Teacher Zdenek's book recommendation: Practical Everyday English. A very unique book to learn English. I decided to interview Zdenek, the English teacher because we also need to get out of our comfort zone and speak. We can't always cover behind single English expressions.

Links:

https://www.teacherzdenek.com/youtube
https://www.scottholmesmusic.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Everyday-English-Steven-Collins/dp/0952835827
(I don't get any commissions)

Full transcript:

Hi, I'm teachers' Zdenek from Zdenek's English podcast and you're listening to the vocab man.
I am the vocab man and this podcast is going to help you to learn different expressions like in episode two, the expression "gotcha" I finally got you your little rat. "Gotcha" Or in episode 35 "batshit crazy" I just kind of think of how bat shit crazy the whole thing...

This time, we are going to change things a little bit up and have a discussion with teachers Zdenek.

It goes without saying that you are going to learn something anyways.

The thing is the other day I saw you commenting on the Discord platform in which I am a member of the group called learn English online and actually you gave some advice to an English learner there. Apparently she has been preparing herself for the Certificate in Advanced English.

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LINK: https://discord.gg/jaQzatxzg4
Join our group and le'ts practice English together!
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...and this person didn't think she was already prepared for an exam. She pointed out that she would have a lack of vocabulary. You wrote something like I can recommend you a very good book to boost your vocabulary you remember?

Zdenek:

It must be the book that I recommend to everyone because I know it personally helped me and I think it's quite useful for high level learners. So I do remember which book I keep recommending but I don't remember this particular post you're referring to. I think it was back mid November already.

Daniel:

So that got me thinking and now I have the opportunity to talk to you. I'm super curious: why do you find it useful and very unique ?

Zdenek:

okay. Well I think the book is called practical everyday English. Let me just check it because there are a lot of books that have a similar name.
I think the answer Daniel is in the title itself, yeah. Practical everyday English. And it was written by Steven Collins and it's actually a series of books, which are divided by levels as well. So the first one is. The blue book, I referred to it as the blue book and it's suitable for B2 level learners.
So upper intermediate level learners. And then after that, you've got a belief that I could red book and green book. Yeah. I think there's a red book for advanced learners. And then there's a green book for high-level learners. Yeah. So it's it kind of corresponds to C1 and C2. And I really liked this book because it's a unique way to teach vocabulary.
As the title suggests it's quite practical. So the way this works is that you have got different units. And in each unit that has, a certain number of expressions that you learn. So let's say it's about 15 or 20. I don't know exactly. And they seem to be seemingly unconnected.

3:06

Yeah. So it's like kind of all over the place. So it's a bit of phrasal verbs, some idioms and just, you know a bit of slang as well. So it's, it seems like the author of the book tried try to go for expressions that are used a lot, you know, that's why it's called practical everyday English. So these are expressions that perhaps you wouldn't find, sometimes you wouldn't find them necessarily in a classic course book.

Yeah. Like some of those slang expressions perhaps some of the idioms. And, so the way this works is that you've got an entry of vocabulary entry. Let's say they teach you the expression to kick the bucket. I don't know if it's there, but let's just have an example. And then


3:50

the expression is explained that there's a meaning, there's an example and then you learn the next one but what, what the author did is very cool actually, because every single example from that point on, from then on every single example contains one of the words from the previous units.


You see? So in the follow... so you would be learning, let's say a phrasal verb "to throw away". As the next one. Yeah. And you would have an example sentence, which would also contain "to kick the bucket" in it. I don't know how you would do that. That's just, I'm just, trying to come up with some sort of a silly example, but you know how it works, revise the older vocabulary words you were learning quickly by learning the new one.

4:40

Exactly. But it's as if you don't almost have a choice because you always see the previous expressions, you will always see them. So the author keeps reminding you because that's the thing with learning new vocabulary. We just forget, we forget easily but you need to reinforce it as we say.

4:58

Yeah. It's not enough to just learn it once. And then use it. I don't know, 10 minutes later, it's not enough. This is a very cool method and I have to say it really helped me personally as well because I've learned a lot of expressions from that series of books and I can only recommend it.

5:19

And where did you find out about that book? I think I was looking for some material to use in my English classes and I probably just came across it by chance. I assume.I don't think anybody had ever told me about this. Do you remember when you bought it?

That's a good question. I'm looking at it online and it says here it's originally published in 1993. Since then it must have been revised a few times. I assume.

5:46

I think I bought this eight years ago and I think I bought the first book first and I liked it so much that I bought the following ones and I also bought it for some of my friends as a gift because it's that good. Like this is really cool.

To be continued... If you need the transcript just write a very short message at myfluentpodcast@gmail.com
Then I will know, that there is actually somebody out there reading the transcript. Then I will upload the rest (because it's a lot of work and I don't want it to do if nobody reads it, thanks). Thank you for listening. Daniel