook to the students. It’s easier, and the results are more tangible. You can clearly see who knows what by checking the homework, for instance, and it eliminates the hassle of speaking.

The fourth factor is – and it will sound a bit controversial – encouraging students to speak English… But – it’s the old paper-English formed in your head and translated from your native language! Haven’t you been told on many occasions – common, speak as you can, it’s OK to be wrong, you’ll learn from your mistakes..? You see – it’s true to some extent. We will always make mistakes and that’s the nature of things. But if you don’t know how to say a certain thing in the first place – it’s impossible to learn from it simple because you don’t know you’re making the mistake! You will still be sticking separate words together and the progress towards English fluency will be very, very slow – just like in my case. The key is repeating grammatically correct sentences and phrases, and that is the missing element in the English class conversations.

I can give you a good example describing what I just said. It’s not in relation to the English language, but it’s all the same. My daughters attend school in Ireland and they have to learn the Irish language as well. Just in case you didn’t know – the Irish language is spoken by very few in Ireland but it still exists and is a part of school program. So my daughters learn both English and Irish. And here’s what their teacher requires from the pupils

in Irish class: they have to speak Irish in the class. And it doesn’t matter if they’re blabbering using wrong grammar and so on, they just have to speak. They don’t know half of the vocabulary used by the teacher. They vaguely understand Irish grammar because it’s really difficult if compared to English grammar. But still they have to speak. And of course the resulting speech is a total gibberish and is never to become better unless they re-learn the language the English Harmony way… (which is also never going to happen I guess…).

I’ve heard similar stories about learning English – teachers encouraging students to speak how they can and improve gradually. The English Harmony way – start speaking correctly straight away! Which way sounds more sensible? Isn’t it much easier to learn something correctly at the beginning rather than learning it wrong and then re-learning it? I’ve noticed foreign speakers making the same mistakes over and over again even when they’ve been corrected. That means once your brain has got used to speaking certain words in a certain way, it’s very difficult to get rid of that habit. And even if you do, there’s a chance you’ll make the same mistake again when you’re in a stressful situation.

But that’s exactly happening in English classes all over the world! While many manage to learn fluent spoken English because of additional factors like English speaking friends or watching TV, a large group of students just get stuck in the same paper-English mode permanently.

* * *

Speaking of watching TV, I have an interesting story to tell. It’s about my brother who was watching German satellite channels since the age of 5. By the time he started learning German at school, he already had a complete understanding of the language. A little touch-up – and his spoken German got also fluent. You see? The first language he learned was SPOKEN German – from cartoon, movie, news and music channels. It may sound quite surprising, but apparently the most commonly used phrases are repeated frequently and after a while they just settle in your brain and you instinctively understand their meaning. It’s similar to the English Harmony concept - with one major exemption. While it took years for my bro to acquire German fluency through constant listening to the language, the learning curve can be reduced significantly by purposefully learning the phraseology and memorizing it.

* * *

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.

There’s another very important point I want to stress – and it can literally mean difference between months and years in achieving English fluency. Please let me introduce you – 80/20 rule!

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 here it is – in life about 80% of output results from just around 20% of input. Read the sentence once more. And then one more time. Does is start dawning on you? Around 80% of company profits come from around 20% of customers. Around 80% of crop is harvested from 20% of fields. And – when applied to English – 80% of English speech consists of just 20% of vocabulary and phraseology! You see where I’m coming from? It essentially means that by acquiring 20% of the essential knowledge you can cut the learning time by a great deal as most of the output is determined by the small essential knowledge input!

For instance, the first 100 most commonly used English words make up about a half of all written English texts. The first 300 account for about 65%. But the 2000 General Service List words make up to 95% of the colloquial English.

Among different areas of life the 80/20 distribution may vary. It can be 70/30, or 90/10 and so on. What it means for you in the English learning context, though, is that by focusing on those things in English studies that account for the major part of the end-result (namely – English speech, writing, grammar) you can stop wasting time on the unnecessary things!

And here’s a list of practical application of the 80/20 rule in improving your English – I warmly suggest you start following these rules right now!

80/20 and English grammar. Much of the advanced English grammar is actually not applicable in everyday spoken English. I used to hammer all types of the conditional sentences and if clauses in my head – not to use them EVER in the real life! With knowing the most commonly used if clause type – if + simple present followed by will – you will do just fine on 90% of the occasions! (an example – If you decide to come tomorrow, I’ll be waiting for you.) And you know what? Even if you happen to use the other types of the conditional clauses you don’t really need to KNOW that they exist and how they’re built!

So by understanding the most commonly used grammar rules, you’ll be able to get 90% of your speech right – and why aim for perfection? As Tim Ferris says in his book 4 Hour Work Week – to be correct 95% of times requires half year of effort when learning a foreign language. But to be correct 98% of the time requires 20 – 30 years. And I completely agree with him – get the most of the things right and don’t worry about the rest!

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.

80/20 rule and English vocabulary. Whenever you try to learn a new word – make sure you’ve heard it a good few times before memorizing it. Of course, I’m assuming you already have a couple of thousand English vocabulary acquired throughout the years. So whenever you hear or read a new word, don’t mind it. Most of the times it’s quite easy to guess its meaning from the context. IF you hear or read the word again at least a couple of times, it’s worth

looking up in the dictionary or thesaurus. I’d most often go for the thesaurus as it doesn’t involve using my native language as a reference. Sometimes, however, the word can be quite specific so that you need a vocabulary. Anyway – you will have heard the new word a number of times already when it was in some context, so you know how it can be used. That’s very important to avoid the translation mode – remember it!

Here’s my approach towards learning new words. Whenever I’ve heard a certain word number of times, it’s already settled in my brain. And when I look up its meaning, everything kind of comes together and there’s no more memorizing required.

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!

But if your vocabulary needs a considerable addition and you meet new words everyday, you can’t do without writing at least some of them down. If that’s the case, please write them in your notebook as part of a collocation – word combination – so that you know how the word is naturally used. Say, you’re writing down a word burst because you’ve heard a phrase burst into tears. DON’T put the word burst down seperately; write the whole phrase so that you can see exactly how this word can be used. Moreover – try to focus on learning the whole phrase as opposed to learning just the word. It will happen unconsciously anyway, but you’d better repeat the whole phrase in order to memorize it instead of repeating just the word.

***

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.

***

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.

Well, in the English Harmony System most of the analysis is actually done! In the 60 speech exercising lessons you’ll find only the most commonly used English phrases and word combinations. The 80 end has been eliminated and by learning the essential 20%, you’ll find yourself among fluent English speakers much faster than you could actually imagine!

My foreign English speaking friend!

This is as far as the free version my eBook goes. However, I truly hope you got a pretty clear picture of the English fluency issue, why it is there and how to deal with it.

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:

Get The English Harmony System 2.0 NOW!

And proceed with the payment – just click on the link at the top of the page and you’ll be dropped down to the payment link. Just a few easy steps separate you from getting the English Harmony System 2.0 posted to your doorstep!

What are you waiting for then?

Sincerely,

Robby Kukurs

Author of the English Harmony System 2.0

http://EnglishHarmony.com

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