Posts by Ethan

Are you looking for an international career? Is the only thing stopping you from getting an amazing job in a big multinational company your lack of “business English?” Well, good news! Business English and general English is actually the SAME THING! Many people believe that business English is a super advanced way of speaking English…

A basic, yet fundamental part of learning a foreign language is knowing how to effectively purvey your ideas. To do this, especially when you are a beginner, it’s important to avoid sentence fragments.  You probably already know that to create a complete sentence you need a subject and a verb. For example: Complete Sentence – You are going to the store…

What’s one of the secrets of having native-like fluency? A broad vocabulary of course! And not just knowing fancy, formal words, but also the slang and expressions that we use in our daily lives. That said, today we are going to look at some of the most common ways to talk about bravery in English.…

The other day I was teaching a student and he was wondering what other ways he could say that someone was fearful, or a coward. This got me thinking: In English, we have a ton of words, slang, and colloquialisms around calling someone cowardly. As I kept thinking of more and more terms for my student, I…

Today I’m bringing you a different kind of post than is typical at RealLife. One of the greatest reasons to learn another language, like English, is that it opens up so many opportunities to travel! I came to Barcelona a little over a year ago and I can say without a doubt it’s one of the…

Pronunciation is an often-overlooked part of the language that can be essential not only to be understood, but also in how you are perceived by native speakers of the language. I’m not saying that having an accent when you speak is a bad thing, but lessening it can help you be better understood AND make native…

I’ve talked to tons of people who have told me that they want to improve their English or learn a new language, but that they don’t have the time. The problem is that there is this misconception that if you want to improve your skills in a foreign language, you need to sit down and…

We’re all busy right? It’s hard to find time to do the important things, like improving our English, if they aren’t urgent. But you do have time to improve your English, every single day. It only takes about 15 minutes, and over time your English will DRASTICALLY improve. Plus, it’s easy to make it into a lifelong…

Do you ever feel stuck in your learning? Or even in your life? This is a feeling we all suffer from at some point. It can be awful, frustrating, and even tortuous. When we are learning a language, and we hit a plateau–we feel like no matter how much we practice, we remain at the…

Last week, I told you about one of the most powerful motivations for successful language learners–which is using the culture in order to add inspiration and purpose to your learning. Today, we are going to take it a step further to the upper limits of learning a language. We will truly go beyond the simple,…