You Can Choose Your Own Selection of English Phrases!

English Harmony Podcast: Improve English Fluency | Improve Spoken English | Learn English

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Transcript Below:

Hi guys, hello boys and girls and hello my dear fellow foreign English speakers!

It’s me, Robby from EnglishHarmony.com bringing you another video message which is going to be uploaded onto my YouTube channel and then it’s going to be embedded into a blog post on my blog EnglishHarmony.com and then I’m going to promote it for my Facebook followers, my Twitter followers, my LinkedIn partners so basically this message is being sent out for everyone who is interested in spoken English improvement basically, right? That’s what the whole thing is about.

And today’s video is about the fact that not everyone, right, listen to this carefully guys, not every English speaker out there uses the very same means of expression, right? And the reason I’m saying this is because I’m cranking out all these idiomatic expressions. If you head over to my blog site map page you may want to click on this link, right? Englishharmony.com/sitemap-page if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, I’m going to look at up later on and then I’m going to embed that link right here. So it might not be not the same exact link that I just said but you’re going to be able to click right here just like I said, right? And you’ll be able to see all those hundreds upon hundreds of videos and blog posts and a good chunk of those is idiomatic expressions, right? Collocations, idioms and so on and so forth, right?

It’s Easy to Get Overwhelmed by Looking at the Sheer Amount of Phrases

So the reason I’m bringing up this subject that everyone uses the same expressions is that some of you might get overwhelmed, right? You might be looking at the whole list of phrases and you might be thinking “Hold on a second, does that mean that I have to be using every single one of those phrases all the time in my conversations?”

And the answer is – not really, right? You may pick and choose your favorite set of phrases that you would be using on a regular basis. And if you observe the way native English speakers speak you will also realize that certain people use certain phraseology more often than not, right?

When I remember in my last job there was this secretary and she was always using the expression – what was the expression? Let me remember. “That kind of a way,” right? So she would basically explain something and then in the end she would stick the phrase “that kind of a way”, right? And that was a peculiar phrase to her. I haven’t actually heard anyone else using that phrase, right? Obviously I’m not saying that just by using that one phrase you’re going to become a fluent English speaker, not at all. I’m just saying it to illustrate the fact that not everyone uses the same pool of expressions, right?

And let me think of another example. My former instructor in the college that I’m currently attending was always using – what was the phrase? He used a couple of very, very interesting phrases. Can’t remember, to be honest with you guys. Totally slipped my mind but you get the drift, right? It’s okay to pick your favorite phrases and use them quite frequently during the speech, right?

Obviously some people would say that if you just use one phrase such as “you know what I mean” and if you overuse that phrase that would be a bad thing, that would be a bad habit and that would send the wrong message to the conversational partner of yours that your English is very poor or whatever.

I don’t really agree with that opinion but I can see where those people would be coming from, right? If you use one particular phrase all the time, yeah, that might be a little bit annoying for the other person.

It’s Better to Sound a Bit Annoying Than Lose Your English Fluency!

But then again, just think about the fact that if you do that you might keep your fluency going whereas if you don’t do that, if you analyze your speech too much, if you try to get rid of all those expressions, your speech might start to struggle a little bit. You might get stuck for words and so on and so forth.

So the trade-offs of using such phrases I don’t think that they outweigh the benefits that you get by using those phrases, right? Basically I think that the benefits of using these expressions by far outweigh the possible negative consequences, if you know what I mean.

What I just said was a little bit confusing maybe but all I was saying was that just go with using a couple of phrases, if that makes you feel comfortable, if that gives your fluency that so much needed flow, if that gets you into the rhythm and just stick with those phrases, okay?

And if you think about it as well a lot of authors if you’re into reading and if you read different authors, you will definitely realize that certain people have certain types of vocabulary that they use. So basically everyone is unique.

You can’t actually compare yourself to everyone else and draw the conclusion that your English is not up to scratch just because you’re not using the same means of expressions as the other person, right? It’s not necessarily the case; it’s quite the opposite actually on a lot of occasions. You have your own unique ways of expression that are probably on certain occasions even better than those of the other person that you’re looking up to, right?

So it’s all the matter of perspective. So by all means guys, just pick and choose a few expressions. Typically they would be sentence starters that would help you to get your speech going, right? And obviously when it comes to the rest of the speech I’m not saying that you only have to use like 3 or 4 idiomatic expressions and that’s it. That’s not at all what I’m saying. I hope that you get that as well, right?

All I’m saying is that obviously you have to be learning a lot of new vocabulary, phraseology and all that kind of thing but all I’m saying is you don’t have to be overly worried and concerned about the fact that you can’t use everything in your active speech. It’s not even possible, right?

There’s Only So Many Phrases You Can Use at Any Given Point in Time!

Just look at me. You might be under the impression that I’m using loads and loads of phrases and all that well, which is obviously true to a certain degree but then there’s a whole lot more phrases that I’m not using that I could have been using and that I could have been beating myself over but I’m not doing that.

Because I know for a fact that I’m sticking to my comfort zone, to my phrases that I know, that I use and obviously a few years down the line I’ll be probably using a whole lot of more expressions. But at this particular moment in time I’m comfortable using my own pool of phrases and I can express myself freely and that’s the way I roll and that’s the way I suggest you roll my friends.

So if you have any questions obviously about this topic or about improving English fluency in general, please don’t hesitate getting in touch with me right here in the comment section below and obviously if you liked this video don’t forget to like it and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already done so.

So thanks for watching and chat to you soon. Bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

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