The Blog

What's funny to you in English?

When I was in college, I studied the plays of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is probably the greatest writer in the English language, but he wrote several hundred years ago. So some of his plays can be hard to understand for modern English speakers.

The comedies were especially hard to...

The Phrase Mixer is awesome.

I hope you don't mind me bragging.

I've recently updated the Phrase Mixer, the tool that lets PhraseMix Premium subscribers review PhraseMix English lessons. If you've never used it, try out the limited Phrase Mixer sample version for free.

The Phrase Mixer is something I thought of many years...

Don't just learn. Overlearn.

If you're just reading each PhraseMix lesson, you're doing it wrong.

A story

I used to teach at an English conversation school in Japan. The students were mostly Japanese housewives and businessmen who came in two or three times a week.

There was one student who had been coming to the school...

How to get your questions answered

Do you have a question? Here are a few suggestions for how to get an answer quickly:

If you have a technical question or a suggestion for some way to improve PhraseMix, you can send it to me from the Contact page.

If you have a question or comment about a specific lesson, post it on...

The 3 biggest improvements you can make to your English writing

I see a lot of emails and comments from English learners. Some of them are well-written, but others are filled with mistakes and hard to read.

There are so many different rules to follow and think about when you're writing in English. It might seem impossible to learn them all. But it's...