So, let's return to our muttons!

WHAT WE’LL BE DOING HERE EXACTLY

We’ll be working together on the improvement of our knowledge of English. And firstly we’ll improve our pronunciation.

It can be done in two possible ways. The phonetists are disputing, but we have only to choose the most appropriate one for us:

-    or we’ll be doing it through imitation, and learn it like children do – repeating exactly after the adults and trying to sound like them;

-    or we’ll learn the pronunciation in the usual way – learning the positioning of our speech machine parts and the rules given and formulated due to the scientists' research.

-    and - you can combine the both – what is the best – in my opinion.

I decided to give here both approaches – it’s up to you to decide what suits you better. So, here you’ll have them at your hand, thus you can easily understand and actually use them, namely to put the ideas into your daily practice.

1 - Believe me – Emma is beautiful! How does the Imitation Technique work?

Emma, Imitation Technique

2 – Do you know what is IPA?:  International Phonetic Alphabet ( phonetic notation system ) (Wikipedia).

The phonemic chart contains the 44 sounds of spoken English. It is an excellent tool for both learning and teaching about English pronunciation, but there is no easy way to type the phonemes with a normal keyboard. Use this site to "type" the characters by clicking with your mouse. You can then copy and paste to your software of choice, or even export the characters as an image using the save as image button. (Netty's issue)

Hope it’ll be helpful to you when having no Webster – e-book variant with a speaking out the words possibility – new generation chooses Whiscas…

So, DONE? Now your next step – go, PLEASE! (it will be omitted ever after – just not annoying me) to Google Play – English pronunciation – Awabe (vhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/category/EDUCATION) – it’ll do you no harm to work it out, and, in addition, you might be rather astonished by a mistakes quantity in your speech – all the time you have thought/read/knew it’s like this - and it just occurred to be like that…

So, download the prog – and make your own mistakes list. Hope it’ll be minimized to zero over time.

3. Pa-dam! And here is the combined method – attention! It’s really good, nevertheless seems rather strange at the beginning:

A.J.Hoge. Pronunciation Training Technique

I really like this guy – he’s so unusually weird and expressive – you ’ll remember him word by word! Do you know why? Because human most strange memory strengths are connected with our emotional life, as well as motor memory:  here it is presented in the most interesting way…

Now, my dear friends, was it some help to you? Look here, there are some useful links. Just not to invent the bike – I prefer to give you the best in the Netty’s nets!

Top 27 Mispronounced Words

Break & Grab Method – Hear – Listen – Understand – and your Pronunciation will be improved!

And to be sincere – if you have nothing to do – DO IT HERE!

Matrix. Neo Pills - Neo & Matrix & These Best of the Pills  - Do Your First Exercise in Imitation Technique – IT’S EASY

And I must say, there’s an opinion that you’ll never be able to get out of the accent, even very little noticeable.

OK – to tell the truth – what for? Do you mean to become a TV announcer or radio host broadcasting in Oklahoma State? Or an undercover agent somewhere in the some Shyre county of UK? And, by the way, as one French young man said – “Why? Russian girls are so charmed with my French accent!” 

Well, as follows, being less than enthusiastic about your accent problem, let’s live in our expectations for the best!

PS! Do you know what psychologists say? That your well-designed limitations can actually improve your performance.

Working not 12 hours, but using your head, we’ll reach your goal! Forward, my awesome friends, for great things are awaiting us!

IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT!

Or

WOULD YOU LIKE TO BECOME A WRITER?

Learning is like rowing upstream, not to advance is to drop back. – Chinese Proverb

Hello, everybody! 

So, we have met and there is a point to put a bit of feeling into our meeting. It’s very non-English approach, but I just can’t help it: with all your fun and zest, passionately and without any fear, go ahead!

I would not burden you with problems: you don’t need mine, but I’ll take care of yours – the truth is of only one, concerning your fluency in English. Don’t be anymore this frightful person so much afraid to seem foolish when speaking English. Yes, sometimes it is going to be hard – you cannot be becoming better without working. So, we’ll keep up the good work even if it would ask us for some ‘midnight oil’ to be burnt…

We’ll put our priorities right: let me say I count myself lucky that your way coincided with mine… At last I’ve encountered somebody who could share my passion to the ‘belles-lettres’ subject. To tell the truth, last 20 years my main interest lay in the domain of ‘mechanics of writing’. Is this truth really sad one? NO, my friends, it says that, I am not old, but mature… I won’t boast, but only the best, and really worth of people attention books can give me that feeling of joy and excitement which had led me all through the life.

Suppose, it had brought a bit of interest into your life – then do not stop yourself getting excited… There are no rules in writing – but there are some unconscious principles instead – the principles of freedom and beauty. It will not be the easy way: you’ll begin to work harder than you had ever before.

As this is not our first meeting, I do hope you are feeling more confidently now.

Now, that you love your brain more, the next exercise is to build on this your ‘new-found land’ confidence.

Every writer needs one or two good tricks upon a sleeve. And here are some of them:

• A good warming-up exercise for you:  we’ll take a sheet of paper and a pen, then we’ll prepare a list of your new-learned words, phrasal verbs or proverbs, quotations and wise people thoughts. Let it be 15 – NOW try to write something coherent and interesting using ALL of them in your essay, converting them as you wish in your own personal style. And DO remember: ‘Learning is not a spectator sport.’ – D. Blocher. You really need to know what you are doing, and what works the best at writing an essay. Just Do It!     
• A Little Brain-Storm:Now again you’ve got 5 minutes:Take a theme; write down a heading (it’s a great deal for your success!); make again a list where input all the associations: your own thoughts, big ideas and slight hints of your Intuition, words, verbs, expressions etc…Your time is out. You can relax, drink your cup of coffee. Then read the list, think it over, and in case of need – put it aside, till tomorrow morning – sleep it over, making your goals crystal clear, or the other way round -  burn your candle all through the night – it’s up to you…
• Now then – a Little Bang!

My understanding is that you want to do something nowadays in the field of writing – a thing completely New – let us say a contemporary Internet-essay. We All here are in some or other way Internet-people. When making a Search in the line we usually are reading articles – watching Adds – looking for words or notions – watching games – films – news – cartoons and pictures – then writing songs or scripts or poems/translations – and so on and so on… Yes, of course, it’s our leisure time, we can idle unconsciously while our mind is accepting the info and working, and working hard…That is how we receive this “being in mood”, where gist some traits of our personality character as well as in time – the character itself…  Could you… Yes, you easily could to compose a recitation of your net-itinerary – and retell some story, and give your opinion, and transmit your attitude… Using different signs and colorful pictographs and underlining and circling striking out, writing words – logos – slogans, drawing the pictures, inserting audio- and video-files passages… How to represent it? Through video-films or presentations, but you need to bear in mind – it cannot be done in the usual format of a paper work – it’s good only in the Netty-format! Isn’t it a BEAUTY?!

This is Take & Use!!!

Today’s Task:

It is not about writing an essay – but it is a rather helpful exercise,

Because

 We All Are Striving for Fluency!

It will help you to speak spontaneously:

Choose a word, which is used not too much and often, but has a lot of definitions (6-8 or more – till 15). Write a list of different meanings of the word, Google them all, read some odd materials, give your own thoughts –

And NOW – retell all you know about Every! Item!

This work is for an Hour or so – I ask you no more than that! Just not to be boring!

And of course, it’s your exercise for every day – in time it will be easier, only the beginning is rather cumbersome!

Ah, and what about essays? There are two ways:

• Choose your best time and place for writing – and GO AHEAD! There’s a beautiful rule for beginners:
• 2-MINUTES RULE – If you are hesitating to begin – do it for only 2 minutes – just say to your Brain – My Dear, we’ll be doing this only two minutes, not more, promise… AH, YOU ARE A LAIR!
• Or you can write on you knee on the bus stop or elsewhere – but with Lady Inspiration!

So, We Do Have Friends 

in the Fields of Mastering our Fluency!

Here the Link for a week with Gabby Wallace & her Go Natural English: ( and be swift, PLEASE!!!)

http://www.gonaturalenglish.com/challenge

‘Train – your - ears’ exercises

It will not be something like 1-2-3 training.

We’ll be doing it properly for a linguistic site. That means, there are some exercises to train our unused to a fluent and at a normal speed native speakers' language ears. They are simple. And useful – try and you’ll see!

• Listen to a 3-minutes passage of any interesting for you audio-file (never do anything uninteresting – we are learning ‘at a pleasure pace‘– do you remember?). How many words have you understood? Not many? OK, listen it again… and again… and again… No, I am not a damaged record-player, I want you to grasp at your listening exercise as much as you can.  The quantity of words will rise till some point – when you come to the seaming end of your means. Then read a script (or subtitles) – and translate the unknown words with Google translate – rather useful tool – write them down – learn them – and listen again! It’s SIMPLE, isn’t it?
• And a very useful thing is to repeat the words or even the whole phrases or sentences tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and a week after the day after tomorrow… Just keep a dictionary of your new words (they are your REAL ACHIEVEMENT!) – in time they will go from your passive vocabulary to the active one. This is the goal!
• Use the “Break & Grab” Technique of this engVid guy – it’s interesting. For short, you have to hear while listening this or any other passage of audio file all the SOUNDS ‘s’, or ‘t’, or … any you want. Count them, please – how many ‘s’ have you encountered in the first 3-4 sentences? And so on…
• In time you’ll be able not only to hear, but listen and understand much more than before. Promise!
• Anyway, all exercises are useful, why not this one?

Break & Grab Method

Listen to the audio books – you can download the on the Play Market – believe me – they are great! And, by the way, you can read the content you are listening – a good help for the learners! Begin with children books or classic things, waiting or sitting, or riding but –  not on the crossroads…

And there are these Big Talks, and TED, and different kind of masterclasses – with B-B-Beautiful English subtitles! And what are their themes and personalities! Welcome to the English-speaking World! Your efforts were worthwhile!

• Now then - you can watch films or cartoons – whatever you do prefer. That was what all the thing was about (I mean this my blog…). Choose them with English! subtitles – throw away your be-lingual dictionaries – not a great help to begin to speak and think in the foreign language, anyway…
• There are also some podcasts – TV-shows and films, the most popular nowadays is “Friends” – USE them! PLEASE! The heroes are speaking the colloquial language, everyone has his own ’voice’ and manner to speak, as well as his specific vocabulary traits… Listen to them, imitate them – and you’ll see receive ‘another YOU’-personality! They say, knowing many languages gives people more than one personality, and in English you will sound and behave somehow the other way than in your native tong – you will become your English-speaking YOU!

Uh-h!

NOW you’ve read it all and – as I suppose - have digested it properly –

Take Your BONUS:

The best 2018 world Song – Ed Sheeran – “The Shape of You”:

Ad Sheeran, The Shape of You

(Google the lyrics  - read - translate – learn – and sing – or hum it, as you wish… In the kitchen – in the office – on the road – in the bus – in the train – everywhere and whenever you like – aloud or in your mind – as it suits you!) 

It’s BEAUTIFUL!

               TELLING A STORY

Language is wine upon the lips. – Virginia Woolf

When you are learning a language, remember to slow down and enjoy the process. The language itself is often as enjoyable as the end goal.

How to Tell a Good Story

If the choice is between being idle as before or doing your English, there is no contest for you now. I love encounters like this – they are not only doing wonders, but rather being them as well. Really, I do imagine how exhausted were you with all these schools and techniques and trends – and with rather poor results. OK, let it be – we’ll fail together, and we’ll fail better!

I created the blog just to recover myself and resurrect my dreams to become a real little corpuscle of the huge English World. This is a friend – mine and yours, as well as a mini-support system. System that won’t let you down.

There are several ways how to write a good story, and I think they are worth examining.

In the mainstream… Please, click on the link under the picture of the Sculpture Under The Sky – here you’ll meet... the Oxford Language School teachers – young and professional, they’ll show you how to do it properly – in the classic way. I would be glad to become a ‘classic story-teller’ myself… but my opinion is that it is very well, but such an approach seems to be somehow … uncool. Suppose I’m not being a bitch… A matter of taste…

Here is the known “jam technique” – a nice possibility to try your sand watch. As a matter of fact, mine, having sand enough only for three minutes, has to be turned over trice.  You know, here jam is not the usually stolen stuff from the mother jar – I’m sorry, but it’s simply “just-a-minute” technique…

So, you have a theme, a watch, and only one minute. Try to remember all the words connected with your theme, breath in deeply, and… retell during the given minute all that you can and know about the theme. Do not stop until you time has gone like sand in your watch… Now you have three minutes to write down your key-words, your thoughts, some coherent sentences… Ready? There’s your second minute! Retell your theme, but do it more consciously, more coherent, like a text, not disconnected words, as it could be before…

Now you have again three minutes – improve your grammar, sentences structure, maybe insert quotations of any famous people –  they always sound wisely, and sometimes are very much in the right place, you know… OK, now it’s your last minute… Ready, steady, go! Congratulations! In this game for one ‘beautiful you’ You were the best!

Imagine that you have encountered some old times letter, or … you have read a passage from some unknown novel, but... there’s no beginning… and no ending… What was the tale of the story? AND WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? Who are the main heroes? And what was the climax of the story? Imagine this is a picture describing the story. Who is who here? Why do you think so? And – Oh, at last! Philologist PARADISE! Because – Why? Did? The Author? Put THIS WORD in THAT PLACE? What did he want to bring to us, Readers? Don’t you think it’s interesting? Or – This Is The NOW – time when the language itself is “as enjoyable as the end goal”? So, “slow down!’ and “enjoy the process”!

TIPS TO THE PRESENTATION

A VERY DECENT PROPOSAL

On my Blog Pages We spend together only 1H a day!

And you will receive in a year time

Your Proficiency Level!

Oh, Don’t Believe! I am not joking – it depends on your own pace of walk… Or trot… Or work.

Do Become Fearless while speaking English! Be like children are!

Don’t be afraid of Mistakes - Do remember – “Shit Happens”!

Here you’ll find all that you need – NOTHING to buy MORE!

Let me become your Friend holding your hand all through the journey,

Your Guide to the FLUENCY in English!

Our journey will be PLEASANT & EASY!

There is ONLY one obligation from your part:

NEVER BREAK A CHAIN!

Learn English bit-by-bit – but every day!

Stick with your habit!

NEVER postpone your Key Tasks!

Be diligent!

Learning in less time and with less stress

Has become our motto!

The maximum amount of value will be delivered to you in the minimum amount of time!

OK! What do you need here?

Headphones.

Notebook.

Pen & pencil & paper – as well as our motor type of memory which is prevailing.

Nothing more!

SOME USEFUL SOURCES

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. – Benjamin Franklin

Now then, here you are, this is your list!

Read it – and use everything that seems useful. DO NOT FORGET about films/cartoons/radio broadcasts, as well as sitcoms, TV-shows, Big Talks, audio books etc…

                                               YOUR LIST OF BEST ENGLISH PLACES IN NETTY

                                                                               Voila!

You cannot even imagine how happy I am to see the back of it! I mean that I am so glad … to begin my blog! At last!!!

I cannot say there won’t be any articles any more – but then I’ll be rather a volunteer, and all the stuff you’ve read before was a strongly “MUST HAVE’’ – CONDITIO SINE QUA NON! Won’t you agree that we had to understand each other speaking the same ‘notional’ language? 

And what about you, MY Dear Friends? Of course I do care about our conversations, meetings and talks; I have invited you, imagined and even invented you! How could I leave you now – having devoted you so much time and efforts, having cherished every your imagined by me first step?  Don’t you see how much I do care about My Imagination – the God’s Gift for me?!.

       Some Useful Tools

Very sensible advice. Now it’s time for you to get involved in our journey. 

Our Today's Tools Are: Presentation from disc -  My Presentation #1 Link/picture of mandala for learning…- mandala for English language learning Link for some good affirmations…- Extremely POWERFUL! And just in words: Language is in my Heart! I Get a Little Better Every Day! I Grow with Every Word I Say! I can speak English very well Learning English gets easier and easier!

 Some ‘helping tools’

In this journey we’ll take to our ‘kit in mind’ the tools which are necessary – simply, they’ll become our ‘must have’ since NOW!

• The usual problem of many – not of all of us, Glory to God – lack of attention or focus – and here’s a simple solution for it –

Pa-dam – and you have it – the beautiful habit - to draw a mandala every morning! IF IT WAS USEFUL FOR Carl Jung – it won’t do you any harm, believe me! Well, if you are not in mood to tame a new habit – like to draw… these pencils… and sheets… of paper... it’s so childish… – just have a look at the beautiful prints – they say the East monks began the tradition to draw them on sand. You may paint them – anyway, a good distraction and even HELP IN STRESS SITUATIONS! Can you imagine – it helps in the test preparations, stress situations and so on… and just to become more focused on the task – of, let us say, English language learning:

Having a focus, we can perform at our best in every activity we want to do. And we’ll be able to do it properly – that is not being like under pressure, but in the most natural way.

How to Draw a Mandala

• Meditation. 5 minutes of silence for your good – and REALLY GOOD!

So, just find a quiet and remote place where nothing will disturb you – NOW breathe in for 1-2 counting – then stop your breath to 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 counting – and breath out for 1-2-3-4 counting – Do It several times until you and your mind are relaxed just enough to begin…

You may imagine a vast calm lake surrounded by the forest trees, the sun is rising, the morning is peacefully nice, no thought is coming to your mind… and if it comes – just put it beside – till then…

Or... just watch: Meditation for better learning - learn the language twice faster!

Or… you may take a watch counting the seconds – let it count them 2 minutes – think nothing – just contemplate its face…

Or… you may burn the candle and be watching its flame for 3-5 minutes…

Whatever you like. Choose!

Or… just a glass of cool water – and we’ll begin?!

Hm-m-m…

PS. Have you seen there, in the right top corner, a link ‘Presentation’?

Now, PLEASE,   

Take not more than 3 first pages of presentation. Choose key-words, examine each with help of Wikipedia. Let it be 10-15 items – present us your opinion in your own words. OK?

Well done, WE ARE THE BEST!

I put these three videos just aiming to your inspiration: it is not about drawing and how to be or become an artist. It's rather about how to be your beautiful self according to the Saviour plan for your holy person!

How a Drawing a Day Has Changed My Life

Be Afraid to Do Nothing at All

Follow Your Art

In doing things when we are alone we usually aren't afraid to be ourselves - sometimes we aren't speaking this very posh teachers or bookish English at all - as a matter of fact, only 1% of English speaking people are using the Royal (standard) English. So, I mean, the things below will be appropriate here:

English Exclamations

Some Useful Proverbs & Expressions

So, Learn & Use!