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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.

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.

Want to know where all of our podcasts go when they fall off the bottom of the home page screen?

Click on the “Podcast Archive” to find all the podcasts, or “lesson pods” as well call them (which include a podcast, PDF transcript, review materials, exercises and teacher lesson plan).

The lesson pods are searchable in different ways:

by title/introduction - type part of the name or a word from the introduction of the lesson pod you’re trying to find in the search box.

by level - click on Lower Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, or Advanced to call up all of the lessons for that level.

You can then sort the results you get from these two searches by: date, popularity or rating (in the Learning Center, premium users can rank podcasts on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the highest).

You can also search:

by topic - click on the topic and up pops all the lessons related to that topic.

by function - same as for topic, but what are functions? Well perhaps that’s the subject of another blog post, but for now let’s call it the use of the language - what situations can you use this sort of lanauge. Or we could call it the goal of the communication: i.e. agreeing/disagreeing, describing people, offering, inviting, etc.

All of these search functions allow you to find what you want and study the things YOU find useful and/or interesting.

See you in the archive,

Today I was wondering about learning languages and about the topics that are necessary/interesting to learn. I am both a student and teacher of languages, but I must admit I don’t have all the answers yet about what to learn and when to learn it.

Oviously at the lower levels the basics of communication are vital: talking about numbers, especially price, finding out where things are, and directions for how to get there, how to say what you like and don’t like… Describing people and objects is also key. Most of the textbooks I’ve used concentrate on topics like hobbies and jobs. Talking about your hobbies, families and what you do in your free time is alright, but not a necessary skill, and it’s a bit vague to be of much help. Given that EnglishPod’s structure allows us 10-15 minutes to discuss a topic, each individual hobby could be a topic.

Let’s think about what people ask you and what you want to know when you meet someone who speaks English. The typical American will ask you:

What’s your name? = introductions
How are you? = feelings
Where are you from? = talking about your hometown
Great weather today. = talking about the weather
What do you do = jobs/school

Howeverm, some websites and textbooks just dont get it. The topics taught are either irrelevant, useless or both. A prominent English language website for kids has topics like “Aztecs” - something the student will probably never use in their life. Other topics include “volcanoes”, “monsters”, “dinosaurs”, “polar animals”, “snow travel”, “haunted houses”, and the “circus”. Some of these topics are for kids, and that’s fine, but even “haunted house” is really only useful when living in cultures that actually have this concept.

Other websites and textbooks have great topics, useful language and teach things that can be used immediately and throughout one’s life. Check out the BBC’s street language topics including work, moods, sport, food, money here.

More advanced learners need topics that are more developed and specific. But we’ll get into that another time. Any suggestions out there for topics you’d like to learn about?

Hey everyone,

Many of you have noticed we’ve got a new feature on the website: My Course.

My Course is designed for both students and teachers to be able to organize the lessons they want to study/teach. My Course is one of the Premium services located in the Learning Center.

How do you use My Course?

To get access, you have to subscribe as a premium user or the 1 week free subscription. Next, select the lessons you want by clicking on the “Add to My Course” buton just below the lesson titles. Then go to the Learning Center. You will see all of the lessons you have selected listed (in blue).

What new features does My Course offer?

1. Inside My Course you can organize the lessons you choose into different lists. This way, you can create your own lesson courses and organize your study schedule. Maybe you want a Lower Intermediate set and an Upper Intermediate set. Or maybe you want a set about sales and money, and a different set dealing with lessons on management. Create or delete lists and move lessons around.

2. Click the “My Course RSS” button and copy the url - then go to itunes or your podcatcher of choice and subscribe by pasting the url. itunes will add your list (i.e. “Kris Fedorak’s Englishpod Course” appeared in itunes and it started to download the lessons in my list).

3. Click the “My Course PDF Zip File” button to download all the PDFs from the lessons in your list.

4. Download individual PDF transcripts and Lesson Plans by clicking on the red play buttons.

5. Rate the lessons by clicking on the “Rate this product” link and selecting the number between 1-10 (10 is the best) that you feel that lesson deserves.

Use as much as you want, when you want. My advice is to play around with it a bit and after a few minutes you’ll discover all the new cool features there are. As far as I know, we’re the first to do this, so let us know if it’s easy/difficult to use and what other features you want : )

Best Wishes,

Kris/Team ODE

Hi everyone,

EnglishPod is coming out with a new version of the site. Better content, more focused, and more great hosts. For those of you using the “Advanced English”, we will now call it Business EnglishPod. There will be 3 levels: Lower Intermediate, Upper Intermediate and Advanced. The shows will have a professional feel and be more business oriented. The learning center is going to have more exerciese, sample sentences and other tools for review and reinforcement. (The simplified Chinese site will also have better content, but will have 5 levels and more general English lessons).

As always, your suggestions are welcome. Comment on lessons, hosts, my rants, the webiste format, the exercises - everything and anything you want. The show and the website are designed to be flexible and user-driven, so we’ll change whenever we find something that works better.

Kris Fedorak/Team EnglishPod

English language learning is everywhere these days: books, classrooms, TV, magazines, Starbucks… and of course, online. To all those out there learning English, you are not alone, and there’s strength in numbers. Tell us what you want, when you want it, and if you want fries with it (well, we can’t do the fries… at least not yet, let me ask the tech people).

English is a relatively young language, but is coming along fast. Though Mandarin is still the most spoken language in the world, English is number 2 or 3, depending on the stats used. But the difference in the number of native speakers and those who’s mastered English as a second language is interesting to note. See here for more details.

If you’ve been learning English for many years and are still frustrated that you can’t speak as well as you want, have no fear - many of us at Englishpod share this experience too (learning everything from German to Arabic). We’ve spent many years studying with books, memorizing vocabulary, and having teachers embarrass us with questions that we can’t answer. However, in the past ten years new approaches to language learning have been developed, and the past 2 or 3 years has seen an explosion in technologies able to help people to take advantage of these new methods.

Take advantage of these new tools! Englishpod is just getting started, as is the whole industry of podcasting. However, we’re adding tools that we think will add to your learning experience and improve the results, and as more people use these new methods and technologies, the better we’ll understand how to help those users.

Good luck, and get learning,

Kris Fedorak/Team Englishpod

EnglishPod has been going for about 2 months and the results so far have been very encouraging. We have gradually built up a loyal audience of English learners from around the world. And the feedback we have received from our listening audience has help greatly improve the product. Actually, we view EnglishPod as a community where students and teachers can come together and explore a common interest - learning English.

We are using social media like podcasts, blogs and wiki’s to interact with our audience, and provide places where our audience can interact with each other. Sometimes the conversations on our website stay close to the topics presented in our lessons, and other times they go in completely different directions. Regardless, people are discussing, people are communicating, people are learning English, and that is truly something very exciting.

Podcasts and social media will revolutionize the way people learn languages, a notion that has already seen some traction in cyberspace. Search Google or iTunes for “English Podcasts” and you will find a growing list of podcasts to help you learn the language. A few worth mentioning are New York English, English Feed and ELTpodcast. And for those of you interested in learning Mandarin Chinese you can check out ChinesePod

Language training podcasts like EnglishPod are important but they are certainly not the only podcast resources available to English learners. Virtually every major media outlet in the English speaking world has started offering podcasts. You can listen to the news, interviews, documentaries and much, much more. I will blog about some of my favourite podcasts in the next day or two. What English language podcasts do you listen to regularly? How are you using podcasts to improve your English communication skills?

Matt Park / Team EnglishPod

This resource lists many of the common problems that English learners make. I’d recommend you take 10 minutes to read through all the examples.

Tip #3: Create sample sentences!
Your goal, as a language learner, is to develop the ability to communicate in a wide variety of situations. A great way to practice this is to write sample sentences for each of the new words you learn. You should try to use the new word in as many different situations and locations in the sentence as possible. Once you run out of sentences, try Googling the word to find other samples in English language websites. Here are some examples of sample sentences.

New Word: wireless

1) The wireless network is broken.
2) Our office is wireless.
3) I need a product that provides very fast wireless connectivity.

And a Google search reveals lots more sample sentences.

Tip #2: Learn relevant things!
When you are learning English, it is much easier to remember language that is related to your job, life, interests, etc. And, because these things are related to you, they will be far more useful. So, don’t waste time trying to learn words that you will never use, or discussing things that don’t interest you. Instead, focus on what you need or like. You will have far better results.

Here are some suggestions for learning activities that will be highly relevant:

1) See if you can translate your resume into English.
2) Keep a diary in English, and use it to describe your life. You will find you will need to use a dictionary to learn new words, and because these words are related to your life you will remember them better.
3) Regularly read an English language website or blog about one of your hobbies. Because it interests you, you will have greater motivation and better retention of new vocabulary.

If you have any other strategies for relevant learning, I’d love to hear them in the comments section!

We get many e-mails at EnglishPod asking for advice on how to learn English. Over the next few weeks we will publish a series of tips and suggestions to help you learn English effectively.

Tip #1: Use what you learn to communicate!
Communication is not only the purpose of language training, but also a powerful learning technique. Every time you use what you learn for real communication you will improve your fluency and ability to remember words. Real communication happens when you share any kind of information with another person. It doesn’t matter if you are speaking with a native speaker or another learner. Therefore, for example, instead of reciting words to remember them try to use them in real English conversations. Also, if you have questions about the language, try discussing them in English rather than your native language. Make a habit of using every available opportunity to practice. Finally (and very importantly), don’t worry about the accuracy of what you are saying. Making mistakes is a necessary part of language learning. As long as you have plenty of sources of correct input (such as English websites, EnglishPod, books, magazines, native speaker friends and colleagues etc) you will be aware at some level in your brain when you make mistakes, and over time they will become less frequent. However, if you don’t practice in the first place, this process won’t occur.

Obviously, learning English is more and more popular around the world. In this way, learning English has, consequntely, become a hot topic. However, so many people are learning it with great pains, but not enjoyment. Most of them regard it just a tool of communication, so, in their mind, learning English is something like “have to”. In fact, it will be much easier if they change their attitude to “wish to”. Because, actually, there are also a lot of interesting things,like the westen culture, tradition, and daliy life, etc. As long as you form up this concept, you would have a strong motivity to learn. So, in my opinion, INTEREST is very very important for an English learner. This is a little tip according to my own experience of learning English, and I am very glad to share with everybody.

Carrie / Team EnglishPod