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So I’ve heard a lot of you out there are just listening to the podcasts, but not doing any other work on the site. I realized we haven’t fully explained how to use all of the wonderful tools we have on the website (except in the New User Guide).

First, slow down and just listen to one or two podcasts a day. You can’t learn everything in one day or one week. If you study 3 or 4 podcasts each week, you will be doing great 6 months from now. Set a date and start learning (New Years is coming, and it’s a tradition in many countries to make promises to yourself on that day, usually for self improvement - we call these “New Years Resolutions.”)

Which podcasts do you study? Well, find a level that suits you first. Listen to one or two podcasts from each level and decide which level you are. For example, if you find Upper Intermediate is good for you, stick with it - study other podcasts at that level. You need to understand the basics of the conversation between the hosts to learn much from the podcast. Of course it should be a little bit difficult; it has to be a challenge. Once in a while, listen to a lower level in order to review or if the topic is one you have trouble with. Also once in a while try a lesson from a more difficult topic to see if you’re ready to ‘graduate’ to a new level. If you listen to every podcast that’s fine, lots of students do that, but concentrate on the level you think is appropriate for you.

I would also encourage everyone to find topics they’re interested or need (now) for work. You’ll be much more likely to really learn and remember the target language and actually get chances to use it. Find the lessons you want using the Podcast Archive, which I’ve blogged about here (it also has its own tag here).

Now, how do you use our system to learn better and faster?
Put the lessons on your MP3 player. Download the lessons by right-clicking on the link, or using podcast software (podcatchers) like iTunes. See our RSS explanation here, to find out more.

Listen to the lessons on your way to work, then spend a few minutes before you start work or at lunch, reviewing the lesson online - this is where you can really learn the new words and phrases. Follow these steps:

1. Click on the “Review Materials” to study the lessons in more detail.
2. Go over the dialogue transcript (html page) and listen sentence by sentence. Use the rollover for any words you’re unsure of - add interesting ones you want to review later to your WordBank with just one click.
3. Check the Expansions section to see new language used in sample sentences. Listen and read the sentences, and make sure you know a) the meaning, and b) how to use the new language.
4. Do the exercises to make sure you’re really learning everything.
5. Then listen one last time (at work, on the bus/subway, at home, shopping, wherever).
6. 3 days later, review the same lesson to see if you remember and retain the target language.
7. Make a schedule to periodically review lessons you’ve already studied. If you can’t remember what you have and haven’t learned, use My Course to track your studies.
8. Post comments on the website to ask questions, and tell us what you want. If there’s a lesson you need, we’ll make it. If you notice mistakes or have problems, tell us about it - we’ll find solutions as quickly as possible.

Remember, studying our podcasts by themselves won’t make you fluent. You need to use the online resources to really learn new words and phrases and how to use them. Naturally you must find chances to speak English as well. Work is an obvious choice for some people, but for those not working with English speakers, see this blog and this other one to find out how to improve your English Environment to find opportunities to speak English and become fluent.

Ok, what are you waiting for? - try it out!

Kris

Good news,

We’re now able to provide the rollover for collocations and phrases. Go to the Review Materials for each new lesson and find the rollover works not only for individual words, but also commonly used collocations or phrases whose meanings are not obvious from the words that make them up.

This new feature is part of our overall philosophy - that language learning is not about learning words, but useable “chunks” or blocks of English. These chunks are more than one word, but they’re not whole sentences. They are natural combinations of different words that form ideas. Learning collocations and phrases helps us discover that we “take a seat” or “have a seat.” If you learn the word ‘take’ by itself, it has too many possible meanings and uses - we need to learn it in context and as part of natural combinations with other words (in this case, take is a verb, and it is used naturally with many nouns and some adverbs). Otherwise, you will end up speaking Chinese-English or Italian-English, etc., mixing up parts of your native language (and it’s grammar - particularly word order and collocations) with English.

We hope you enjoy this new feature. I’m confident it makes Englishpod a better product. Step by step we’re getting better. Any thoughts on how we can improve more?

TOEIC is the Test of English for International Communication.

From the ETS (Educational Testing Service) website:

For more than 25 years, TOEIC® has been used by institutions, companies, and government agencies worldwide to measure the English proficiency of nonnative English-speaking people.

With more than 4.5 million test takers per year, the TOEIC test is the standard for workplace English language proficiency worldwide.

What does everyone think of this test? As far as I know, TOEIC is a multiple choice test that measures listening and reading comprehension. It is supposed to test English ability within a business context. Therefore, it is largely used by companies as hiring or promotion criteria. However, some universities and governments use the test for other purposes. See here for a thorough overview of the test as well as useful comparisons with other testing systems.

One thing that stands out to me as an English teacher is that TOEIC tests passive or ‘receptive’ skills. Yet having good reading and listening skills don’t always mean a student has adequate speaking and writing abilities. I have taught many students whose reading was quite good, but they couldn’t speak much more than a few words. So TOEIC isn’t comprehensive, but like all tests, it aims at measuring English levels and achieves some success in doing this.

I find that some students are better at visual learning (reading and writing) - which they can do alone - than they are at oral and aural skills (listening and speaking) - which are more social. Schools sometimes over-emphasize learning from books, and when we study, it’s often alone rather than with a group. But what is the purpose of language? It is by definition a social activity - we use it to communicate our thoughts and ideas to others. There is no purpose to language for a single person, but it is essential for groups, societies and civilizations.

I’ll leave you with a question to consider: how can we make language learning more social?

Hi all,

Today’s blog is simply about vocabulary… you can learn word after word with vocabulary books and games, but how commonly are those words used?
Well, we have a list provided to us by About.com’s ESL page.

They’ve managed to rank the top 1000 most commonly used words in English. Looks like the list was created by a guy named Jerry Jones. I don’t know how - maybe by using Google? Anyway, the most common word is… “the.” Well, I admit, that’s not much of a surprise, and not very exciting, but it gives you a chance to see the truly important everyday-use words.

To be sure, your vocabulary will need more than 1000 words for you to be fully fluent. However, many of the top 1000 words are the building blocks of English. To really test yourself, take some of the most common verbs and nouns and try to make collocations out of them. See what collocations are here.

Here’s an example of collocations for a common and important word in English: money
These are fairly set pairs of words - the trick is to find out which verbs and adjectives are used with which nouns.

Money - with verbs
spend money
save money
make money
earn money
lose money
exchange money
put money in the bank
deposit money in the bank
take money out of the bank
withdraw money from the bank

Money - with adjectives
fake money
extra money

Add to my list with your own!
Try some collocation quizes (some are very hard!)

In case you don’t know, collocations are EXTREMELY important for learning languages, at least the ones I’ve tried. They are particularly important for English… so first, let’s tell you what they are. The following definitions and examples have been taken (and modified) from The Free Dictionary by Farlex.

Collocation, collocate (noun)
- a language unit, linguistic unit - one of the natural units into which linguistic messages can be analyzed
Collocate (verb)
- the act of positioning two or more objects together

Knowledge of collocations is vital for the competent use of a language: a grammatically correct sentence will stand out as ‘weird’ if collocational preferences are violated. This makes collocation an interesting area for language teaching.

Some examples for collocates of ‘bank’ are: central, account, manager, merchant, money, deposits, lending.
It is easy to see how the meaning of ‘bank’ is partly expressed through the choice of collocates.

Ok, so basically stated, collocations are ‘language chunks’. They are usually two words, sometimes with prepositions, articles or pronouns between them, that form an idea. Collocations usually consist of verbs and nouns, or adjectives and nouns. In this way they form language pairs, that fit together naturally. So using the example above, you may say ‘central bank’, but you cannot say ‘middle bank’. The meaning is sometimes understandable and the grammar is fine, but it sounds awkward and unnatural. Collocations have developed over hundreds of years, so they can not always be guessed, they must be learned through example and experience.

Collocations are the building blocks (not words and not sentences) from which natural spoken English is made. I have far too many students who study thousands of words and understand their meanings, but have no idea about how to use them in sentences. Using collocations can improve your ‘active vocabulary’ and limit the number of awkward phrases or sentences that you say or write.

Oxford has an entire dictionary just for collocations, though most good dictionaries (the books, not the electronic ones) will give a couple in the sample sentences they provide.

This is the one most important piece of language learning advice I can give students and teachers: learn, practice and use collocations. I have never seen them used in any systematic way in any language learning book or online resource, and I’ve looked at and used many.

Try them out, see if you agree.

So what’s the ideal English environment?

Well, I’d have to say, a job or school where most of the people use English, most of the time. Then add in English-speaking friends. An English-only girlfriend or boyfriend is a huge help. Hmm, what else? Maybe living in an English speaking country.

All of these things would be great, but we can’t have them all. We have to do the best we can with the opportunities we have. There are many foreign exchange students in my country (Canada) who stay together in groups, speak their native language, and spend years in Canada and do not become fluent (or even close in many cases)… sounds like the subject for another blog.

What I’m saying is that some of these people are not taking advantage of the opportunities they have to learn English. So let’s take a short look at the average person in Hanoi, Vietnam or Munich, Germany. How can they improve their English?

First, they can take language courses at a local school (community programs tend to be cheaper but not as high in quality, whereas private schools have higher tuitions but better instruction). However, we all have problems with time and money - both are limited.

Second, they can try to get a job where they can use the English skills they have and learn more. So, multinational companies can be helpful, but not always. There are many offices of large American and British companies in non-English speaking countries where almost no English is used, everyone is local. I have many students who have jobs where they only use English in company emails… well, this is a start, but of course it is better to need English for face-to-face communication or over the telephone.

Third, make friends. Now, a big warning here. Many foreigners in non-English speaking countries absolutely HATE getting asked for free English lessons or to be someone’s friend only for the purpose of practicing English. Make friends just for friends, the English learning is in the background, and is something that happens naturally. Don’t force it.

Fourth, use your time wisely. How much time do you waste in a day sitting on a bus or in a subway, waiting for people, etc. That’s where EnglishPod comes in. You can spend 20-40 minutes sitting at your computer listening to the audio, doing the exercises, listening (and speaking back) to the sample sentences for new vocabulary. However, an even better option is to download the mp3 podcasts on to your mp3 player and listen to the lessons as you go to work, work out in the gym, wherever and whenever you want.

Fifth, as mentioned in yesterday’s blog, think in English. After you use English, reflect on the conversation and think about how you could have said something different, what could you have said better. A frequent observation of mine when teaching English and working with ESL colleagues is that they use the easy words that they’re very comfortable with, but don’t often try to use more complex vocabulary that might really force them to upgrade and improve their speech (though they may do this when they write).

Not one of these steps will teach you English on its own. You need to try all of them and find out what combination works for you.

Good luck,

So, where do you study and how effectively do you study?

I’ve learned from my many years of school (including 7 years of university) and many tries at learning languages (we’ll talk about that later), that there are certain times and places where I learn best.

My personal preference is to study in the morning or the early evening, with a coffee and quiet music in the background (i.e. Starbucks or a library where I can listen to headphones). I like big tables where I can spread out my stuff. I like snack breaks about every hour or so. When I study in this way, I learn quickly and I learn a lot, whatever the subject. But everyone has their preferences - find what works best for you. Here’s a short test that may help (though it does assume we all learn in the same way).

However, learning English is not exactly the same as learning Math or History. It’s not all about memorizing dates and formulas - English’s equivalent would be memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugation. English is a tool to communicate, so it needs to be used and practiced in that way. The focus should be on listening and speaking, but in practice, most people learn reading and writing first. This leads to students studying alone, which leads to neither fluency nor communicative skills. We should learn English together.

I have more thoughts on this topic, but perhaps I’ll save them for tomorrow. For now, check out this blog about learning English: I find Mary’s comment particularly thoughtful.

I really hate the out of control use of acronyms and abbreviations. In these days of instant messaging and chat rooms, acronyms and abbreviations are becoming all too common.

They’re not just annoying, but slow to read and awkward to say (do we say the letters, like in BBS, or pronounce it like a word, as in AIDS). There are plenty of people who agree with me. A great deal of writers, professors, language purists and old prudes like me (I’m not yet 30 if you’re checking) can’t stand them. I would link to them, but most of the blogs and comments I’ve seen are maybe, er, not appropriate (very strong language).

What makes it even worse is that many people learning English adopt acronyms and abbreviations quite quickly. I’m not sure why. I’ve had students use them in class and I didn’t know what they were saying. The students would give me a confused look like - “how can you not know this?”. Then I had to explain what they’re using is often slang or jargon. These students, who have a vocabualry about 1/20th the size of mine, are using this stuff. Often it’s from work - they have jobs where acronyms or abbreviations are often used in the workplace or that particular field of business. But the rest of the English speaking world doesn’t know them or use them.

Let’s get this straight. Acronyms and abbreviations do not make you sound intelligent, and they are not, in general, much faster to say. I can see how it makes sense to use them in writing sometimes, but only if they’re high-use, well-known ones that your readers will know. There’s nothing more frustrating than not understanding a piece of text or what someone is saying because they use too many acronyms and abbreviations.

I admit, I use them here at EnglishPod - we have our own little language of acronyms and abbreviations - but I wouldn’t use them with outsiders because I wouldn’t expect them to be understood. So to everyone out there, please limit their use - make yourself clear, stop the confusion.

For all those who need help understanding acronyms and abbreviations, go here to find out what possible meanings they might have.

I’m not sure where the time goes each day, but I’m thankful for the few timesavers I have. One is delegating, one of the nicer benefits of being a manager. It’s so satisfying to have someone else do work for you (as long as it’s done well and on time), particularly when the work includes those time-consuming detail-oriented “little things,” the little problems that take up hours, days and weeks. But where does one find the time for improving themselves and learning the skills necessary to become a good manager? If you don’t have time for management schools like Yale or Harvard, you can learn some very useful advice online. Gerard Blair has written some helpful articles here and there’s a management blog hosted by Tom Foster that has useful insights and, as in all good blogs, has readers who comment and ask questions. I’ve also found some good articles with advice for managers here.

So delegating is a timesaver. The Internet can be as well; there are many websites that can give us the info we want and teach us the skills we need to survive and thrive in the world. However, the Internet is so huge that sorting through all of the information can be a time-consuming task as well. That’s where Google, Yahoo and other search engines come in handy. I don’t use them as effectively as I should - we can all still use a primer in Internet searching - it’s such an important skill. Researchers looking through books for information don’t read everything, they read smart - they scan, they use indexes and they learn how to find what they want. The same is true for the Internet. Searching involves using “search terms” and “boolean operators.” Most of us amateurs just type in words related to the information we want and look through the webpages, but the boolean operators can help us be more specific. There are tons of pages with tips on how to search effectively, but here is one that has some of the keys. Finding the information you need can be extremely important in managing a successful company or just enjoying your free time more.

Computers themselves can be invaluable as timesavers, but in my experience, there are so many problems with hardware and software, that sometimes it seems like they make more problems than they solve. Remember the days of the secretary and the dictaphone? Just record your thoughts on the dictaphone and the secretary could type it out much faster than you ever could.

Other time saving tips: A decent list can be found at this site , although not much explanation is given. To learn about time management for studying (say, with English), see these tips. Making the most of your time is essential for language learning. I’ve met many people who have studied English for 10 years or more. The combination of poor study/teaching techniques and massive amounts of wasted time mean that after 10 years, they’re not even close to being able to speak fluently. We’ll talk about study and teaching methods another time. For now, let’s conclude with my tips.

1. Get enough sleep to function properly during the day.
2. Solve your difficult/intellectual problems early in the day.
3. Make schedules and do your best to stick to them.
4. Have well-thought out agendas for meetings and don’t get off topic too much. Keep meetings short and productive.
5. Make action plans. Write out all the steps needed to complete a project.
6. Eat well, take breaks. Use coffee as needed.
7. If possible, surround yourself with positive, high-energy, motivated people - this will give you the extra push you need.
8. Keep work at work. Your personal life should not include large amounts of time thinking and worrying about work. Relax, escape with a movie, and get exercise.
9. Keep some time free during the day to put out fires and solve unexpected problems.
10. Use time efficiently (i.e. do something during your commute).