The Blog

Infographic: How many words do you 'need'?

How many words do you need to learn in order to speak English fluently? Well, it depends on what you mean by "fluent".

We looked at a "word frequency" list of spoken English - a list of which words show up most often - and made some interesting discoveries. 

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Teaching the meaning of a word is like...

...trying to describe a dog.

Imagine that I show up on your doorstep one day. You open the door, and I say:

Hi, I'm looking for my dog who's gone missing. She's about a foot tall, with short legs and a long, round torso. Her face is kind of scrunched up and she has big eyes. Her hair is short...

An Interview with Brainscape

Andrew Cohen, CEO of Brainscape, interviewed me about PhraseMix. It's part of his series of interviews with people who are using Technology to improve Education. Check out some of his other interviews here: http://www.youtube.com/user/theEdTechInsider

I was speaking at a normal, fast pace,...

What are YOUR key sentences?

When I post a new lesson on PhraseMix, I hope that you will study it and get the key sentence at the top of the lesson stuck in your head. I want to keep adding new phrases until there are thousands of them for you to learn from.

Unfortunately, it's going to take a long time for me to add...

Have you ever used an English tutor?

Have you ever taken lessons one-on-one with an English tutor?

I've studied Japanese with a tutor, and found it to be a great way to improve my fluency and understanding. We met once a week in a coffee shop for a couple of hours. We discussed various topics, read out loud from Japanese books, and...