Instructions

TalkEnglish.com is internationally copyright protected according to the World Intellectual Property

Organisation and the United States Congress of Library. Do not copy, duplicate, distribute, or sell in
any way.

Please read these instructions.

If you are using a Mac, then you will need to use the HTM version. If you are using a PC, then you
can use both the HTM version and the TalkEnglish Application.

If you launch the TalkEnglish Application on a PC and you see an error that says the following, then
you will need to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0:

“To run this application, you first must install one of the following version of the .NET Framework:
v4.0.30319
Contact your application publisher for instructions about obtaining the appropriate version of the
.NET Framework”

You can find the .NET Framework installation package in the TalkEnglish folder. Double click on
dotNetFx40_Full_setup and the installation will begin.

You can also install the .NET Framework from Microsoft directly at:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17851
If you are using IE (Internet Explorer) to use the HTML pages, please read the “Known Issues”
document. If the known issue does not affect you, then there should be no problems. You can find
the document in the same folder as this instructions document, or you can click here to open the
document.

You can unzip this package to any location on your hard drive. However, do not remove any files or
folders from the current structure. If you do, the links that are set up will no longer work.

In the root folder of TalkEnglish, you will see (4) folders and (5) files. The five files consist of the
(1) .NET Framework installation file, (2) this instructions document, (3) the Known Issues
document, (4) the TalkEnglish Application, and (5) "TalkEnglish_Full_Lesson_List.”

In this document, you will find the 1) Instructions, 2) Study Method, and 3) The 5 Speaking Rules
you need to know.

The .NET Framework installation file is for those who do not have the .NET Framework 4 installed
on the computer. If the TalkEnglish Application works on your computer, you will not need to run
this file.

The TalkEnglish_Application file is the TalkEnglish Offline Version that runs on your desktop
without Internet connection. Double click on the file to launch the application. This will only work
on PC's, so other operating systems will need to use the HTM version.

“TalkEnglish_Full_Lesson_List” is the entry point for the HTM version. The document will contain
a list of all the lessons separated by category for easy navigation. All lessons are hyperlinked to the
corresponding documents that are located in the “Lessons” folder. If you remove this file from this
location, the links to open other lessons will no longer work.

“Lessons” folder contains all lessons that you can open in a document. Each document will contain
links to audio files that are either stored in “LongAudio” or “ShortAudio”. If you do not open any
of the “Lessons” document from the original location, the audio file links will not work. You may
also choose to open up lessons directly from this location instead of using
“TalkEnglish_Full_Lesson_List.”

“PDF” folder contains all the lessons in a printable format. The sentences are not linked to the audio
files. Please use the lessons in the “Lessons” folder to listen to the short audio files.

“LongAudio” folder contains all the long audio files. You can copy these to your MP3 player and
listen to them at any time. The names of the long audio files correspond to the lesson and should be
easy to find. If you have trouble moving the audio files to your MP3 player, please read the Known
Issues document located in the Lessons folder.

“ShortAudio” folder contains all the individual audio files that are associated to individual
sentences. This allows you to benefit from the “click, listen, and repeat” functionality that is
available on TalkEnglish.com website. If you want to practice individual sentences, you may also
copy individual files to your MP3 player so you can focus on one specific area.

REMINDER: After you unzip the file, you may move the entire TalkEnglish folder anywhere on
your computer, but DO NOT MOVE FILES OR FOLDERS FROM THE CURRENT
STRUCTURE.

Lessons Folder

The Lessons folder contains all lessons found on TalkEnglish.com for the below categories in
HTML format. Double click on any file and the page will show you the lessons with active links to
the short and long audio files. To prevent having to open so many different documents, many
lessons have been merged together. On the website, you might have 7 different pages for Office
Basics lesson, but in this package, they have been combined into one document. Therefore, some of
the documents can be pretty large. However, they are broken up and separated thoughtfully.

 BusinessEnglish (14 Documents – Totaling 77 Pages )

 EnglishBasics (9 Documents – Totaling 55 Pages)
  Grammar (30 Documents – Totaling 90 Pages
 Idioms – (10 Documents – Totaling 65 Pages)
 InterviewEnglish (8 Documents – Totaling 110 Pages)
 Listening – (6 Documents – Totaling 204 Pages)
 Pronunciation (19 Documents – Totaling 22 Pages)
 RegularEnglish (75 Documents – Totaling 304 Pages)
 TravelEnglish (7 Documents – Totaling 36 Pages)

178 Documents with a Total of 963 Pages!

PDF Folder

The lessons in the PDF folder are provided so you can easily print any material in a clean and easy
way. The sentences are not linked to the audio files and are used only for viewing. If you want to
use he “Click, Listen, and Repeat” functionality, then use the HTML pages in the Lessons folder.

LongAudio Folder

This folder contains all the long audio files. These audio files read the entire lesson to
you. Depending on the section, the length of each file will range from 1 minute to over 10 minutes.

 BusinessEnglish (14 Long audio MP3 files – 2 hours and 7 minutes)

 EnglishBasics (89 Long audio MP3 files – 1 hour and 10 minutes)
 ListeningDialogs (102 Long audio MP3 files – 1 hour and 27 minutes)
 Pronunciation (19 Long audio MP3 files – 25 minutes)
 RegularEnglish (75 Long audio MP3 files – 7 hours and 29 minutes)
 TravelEnglish (7 Long audio MP3 files – 50 minutes)

Total of 306 Long Audio MP3 files playing over 13 hours and 30 minutes!

ShortAudio Folder
Each lesson will contain many individual audio files. If you want to find a specific audio file for a
specific sentence, you need to open up the folder corresponding to the lesson. For example, under
Regular English Lessons, the first document you will find is 01Greeting. If you open that document,
you will find 60 different sentences you can click. If you want to find the audio file associated with,
“What a surprise. I haven't seen you in a long time. How have you been?” you have to know what
section you are on and the number of sentence from the top for that section.

Sections are divided by larger font text. In this example, “Greeting – Basic” is the first section and
“Greeting Someone you Know” is the second section. The sentence we are looking for is in the 2nd
section and is the 6th sentence from the top.

If you open up the ShortAudio folder under RegularEnglish under 01Greeting, you will see 60
files. The one we are looking for will be Greeting2S6.mp3. “Greeting” indicates what lesson you
are on, “2” represents the 2nd section, and “S6” represents the 6th sentence in that section.

The Interactive Conversation Dialogs can also be found in the ShortAudio folder. Most sentences
will end in “S1” or “S2”, etc. But the Practice Dialogs used in the Interactive Conversation Section
are labeled “P1”, “P1a”, “P1b”, etc. For example, if you are looking for the audio files that are
associated with the second conversation dialog in 01Greetings, then you can find it under the
01Greeting folder under the ShortAudio folder under RegularEnglish folder. The name of the file
will be “Greeting3P2.mp3”. “3” represents the last section, and “P2” represents the second practice
dialog. “Greeting3P2a.mp3” will be the audio file that is used to be person “A”, and
“Greeting3P2b.mp3” will be the audio file used for person “B”.

 BusinessEnglish (725 Short audio MP3 files)

 EnglishBasics (915 Short audio MP3 files)
 Idioms (1241 Short audio MP3 files)
 InterviewEnglish (634 Short audio MP3 files)
 Pronunciation (226 Short audio MP3 files)
 RegularEnglish (3790 Short audio MP3 files)
  TravelEnglish (383 Short audio MP3 files)

Total of 7,914 Short Audio MP3 files!

If you run into technical difficulties, please email talkenglish@talkenglish.com

If you have English questions during your study, you can ask questions at:
http://forums.talkenglish.com

If you study this package diligently, I have complete confidence that you will be a fluent English
speaker! Good luck and study hard!

The remaining content on this document are study tips and advice:

Study Method

TalkEnglish.com is a program offering speaking lessons on Regular, Business, Interviewing,

Traveling Lessons, along with new Listening lessons, Pronunciation lessons, and Intonation and
speed of speaking tips. Here are the detailed steps on how to study using TalkEnglish.com.

For Regular English, Business English, and Travel English

1. Start from the first lesson

2. Click on each sentence and listen to it
3. Repeat after each individual sentence. Listen and repeat until you master the sentence
4. At the bottom of most lessons, you will see an Interactive Conversation Practice Lesson
5. Listen to the real life conversation by clicking on the Listen All button
6. Keep listening to it until you are very comfortable with both Person A and Person B
7. When you are ready, become Person A or Person B by clicking on the buttons
8. All the interactive conversations are native speed. If it is too fast for you, click on the pause
button for practice
 9. After you practice several times, you can practice without the pause button and speak like a
native

For Interview English and Useful Phrases

1. Select the Question or Topic you want to study

2. Read the explanation
3. Click on each example answer to listen to the answer or sentence

For Listening Lessons

1. Click on the sound or letter you want to learn

2. Pay close attention to the instructions
3. Click on any sentence or word that is blue to hear the sound

For Pronunciation Lessons

1. Click on the sound or letter you want to learn

2. Pay close attention to the instructions
3. Click on any sentence or word that is blue to hear the sound

Additional Study Advice

Practice until you can speak without thinking about each word
If you read each section once and listen to the lesson once, you will probably finish in 10 minutes.
But you will not be learning anything. Take the time to make each sentence a part of you. You
should be able to say each sentence without thinking about it. Use the Interactive Conversation
Practice session over and over again until you can be fluent for that category. Don't be discouraged
if a lesson takes you a long time.

Invest your time and effort

Don't believe book titles that say you can learn English in 3 months. That is a lie and only the
smartest of all genius's will be able to accomplish that. More realistically, it will take quite a long
time. Depending on how much time and effort you put into it, you can finish this whole site and
learn how to speak English in one year. Even if it takes two years, it is a great accomplishment
seeing how many users study English for 10 years without being able to speak English.

Review regularly
It is normal to forget things that you do not use. Even after mastering a lesson, you should re-do the
Interactive Conversation portion of that lesson on a regular basis so you don't forget it. After awhile,
when those sentences are engraved in your head, you will be speaking English fluently.

Ask questions anytime you want

All users are welcome to view the postings on our Forums page. While studying English, you can
always come into the forums page and ask questions at http://forums.talkenglish.com.

Learn English to Use it!

You will become an expert English speaker!
Many people study English for many years. Even after years of studying, they go to an English
speaking country and realize that they cannot say one sentence correctly. This is going to change for
people who finish this course. You will be able to speak English in many different situations. This
site will give you the foundation you need to communicate effectively in English.

Speak English fluently without thinking about the rules and logic.
You need to mimic correct sentences over and over again.
Do you have to memorize English or do you have to understand the English to speak it? Let's first
think about how people learn their first language. When you were little, you listened to your parents
speak and you copied them. Over the years, people have tried to learn English like they learn a
concept or a theory. They try to understand the meaning behind each sentence and try to put them
together through logic. If you are studying to pass the GMAT or TOEFL or any other test, then you
will have to try to understand every word of every sentence and know why each word is in a
particular place. But when you speak English, you don't need to know any rules. The more rules and
logic you think about, the harder time you will have. The best way to learn to speak English is to
memorize. First, have a sentence that is correct. Listen to the sentence, repeat the sentence over and
over again until it becomes a part of you.

Did you learn to speak through all the classes you took?
Don't worry any longer. TalkEnglish.com will be your guide to speaking English.
Being able to speak English is more difficult than people realize. If you have bought many books
and attended many classes in English only to get disappointed and discouraged, you can be
confident that TalkEnglish.com will be different. Anybody who completes this program will have
the ability to speak to anyone in any situation.

Are you talking after thinking about all the words?

You have to speak without thinking instantly.
When I ask you for your background information in your language, you don't have to think about
each word that you are going to say. You are basically thinking about the content. When you know
what you want to say, you can say it automatically. This is because you have everything already
memorized. When you want to speak effectively in English, you have to recall information
immediately. In order to do so, you must have the sentences already memorized. If you have
something memorized, you will be able to say it immediately. For example, you probably learned
how to say, 'How are you doing?' You don't have to think about this sentence because you practiced
it so many times. Imagine if can say other things as quickly as you can say 'How are you doing?"
That is what you will be learning.

Practice with sentences that are most commonly used.

TalkEnglish.com does not contain any awkward sentences.
All the content on this site is the most commonly used sentences that everyone will understand. In
many text books, there are many sentences that are awkward. Because you do not know which ones
are proper or not, you might be wasting time and energy on sentences that are not used. With
TalkEnglish.com, you will only be studying sentences that are used frequently and by everyone.
You don't have to worry about memorizing thousands of sentences that you are not sure about.

Learning listening skills will not improve your speaking skills.

TalkEnglish.com focuses solely on teaching you how to speak in English.
Many people study Television news program to improve spoken English. Your listening skills will
improve, but your speaking abilities will stay the same. Ask if studying news will help you speak
English in a normal setting. If you practice saying, "In Iraq today, 200 US troops have evacuated the
perimeter near Baghdad due to constant surprise attacks by the remaining rebels", will it really help
you speak to a regular English speaking person. Wouldn't you rather learn how to say something that
will be used in daily conversation?

5 Speaking Rules you need to know!

1. Don't study grammar

This rule might sound strange to many ESL students, but it is one of the most important rules. If you
want to pass examinations, then study grammar. However, if you want to become fluent in English,
then you should try to learn English without studying the grammar.

Studying grammar will only slow you down and confuse you. You will think about the rules when
creating sentences instead of naturally saying a sentence like a native. Remember that only a small
fraction of English speakers know more than 20% of all the grammar rules. Many ESL students
know more grammar than native speakers. I can confidently say this with experience. I am a native
English speaker, majored in English Literature, and have been teaching English for more than 10
years. However, many of my students know more details about English grammar than I do. I can
easily look up the definition and apply it, but I don't know it off the top of my head.

I often ask my native English friends some grammar questions, and only a few of them know the
correct answer. However, they are fluent in English and can read, speak, listen, and communicate
effectively.

Do you want to be able to recite the definition of a causative verb, or do you want to be able to
speak English fluently?

2. Learn and study phrases

Many students learn vocabulary and try to put many words together to create a proper sentence. It
amazes me how many words some of my students know, but they cannot create a proper sentence.
The reason is because they didn't study phrases. When children learn a language, they learn both
words and phrases together. Likewise, you need to study and learn phrases.

If you know 1000 words, you might not be able to say one correct sentence. But if you know 1
phrase, you can make hundreds of correct sentences. If you know 100 phrases, you will be surprised
at how many correct sentences you will be able to say. Finally, when you know only a 1000 phrases,
you will be almost a fluent English speaker.

The English Speaking Basics section is a great example of making numerous sentences with a single
phrase. So don't spend hours and hours learning many different words. Use that time to study
phrases instead and you will be closer to English fluency.

Don't translate

When you want to create an English sentence, do not translate the words from your Mother tongue.
The order of words is probably completely different and you will be both slow and incorrect by
doing this. Instead, learn phrases and sentences so you don't have to think about the words you are
saying. It should be automatic.

Another problem with translating is that you will be trying to incorporate grammar rules that you
have learned. Translating and thinking about the grammar to create English sentences is incorrect
and should be avoided.

3. Reading and Listening is NOT enough. Practice Speaking what you hear!
Reading, listening, and speaking are the most important aspects of any language. The same is true
for English. However, speaking is the only requirement to be fluent. It is normal for babies and
children to learn speaking first, become fluent, then start reading, then writing. So the natural order
is listening, speaking, reading, then writing.

First Problem
Isn't it strange that schools across the world teach reading first, then writing, then listening, and
finally speaking? Although it is different, the main reason is because when you learn a second
language, you need to read material to understand and learn it. So even though the natural order is
listening, speaking, reading, then writing, the order for ESL students is reading, listening, speaking,
then writing.

Second Problem
The reason many people can read and listen is because that's all they practice. But in order to speak
English fluently, you need to practice speaking. Don't stop at the listening portion, and when you
study, don't just listen. Speak out loud the material you are listening to and practice what you hear.
Practice speaking out loud until your mouth and brain can do it without any effort. By doing so, you
will be able to speak English fluently.

4. Submerge yourself
Being able to speak a language is not related to how smart you are. Anyone can learn how to speak
any language. This is a proven fact by everyone in the world. Everyone can speak at least one
language. Whether you are intelligent, or lacking some brain power, you are able to speak one
language.

This was achieved by being around that language at all times. In your country, you hear and speak
your language constantly. You will notice that many people who are good English speakers are the
ones who studied in an English speaking school. They can speak English not because they went to
an English speaking school, but because they had an environment where they can be around English
speaking people constantly.

There are also some people who study abroad and learn very little. That is because they went to an
English speaking school, but found friends from their own country and didn't practice English.

You don't have to go anywhere to become a fluent English speaker. You only need to surround
yourself with English. You can do this by making rules with your existing friends that you will only
speak English. You can also carry around an iPod and constantly listen to English sentences. As you
can see, you can achieve results by changing what your surroundings are. Submerge yourself in
English and you will learn several times faster.

5. Study correct material

A common phrase that is incorrect is, "Practice makes perfect." This is far from the truth. Practice
only makes what you are practicing permanent. If you practice the incorrect sentence, you will have
perfected saying the sentence incorrectly. Therefore, it is important that you study material that is
commonly used by most people.

Another problem I see is that many students study the news. However, the language they speak is
more formal and the content they use is more political and not used in regular life. It is important to
understand what they are saying, but this is more of an advanced lesson that should be studied after
learning the fundamental basics of English.

Studying English with a friend who is not a native English speaker is both good and bad. You
should be aware of the pro's and con's of speaking with a non native speaking friend. Practicing with
a non native person will give you practice. You can also motivate each other and point out basic
mistakes. But you might pick up bad habits from one another if you are not sure about what are
correct and incorrect sentences. So use these practice times as a time period to practice the correct
material you studied. Not to learn how to say a sentence.

In short, study English material that you can trust, that is commonly used, and that is correct.

Thank you for taking the best step in becoming fluent at English speaking.

Regards,
Steve Kim
Author and Creator of TalkEnglish.com

Copyright © 2012 TALKENGLISH.COM | Copying or Redistribution of this material is illegal