If you want to understand a word or a phrase, you need context. One way is to read those examples in dictionaries that are given below all the definitions. It's enough for the time when you check the meaning, but you need something more powerful to be confident with a word. As associations are key to remembering, it's quite effective to use videos to attach a certain detail/emotion/attitude to it that can help you keep that meaning in your memory.

Benefits of looking up words in videos:

- You get a better picture of how it can be used, as there are many variants that are not always shown in dictionaries;
- You understand the style in which it's applicable to use it;
- You memorize it faster because of the listening practice;
- You see different situations where it is usually used and why.

So imagine that you laughed at a joke, or related to something, or felt sorry for somebody in a video that contained a new word, the chances you are going to remember it are pretty high because of the connected emotions.

There are probably more websites where you can search for specific words, phrases or sentences, but here is my favorite:
https://www.playphrase.me

Hope this helps with learning vocabulary;)

#context #lingvostrategies #associations

Accents

There are so many of them! First, there are big well-known variants of English: British, American, Australian. Then, within each of them, there are countless dialects and varieties of accent that sometimes you're not sure if they're speaking the same language🙈

This is especially challenging as, for a lot of people, English is not their native language, and they just pick up whatever they might hear from natives with different accents and end up with this kind of 'a little bit of here, a little bit of there' thing going on with their pronunciation.

There are so many videos where people compare accents, talk about differences in pronunciation, mock how somebody says something. Let me share with you some of my favorite ones😃

People reacting to a fake British accent
Faking a British accent
Natives comparing their British accents
The most hilarious video about accents I've seen! A regional British accent.
Natives not understanding other natives
How native languages influence people's accents in English

#такойразныйязык

I was trying to come up with an opening for this text and found out there's a special word for what I'm going to talk about.

Charactonym! Recently, it struck me that Dudley in Harry Potter is a derivative from dud (a person or thing that proves ineffectual or a failure). And I've always liked spotting these hidden meanings that authors intentionally put in characters' names. My examples are from one particular author, though 🙈

Severus Snape (read: severe snake), Dolores Umbridge (dolor is pain from Spanish, take umbrage: to feel upset or annoyed, usually because you feel that someone has been rude or shown no respect to you), Voldemort (flight of death in French), Peter Pettigrew (petty: not important and not worth giving attention to), and many more.

Plus, for those of you who are not familiar with Latin, it might not be obvious what spells, names of magical objects, places, or abilities mean just by looking at their names. So, if you read a translated version of a book, all of it gets lost in translation, leaving readers with meaningless names that don't make you think, analyze, wonder. And that's one of the reasons why it's so great to know languages and be able to read in the original. You understand the details, hints, and nuances — you are closer to what the author meant to convey through all of that.

Just food for thought and something to be inspired by when learning languages 😉

Check out this great article on real words from the Potterverse and share your favorite charactonyms in English in the comments!

#такойразныйязык

I've always been skeptical of intensive courses and marathons, mainly because of the idea behind most of them — that it's sort of a magic wand that will help you learn something in a short period of time, and that'll be enough. That was the case until last week, when I participated in my first acro intensive course. Oddly, I remembered that even before that, I'd participated in sports marathons — but at that time, it was just an addition to regular training. The perfect ratio: regular practice with some extra work.
This time, though, it was an attempt to get back in the game and see if I could still do it.

On the one hand, it's different, because it's a sport, not a language. On the other hand, they have a lot in common. The idea of consistency and prolonged effort accumulating over time is still there, but this gave me a new perspective. In my case, I just wasn’t able to do acro for some time for different reasons, even though I'd attended classes regularly before that. So I embraced the current situation and the fact that it was going to be different. And now I have a new motivation to continue despite the difficulties and lack of opportunities.

In a perfect world, we do what we want to do here and now, but life throws all kinds of situations at us. So maybe sometimes it’s good practice to let yourself do just enough to keep the spark going. It’s better than nothing. If that’s the only way you can do it now — do it. But keep in mind the ideal approach, which is far more efficient and practical in the long term: a little bit, but often — not a lot and rarely.

Wishing all of us the capabilities and opportunities we consider ideal!🙏

#aboutme #lingvostrategies

Try to find a spelling error in one of the verbs in the subtitles (said twice)

It should be halving instead of having. Just one missing letter, with no difference in pronunciation — but if you start thinking about why he's talking about possessing the size of the tree, you'll realize it doesn't make sense for the verb "to have" to be there. So it must be something else.

This is where it comes back to context. Once you understand the main idea, you can infer the meaning of the word and check which verb would fit. It might not be obvious right away. In this case, you'll probably recognize the noun half first — it's much more common and familiar — and then use its meaning and spelling to figure out the verb you need.

The progression would be: half → two halves (just like knife → knives, wife → wives, life → lives) → halve.

The words snip and subtree hint at the main idea and, along with the visuals, help narrow down the possible meanings.

This is just one example of homophones (words that are spelled differently but pronounced the same), but it's a powerful tool when you're unsure about a word in listening, writing, or reading. And you can even use it in speaking if you want to make jokes or puns based on these differences.

Don't confuse them with homographs and homonyms, though😊 If you want me to cover them as well, let me know!

#context #такойразныйязык

How to Remember Words Better

First, try to visualize the idea you have without attaching it to a language. Imagine a situation where this idea was present. Connect it to something in your mind: a voice, a feeling, a place, a person, a sound, a smell. You're likely to get a hint from your brain about which word fits here. It might not be the exact word you were initially looking for, but it’s a straw you can grab onto to help you find the right one for this particular situation. You might even come up with a different but still relevant word. Very often, after this effort, you'll find a word that has the same root as the one you wanted. In that case, it's useful to:

🔎 Understand what part of speech the word you have is;

🔎 Think about what part of speech the word you need is;

🔎 Think about how to convert the first one into the second one.

Depending on the situation, the order of these steps can vary.

Situation 1:
Let’s say you need to understand this sentence but don’t know the word solitary:

❔In general, adult polar bears live solitary lives.

You try to grasp the main idea. There isn’t much context, but since this word comes before a noun, you can see that it describes that noun. -ary can be a noun or an adjective, but that’s not critical here. So you cut off -ary and think of other words that have the same root. The easiest way to come up with something similar is by checking if you know or have heard words that sound alike. If you find some options, compare their meanings with the meaning in the sentence and see if any fits. Otherwise, you can first guess from the context (or from broader knowledge not found in the sentence itself — in this case, what you know about polar bears in general), and then try to think of a word you already know that would work here. If it makes sense, it’s probably the one.

Situation 2:
You need a word, but you're stuck with the word that you would use in your mother tongue. Push that word out of your mind, just as you would let go of a thought during meditation. Keep only the main idea and try to redirect your focus to something associated with it. Most likely, your brain will give you a hint that will help lead you to the right word. The algorithm is the same as before. Once you grab onto something, start thinking about how to change the part of speech if necessary. If it comes easily to you, you might just go through a list of suffixes for that part of speech in your head. But it’s often more effective to think of actual words in that part of speech that use different suffixes and try applying them to the word you have. If it sounds okay — or even better, if, when you say it, you recognize it as a real word or recall hearing it before — then that’s it! Just keep going until you get there, because eventually, you will.

I hope you try it and find it useful. Let me know if you have any questions about these techniques.

#lingvostrategies

Have you ever listened to native English speakers and thought,
“Was that even a sentence?”
It often sounds like one long blur — a swirl of sound where individual words disappear. But what you’re hearing can be decoded. With the right technique, you can break it down and actually understand what’s being said.

🎧 The Challenge: Understanding the Phonetic Swirl
Many learners struggle to decipher a large chunk of incoherent phonetic noise when listening to English. That’s perfectly normal — speech comes fast, small words get swallowed, and the stress patterns are unfamiliar.

But since this is the first step to understanding anything — just hearing where the words are — it’s crucial to know how to approach it.

📦📦📦 Break It Into Rhythmic Groups
English is spoken in rhythmic groups — small chunks of speech that are centered around content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs). These content words carry the main stress, and everything else — the function words like a, the, is, to, it, they — tends to be quick and unstressed.

Add to that the fact that English has a relatively strict word order, and you've got some powerful clues for decoding what you hear.

So instead of trying to understand the whole sentence all at once, break it into chunks, find the rhythm, and then rebuild the meaning.

🔍 Step-by-Step Strategy
Here’s a simple algorithm you can use when listening to fast English:

Pick out individual words
Focus on the words you can hear clearly — especially stressed ones. Use your knowledge of vocabulary and common patterns to fill in likely gaps.
⬇️
Group words into rhythmic units
Words are pronounced in chunks, with one strong stress. These groups usually center around content words.
⬇️
Tackle each group separately
Try to understand each chunk on its own. Even if you miss some words, focus on what the group is about.
⬇️
Reconstruct the full sentence
Put the pieces together. Now that you’ve made sense of the rhythm and main ideas, the full meaning often clicks into place.

🧠 A Mental Image: Like a Word Search Puzzle
Imagine those puzzles where you see a long line of letters and have to find words hidden inside. This is the same — except now you’re doing it by ear, and using your understanding of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary to find the hidden structure in speech.

🎯 Final Thought
You don’t need to catch every single word to understand. You just need to catch the right ones, recognize the rhythm, and know how English works.

With practice, what once sounded like a swirl of sound will become something much more familiar — and meaningful.

#lingvostrategies

Ever wonder what the difference between 'can' and 'may' is?

💡 Still translating everything in your head before you speak?

It feels safer that way, right? You think, “If I say it in my language first, I’ll know I’m saying it correctly.”

But here’s the truth: this habit might be the one thing that’s slowing you down the most.
And once you learn to think in English instead — everything starts to shift.

Let me show you how this works — and why it’s such a game-changer.👇

The most common problem that people face when learning another language is translating everything from their native tongue into the one they’re trying to learn.

It feels like a perfect solution: you use your first language as a reference and feel more confident that you're "doing it right". Otherwise, it can feel like walking in the dark with no direction.

It’s totally normal to lean on this method at first — it really does make things simpler when you’re just starting out.
But as soon as you move beyond beginner level, there’s a more powerful tool: thinking in English directly.

This means trying to understand words, phrases, and patterns through context, using what you already know — not translating word-for-word.

Let’s break down why this works so well and what it gives you.
Most of the benefits are interconnected — one leads to the next.

🌀 Mental Flexibility

🔓 You are not tied to another language
It’s frustrating to constantly depend on translation and not feel free to express yourself.
When you think in English, you reshape your thought using the words you already know — without losing the meaning.

Example: You want to use an idiom that popped into your head, but you don’t know the equivalent in English. Instead of dropping the idea or translating it literally, you visualize it and say it in a way that works in English.

⚡️ You speak faster
No need to process speech in two languages. You skip the translation step — and eventually, it becomes automatic.

You don’t overthink tenses or prepositions — you just speak naturally.
Same goes for listening: you understand others more quickly and with more detail. You don't ask them to repeat, and you can follow paraphrasing more easily — because you use the same skill yourself.

🪤 You don’t get stuck when you don’t know the word
A huge problem is getting obsessed with one phrase and feeling stuck if you can’t find its translation.
But when you stop chasing one “correct” way to say something, the road opens.

In my lessons, I encourage students to try alternative phrasing. I give a starter idea — they follow the thread. After a few tries, they begin doing it on their own. And over time? It becomes second nature.

👉 In the next part, we'll talk about how this affects your accuracy and vocabulary.

#lingvostrategies #context

🎯 The power of thinking in English (Part 2: Accuracy & Richness)

Yesterday we talked about how thinking in English gives you more freedom and flexibility — no more getting stuck searching for “the right” word.

Today, let’s look at two very real changes this mindset brings:
• you become more accurate,
• and you start using richer vocabulary — with more confidence.


✅ You are more accurate
Students who rely on translation often copy sentence structures from their native language — but these don’t always work in English.

Sometimes the analogy doesn’t exist.
Sometimes the grammar is different.
Sometimes the idea is fine, but it just sounds awkward.

A classic example: forgetting to use “there is/are” — because that structure may not exist in your language at all. So it slips your mind completely.

But when you think in English, you gradually feel how things work, rather than trying to “convert” what you already know.

🌱 You use wider vocabulary
When you're not locked into a single version of a phrase, you start exploring words more freely.
You find better categories, compare similar words, and choose what suits your meaning best. And guess what? That freedom makes your speech more precise — not less.
You’re no longer blocked by what you don’t know. You work with what you do know — and that opens the door to more.

🌞 Emotional Freedom and Confidence

🪴 You don’t get discouraged
If you believe there's only one right way to say something, and you can’t remember it — that feels like failure.

And that failure sticks. So next time? You give up earlier.
That’s how a vicious cycle forms: you try less, you trust yourself less, and progress slows down.

But when you let go of that perfectionism and start trying things out, you gain confidence.
And with every success, your confidence grows even more.

✨ Tomorrow in Part 3: how this approach helps you express deeper, more complex ideas — and makes your English flow more naturally than ever.

#lingvostrategies #context

🎯 The power of thinking in English (Part 3)

You express complex ideas more easily

When you stop translating and start thinking in English, something shifts:
you don’t just “survive” in a conversation — you start shaping ideas in real time.

You can:

🔹 combine clauses,

🔹link ideas smoothly,

🔹build longer sentences without losing track of what you’re saying.

It may sound strange, but:
Longer, well-structured sentences = faster, clearer communication.

Why? Because you don’t need to repeat yourself. You can link ideas smoothly, just like in your native language.

🛤 Final thought

If you truly want to improve your English, try letting go of the habit of translating everything.

· Think in English for just a few minutes a day.
· Describe what’s around you.
· Imagine how you’d say something — in English, not your native language.

✨ You’ll be amazed at how much faster your confidence, accuracy, and fluency will grow.

Why memorizing lists of words doesn’t help — and what helps instead📝

For as long as I can remember, the idea of “learning 5 words a day” has been everywhere — as if it’s the golden rule of language learning. People cling to this method, trying to deal with the overwhelming number of words they think they need to speak.

But what actually happens?
They get stuck in a loop: learning → forgetting → learning again → still not speaking → and yet, feeling like they’re making progress, because there’s a number — “5 words a day”. At least something to tick off.

Sorry to disappoint — but it doesn’t work.
Not really. Not in the way your brain needs it to.🙅‍♀️

As I wrote in the post about context, words don’t live in isolation. Our brain doesn’t store a word. It stores ideas, phrases, patterns — pre-packaged chunks of language. That’s why so much of what you say daily comes out automatically: expressions, idioms, familiar structures you’ve heard again and again. Try noticing it next time you speak — it’s fascinating.

So, to understand and remember the meaning of a word — let’s call it X — you need more than just “X = meaning.” And don’t forget: most words have more than one meaning. That’s why you don’t really “learn a word” — you learn one or more of its meanings in context.

To make it stick, you tie X to another word or a short phrase, something that represents a complete idea when combined.
Then, you add more words that can go with X. Now you’ve got options. You can choose, mix, and use it flexibly. That gives you freedom of expression and speed of speech.

Eventually, you get comfortable with X. You start noticing how it behaves in different situations. You begin to play with it — combine it in new ways, make jokes, connect ideas. That’s when you’re not just “learning vocabulary.” You’re growing your language.

In the next posts, I’ll show you what this process actually looks like — and how to start doing it yourself.
You might never look at vocabulary lists the same way again.💫

#lingvostrategies #context #associations