Hi guys,

I just had an online meetup event where I had people from all over the world, we all spoke English and we were discussing online business in 2020. What I’ve noticed is that people who are not English native speakers were using a language that is so ‘textbook’. There were some people who are in the US and their language was completely different and when I was listening to those people, I started noting those differences. I decided to share my insights with you because with these tips you will be able to speak English as a native speaker and won’t sound a little old-fashioned. When you’re using English from textbooks, you sound a little too academic. With these tips by the end of the class, your English will be more native.

Let’s start with a very basic common thing that you probably know but not all of you are using it in your everyday speech. I’m talking about reduced forms. Let’s look at some examples:

• want to – wanna
• don’t know – dunno

You need to decide which accent you want to adopt because you can speak British English, you can speak Canadian English, you can speak Australian English and you can speak American English. There’s nothing wrong with either of those accents, it’s just you need to be consistent.

Learn to ignore “fillers” but also learn how to use them.

Here is a list of common “fillers” in English:

• actually
• anyway
• basically
• by the way
• erm
• I mean
• incidentally
• in fact
• obviously
• well
• you know

Native speakers also almost always use contractions (short words created by combining two separate words) to speak faster. Some examples of common ones:

• I + am = I’m
• I + will = I’ll
• do + not = don’t
• I + have = I’ve
• I + would= I’d

Next tip. Use slang! Yes, we’ve learnt a lot of slang words with you but I just want to emphasize that people use those slang words a lot because sometimes you learn them and you’re in your country and you’re like ‘whatever’. But then, you start interacting with native speakers and suddenly they’re like: “Do you want to hang out with me?” And you’re like: “What was that?” To hang out means to spend time together.

English idioms are phrases whose meanings aren’t obvious from looking at the individual words.

The use of idioms might not be as common as slang in informal speech. However, native speakers can use idioms at times and mystify you.

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