387. LEP Anecdote Competition Entries – Please Listen & Vote

Voting is now open in the first round of the LEP Anecdote Competition. You can listen to all the anecdotes on the page for this episode and vote for your favourites using a simple poll. I’ll give you the full details and instructions in this episode. I’m also going to talk about the results of the podcast survey I did recently and a couple of other things, including the top countries for LEP this week.

[DOWNLOAD]

To find the page, go to teacherluke.co.uk and there should be a link on the right hand side of the page. Please do visit, have a listen and vote.

Listen to the anecdotes using this playlist. Scroll down the page to find the poll.

You can listen to the anecdotes on your phone like a podcast

Here’s the RSS feed for the anecdote competition https://audioboom.com/users/1917559/boos.rss

To listen to the anecdotes like a podcast on your phone just copy the RSS link above and paste it into the search function on your podcasting software, then subscribe.


[socialpoll id=”2391727″]

There are quite a few entries there. I know that’s rather a lot to for you (and me) to listen to. I hope do you listen to them all! You probably can’t listen to them all in one sitting, so I suggest you visit a few times. In any case, regardless of the number of listens and votes each anecdote receives, I will also have a deciding influence on who gets through to the next round. The number of votes is the most important factor, but as a judge of the competition I also will give kudos points to certain entries if I think it’s necessary. In the end, we’ll whittle down the 56 entries to just 10 entries for the next round.

How do you find the page for this episode?

If you’ve subscribed to the mailing list, an email should automatically arrive in your inbox later today. It might already be there. Just click the link and bob’s your uncle. It works best on a computer. The mobile theme of my website doesn’t work very well I’m afraid.

You can vote for as many anecdotes as you like. Repeat votes are allowed but you can’t vote for yourself more than once.

Voting will close in about 3 weeks, on the 21st October.

Then the votes will be counted and the top 10 anecdotes will go through to round 2.

Round 2 will be an episode of the podcast. I’ll play the top 10 anecdotes and then there will be another round of voting.

The winner will either win some LEP merchandise or will be briefly interviewed by me on the podcast. I might ask some more questions about the story, or ask questions any listeners have sent in.

That’s it!

So, check out the page for this episode, have a listen and vote for your favourites.

You are now judges and it’s completely up to you to choose your judging criteria. You could think about the English being used, the structure of the anecdote, whether the person followed all my rules, whether the person followed my advice or if they did it in a more original way, or perhaps most importantly: How much did you enjoy listening to it. That’s probably the best way of judging it.

All the recordings are displayed in a playlist on my site and the voting poll is available there too.

Survey results

Catherine Bear
Luke, do the survey results meet your expectations? Or are you surprised at some points?
I hope that folks have answered just once (from one device) — so that you could get an accurate picture. But maybe you don’t mind.
Thanks,
Cat

Results of the survey
They show that listeners prefer these types:
When I talk about a subject at length, e.g. culture, history, topics which I know about
When I teach vocabulary
When I interview someone
When I teach grammar
Everything else gets around the same number of votes.
At the bottom of the list there are these ones: improvised stories (e.g. the Pink Gorilla story – what a pity), responding to messages from listeners, listener competitions!

Well, sorry to disappoint you but 1. I enjoy doing the improvised stories and I’ll keep doing them! 2. We’re in the middle of a listener competition!

I understand why listener competitions are not at the top of the list – you want to hear me or other native speakers speaking English. But I have my own reasons for doing these competitions and I’ll still do them from time to time.

The results are a little bit misleading when you look at them like a bar chart. It appears that some of the bars in the chart are quite short and therefore not very popular. But if you look at the results like a pie chart it’s quite clear that the preferences of the audience are very evenly spread out.

Each slice of the pie is actually quite similar in size. Everyone seems to have different preferences. It’s not like one single episode type is vastly more popular than all the others. It just goes to show that you can’t please all the people all the time and it would be unwise for me to try to do that.

In the end it’s my podcast and I’ll do whatever I want and whatever I think is right based on my judgement and experience. But it’s good to get some feedback and I will aim to produce more of the kinds of episodes that everyone seems to like, while also satisfying my own inspiration.

Like, sometimes I just fancy doing something totally different and unusual, based on what is appealing to me at any given moment. Sometimes it’s English language related and sometimes it’s topic related, and I think that’s what keeps me interested in the project as a whole, that I can do exactly whatever I want, unlike in a classroom situation, and I reckon that is what makes the podcast a bit original or at least unexpected sometimes. Imagine for example if I just stuck to a sort of conservative selection of generic topics with no surprises. It would be boring if it was always the same thing again and again so I will mix it up a bit, and I will continue to experiment with episodes, like improvised stories if I feel like it.

In the end I think it’s about creating something authentic and hopefully enjoyable to listen to, whatever form that takes and whatever subject I’m talking about.

Click here to take the survey if you haven’t already done it.

LISTENING STATS – WHERE ARE THE LEPSTERS?

TOP 20 COUNTRIES THIS WEEK

CHINA – 你好 (ni how!)

RUSSIA – Здравствуйте (zdrazdoitchyeah!)

JAPAN – こんにちは! (kon-ni-chi-wa!) genki desuka?

UNITED KINGDOM – Alright

SPAIN – Hola!

SOUTH KOREA – 여보세요 (yey-buss-say-oh!)

POLAND – cześć (chesht!) hey!

ITALY – Ciao!

UKRAINE – Здравствуйте (zdrazdoitchyeah!) (sorry, I don’t know it in Ukranian)

GERMANY – Hallo!

UNITED STATES – What’s up guys? How y’all doing? Hi there you guys!

BRAZIL – Olá (oh laa!)

AUSTRALIA – G’day!

SWITZERLAND – Hallo! or Salut!

FRANCE – Salut!

TURKEY – Merhaba (mare haba)

TAIWAN – 你好 (ni how!)

VIETNAM – chào bạn (ciao ban!)

THAILAND – สวัสดี (sa bai dee kup!)

MEXICO – Hola!

Transcript collaboration team

Comedy shows in Paris

Like my FB page to get updates, or check “Comedy Shows” on my website.

Meeting of Japanese LEPsters in Tokyo

 

Name: Hideki Kanazawa

Message: Hello Luke, how are you?

As I said before, we had the very first meeting today!
Five people came and we talked about how your podcast is amazing.
We also shared a lot information mainly about English.

It was really fun and amazing.
We are going to hold another meeting soon.

We also took photos.

Thank you again for supporting my idea, I really appreciate it.
Cheers.

screen-shot-2016-10-07-at-17-49-13

Only 5 people – but it’s quality not quantity! Nice one for getting together, it looks like you had a good time.

I’m hoping to come to Japan in April. This is a place that my wife and I have wanted to visit for ages. I used to live there so I want to revisit and show her everything, and she’s just slightly obsessed with all things Japanese. Perhaps I can arrange a gig or an event of some kind if we manage to save money to come. We’ll see.

As for my other plans for doing events in other places, that idea is on hold at the moment because I’m working on another project which I’ve been putting off for ages – a business English online course. That’s my priority and I’ve got to finish that before starting other things.

Luke from Luke's English Podcast - don't vote for me, I already have an LEP mug ;)