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Articles about learning, business, and practical experience.
Jul 21, 2026
Your brain is drawn to the word you do not know and away from the familiar ones sitting right beside it. Training against that instinct is the most valuable reading skill there is.
Jul 19, 2026
Progress has never been decided by the distance between you and your teacher. A room where the lesson is just talk until the hour ends teaches nobody anything.
Jul 17, 2026
Three hours a week is when someone corrects you and points you the right way. The days in between are when it turns into a skill that is actually yours.
Jul 15, 2026
You prepared three answers in order. They ask you the second one, ask someone else the first, then turn back with "how about you?". Communication is its own skill.
Jul 13, 2026
Look is the deliberate act of pointing your eyes at something. See is the result. English does not just use different words from Vietnamese, it divides the event differently.
Jul 12, 2026
Both translate the same way into Vietnamese. English keeps a consistent line between what you choose to do and what simply happens to you.
Jul 7, 2026
In Vietnamese, spelling tells you the sound. In English it almost never does. So take the letters away, listen, and imitate like you are teasing a classmate.
Jul 3, 2026
Underlining feels productive and teaches you nothing. Predict the word class and the likely answer instead, and you cannot fake having read the sentence.
Jun 24, 2026
You do not know the word "explain"? Then say it another way. The person in front of you may be Indian or Filipino and cannot fall back on Vietnamese with you.
Jun 22, 2026
You can sit at a desk all night and learn nothing. Studying is an activity; learning is what happens when you take something in and can use it.
Jun 20, 2026
Children can afford a bad method because they have nothing but time. Adults cannot, so the two things that decide it are hours per week and choosing the right approach.
Jun 18, 2026
Meaning, Form, Pronunciation, Appropriateness. Looking up a Vietnamese translation and copying it down is one quarter of the job, which is why it never sticks.
Jun 17, 2026
A student spent two months getting the word "the" to sit right, and was thrilled. Had I told him on day one that he was saying it wrong, there would have been no day sixty.
Jun 16, 2026
Be curious out loud, and say what you actually think. Answering "it's okay" to everything kills the conversation, because nobody can tell what you mean.
Jun 15, 2026
If you were quiet and hesitant at home, abroad you are fighting on two fronts at once. You can speak Vietnamese perfectly and still connect with nobody.
Jun 13, 2026
Every accent carries a set of assumptions with it. Copying one you have no claim to means inheriting its baggage too, without ever realising.
Jun 12, 2026
IPA existed because learners had no speakers and no recordings, like reading sheet music and imagining the tune. You can hear any word now, instantly, for nothing.
Jun 11, 2026
Look up "material" and you get "vật liệu". Add "in the context of accounting" and you get what it actually means there. A CELTA habit worth stealing.
Jun 9, 2026
Students admit they nearly quit in the first week because they could not keep up. Being placed slightly beyond you is deliberate. A class you coast through is just dull.
Jun 6, 2026
Write the meaning beside the word and you can never tell which ones you actually know. Keep the list bare, and every review becomes a real test.
May 31, 2026
Every word has three parts: meaning, use and sound. Most people learn the first two and skip the third, then wonder why listening feels impossible.
May 23, 2026
I was never a top student. I was the difficult one at the back doing another subject. But I understand exactly how learning can rearrange a life.
May 18, 2026
We went from one pocket dictionary being a marvel to an app store full of them. Twenty percent of the apps produce eighty percent of the result, and there are only two.
May 4, 2026
A band 8 word list for "farming" is almost impossible to retain. Read about rooftop farms in Paris, argue about whether Saigon could do it, and the words arrive on their own.