Filed Under: English fluency, Vocabulary

Will learning more vocabulary make me fluent in English?

August 10, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Learning more vocabulary doesn’t necessarily make you fluent in English.




In fact, memorising more words in an attempt to be better at English is actually a big mistake that a lot of people make.

And the problem actually isn’t that you don’t have enough vocabulary… it’s that you’ve got no idea how to combine these words into native-like units of English to use in conversations.

So that’s the main thing you should focus on if you want to be fluent in English (here’s a free guide I created that shows you how to do this).

This said, however, that doesn’t mean knowing more is bad. Learning more vocabulary is always going to be better than knowing less vocabulary. Kind of like money: if you have a lot, it’s always going to be a good thing. But if you think that money can make you happy… obviously it won’t. But it’s still nice to have it. Same with vocabulary. You won’t be able to be fluent in English automatically if you know a lot of words… but it’s good to know more vocabulary all the same.

So, yes, learning more vocabulary is a good thing.

But again, don’t make learning vocabulary your ONLY primary focus. It does depend on each and every person to a certain extent but in my experience, most people don’t actually need more vocabulary… they need better chunking skills.

Here’s a free guide I wrote that shows you how to do this.

Hope that helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English learning, Fear of Making Mistakes, Making Mistakes in English, Speaking English

Why do I have an irrational fear of making mistakes in English?

August 9, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

Making mistakes in English is indeed an irrational fear.

Here’s an extract:




Ironically, however, it is completely rational because… well, it’s human psychology.

We’re all the same.

We have this fear of just making mistakes in general.

Let’s put it this way:

There is an idea in psychology where we all think of ourselves as giants. We see everyone else as these small people around us. We think “Oh, I’m so big, and because I’m a giant surrounded by tiny people I stand out too much!” But in reality, everybody believes themselves to be the giant.

And it’s the same as when you’re speaking (or doing) things in English.

For example, you’re doing a presentation in English. You’re thinking, “Well, I made a lot of mistakes during my presentation” when in reality… you didn’t make many at all, and probably the ones you did make went totally unnoticed.

So my advice is, don’t worry so about making mistakes. It happens to everybody.

Now, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t try to learn from your mistakes or eliminate them completely. But fear of making mistakes shouldn’t hop you back.

There are several ways you can do this, but if you’re interested in the methods I use the best place to start is the one-hour free training that I created. You’ll learn the 5 key changes my best clients make to improve their English as higher-level English learners.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English fluency

How to define fluency in English?

August 6, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

A lot of people have this preconceived notion that fluency is a single thing – either you have it or you don’t.




But that’s not actually true.

And, you know, when you say fluency (the technical, scientific sense of the word), what you actually mean to say is ‘proficiency’ instead.

See, fluency (spoken fluency) has 5 elements.

These are:

  1. Encoding (how you learned those chunks and store them in long-term memory).
  2. Organisation (how well you organise that information into networks of English in your brain).
  3. Motor skills (the physical aspect of fluency).
  4. Activation (how awake your English is).
  5. Cognitive load (everything else that’s happening in your brain, i.e., if you’re nervous, this will reduce your English ability).

So, if you want to speak English fluently, you’ll need all five of these elements to work nicely together.

I can help with this if you like, and a good place to start is with the free guide I created that shows you how to be fluent in English.

Best,
Dr Julian Northbrook

Filed Under: English learning, Improve in English

What is the easy way to improve one’s English?

August 5, 2021 , by Dr Julian Northbrook

The easy way to improve your English is to stop looking for “easy” ricks to improve, and start putting some time and effort into the things which work.

You need:

  1. A method that works (because if the method you’re using isn’t getting the right results, you need to change it).
  2. Materials that help you learn natural, native-like English (chunks, not words or grammar).
  3. The right mindset (because if you believe you can’t do it, you won’t).

If you get these things right, you’ll improve.

If you don’t, you won’t.

Improving in English really is that simple.

If you’re not sure what method, materials, or mindset you need: I have a free training here that will show you what you need to know.

Best,
Julian Northbrook

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