Filed Under: English learning, Improve in English

Is it better to use an English-to-English dictionary to improve my English?

August 4, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

In general, yes, I would recommend using an English-to-English dictionary as a way to improve your English.

And this is because if you look at English definitions of words in an English dictionary, you’re actually doing something in English.

Here’s an extract:




You see, the more you remove your native language in your learning process, the better. And if you’re reading definitions in an English dictionary, obviously, you have to understand English first. So, when you’re reading these definitions, you’re actually leveraging your English. You’re using it as a tool to learn even MORE English.

However, if you use dictionaries in your native tongue, that’s another case. And I say this because English dictionaries in a different language usually have a lot of fuzzy translations. Of course, some specific technical words have clear translations… but then most of them still don’t.

Let’s take this for example:

If you translate the English word “cause” into Japanese, you’ll get a similar word in Japanese… but it’s not used in the way it’s supposed to be used in English. Not only that, you’ll actually lose most of the information you need. Like how the English word “cause” is only used in negative situations, i.e. “cause a problem” or “cause an accident”. You never really say “cause happiness”. And, you know, this sort of thing is hard to grasp if you’re just looking at word-for-word translations.

Now, this is not to say that all multi-language dictionaries are bad (some of them are actually good). I just think that it’s always going to be better to keep English in English since it has real benefits once you use them.

So, again, yes, you can use an English-to-English dictionary. But if you can, try to avoid multi-language dictionaries when your goal is to improve your English.

Now, if you need help improving in English faster, you can try what I like to call the “Two Track Approach”. You can learn more about this and other methods in the free training I created. You’ll learn the 5 key changes my best clients make to improve their English as higher-level English learners.

If you want more tips, you can sign up for my free daily emails here.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English learning, Vocabulary

How can I improve my vocabulary and retention?

August 3, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

The best way to learn and retain vocabulary is to stop trying to learn “vocabulary”.

Or at least, not as the main thing you do.

Let me explain. Even native speakers only use around 2.5% of the words in English. And for the vast majority of people learning English as a second language, more, more, more words won’t help at all.

Neither will just learning more in the same way help you retain what you learn.

The big difference between people who are intermediate in English and people who are advanced (and beyond) is that they’ve learned to CHUNK their English well.

If you don’t know what this means, I’ve got a free training here that will teach you everything you need to know about improving your English past the intermediate stage (including “chunking).

In a nutshell, though, we used to think native speakers had grammar rules in their head, and that they combined these with words to make sentences… but this never made much sense. Speaking like this, we shouldn’t be able to speak fluently because the brain’s RAM (working memory) simply isn’t that good. Using grammar and words, we’d speak slowly and awkwardly (like most non-native speakers who have learned to speak in this way). Also, we shouldn’t sound natural simply because most “grammatical” English isn’t natural – “make a picture” is grammatical, and so is “let’s try it”. But both sound awkward (we say “take a picture” and “let’s give it a go”.

This is because native speakers speak in chunks.

So if you also want to speak in an advanced, native-like way, that’s how you need to speak, too. And the easiest way to do this is to learn in chunks right from the beginning… not individual words.

This also makes retention much, much easier.

The reason you forget things is because your learning is too shallow. You probably memorise a word, with a translation in your native language… and that’s it. But the brain has nothing to connect that word too, so it’s lost.

Learning in chunks helps you to integrate what you learn deeper into the network of your English.

Anyway, this is getting long.

As I said, I have a free training here that will show you how to do everything I’ve talked about here.

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English learning, Speaking English

What does a non-English speaker really have to learn to pronounce English well?

August 2, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

There are three things you need to know:

  1. There are sounds in English not present in your native language.
    This one’s easy, and you already know this.
    When I learned Japanese, I had to learn to pronounce the “ra”, “ri”, “re”, “ro” sounds that don’t exist in English. Japanese people learning English have to learn to pronounce those sounds as separate “r” and “l” sounds.
    This really just comes down to learning new motor skills.
  2. The way you were taught to pronounce English was really bad.
    Most people get taught idealised versions of English in school. Every word is enunciated clearly and you end up over pronouncing everything. Word. By. Word.

    But this isn’t right.

    Native speakers don’t enunciate every word clearly. They slur words together, crush them down and sometimes even pronounce them wrong.
    And your over-pronouncing English is actually harder to understand.

    Why?

    Because we speak in chunks.

  3. Articulate English in “chunks” – don’t pronounce in words.

    Native pronunciation is chunked, not word by word words.

    Like I mentioned above, sounding native-like in English has more to do with your rhythm and intonation than it does pronunciation.

    It’s all about good chunking skills.

    If I pronounced the word “end” wrong in “at the end of the day”, what I’ve said is still instantly recognisable to a native speaker.

    But If I pronounce each word carefully?

    It’ll be much harder to understand.

Hope that helps.

A great exercise for working on pronunciation in general, and good rhythm and chunking skills, in particular, is “shadowing” — I wrote a free guide called “The Good Shadowing Guide” which you can download here.

Best,
Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English learning, Pronunciation, Speaking English

The best way to know if your English is correct without asking

July 21, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

There are a few ways on how you can check if your English pronunciation is correct (or not) without asking.




One of the best ways to know if your pronunciation is correct or not is actually quite easy. If the person you’re talking to looks confused, your pronunciation is probably incorrect. But if the person doesn’t look confused, then you nailed it.

And you know, a person’s reaction is still the best feedback you’re going to get.

But for example, you ask them, “Is my pronunciation correct?”, you’ve now implanted an idea in that person’s head that your English is not very good. Because you’ve then shifted the focus from your conversation to the fact that you’re insecure about your pronunciation. In reality, however, they probably never even thought so much about your English at all.

So be confident with your English. If you want to check if your English is correct or not without asking, use their reaction as a reference.

Hope that helps.

I help high-level non-native English speakers use English better at work and in day to day life. If that’s you, you might like to sign up for the free daily email tips I send.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English confidence, English learning

Why do I lose confidence the better I get at English?

July 14, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

If you feel like you’re losing confidence the better you get at English, it’s actually perfectly normal.




It’s human nature.

We’re designed to find the negative in anything and not notice the positive.

You may have heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger curve. This is a graph that shows confidence on one axis and knowledge on the other:

So what happens is this: when you’re learning any kind of skill, you start high in the confidence axis, thinking you know it all. But as you gain more knowledge about that thing, your line at the top suddenly curves down. You start to lose confidence because you start to realise that you actually don’t know anything at all.

The more you learn, the less you know. It’s cliché, but it’s true.

A good example of this is when I was first teaching in secondary school in Japan, I actually said “if you just let me do everything I wanted to do, I can have these kids fluent in a year!”.

Except that’s impossible.

The reality was, I had no idea what I was doing.

So I decided to study second language acquisition and applied linguistics. It made me realise just how unbelievably wrong I was. My confidence plummeted. I started questioning myself like “how can these people let me teach these kids in class?”.

But then I started to gain more and more knowledge about what I was teaching and my confidence went back up again.

And it’s true of anything you’re trying to learn, including, of course, English.

So understand the fact that when you feel like you’re losing confidence when speaking English — it’s actually a positive thing. Because it means you’re progressing through the Dunning-Kruger curve, and your confidence will start to go back up.

If need some help improving in English faster, I can help.

The best place to start would be the free training I created. You’ll learn the 5 key changes my best clients make to improve their English as higher-level English learners.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: Chunking, English learning

Hymes’ fourth parameter of situational competence

April 14, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Last few days I’ve been revising one of my research papers for publication.

And I pulled out this of the introduction:

“Hymes’ (1972) fourth parameter of situational competence, which states language in the real world should be performed—or put more simply, language should be ‘done’—not just be possible, well-formed, or appropriate (the first three of Hymes’ parameters). As Skehan puts it, “learners who restrict themselves to item-and-rule approaches to language will be forever marked as non-members of the speech community they aspire to” (1998, p. 39)”

What this means is, being “grammatical” in English isn’t enough.

Success in conversation comes from speaking in fluent, natural and well organised “chunks” of English.

And a focus on grammar and vocabulary only, ironically, often leads to someone sounding less natural, and more like a second-language speaker. NOT more natural like people believe.

You’ll see from the references that even as far back as the 70’s people have been talking about this stuff. Yet I bet there are almost no English teachers that have ever heard of Hymes, or his Four Parameters of Situational Competence.

To my eyes, this is a problem.

We know so much from science: yet it’s ignored by everyone other than scientists.

I’ve made it a mission to change this via the courses I run (i.e. MEFA), via the weekly lessons I publish in EES, and in the near future via the very expensive ‘advanced topics’ print books I’ll publish.

This brings us to the next steps:

Which is to join us in the next MEFA group, if – and only if – you’re the kind of person willing to invest a bit of time and hard work into transforming their English.

Info and enrolment are here:

https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA/

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook