PhraseMix Articles
What is the best way to learn English grammar?
Here's a question that I answered on the Q&A site Quora about learning grammar. It's a topic that I've written about before, but that was a long time ago. I think it's a point that should be repeated.:
Question: What is the best fun way to learn English grammar?
I...
Look for common English metaphors to help you understand new phrases
In the last phrase this week, "The video's pretty choppy on my end," I explain that English speakers think of a telephone or online conversation as an imaginary string between two people. So you can talk about "my end" or "your end" of a conversation, just like you can talk about the two "ends"...
A Skype conversation: "flipping a coin"
Here's a Skype conversation I had this morning with an English learner:
Shinichi: Hi, can i ask you a question?
PhraseMix: Hi
PhraseMix: Good morning.
PhraseMix: Sure, ask away.
Shinichi: first question: how do you say コインをひっくり返すin english?
PhraseMix: "flip a coin" (but I had to look it up)
Shinichi:...
Learn proper English, and then make mistakes on purpose!
I have a confession to make: I love saying things the wrong way.
In the morning, when people at work say "How are you?" I usually answer "Wonderful!" instead of "Fine" or "Good". When I call an old friend, I don't say "Hey man, how's it going?". Instead I try to think of some new funny way to say...
Should we forget about PhraseMix and just go make international friends?
Yesterday I read a post at the Fluent in 3 Months blog. The author, Benny, says:
If you want to speak a language well, the amount of money or quantity of course material or choosing the “best” one to invest in, or how much you study, will not determine your success. It’s how...
Don't try to learn similar phrases together (or you might make a dumb mistake like I almost did)!
Should you learn similar words and phrases at the same time, or words and phrases that are different from each other?
The first instinct for most language teachers and learners is to group similar vocabulary together. When I first began learning Japanese, I had a list of animal names to study, a...
Try studying English once an hour!
When and how often do you study English? Do you do it once a week? Every day? What about every hour?
There's a blog that I'm a big fan of called All Japanese All the Time (AJATT). The author, Khatzumoto, discusses theories about how to learn a foreign language quickly and well. Yesterday he...
How learning grammar is like painting.
Language learners sometimes try to learn too much at once.
For example, I often get questions like this:
I don't know how to use 'the' and 'a'. Can you explain how to use them?
Well, no, I can't.
First of all, "the" and "a" are too...
Finding a different way to explain tenses
I'm working on writing some posts to explain tenses. (Like the past tense, past progressive, present perfect, and all those lovely terms you learned in school). Of course, there's a ton of information out there already which explains these ideas. But I have to figure it out and explain it in my...
Slang
Slang is language which some people use, but which isn't widely accepted as "proper" or "correct".
What is slang?
Slang has the following qualities:
- It's often used by young people.
- It's often regional, meaning that people in one country (or part of a country) use slang words and phrases that...
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