PhraseMix Articles

Some unusual advice for improving your English accent

People often ask my opinion about how to improve their English accent. The best answer, of course, is to spend a lot of time listening carefully to natural, native English. But there's another secret which has to do with your attitude.

The secret is:

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Do you have a different personality when you speak English?

The other day, I got into a conversation with one of the students I tutor. She's from Japan, and has been studying English in New York for over a year. We were talking about how she acts around her English-speaking coworkers. I asked her:

"Is your personality a lot different when you speak...

Should you focus on your flaws or your strengths when it comes to learning English?

How do you feel about your English-speaking ability? Do you think to yourself:

"Wow, I've come so far! I can speak English a lot better than I used to."

or do you think:

"Man, my English isn't very good. There are so many things that I don't know how to say."

I bring this up because I read...

PhraseMix named one of the Top 25 Language Learning Blogs of 2011

Thanks to your help, PhraseMix has been honored in the Top 100 Language Lovers 2011 competition at Bab.la:

We were chosen as #19 in the Top 25 Language Learning Blogs. And when I say "we", I mean PhraseMix and you! Thanks for your support in the voting.

Please check out some of...

Infographic: How many words do you 'need'?

How many words do you need to learn in order to speak English fluently? Well, it depends on what you mean by "fluent".

We looked at a "word frequency" list of spoken English - a list of which words show up most often - and made some interesting discoveries. 

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Teaching the meaning of a word is like...

...trying to describe a dog.

Imagine that I show up on your doorstep one day. You open the door, and I say:

Hi, I'm looking for my dog who's gone missing. She's about a foot tall, with short legs and a long, round torso. Her face is kind of scrunched up and she has big eyes. Her hair is short...

An Interview with Brainscape

Andrew Cohen, CEO of Brainscape, interviewed me about PhraseMix. It's part of his series of interviews with people who are using Technology to improve Education. Check out some of his other interviews here: http://www.youtube.com/user/theEdTechInsider

I was speaking at a normal, fast pace,...

What are YOUR key sentences?

When I post a new lesson on PhraseMix, I hope that you will study it and get the key sentence at the top of the lesson stuck in your head. I want to keep adding new phrases until there are thousands of them for you to learn from.

Unfortunately, it's going to take a long time for me to add...

Have you ever used an English tutor?

Have you ever taken lessons one-on-one with an English tutor?

I've studied Japanese with a tutor, and found it to be a great way to improve my fluency and understanding. We met once a week in a coffee shop for a couple of hours. We discussed various topics, read out loud from Japanese books, and...

English is really two languages

People think of English as being one language, but I think it's more helpful to think of it as two different languages which English speakers switch back and forth between:

1. Casual or conversational English. All native English speakers naturally learn this. This is what you'll hear kids...