Espresso English Podcast

Today you’re going to learn the difference between the words human and humane. These are different by only one letter, but they’re pronounced differently and are used in different ways. By the way, if you want to learn a LOT more confusing word pairs like this, check out my e-book 600+ Confusing Words Explained! Inside that e-book, I’ll help you understand confusing English words easily and clearly.

Today I'm sharing my top 8 tips for improving your writing in English :-) Even when you know a lot of English words, it can be really hard to form good sentences and write well. But when you put these strategies into practice, you’ll be able to improve so that you can write confidently in English. We have two courses where you can get your writing evaluated! Our Advanced Grammar Course and our Reading Course both have the option to include writing tasks with teacher feedback – so at the end of each lesson, there’s a question or topic and you’ll write your response. Then, send it to our teaching team, and we’ll reply with comments, corrections, and suggestions for making your writing even better. Students LOVE this feedback, because the it helps you fix any mistakes or bad habits and bring your writing up to a higher level. If you’re serious about improving your writing, join those courses and select the version with teacher feedback. I hope you’ll put all 8 tips from this lesson into practice!

Your pronunciation is one of the first things other people notice about your English. If you have nice, clear pronunciation, you'll make a good impression. But if your pronunciation is difficult for others to understand, then it will be very hard to communicate - and frustrating, too! The good news is that you CAN improve your pronunciation with practice - by using my top 5 tips for getting better pronunciation :-) To practice and improve your pronunciation FAST, you can join my American English Pronunciation Course! - https://www.espressoenglish.net/american-english-pronunciation-course/ It will help you reach your goal of speaking clear, correct, and confident English. You'll learn and practice all the sounds of American English, and also work on connecting words and phrases together for more natural speaking.

Does this ever happen to you? You study and study and learn lots of new vocabulary... ...but then when you want to use it, you can't think of the words! How can you make sure you don't forget the vocabulary you're learning? Here's one simple thing you can start doing today to remember vocabulary better! Improving your vocabulary can take a long time because there are SO MANY words to learn in the English language. You can accelerate the process by joining my Vocabulary Builder Courses! - https://www.espressoenglish.net/vocabulary-builder-course There are two levels, and you'll learn 1,000+ words inside each one. It's a fast, focused way to expand your vocabulary quickly.

I always ask new students what their biggest difficulty is in English... ...and the #1 difficulty is speaking. Many, many English learners have a really hard time with it! So today I'm sending you my top 10 strategies for improving your speaking. Check them out and make sure to put them into practice! Now you know HOW to improve your speaking... ...but how can you learn exactly WHAT to say? You can learn tons of useful phrases and expressions inside my Everyday English Speaking Courses! These courses are designed to improve your speaking fast by teaching you what native English speakers say in daily life. When you know what to say, then you can speak more confidently. I hope to see you inside Everyday English Speaking :-) ⭐ Everyday English Speaking Course: https://www.espressoenglish.net/everyday-english-speaking-course

Today I wanted to clarify the difference between the words CON-tent, con-TENT, and contents, since it can be really hard to figure out. The English language is full of words like these, and I’ve collected a lot of them inside my e-book, 600+ Confusing English words Explained. Like the title says, the e-book will explain them to you so that you’ll understand when to use one word and when to use the other one. So you don’t have to be confused, instead you can use those words confidently! ⭐ 600+ Confusing Words Explained E-Book: https://www.espressoenglish.net/600-confusing-english-words-explained

Chance can mean a possibility (which could be good or bad) or an opportunity (which has a more positive connotation) and we use it in combination with lots of other words. Let's learn 30 collocations with CHANCE. These are all words that go together naturally with the word chance. When you learn these common combinations of words, then it’s easier to put them together so that your speaking sounds natural (and not a little "strange.") Come get your copy of the 1000 collocations e-book to learn even more! This is one of our most popular e-books because the lessons are really quick, so it’s easy to make progress fast. ⭐ 1000 Collocations E-Book: https://www.espressoenglish.net/1000-english-collocations-in-10-minutes-a-day/

Today we’re going to focus on how to use two small but very common words in English – even and ever. I'll show you how to use them correctly, with lots of examples. It’s important to be able to use these words correctly so that your grammar sounds good and you can avoid mistakes. I know a lot of you are worried about mistakes or nervous about making them, and that’s why I created a course on 200 common errors in English. You can check to see if you’ve been making any of the mistakes in there... ...and more importantly, the course will help you fix them and say things the right way, so you can speak and write more confidently! ⭐ 200 Common Errors in English Course: https://www.espressoenglish.net/200-common-errors-in-english-course/

You probably know that an English word ends in -E, the -E is usually silent; we don’t pronounce it - like in the words date, cheese, fine, spoke, and rude. But there are a few exceptions! Many of these words came into English from other languages and so they don’t follow the typical trend of a silent E at the end. Repeat after me to learn 12 words in which we DO pronounce the final -E. I know that English pronunciation can be SO confusing with all these exceptions to the rules! If you want to improve your pronunciation fast, come join my American English Pronunciation Course. Inside it, we’ll do lots of practice so that you can master the sounds of the language and say them clearly. And when you can pronounce things clearly, you’ll be able to speak English more confidently. I hope you’ve enjoyed today's lesson and learned something new!

Do you want to learn more than 1000 advanced vocabulary words, so you can speak and write like a master of the English language? Keep listening, because this course is for you. ⭐ Advanced Vocabulary & Collocations Course: https://www.espressoenglish.net/advanced-vocabulary-and-collocations-course/ ✔️ Save $15 with discount code ROCKET If you’ve been studying English for a while, then you already have enough English to communicate. Your English is fine for most situations… but you might feel like your vocabulary is just a little too “simple.” You want to express yourself more fluently, without using the same basic words over and over. Maybe you’ve tried reading a lot to build your vocabulary, but progress is slow. You might read a whole article and only learn a couple new words. And most English-learning apps and online lessons are too easy for you because they teach words you already know. What if you could learn 1,000 advanced words in the next few weeks – by studying just a few minutes a day? You can d

I hope you’re ready to learn some awesome words! You don’t want to use the same basic English words over and over... instead, you want to use interesting and powerful words to express yourself better. Today I'll teach you 20 verbs that will supercharge your vocabulary. That’s actually a good example – I could say “improve your vocabulary” or “expand your vocabulary” but the word “supercharge” is so much more descriptive; it creates a mental picture of getting a huge boost in vocabulary power! If you like this lesson, then you’ll probably love Level 2 of my Vocabulary Builder Course, where you'll learn 1,000+ words that will really enrich your vocabulary. Every lesson inside the course includes ways for you to practice - quizzes and short-answer questions to help you use these new words yourself. Come join if you’d like to supercharge your vocabulary even more!

One HUGE step towards fluency is learning how to think directly in English. This will help you speak with fewer pauses and express yourself better! But many students say... “It’s too hard! “I don’t know enough English words!” “I need to think in my native language and translate.” "I'm not advanced enough to do that." Today I'm going to show you 4 simple steps to help you develop the skill of thinking in English, without translating from your native language. If you practice these steps, you will succeed and you'll see a big improvement in your English :-)   I hope you can see that you don’t need to be super advanced to learn to think in English – you can start today. Try one of the four steps this week. Thinking in English is a very important skill for fluency, but you’ll need a lot of other skills, too – like a strong vocabulary, clear pronunciation, listening comprehension, and the ability to understand common phrasal verbs and idioms in English. You can improve all your skills inside our courses at

Do you know the difference between “making trouble” and “taking the trouble”? What about “having fun” and “making fun”? Today I’m going to clarify 20 confusing collocations with the words do, have, make, and take. The meaning often changes depending on which verb is used. If you want to remember these collocations better, I’d encourage you to try writing your own example sentences using each one – this will help establish the differences in your memory. You can learn even more with my e-book, 1000 Collocations in 10 Minutes a Day. It’s full of quick lessons and quizzes that will teach you tons of common collocations, so that you can expand your vocabulary and be able to express yourself better in English – and also avoid mistakes with collocations, avoid putting words together in a way that sounds unnatural. I believe this is actually my most popular e-book; everyone loves how easy it is to complete the lessons! Thanks for watching and I’ll talk to you next time :-)

Welcome to the final lesson in our pronunciation power-up mini-course! So far we’ve practiced 200 English words for jobs, food/drink, countries, and brand names – and I’ve saved the best for last. The theme of today’s lesson is difficult words to pronounce, so I’ve selected 50 of the words that English learners often find hard to say. If you’re serious about improving your pronunciation and you want to practice more with me, you can join my American English Pronunciation Course, which will help you speak English more clearly and confidently. Are you ready to try these difficult words? Let's jump in - listen and repeat! If you’ve made it to the end of this list, great job! Those words aren’t easy. A lot of students ask me, “How can I know if I’m pronouncing a word correctly or not?” and I always encourage you to check an online audio dictionary. For example, if you look up a word in thefreedictionary.com, you can click on these audio icons to hear the American pronunciation and the British pronunciation. W

Hi! It's day 4 of our Pronunciation Power-Up Mini-Course, and today's theme is brand names. Nowadays a lot of brands and companies are really big and well-known – so we’re going to practice pronouncing 50 of the biggest and most famous brand names. Remember, in your native language, you might pronounce these exact same names differently – because of the different pronunciation rules of your language. But when you’re in a conversation with an English speaker, you’ll want to modify your pronunciation and say these brand names the same way native English speakers would say them. All right, get ready to practice repeating after me – 50 brand names in English.   Thanks for practicing with me! Tomorrow is the final day of our mini-course, but if you want to continue training and improving your pronunciation, make sure to check out my American English Pronunciation Course, which has 30 lessons to help you even more. Inside it, you’ll practice all the sounds of the language – both in individual words and in sen

Welcome to day 3 of our pronunciation power-up mini-course! Today we’re going to practice pronouncing the names of 50 countries in the world. Some of these might be similar to how they’re said in your native language, but others will NOT be the same, so pay close attention to any small pronunciation differences from what you might be used to. I really wish I could do ALL the countries in the world, but unfortunately we don’t have time in this short video – so I just took the top 50 countries by population size. Listen and repeat so you can practice saying these countries’ names in English. One of my favorite things about teaching at Espresso English is that I have students from all over the world. And I know you’re all working hard on your English! I wanted to clear up one question about my American English Pronunciation Course. Someone asked, “Will this course give me an American accent?” But the problem is, that’s the wrong question to ask. The reason it’s called the American English Pronunciation Co

Hi everyone! It’s day 2 of our pronunciation power-up mini-course, and today we’ll be practicing 50 words for food and drink. Remember - in order to get the most benefit out of these lessons, you need to actually SAY the words yourself. Don’t just watch... speak! Actually, if you want to challenge yourself even more, try listening and repeating with your eyes closed. Why? Because sometimes it’s actually better for you to use ONLY your ears, and NOT your eyes. In English, the way a word is written often doesn’t seem to match the way it’s pronounced. So seeing the word can sometimes lead you in the wrong direction, because you think or assume it’s pronounced one way, but in fact it sounds different. OK? So maybe try this video once with your eyes open, and then once with your eyes closed. Ready to pronounce 50 food and drink words? Repeat after me! One final thing I want to remind you is that practicing your pronunciation is like doing exercise at the gym – you don’t go to the gym once or twice and then

Hello and welcome to our Pronunciation Power-Up Mini-Course!   We’re going to practice pronouncing 50 words a day for 5 days - a total of 250 words. This will give you a quick boost in your pronunciation.   The #1 most important thing is for you to PARTICIPATE in these lessons by listening and repeating the words aloud. There's space in the video for you to say each word immediately after I do. Try to pronounce it exactly the way I did. When you do this, you’re training your mouth to say each word correctly. Each day of the mini-course will have a theme, and today's theme is jobs - so we’re going to practice saying 50 common job titles.   Those were 50 words for common professions, and now you know how to pronounce each one like a native English speaker. If you want to continue training your pronunciation with me, I have an American English Pronunciation Course that will teach you all the sounds of the language. In that course we focus on the sounds themselves, like the difference between seat and sit, o

Next week I'm giving a FREE mini-course called "Pronunciation Power-Up!" In video games, a "power-up" is something that increases your skills quickly - and that's what we're going to do with your pronunciation  :-) This 5-day mini-course will help you practice 250 words so you can pronounce them correctly and confidently. The mini-course will run from March 1-5. To get the lessons, just register (again, it's free!) by visiting EspressoEnglish.net/minicourse and entering your e-mail address. Or keep listening because the episodes will be published on this podcast :-)

When should you use the word drank and when should you use the word drunk? They are pronounced differently AND used differently! Today you'll learn how to use drank & drunk correctly. To learn more about confusing English words - how to understand them clearly and use them correctly - get my e-book called 600+ Confusing English Words Explained. It covers TONS of words that are often mixed up by English learners. I'll explain these words to you and include examples to make them perfectly clear!