Improve Your English Vocabulary with over 140 Tricky Words
- 1.5 hours on-demand video
- 4 downloadable resources
- Full lifetime access
- Access on mobile and TV
- Certificate of Completion
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Try Udemy for Business- Tips and tricks covering more than 70 of the most difficult English words to tell apart
- 12 quizzes and a project to help you test your understanding.
- Learn mind tricks to remember English words that sound alike
- Write more confidently in English
- Get your point across more accurately when writing in English
- Improve written English test scores
- Comprehend and communicate better on social media
- Avoid some embarrassing auto-correct mishaps on mobile and computer devices
- Improved understanding of spoken English
- A desire to learn, ask questions, and interact with others
- Conversational English is very helpful for this class
- Intermediate level spoken English
- A written or reading English vocabulary of 500-1000 words or more is helpful, but not necessary
7/12/15 update: 6 new lectures were added, all closed captioned. This brings the course from "over 70 tricky words" to OVER 140 TRICKY WORDS!
Note: All lectures are closed-captioned to help you understand the content. This course mainly covers US-English word use.
"...I like the visual illustrations to help remember as I am a dominant visual learner..." -- Erika
"...This course was well thought out..." -- Gary
"...this is the most fastest and easiest method to memorise vocabular[y]..." - Shane
"....such a great way to remember!" - Angelika
Build confidence in your English writing skills.
You can perfect your use of confusing English words, such as the sound-alikes "write" and "right" which mean something very different. This course will help you remember which word is the correct word, and you will learn and practice 144 commonly mistaken words.
You need to write these words when:
- job hunting
- running a business
- work
- school
- social media
- blogging
- texting and emailing
Improve your English writing with verbal, visual and story-like tips on knowing the correct word to use. You can tell the differences between common problem words in English.
- Look more professional
- Avoid miscommunications
- Say what you mean
- Make a great first impression
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the course. Search on my name and my instructor page will come up in the results.
Enroll today and improve your writing right away!
- People familiar with conversational English but who need to sharpen their English writing skills
- Homeschoolers, homeschooling families
- International English students
- Advanced English learners who are still making mistakes with homophones (words that sound alike)
- Intermediate English as a Second Language learners
- Intermediate English as a Foreign Language learners
- Business people
- Native English speakers who make common mistakes with words that sound alike
- Anyone who wants to improve their English writing
- Lectures are closed captioned to improve listening comprehension
- Why you need this course
- Tricky words
- Learning by hearing, not reading
- Hard to remember
- English is not always phonic
A little about me, and my background. I am not an ESL (English as a second language) teacher. I am a native English speaker, writer, poet and professional brainstormer. I make mistakes. Please catch me!
Photo of Criss by Nuby DeLeon of ND Pro Media.
A document that you can print if you would like to track all the 140+ words we are covering in this course. Please feel free to make suggestions of other words to be added in the future, and I will add them to the list.
April 12, 2016: Version update: 5.1 includes a preliminary list of the 70+ words I plan to add to the course in the next 1-2 months.
Even in lecture descriptions in this course, there are many common words that have sound-alikes in English. And there are two ways to get them right: you can memorize these words, which can take a long time, or you can prepare a mental trick, a mnemonic, that you can use to remember the right word. I used bold to highlight words in the lecture descriptions which apply to the current lecture, and italics for the words that you will find in another lecture. Now you can see some of the words in sentences and paragraphs as you go along.
Crown photo by Jason Train (Flickr, CC-By).
It's almost impossible to write a sentence in English without using some of these words. For example, one (person) might try to write two sentences to describe a lecture and find that you wrote "to" three or four times.
Crown photo by Jason Train (Flickr, CC-BY). Goat/Horse/Turkey photo by galendara (Flickr, CC-BY).
It's time for those dreaded apostrophes! How will you improve your written English if they're always putting apostrophes in the middle of their words? In this lesson, you're going to learn when to use the apostrophes, when not to, and the meanings of words that sound exactly like those tricky possessive pronouns and their sound-alike contractions.
Watch photo by Joe Haupt (Flickr, CC-BY).
You're doing great here! You are learning how to take the words we hear and break them down in understandable ways. After this lesson you can take a break, or you can go on to our next quiz.
Fresh grated cheese photo by Jay Davis (Flickr, CC-BY-ND). Grate discrepancy by JD Hancock (Flickr, CC-BY).
In principle, which words you choose when you write can affect how people view you. This is great when writing to affect a council's decision, to meet with a principal about your grades, or if you need to compliment a witch to avoid being turned into a deer. Bear with my counsel, and your writing will have a greater effect.
Like dough to a counter-top, you've stuck with me this far! Let's see if you can bear to accept more of my attempts to complement each lesson by writing barely acceptable sentences. If you're sitting there doe-eyed with fright at my writing, let me know in the discussions and accept my apology, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjobdArtiA
Dear Tricky Words Student,
I'd like to ask you to take your time learning how to use each pair of words. Write them down, use them in sentences, draw rings around them to help you remember. It will help you the next time you pick up a pen or have an axe to grind.
The receptionist said, "One of the perquisites of already having an appointment with the doctor is that I can skip you ahead in the queue. Occasionally someone will question why you went in before them. That's my cue to put on my best smile and quiet their doubts. Patience is a prerequisite for working with patients."