Espresso English Podcast

Yesterday you learned how you can get fluent faster by focusing on learning phrases, NOT on memorizing individual words or grammar rules. But there's another problem that might be holding you back from becoming fluent. That problem is not being confident in your English. Here are three simple ways you can increase your confidence to speak English.

Over the next four days, I'm going to share with you my best tips for improving your English speaking. Let's get started! Here's one reason it can be hard to speak English. You might know a good number of English words... but then it's difficult to put them together into sentences when you speak. First of all, it's a LOT of work to put together an entire sentence word by word. It takes a lot of time, and it makes your speaking slow. Second, a lot of questions come into your mind: Am I using the right words? Is the grammar in this phrase correct? What if I make a mistake? Will the other person laugh at me or not understand what I'm trying to say? These doubts and worries can STOP you from speaking, or make you nervous to try! So my first tip that will help you speak English fluently and confidently is NOT to focus on memorizing words or grammar rules.  Instead, focus on learning phrases.

A collocation is two or more words that go together naturally. Learning collocations is essential for making your English sound fluent and natural! Today we'll learn 50 English collocations with the words big, great, large, deep, strong, and heavy. These words all seem rather similar, but they are used in DIFFERENT combinations of words. WOW, those were a LOT of collocations – are you ready to see how well you learned them? Click here to take a quiz! It’s so important to practice and review what you’re learning, and that’s why every lesson in my 1000 collocations e-book also has a quiz. Each lesson in the e-book only takes about 10 minutes a day, so you can learn a lot of English in little time.

Are you ready to practice your pronunciation with some longer words? The ones we’ll practice today all have 5 syllables – like the word vocabulary: vo-CA-bu-la-ry I’ll say each word twice – once a little more slowly with some separation between the syllables, and then once at normal speed. Repeat after me both times. To improve your pronunciation FAST, join my Pronunciation & Shadowing Courses. My pronunciation course will train you to pronounce all the sounds in the English language clearly and correctly, and then the shadowing course helps you practice saying whole phrases after me. There’s a discount when you join both courses together!

When writing letters and e-mails in business English, it's really important to avoid mistakes - which can make your writing look unprofessional. Today you'll learn about 10 common mistakes in business English writing. I'll explain why they are wrong and how to correct them. If you want to learn the phrases that native English speakers use for business English letters, e-mails, interviews, meetings, presentations, negotiations, and more – check out my Business English Course! The 40 lessons inside will teach you hundreds of vocabulary words and useful phrases to help you speak and write in English more confidently at work.

Today we’re going to do a vocabulary with pictures lesson to help you learn 20 words for shapes in English, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional ones. You’ll learn both the noun form (the name of the shape itself) and the adjective form (how to describe something else with this shape) – in some cases those are the same, and in other cases they’re different. Have you ever wanted to say something in English, but you just couldn’t think of the right word? That’s a vocabulary problem, and it can be really frustrating! If you want to expand your vocabulary fast, come join my Vocabulary Builder Courses.   Not only do they have lessons that are full of useful words and pictures, but they also have quizzes and exercises to help you put the new words into practice right away.  

Come along, come across, come off, come on, come out, come over, come up... Phrasal verbs like these can be easy to confuse because they all seem so similar! Today we’re going to learn 10 phrasal verbs with the word “come,” and I’ll give you an example sentence for each one to show you how it’s used in English. I challenge you to try writing your own sentences with each of these phrasal verbs – because when you use them yourself, that’s when you really start to remember them better so that they will come out naturally when you speak English.   Inside my Phrasal Verbs in Conversation Course, each lesson includes questions that help you use the phrasal verbs yourself, and you can send in your sentences for correction and feedback from the Espresso English teaching team. This course is a simple, easy, and natural way to learn more than 500 common phrasal verbs in English!

Right now it’s summer, and it’s hot as blazes! (= the weather is extremely hot). This inspired me to teach you 15 English words and expressions with “hot.” Some of these are idioms – short phrases or expressions that you can’t understand literally, you can’t translate them word for word to get their meaning – instead, you have to know the meaning of the whole phrase. Your own language has idioms, too... and lots of them are probably different from the ones we use in English! That’s why I created a course to help you learn idioms fast – it’s called 300+ English idioms in 30 days. Inside it, you’ll practice understanding common idioms from context, you’ll learn what they mean, and then you’ll try to use them yourself.

If you had to talk with a doctor in English, would you know what to say? In today’s lesson you’ll learn phrases and vocabulary for talking about medical problems. Now you’re a bit better-equipped to talk to a doctor in English if you ever need to someday – but there’s a lot more to learn! In order to be fluent and CONFIDENT in English, you have to be comfortable speaking English in many different situations in day-to-day life. My Everyday English Speaking Course will teach you the phrases you need for these situations! You’ll learn what to say in restaurants, while shopping, on the phone, while traveling, socializing, and much more. This is my most popular course because it’s so practical and useful  :-)  

Today’s lesson will be a challenging one – we’re going to look at 10 more advanced vocabulary words. But I’m not going to just tell you what they mean… instead, you’ve got to try to figure out what they mean based on an example sentence. I’ll show you a sentence with the word and give you three choices for what it means. Try to choose the correct answer, and after a few seconds I'll show you the right one. If you like the higher-level words in this lesson and you want to learn over 1000 more of them, check out my Advanced Vocabulary and Collocations Course. It will teach you sophisticated vocabulary words and how to put them together naturally, so that you can reach a higher level of English fluency. When you join, you'll get 45 lessons that are packed with amazing words! There's also an option to add writing exercises with feedback from our teaching team :-)

The English language has a lot of silent letters that cause difficulties for both native speakers and English learners, because they make the spelling of words different from their pronunciation. You don’t want to make embarrassing mistakes by saying these words wrong, so today let’s practice pronouncing some common English words with silent letters from A to Z!   Thanks for practicing with me! When you practice by repeating out loud, you’re training your mouth to pronounce these English words more clearly, so that other people can understand you even better. My American English Pronunciation Course has tons of listen and repeat exercises – both words and full sentences – so that you can get this essential practice and improve your pronunciation fast. I hope to see you in the course :-)

What's today's date? Can you answer quickly in English? A lot of English learners have doubts about how to say and write dates correctly, and you don’t want to make mistakes with something so common and basic. So let’s make sure you’re doing it the right way, because there are a lot of little details to remember. If you want make less mistakes fewer mistakes in your English, it’s good to learn the most common ones so that you can avoid them! This means your English will be more accurate, and you can also speak and write more confidently since you know you’re saying things correctly. I created a course called 200 Common Errors in English for exactly this reason! The 40 lessons in this course can help you fix any mistakes you might be making in grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and more.

Do you know what it means to: drop someone a line get your wires crossed or beat around the bush? These are all examples of idioms that we’re going to learn today! Idioms and informal expressions like these are used frequently in movies, TV shows, and casual conversations. But a lot of English textbooks don't teach you these expressions! So you might be confused when you hear them in real life. That's why I created the 300+ English Idioms Course - to teach you the most common idiomatic expressions! After you learn the idioms, there are quizzes and writing exercises to help you review and practice the expressions.

You already know a LOT of nouns in English, but did you know that there are different types of nouns? That’s what we’ll be learning today! Make sure to watch to the end of the lesson, because I’m going to clarify a very common confusion between categories of nouns that many English learners have. There's a lot more grammar to learn - and you can learn it easily in my Basic and Intermediate Grammar E-Books! They have 70+ step-by-step lessons and quizzes teaching you grammar in about 10 minutes a day, so that you can be confident you’re saying and writing things correctly.

Today I want to help you fix a pronunciation problem that I hear in a LOT of students’ English, and that is saying things like this: I ask-ed him to help me. We pre-par-ed for our trip. The mistake is with the verbs in the past, ending in -ED. The correct way to say them is: askt (not ask-ed) pre-pard (not pre-par-ed) It’s a small mistake, but unfortunately it makes it obvious that someone’s not a native English speaker. I’ll explain some simple rules to help you pronounce the -ED ending correctly every time, and we’ll practice together! If you want to improve your pronunciation fast in the next 30 days, then I’d like to invite you into my American English Pronunciation Course.   We’ll go through every sound in the English language and help you speak more clearly, so that you can be confident that other people will understand you!

A lot of English learners are curious about the word “shall.” Is it the same thing as “will”? When exactly do we use it? I’ll answer those questions in today’s lesson. I hope this lesson has helped you understand when people sometimes use “shall” and what it means, as well as the alternatives which are becoming more and more common nowadays, especially in American English.   If you’ve got a question about a word or a phrase, please let me know, because I love getting ideas from students about tips and lessons to create in the future.   And if you want to take your English to the next level, check out my courses and e-books because they can help you improve your speaking, understand better when listening, expand your vocabulary, and so much more!

Today I'm going to quickly clear up confusion between the words wander and wonder. These are two completely different words, but sometimes English learners mix them up because of their similar spelling and pronunciation. For more simple and clear lessons about the differences between confusing words in English, get my e-book, 600+ Confusing English Words Explained! These are words that English learners often ask me about, or often make mistakes with – and when you read this e-book, you can avoid those mistakes and use these words correctly.

Today we’ve got a really interesting question from a student: In English, do we say “congratulations ON or FOR your anniversary”? Listen to the lesson to find out  :-) When you’re learning English, it can be hard to feel like you’ve really mastered the grammar of the language. There are so many rules, so many exceptions, and the grammar might be very different from how it works in your native language.   At Espresso English we’ve got something to help you at every level: Our Basic & Intermediate Grammar E-Books will give you a strong foundation. Our Advanced Grammar Course will really help you reach a high level. So if you’re confused by grammar, if you hate grammar, or if you just want to make sure your grammar is good and you’re not making mistakes all over the place, check out our basic, intermediate, and advanced grammar lessons!

Today let's expand your vocabulary by learning 20 different words for lights - from lamps to lighthouses to lightning (which you shouldn't get confused with lighting). As you learn each word, repeat it after me to practice your pronunciation. Do you ever have trouble remembering the English vocabulary words you learn? It's very common. In fact, lots of students write to me asking what to do about this problem. I have several tips, but one important thing to think about is how you originally learn the word. Is it from a word list, textbook, or dictionary? Well, that's a good start... but your memory will be even more powerful if there's an image - a picture - associated with the new word. That's how we learn vocabulary as children. We don't yet know how to read, but we learn to associate new words with the objects we see. That's why there are lots of pictures and illustrations in my Vocabulary Builder Courses! Each level of the course will teach you more than 1,000 useful words in a simple, efficient way

English has some interesting expressions with the word “business” – and many of them AREN'T related to work. Today you'll learn 10 expressions with "business": funny business [someone] means business [do something] like nobody's business make it your business [to do something] ... and more! If you are learning English for work, my Business English Course will teach you the phrases and vocabulary you need. You'll learn what to say in interviews, meetings, negotiations, phone calls, presentations, networking events, and more. You'll also expand your vocabulary in the areas of management, finance, marketing, human resources, entrepreneurship, and many other topics.