The most frustrating thing, words that go together, and a vocab challenge

Hi there,

Welcome back to The English Breakfast — the newsletter for Italian professionals who want to sound more confident and natural in English at work.

Let’s start with one of the most FRUSTRATING things that English learners encounter. Watch this week’s video to see if you’ve experienced the same thing.

Didn’t watch the video?

Well, long story short, let’s see if this sounds like you…

You’ve been learning English for a while. You can speak fairly confidently, but when you watch films and talk to native speakers, it seems like they’re suddenly speaking ancient Greek.

Don’t worry—this is really common (and really frustrating). The problem is simple: You’ve learnt English by focusing on clear pronunciation, but when English is spoken quickly and naturally, you hear relaxed pronunciation.

The solution is simple too. You need to know the key concepts of relaxed pronunciation to see how it’s possible that two phrases like Alaska and I’ll ask her can sound exactly the same in English.

Once you know these concepts, spoken English will become much clearer.

I’ll be making a lot more videos to teach you about relaxed pronunciation but if you want to accelerate your progress, I’ve put 8 key concepts together is this brief interactive course.

Use the coupon code REALENGLISH for 40% discount.

👉️ Click here to get started

Words that go together

Have you ever wondered why we say things like make money (= fare soldi) but not do money, and we say you have a shower (=farsi la doccia) but not make a shower?

The reason is simple: in English, some words naturally go together. These word partnerships are called collocations. And yes—unfortunately, there’s no magic rule. You mostly just have to learn them and notice them over time.

Ready to put your collocation knowledge to the test?
Try this quiz and see if you can get all 15 correct.

Click here to do the quiz 🎲 

Do you have a good vocabulary?

I’m in a good mood, so I’m giving you one more game to finish this week’s edition on a high note.

Test yourself with this fast-paced word game.

Select the letters and create as many words as you can before the time runs out!

Ready? Let’s see what you’ve got.

All right, that’s it for this week’s edition.

Have a great week and I’ll see you next time.

All the best,

Dan

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