Category Archives: Culture

6. Vampires! (with vocabulary for describing feelings & emotions)

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This podcast episode today is about vampires! It includes a lecture on the myth of the vampire in modern popular culture, with a language focus on really useful vocabulary and expressions to describe feelings and emotions.

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Transcript Available below.

Hello everyone. This podcast feature today is about vampires! The language section is about really useful vocabulary and expressions to describe feelings and emotions.

See below for the transcript for this episode. Just scroll down the page. After the language notes you can read the transcript. 

I hope you’re well. I know I said that I would talk about men & women in this podcast. Well, that podcast isn’t ready yet. Instead, I’ve done this one about vampires.  I can hear you asking the question “Why vampires??”. It’s because there are some movies out at the moment which are about vampires. Actually, there’s always a movie out which is about vampires! If you think about it, we love vampires, don’t we? People seem to think they are interesting. There are hundreds of movies and books about them. They’ve been in literature for hundreds of years… but why? That’s what this podcast is about.

The first part of the feature section is about Twilight. Twilight is a very popular American movie. It was recently released on DVD. It’s particularly popular with teenagers (especially teenage girls) and it’s about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. Hmm, interesting. It’s also a very successful book by Stephanie Meyer. I think it’s the most popular book on Amazon.com at the moment.

The second part of the feature section is about the history of the vampire in literature and movies. The information comes from a lecture by the British academic Sir Christopher Frayling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Frayling) who is a brilliant and intelligent expert on popular culture. He gave a lecture a few years ago about vampires. I listened to it, and have summarised it for you here. It’s all about why we find vampires interesting, and why there are so many movies about vampires in the cinema every year.

The language section is about useful words and expressions to describe your emotions. Here is the language summary of those words and expressions. Remember, if you don’t use them – you lose them!!

Fear / Being Frightened

“I was absolutely petrified / terrified” – This just means, I was really really scared! “I was scared stiff” – This means I was really frightened, and I couldn’t move. “It frightened the life out of me” – This means, it really frightened me. “I jumped / It made me jump” – This is when something scares or surprises you and you jump into the air.

Shocked – I was really shocked

“I was speechless” – This means that I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to say. I was lost for words. “I was shocked and stunned” – I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to do. If you are stunned, it means you can’t move. “I couldn’t believe my eyes” – This is when you see something shocking and you can’t believe it! “I couldn’t believe my ears” – This is when you hear something, like some shocking news, and you don’t believe it!

Angry

“I was absolutely furious!” – I was really really angry. “I was so pissed off” – Pissed off means angry. It’s informal, and a bit rude. In American English they say “I was pissed”, but in British English ‘pissed’ means ‘drunk’. “I lost my temper” – I became angry. We never use the word ‘temper’ on its own. We only use it in expressions like this. “Don’t lose your temper” “You’re so bad tempered” “I hit the roof” – This is an idiom which means ‘I became really really angry’ The roof is the top part of your house, so if you hit the roof, it means you fly through the top of the house with anger!

Happy

“I was absolutely delighted” – This means I was really really happy. “I was chuffed (to bits)” – Chuffed means really happy or pleased. It is informal English. It isn’t rude. “I was over the moon” – This is an idiom which means I was really really happy.

Disappointed

“I was absolutely devastated” – This means I was really really disappointed. I was so disappointed, that I was nearly destroyed. Very serious. “I was gutted” – Again, this means I was really disappointed. ‘Gutted’ is an informal expression. It isn’t rude.

Sad

“I was absolutely heart-broken” – I was really really sad, like when your girlfriend has left you… So sad… :( “I was really down in the dumps” – This means I was depressed & sad. E.g. after my girlfriend left me, I was down in the dumps for weeks & weeks.

OK, so that’s it for the language section. Remember: you can email me and ask me more questions if you want to: luketeacher@hotmail.com

Transcript:

Episode 6 – Vampires!

You are listening to Luke’s English podcast. For more information visit teacherLuke.wordpress.com.

Hello to everyone out there in podcast land. Thanks very much for downloading the podcast. It’s a Saturday lunch time right now and it’s a beautiful day outside, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and I am sitting here indoors in front of a computer. So obviously I have got my priority to write, haven’t I? I think that as soon as I finish this I am gonna go outside and enjoy the good weather because to be honest, here in London, the weather isn’t always good. You’ve got to try and make the most of it when it is good, so I shouldn’t be sitting here in front of the computer, should I? I should be out there enjoying the sunshine. So I will be doing that soon.

So first of all I would like to say thank you again for downloading the podcast. On my podcast page I can see all of the downloads that I have had all over the world and it’s fantastic actually because I get like a map  of the world with little flags that show where I’ve been downloaded and people are listening to me in Canada, somewhere way up in the north of Canada, I’ve being listened to in the middle of America , in Toronto, Ireland, all over the UK, in Spain, in Algiers in North Africa – as well as there I am being downloaded in Holland. Some people are listening to me in Luxembourg. Let’s see where else: Milan in Italy, Greece, Istanbul in Turkey. I am being listened to in Kazakhstan and a couple of places in China. Some people are downloading me in South Korea. I am being listened to in Japan in Tokyo and in Sapporo as well so it’s really great to be able to communicate with people all over the world, like this and I am enjoying it very much. Don’t forget to send me a message as well. I really like to hear from you.

Let’s see, in today’s podcast in the feature section I am going to be talking about vampires. Now I know that before I said I was going to be talking about men and women. Well, actually I have changed my mind. I am not going to talk about men and women in this podcast. It’s going to be about vampires instead. That’s because I was planning to talk about men and women but that’s not ready. That podcast isn’t ready yet. I’ve interviewed some people about that but I’d like to interview some more people as well. So it’s not ready yet. You have to wait until probably next time to hear about men and women. So instead this one is about vampires. Now that’s because there are a couple of movies which have come out recently. the first one being ‘Twilight’ which is an American film which recently has been released on DVD and another film is a Swedish movie called: ‘Let the right one in’ and they are both vampire movies, both very popular and so I am going to first of all talk about Twilight which is this very very popular vampire movie –  particularly popular with  teenagers – and then I am going to be talking about vampires in popular culture, the history of vampires in literature and movies and talking about why are vampires so popular. What do they really mean? What is it about vampires that makes them interesting for us, okay?

So that’s the feature section.

Then in the language section I am going to teach you some useful vocabulary you can use to describe emotions and feelings. That’s like different ways of describing being scared or being frightened – being sad, being shocked, being very happy, being very angry, being disappointed. Lots of really good useful language that you can use just when you are describing things,  when you are describing things that happened to you. I will write the vocabulary and the definitions on the web page and then you can start using them and making them part of your normal vocabulary. So you can look forward to that in the language section.

I know what you are – you are impossibly fast and strong. Your skin is pale and white and ice cold.

Are you afraid?

Only afraid of losing you

That’s a clip from the movie Twilight and if you didn’t catch that -she said: I know what you are – you are impossibly fast and strong. Your skin is pale white and ice cold.

And he says: are you afraid? and she said: I am only afraid of losing you.

Mmmm, well she should be afraid, really because it turns out that this guy is a vampire, believe it or not. Now, Twilight is a massively popular film. It’s huge. It’s particularly popular with teenage girls. It is based on a series of books by Stephenie Meyer. The books are currently the number one bestsellers on amazon.com. It’s a whole series of books and they are all very very popular all over the world. Basically, this is the new Harry Potter and the first movie which was released last year is massive. Okay, especially with teenagers and especially with teenage girls. Now Twilight is about a girl called Bella, whose parents split up. So she has to move to a small town with her dad and she has to go to a new school. Now, normally in these Hollywood films where a teenager has to go to a new school, you get the usual problems.- for example they find it difficult to make  friends – perhaps they get bullied by nasty members of the school. But this doesn’t really happen in this film . Bella goes to the new school and  actually the other kids are very friendly. She gets on very well with them. But what happens is that, she thinks that the other kids at the school are actually a bit simple. They seem to be quite sort of a  basic, a bit stupid really. She notices another group of people at the school who seem a bit strange and a bit mysterious and they don’t hang around with all the other kids at the school and they look very – kind of romantic looking. They look a bit gothic and very mysterious and interesting and one of them in particular. His name is Edward. She becomes very fascinated with and  – let’s see – she quickly becomes very attracted to Edward and she thinks he is very fascinating but she doesn’t know why he keeps avoiding her. Now, like I said before it turns out that well, he is a vampire. I don’t think I am giving away any secrets about the film there. It is a vampire movie. So it turns out he is a vampire. But he is not a bad vampire. A lot like someone like Dracula for example because him and his little vampire family – they are not bad vampires, they are good vampires because they don’t kill people, they don’t drink people’s blood – what they do is, they catch animals and they drink animal blood and they avoid people if they can. Okay, so, they are basically good vampires. Now basically what happens is that Bella and Edward – they are obviously very attracted to each other – they fall in love. But they are very afraid that they will lose control over each other because basically if Edward  loses control – if he gets to passionate, then he won’t be able to stop himself and he bites her. Okay?

So what we’ve got is a kind of teenage romance high school movie with a vampire scene and romantic elements with the fact that these two people love each other but they can’t really be together because he is a vampire.

Now actually I saw this film in Norway. I was in Oslo a couple of months ago and it was a Saturday night and I had nothing to do because I was there on my own and I decided to go and see this film. It was showing at the local cinema and I went to the cinema and before the film started, I was almost alone in the cinema – so I thought – okay fine, I’m just gonna be able to sit here quietly and watch the movie.

But slowly but surely more and more people arrived  and the cinema basically filled up with lots of teenage Norwegian girls and me. Right? So I am sitting there on my own, surrounded by   teenage Norwegian girls, right? Which I mean I am not complaining or anything –   it wasn’t bad, but it was a bit strange. And the movie starts and the first time you see Edward these girls just went crazy. I mean they were all giggling and laughing and talking to each other. Now obviously Edward is a very popular character with the girls out there and the actor actually is called –  I can’t remember his name,   I think he’s called Robert Pattinson and he’s been in a couple of other movies. Most famously he played Cedric Diggory in a  Harry Potter series and in this film he is made to look very handsome indeed and is very popular with teenage girls. And like I said before Twilight is a very very popular vampire film.

Now, what I’d like to do now is just talk about vampires in movies and in literature and what I’m going to say here is based on a lecture that I heard by the great academic whose name is Christopher Frayling, actually Sir Christopher Frayling. He is also the head of the society of arts here in the UK and he is a great academic and an  expert on popular culture. So that’s things like literature and movies and he gave a lecture about vampires in popular culture. So I am going to give you a kind of summary of what he’d said.

So the vampire myth really started in the 18th century and in that time there were stories that people told each other that involves vampires and blood suckers and so on and at that time the vampire was a kind of – let see – a countryside figure, a rural folklore figure from agricultural society, okay? So actually at that time vampires were working class labourers who worked in the countryside and the vampire story when it first started involved lots of superstition and some very primitive societies, Okay? So it’s a kind of…it was part of stories that people told each other by word of mouth and the vampire was related to a kind of folklore myth. These stories were based in Eastern Europe basically. Then in 1816 on Lake Geneva there was a very famous meeting of a number of famous horror writers. They included Byron, Shelley and Mary Godwin. They had their summer holiday there at Lake Geneva and the weather was terrible, so what they did for entertainment was they told each other very scary horror stories. And these horror stories became some of the most famous horror stories that we know now. Things like Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde I think and as well as that the first vampire story which was told by Byron. Now his story was about a Lord who went around corrupting young men. So that means he went around, making these young men immoral, interested in sex and alcohol but not interested in the church. The story was set in Greece where this Lord finally died a romantic death, a bit like Dracula and then is brought back to life in the  moonlight. So it’s really the first vampire story that showed vampires as we know them now and it was different to the old folklore stories because in the Byron story the vampire is not a rural character not in the country side biting sheep and things. Now the vampire is a high class character and is sexualised, a kind of sexual person. Also this new vampire story kind of looks at the bad reputation that upper class aristocrats had in the 19th century. So then later in the 19th century the story gets repeated and rewritten by lots of people. Some of the things change for example you get female vampires as well and some things like that. Some of the things stay the same, for example the location. Pretty much all of these stories are based on the edge of western catholic Europe,  so somewhere out  on the edge were…we  don’t quite know what happens on the edge of western Europe. Now the most famous telling of the vampire story is Dracula by Bram Stoker. This is the version that everybody knows and which has been repeated many many times. Now in the Bram Stoker story Dracula all the basic elements of a vampire story are introduced, okay? So the vampire is a powerful man, a sort of Lord or aristocrat, someone in upper class society related to the aristocracy, okay? He has to bite people and then they become a vampire. He bites someone on the neck, he has sharp teeth, sharp canine teeth. Vampires hate crosses. Sunlight kills them, You can kill a vampire with a wooden stake which is kind of like a sharp stick and you stab the vampire in the heart and that can kill them. You can also kill a vampire by chopping his head off. Vampires in this story can change shape, they can become a bat or perhaps a dog or a wolf. Now, all of these classic vampire elements get repeated in lots of movies after that and lots of other stories. And this is really what we now know a vampires to be. One of the most famous images of Dracula comes from the British Hammer horror movie called Dracula which star the actor Christopher Lee as Dracula and often when people think of Dracula they see the Christopher Lee performance. And Christopher Lee in the movie is a very tall handsome charming Dracula with the sharp teeth. Now, later on, after this image of Dracula is produced by movies and by Bram Stoker, later on the vampire becomes domesticated which means he becomes closer to  home and more similar to us. So this is done for example in books like Steven King’s book ‘Salem’s Lot’ and also  other Hollywood movies. So the whole vampire thing gets updated and is put into contemporary modern America – as sort of normal every day set in. So this is a new way of making vampires frightening and scary. So for example a vampire can live on your street or even in your house. They don’t just live in a big castle in another country somewhere or in the countryside. They can live in your town, okay? Also the vampire becomes americanised, so that’s put into normal American society. Now this is a very common pattern in horror stories. Many horror myths start as a European folk myth so not written down by but shared by word of mouth, then the stories get written by 19th century British writers and then later they are made into American Hollywood movies and they are updated. So it’s a very common pattern in all. And one that we can see has happened with vampires. So, now the vampire is an ordinary person like a teenager in a high school for example. So he gets things like the TV programme ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or movies like Twilight, for example.  And first of all this is more scary because it makes it a bit more realistic but also teenagers, for example, who are the target market for these vampire movies usually – teenagers can relate to vampires and vampire movies and then these movies are about issues that effect normal American people, okay?

So the vampire has really changed and it has survived through from old old eastern European folks stories through the 19th century British horror writers into modern day American Hollywood films. So the vampire is very flexible, very adaptable and the vampire can survive. You can’t kill it, you just can’t kill the vampire. It will always survive in popular culture because for some reason it’s very meaningful for us and we can see lots of important issues, meaningful issues to us in the vampire myth. So the vampire movie is like a metaphor. So on the surface it’s a scary movie but underneath that the vampire movie allows us to think about lots of other issues and a vampire movie can be about more than just being scared,  but it’s also about a number of different issues that relate to us in society, okay?

Right, so I am going to at …just quickly look at some of the themes that you can find in many vampire stories. So one of the first themes that you see in a vampire film is the theme of disease. Now this is a very old thing which you can see in the first vampire film which is called ‘Nosferatu’. That’s a German film from 1921. In that film the vampire is presented  as like a plague of rats. So the vampire’s bite is like the bite of a disease which infects your blood. The disease spreads as well  from person to person through the blood. Although there is a sexual connection with seduction and the exchange of body fluids.  So in that sense Dracula or vampires can be seen as a metaphor for even something like the aids virus which is a big issue in society at the moment. For example if you look at Francis Ford Coppola’s  movie which is called Bram Stoker’s Dracula. There are scenes in that movie which show a doctor looking at someone’s blood under the microscope and seeing that it’s infected by vampire’s kind of micro organisms. So certainly in a lot of vampire books and movies they are a metaphor for disease in society.

Also sexuality is a big theme in vampire stories and movies. Vampires are in a way a safe way for us to look at eroticism. So, the vampire really is a very sexual creature. Often he seduces his victim, he bites women and then turns them into whores, he appears in women’s bedrooms, he bites on the neck, he sucks out body fluids. These are all very sexual images. Also the desire to bite and it’s an __________ like sexual desires which is part of a sinful act.

Now as well as those themes you have a theme of the fear of death or growing old. So vampires can represent both the fear of death and the fantasy of immortality. That’s never dying. So if you like, beating death. So by becoming a vampire you can escape death but you have to hide from society and kill people. So there is the tragedy of becoming a vampire which combines the fantasy of never dying with the tragedy of having to escape from society. Also  the tragedy of seeing your loved ones grow old and die and you can see that theme in the famous movie with Tom Cruise and Brett Pit called interview with a vampire which deals with the whole theme of immortality and the tragedy of having to kill in order to survive and stay immortal.

You can also see the theme of drugs in some of these vampire films. Being a vampire means that you have to live at night. You become very pale skinned. You need to drink blood in order to stay alive and if you don’t, you get sick. So in that sense it’s similar to kind of heroin addiction perhaps.

Now, movies like the Lost boys with Kiefer Sutherland which is an 1980th Hollywood movie. A great movie. I used to watch it when I was a kid with my brother. We loved it. Movies like the Lost Boys are about loss of innocence and the pressure to copy people of your age. So do the same as people of your age. There are about temptation and the night time drug culture of young Californians.

In the Lost Boys it’s about two brothers who moved to a small seaside town in California and how one of them becomes seduced by a group of vampires who live in the area. And for me it’s like – the subtext of the film is like he becomes a drug addict. If you watch the film and imagine-  he is not a vampire but a drug addict it becomes very meaningful, I think.

Okay, so you can see how vampires are kind of very important in a way in our culture and how meaningful they are. It’s interesting how the vampire film consists to survive. It never dies. Instead it gets revised, it changes and it also becomes a way for us to look at various issues in society.

So if you haven’t seen Twilight then I ….I can recommend it. I thought it was very sweet story about first love and how it can be very hard to lose control of your feelings when you first fall in love as a teenager. It’s also about the danger of passion and your emotions and the power of attraction and how it can be very confusing and frightening when you first fall in love because the feelings can be very strong and that can be quite frightening. Now, I thought the film was quite corny, it was a bit embarrassing sometimes.

Some of the sequences were a little bit funny but basically I think it is a sweet film and I think it is a good film and so if you haven’t seen it I recommend it. There is also another Swedish film which is in the cinemas at the moment called: ‘Let the right one in’ and I haven’t seen that but apparently it’s excellent. All the critics are saying this, that it is very very good vampire film, indeed. So I hope to see that very soon. If you have seen that and if you have seen Twilight then send me a message. Let me know what you thought of both of those films. Remember the email address is Luketeacher@hotmail.com and I look forward to hearing from you.

Okay, so this is the language section and like I said at the beginning of the podcast this is going to be about expressing your emotions, describing your feelings. Now all of the language in this section you could use for example when you are telling a story about something or when you are describing an experience that you had. So all the examples  I am going to give will be in the past tense. So you might use this language for example if you are describing an experience like for example how you felt about your exam results or how you felt when you first heard about some news. So  the areas I am going to talk about are being frightened or being scared, being shocked, feeling angry, feeling happy, feeling disappointed and feeling sad.

So obviously very very common emotions and very very common in our daily experience and when you’re describing your experiences it is very very good to use these colourful descriptive language to express how you felt at the time. So all the language I am going to teach you I will write on my web page so you can see all of the expressions on the web page with some definitions. Don’t forget the web page is teacherLuke.podamatic.com  and you can see all of it explained for you there.

So we’ll start with fear or being scared.Being frightened. So one thing you could say if you were very scared, you could say: I was really scared or I was really frightened, of course. You can also say: I was absolutely petrified. I was absolutely petrified. So petrified is an extreme adjective means very very scared. I was absolutely petrified. You could say: I was absolutely terrified, as well. Another thing you could say is: I was scared stiff. I was scared stiff. That means you was so scared, so frightened that you couldn’t move, right? I was scared stiff.

Another one would be: It frightened the life out of me. It frightened the life out of me. That means: I was really really scared. Basically :It frightened the life out of me.

Another one is sometimes when you are very scared, when something scares you – you jump – you kind of go “huuu!”, so you could say: I jumped or it made me jump.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

For example: I woke up last night because I could hear noises from downstairs. I thought it was robbers in my house. I was absolutely petrified. I couldn’t move. I was scared stiff. I managed to pluck up the courage to go downstairs. I picked up a cricket bat and I went into the kitchen. I could hear some really strange noises so I went through the kitchen and suddenly my cat jumped down from the window. “Huu” it made me jump! Right? It frightened the life out of me. I thought it was a robber but it was just my cat. Now in that story I said I plucked up the courage to do something. So if you pluck up the courage it means even if you are scared you kind of become brave enough to do something. I plucked up the courage to do something.

The next one is being shocked

 

So for example when you hear some really shocking news like for example if you hear on the radio that someone has died or a famous person has died like if you  heard on the radio that John Lennon had died, for example you could say: I was really shocked or you could say: I was absolutely speechless, I was absolutely speechless. That means: I couldn’t say anything. I was so shocked, right? You can say. I was shocked and stunned, I was shocked and stunned and they always go together.

Stunned means that you couldn’t move. You were so shocked, you didn’t know what to do. I was shocked and stunned. And the other expression is: I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe my eyes. So that is if you see something shocking and it’l like: Is that real? I couldn’t believe my eyes. Like when I saw the UFO I just couldn’t believe my eyes. You also could say: I couldn’t believe my ears. That’s if you heard some very shocking news. So for example when I heard on the radio that John Lennon had died, I was absolutely speechless. I didn’t know what to say. When I won the lottery I was shocked and stunned. I didn’t know what to do. And, let’s see, when I saw my exam results, when I saw that I failed my exams, I couldn’t believe my eyes. All right?

The next one is about being angry.

Being angry. Of course you can say: I was really angry. But you could also say as an extreme emotion, you could say: I was absolutely furious. I was absolutely furious, which means very very angry. A slightly rude expression would be: I was really pissed off. I was really pissed off. And that’s a British English informal expression which is a little bit rude to mean, I was angry. Now in America they would say I was  pissed, just pissed, not pissed off. Now in British English I was pissed means I was drunk. So there is a difference between the British and American English.  In British English we say: I was really pissed off. Pissed off. A little bit rude and a bit informal. If you become angry you could say: I lost my temper. I lost my temper and that means I became angry, okay? And another kind of idiom expression you can use is: I hit the roof. That means I became really angry. I hit the roof. So for example, when my dad heard that I had failed my exams he was absolutely furious. He was so pissed off. He really lost his temper and he hit the roof and was very angry with me.

Now, the next one is about being happy.

Now, of course you can say: I was really really happy, but a more extreme adjective you can use is delighted. I was absolutely delighted. I was absolutely delighted. Probably a good idea to repeat that, right? Practising it by repeating. I was absolutely delighted. An informal British English expression is the word chuffed. Chuffed to bits. I was chuffed to bits. You can read that on the web page if you don’t know how to spell it. I was chuffed to bits. And an idiom you can use when you are really happy would be: I was over the moon. I was over the moon. So for example: When I passed the exam I was absolutely delighted, or if you are a girl you can say: When he asked me to marry him, I was over the moon. And when I got the job I was chuffed to bits.

The next one is about being disappointed.

Being disappointed, okay? So, obviously you can say: I was really disappointed. But you can also use an extreme adjective which is devastated. Devastated. That’s when you are really really disappointed like really badly disappointed. I was absolutely devastated. So for example: When my dog died – I really loved my dog – right, I really loved it. When my dog died I was absolutely devastated. An informal British expression is: Gutted, gutted. I was absolutely gutted which means really really disappointed. So for example, when England lost the football game, I was gutted. I was absolutely devastated. Because obviously football is very important here in the UK, especially in England.

The next one is about being sad

 

So obviously you can say: I was really really sad, but an extreme adjective would ‘heartbroken’, heartbroken. I was absolutely heartbroken. And an expression you can use to describe someone who is sad is down in the dumps. Down in the dumps. Down in the dumps. He was really down in the dumps. That means really sad, so when my girlfriend left me, I was absolutely heartbroken and then for weeks I was really down in the dumps.

So there it is, some useful language for you to express your emotions and opinions when you’re describing your experiences. Of course you should try to use some of those expressions when you are chatting, when you are speaking in English. It will make you sound  like a more advanced speaker. So, you might not be able to remember all of them, but I’ve given you lots of useful expressions there. Try to use some of them. You don’t have to use them all. Just try to use some of them. Look at my web page you will see all of the expressions written, so you can see what the words look like and how to spell them and you can check them in the dictionary as well if you like.

But that’s the end of the language section and it’s also the end of the podcast. And so I am going to end with a final question: I’d like you to tell me – let’s see – okay

Two questions. One question is: Have you seen the movie ‘Twilight’ or have you seen the other movie ‘Let the right one in’ ? And if you have seen them what did you think of them. Also have you read the book Twilight. For it’s a very very popular book. It’s I think, one of the most popular books in the world on  amazon.com at the moment. So if you’ve read that what do you think of the book? Is it better than the movie or worse and the second question is: Tell me about something, tell me about an experience that was very frightening or maybe disappointing or something that made you very happy. Tell me about it. I’ll read it out on the podcast and you can tell the rest of the world about your experience that way. Okay? So I hope you enjoyed that podcast. I hope you found it interesting. Don’t forget to download and listen to more podcasts in  the future and to download and listen to the old ones again. I recommend that you listen to them several times. Listen to them more than once cause it’s a really good way of practising your listening.

If you have any suggestions for me, if you want me to speak about something or if you want me to do something differently just let me know and I will try to do those things.

Okay, so that’s the end of the podcast. See you later.

Bye,bye,bye,bye

Thanks for downloading Luke’s English podcast. Don’t forget to email me at Luketeacher@hotmail.com.

VIDEO
Still want more vampire action? Here’s a really interesting documentary on vampires by Sir Christopher Frayling.

5. Joaquin Phoenix

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An episode all about the mysterious story of Joaquin Phoenix, including an English lesson about modal verbs of deduction in the past and present.

Right click here to download.

Introduction

Joaquin Phoenix is a famous Hollywood A List actor. He appeared in Gladiator and Walk The Line (the Johnny Cash story). Recently he announced that he wants to quit acting to become a rapper. Also, his appearance has become very strange! He looks more like a homeless person than a Hollywood star. His decision has become a Hollywood mystery. Is it real, or is it a joke? No one really knows.

In this episode of the podcast, Luke talks about Joaquin Phoenix with his friend and colleague Howard. You can listen to the conversation – some of the vocabulary is defined below. The language section of the podcast is about making speculations with modal verbs. See below for more information. Also, below you will see some pictures of Joaquin Phoenix, and some YouTube videos – one of him announcing his retirement from acting, and one of him rapping (badly) and then falling off the stage! For more strange Joaquin Phoenix videos, have a look on YouTube. We can’t wait to find out if it is real, or if it is all a big joke. We really hope that it is a joke, because if it isn’t, he could be in real trouble…

Some vocabulary that Luke & Howard used in their conversation + definitions

Howard: “He’s from a famous acting dynasty” – a dynasty means a large and powerful family
Howard: “He looks like a homeless (person), or a tramp or something” – ‘homeless’ and ‘tramp’ both mean someone who doesn’t have a home and has to live on the street. ‘homeless’ is also an adjective
Luke: “He’s making a fly-on-the-wall documentary” – a fly-on-the-wall documentary is a documentary film or programme which is filmed to look like the people in the film are not really aware of the cameras, so they act naturally and it is like the viewer is a ‘fly on the wall’ just watching what is happening. This is not a reality show like Big Brother. It’s a type of documentary.
Luke: “A comedy movie a bit like Borat” – Borat is a satirical comedy about a man called Borat, played by Sacha Baron Cohen
Luke: “The thing about rapping is that you have to have a flow” – a rapper’s ‘flow’ is his rhythmical style of rapping. E.g. Eminem has a fast flow. Joaquin Phoenix’s flow is slow, and elementary.
Howard: “He looks like a twat” – a twat is a slightly rude word which means ‘an idiot’
Luke: “He’s let himself go” – to ‘let yourself go’ means you stop looking after yourself and your appearance goes bad, e.g. you gain wait, your hair grows too long, etc.
Luke: “It sounds like he’s slurring his words” – to ‘slur’ your words means that you don’t pronounce your words properly, like when you are drunk.
Luke: “He’s famous for a method approach to acting” – a method approach is an acting style which involves the actor totally becoming the character he is performing. The actor lives as that character all the time, even at home. Famous method actors are Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. DeNiro famously put on a lot of weight to become Jake LaMotta in the film Raging Bull (an excellent film!)
Howard: “His family are very eccentric” – ‘eccentric’ means slightly crazy, odd, weird, bizarre, strange
Howard: “A lot of craziness” – craziness is the noun from ‘crazy’
Howard: “A lot of weird and wacky things happening” -wacky is another word for crazy, bizarre, weird, odd, etc
Luke: “I’m a bit sceptical” – ‘I’m sceptical’ means ‘I don’t really believe it is true’
Luke: “Someone in the crowd was heckling him” – to heckle someone means to shout criticisms from the crowd. Comedians are often heckled, by hecklers during stand-up comedy routines – e.g. “That’s not funny!!”
Luke: “It’s a piss take” – a ‘piss take’ is a joke. designed to fool everyone, to make fun of everyone.
Howard: “It sounds like he’s on the edge” – on the edge means ‘close to being crazy’ or ‘close to a nervous breakdown’
Luke: “I’m leaning towards ‘it’s all a joke'” – to be leaning towards something means that you are starting to take that opinion. You are favouring that opinion.
Howard: “I think it might be for real” – ‘for real’ means genuine, not fake.
Luke: “Finally, he’s cracked” – he’s ‘cracked’ means he’s ‘lost his mind’

Summary of Language Section – Modal Verbs:

Use might, must, could or can’t to speculate about things.

1. For present or future use modal + infinitive (without to)
e.g. He may have an emotional problem

or modal + be + -ing for the continuous form
e.g. He may be having emotional problems

2. For speculations about the past, use modal + have + past participle
e.g. He may have got tired of Hollywood

3. Use ‘must’ when you’re sure that something is true
e.g. It must be a joke! (or It has to be a joke!)

4. Use ‘may’ ‘might’ or ‘could’ when you’re less sure that something is true.
e.g. He might be serious, but I’m not sure to be honest.

5. Use ‘can’t’ when you’re sure that something isn’t true or didn’t happen.
e.g. He can’t be for real
e.g. He can’t have given up acting.

Episode 3 – Music & The Beatles / Interview with Mum / Language Focus: Used to

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A conversation with my Mum about The Beatles, and a language point about ‘used to’. Full transcript available below.

Right click here to download this episode.

Transcript of Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast episode: Music / The Beatles

You’re listening to Luke’s English Podcast. For more information visit teacherluke.wordpress.com

Hello and welcome to episode 3 of the podcast. Thanks very much for listening and downloading, and possibly subscribing to the show using iTunes, that’s fantastic. In today’s show we’re going to be talking about music and I’m going to talk to my Mum about The Beatles because she was a big Beatles fan in the 1960s. I’m also going to respond to a couple of emails that I’ve had and then in the last part of the podcast, the language part, I’m gonna talk about habits, habits and behavior in the past. So things like ‘use to’ and ‘would’ and some other useful language. So stay tuned for that.

Now, I’ve had an email from Alessandro in Italy in response to the question that I asked at the end of the last podcast. That question was: What kind of music is popular in your country at the moment? Is it kind of English language music or do you have music that is just exclusive to your country? And Alessandro from Italy says that, he still thinks that ‘Opera’ is the most famous Italian music, of course. Everyone knows Opera, erm, people like Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli of course that’s the most famous Italian music, but also in Italy, Rock music is very popular and they have all English language bands, the ones we have, obviously have here as well. Things like, you know, U2, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay. All these really big bands are popular in Italy as well. But also there are lots of Italian Rock bands. They’re really popular there but (they) aren’t very well known outside of Italy and I think this is probably true in most countries, erm, I know it’s true in Japan, that there are big very successful bands, they’re just famous in that country and because the lyrics are not in English, they’re not famous in America or in the UK. So it’s probably, hmm, a bit lazy, in terms, sort of British people. We don’t listen to very much music that isn’t in English. We’re probably missing out on quite a lot of good music. So thanks very much for your emails. I appreciate that very much and remember, if you want to email me, you can. It’s luketeacher@hotmail.com and I love hearing from you. So send me your emails and all your comments and stuff and I’ll get back to you through the podcast.

Ask the girl what she wanted to be
She said baby, can’t you see
I wanna be famous, a star of the screen
But you can do something in between
Baby you can drive my car
Yes, I’m gonna be a star
Baby you can drive my car
And maybe I’ll love you

A little bit of Beatles there. That was ‘Drive my car’ from the ‘Rubber Soul album’ and I’m playing that because the Beatles and Apple Corps which is their company and EMI music have finally decided to re-release all of the Beatles studio albums in remastered form. So they’re all going be digitally remastered and so that means you’ll be able to listen to them and hear them sounding better than they’ve ever sounded before. Some of the albums that they released, particularly the early ones were recorded in mono, and there are CD versions of those albums in mono but now they’re going to be digitally remastered, so that they’ll sound really crystal clear and perfect and they’ll be all in stereo which obviously makes the listening experience a lot better. Now, right, so with me here now, is my Mum.

LUKE: Hello Mum

Mum: Hello Luke

LUKE: How are you?

Mum: I’m very well.Thank you.

LUKE: Now, umm, I thought that I’d talk to my Mum today because she used to be, back in the sixties, a massive Beatles fan. Is that right?

Mum: That’s right, yes.

LUKE: Okay, so, umm, right, so I hope you don’t mind if I ask you some questions.

Mum: No, that’s okay.

LUKE: Umm, so how did you first hear about the Beatles then when you were younger

Mum: Umm, oh, it’s very hard to remember but I can, I have, do have one memory of being on the school bus and hearing two other girls talking about this group

LUKE: yeah

Mum: called the Beatles and looking at pictures of them and saying ‘ which is your favorite?’ and I think maybe that was the first time I heard of them but I, I really can’t remember the first, the actual first time.

LUKE: Yeah, now they, they were a really massively popular band, weren’t they?

Mum: They were

LUKE: I mean, everyone was crazy about them. Umm, so, you obviously heard about them from some friends and then started

Mum: And then started to talk about them and look at pictures of them, listen to the music and I didn’t actually buy any records of theirs until the 2nd LP which was called ‘With the Beatles’ which my parents bought me because I didn’t really have much money of my own in those days.

LUKE: That’s nice of them. How old were you in those days, tell me?

Mum: Umm, I would have been about twelve or thirteen, I suppose.

LUKE: Twelve or thirteen, so you would have been the target audience really

Mum: Hum, I suppose so, yes.

LUKE: So why did you like them? Well, they were so popular but why, why did you like them?

Mum: Oh, it’s very hard to explain why. Umm, they were, they were just so unusual, just so different, all the Pop music we’ve had up ’til then seemed to be mainly from America. I mean there were one or two the English people like Cliff Richard and Adam Faith. Umm, but they were just so different. I mean the first time I ever saw a group, you know with three guitars and drums. Before it was just a singer.

LUKE: They had something else about them, didn’t they?

Mum: Oh yes!

LUKE: They had a kind of personality

Mum: Yep !

LUKE: They had a good sense of humor, they were sort of charismatic

Mum: They were from Liverpool, which, and so they had these wonderful Liverpool accents which, um, of course I didn’t really know about in those days. I had never heard about another Liverpudlian I think.

LUKE: Yep

Mum: And they were very witty and very funny and very quick and just wonderful really.

LUKE: Right, so, did you actually ever see them?

Mum: I did, I saw them twice. I think the first time I saw them was in 1963 I think in Wolverhampton and then I saw them again in Birmingham the following year.

LUKE: So they were probably playing in a theatre or something like that, right? Umm, I can’t remember were they were in Wolverhampton. It was probably a Cinema or a Theater or somewhere like that and in Birmingham there were the Odeon in New Street which again was a Cinema but it had a stage and so it could be used for concerts as well.

LUKE: So, what was the experience like? I mean, what was it like actually seeing them, what was the audience like, first of all?

Mum: The audience was completely hysterical. We were all screaming and shouting and it was, I remember, the compere the shows sort of, that’s the man who did, who introduced the acts. When it got to the Beatles because they were the last on the bill and he sort of start the audience up even more by saying ‘Do you want to see them, do you want to see them?’

LUKE: And everyone was like ‘Yeah,

Mum: Everybody was shouting and screaming and the curtain came up and we could see their feet, and then we could see their legs and then you could see them and then the music started and that was all extremely exciting.

LUKE: There’s lots of video footage of The Beatles concerts where they’re playing and you can’t really hear the band. You can just hear all this ridiculous screaming .

Mum: Yes, that’s what is was like. I don’t really think we could hear them properly at all.

LUKE: So, it was just total madness, really.

Mum: Yeah, absolutely.

LUKE: Yah, Yah, I expect probably at the time because it was the early 1960s, young people didn’t really have anything, you know, interesting like The Beatles. They just, I mean, I think, I might be wrong but I think that life was kind of boring, right?

Mum: Umm, no, I never thought it was boring. It’s just the way it was in those days but it was very different from the way it is today. There wasn’t

LUKE: Now, now teenagers have just got so much, so many, you know so much music, so many, hmm, movies and all kind of things there to entertaining them.

Mum: And it’s so much more accessible than it was in my day. You had to actually go to the cinema or buy a record.

LUKE: Yeeah, Yeah

Mum: There was no downloading stuff from the internet or watching DVDs or anything like that.

LUKE: Right, so erm, which Beatle was your favorite because everyone had a favorite Beatle, didn’t they?

Mum: My favorite Beatle was, it was a toss-up between John and Ringo.

LUKE: Yeah, okay

Mum: I think, mainly my favourite was John, because he was so outrageous.

LUKE: Yeah, he was controversial, wasn’t he?

Mum: He was

LUKE: Yah, okay, so just the fact that he was controversial and outrageous, that, that

Mum: That was mainly it, yes he was very witty and very funny.

LUKE: Yah, he was, wasn’t he? Yeah, and what about now? Is John still your favorite now?

Mum: Ha ha,umm, oh it’s hard. I can’t really think of it in those terms anymore really, because I, I just, I’m very fond of George now.

LUKE: Yah

Mum: I appreciate him more now than I did then, I think.

LUKE: Yah, okay. So do you still listen to The Beatles these days?

Mum: Not very much, no,hmm

LUKE: Why not?

Mum: I find it quite strange listening to them now.

LUKE: Hmm

Mum: It just, it’s, hum, I don’t know, it’s very hard to explain. It just reminds me of those days and I don’t really want to go back and think about those days anymore. I’d rather live here and now.

LUKE: Yeah, alright, okay, thanks very much for talking to me.

Mum: It’s a pleasure.

LUKE: Yeah, hmm, alright, well, that’s, that’s it then. Oh, I think I might buy a couple of these new CDs when they come out.

Mum: Okay, right

LUKE: Because you knoz I’m a big fan.

Mum: Yes, well, I might listen to them if you buy them.

LUKE: Yeah, you’ll probably enjoy them.

Mum: Hmm

LUKE: Okay, well

Mum: Okay

LUKE: Thanks very much

Mum: Okay

Okay, so now it’s time to do the language part of the podcast. This is where I teach you something and in the last episode you heard my Dad talking about his Easter experiences when he was a child. And so he was talking about things that he usually did, things that he did regularly or every year when he was a kid. So we’re going to look at some language that he used and that you can use to talk about regular habits in the past. Now there are some really common ways of doing this. The most common way is to use ‘used to’.You’ve probably studied that, you, you probably know about ‘used to’. Erm, so it’s erm, u-s-e-d t-o, used to. So for example, hum, something my Dad said was ‘ we used to paint our easter eggs different colors, okay? Hmm, another example for me would be ‘I used to live in Japan’, right? Or I used to smoke. I don’t smoke anymore, because it’s very bad for your health, right? I used to smoke but then I gave up.
So this is something really useful. Now, you may know about ‘used to’ and you may have studied it but do you actually use it? Now the most, this is very important, you might know about different kinds of grammar. You might have studied different bits of vocabulary but the difference between a learner of English and a native speaker is that a native speaker uses all of this stuff. They actually use it regularly when they speak. They use a variety of different grammar and a variety of vocabulary, okay? And ‘used to’ is something that people use all the time when they are talking about the past, when they’re talking about things they did regularly in the past, okay? So you should use ‘used to’ a lot. You might think that this isn’t a new language for you but the most important thing is that you’re actually using it okay? Umm, something I always tell people is, it’s not important what you know, it’s important what you do in English. So the important thing here is that you actually use something like ‘used to’, okay. Hum, just some other important points about ‘used to’ , pronunciation. So obviously it should be ‘I ‘used to’, so that’s ‘used to’ not used to, and not ‘used to’ or ‘used to’ (listen to the audio to hear the pronunciation Luke is de,onstrating here). Hmm, I sometimes hear people saying ‘used to’ or ‘used to’ but it’s not that , it’s ‘used to’, ‘used to’. Also in negative or in question forms it doesn’t have a ‘d’, so that’s when you write, ‘used to’ in a negative it doesn’t have a ‘d’ . So I didn’t use to smoke. Right? So it’s without a ‘d’. So it’s didn’t u-s-e t-o, right? And it’s the same in questions,right? Did you use to, for example.

Umm, now ‘used to’ is commonly confused with, erm, another, erm, very similar structure and that is ‘to be used to doing something’. For example, I am used to living in London. Okay? So you’ve got ‘used to’, which is ‘I used’ to live in London and ‘be used to doing something’. I am used to doing something. I am used to living in London. So those forms are completely different.

Right? So, hum, I’ve told you about ‘used to’ to talk about past habits, now let me tell you about ‘to be used to doing something’ or ‘I am used to doing something’. Right? Which is totally different from just ‘used to’ okay. So, hum, okay let’s see, so if you say ‘I am used to doing something’ or ‘I got used to doing something’ it means that before something was difficult or strange for you but now it’s okay. Now you’re okay with it. You got accustomed to it. Okay? So for example something that you might say, you might say ‘when I first moved to London I thought it was very difficult to live here but now I’m used to living here. Okay, now I’m used to living here. So, it could be ‘now, I understand the culture a bit more, I can speak better English, I remember that people drive on the left, so I’m used to living here now. So that is totally different from ‘I used to’ live in London, which means that I lived in London in the past but I don’t live in London now. Okay? Right.

So another way of talking about a past habit which is similar to ‘used to’, is the modal verb ‘would’. Now ‘would’ is usually, when it is used to talk about a past habit we use ‘would’ but in the contracted form. Okay? So for example you may have heard my Dad in the last episode say something like this:’ We’d roll our easter eggs down a hill and then we’d eat them at the bottom’ Okay? So, um, this use of ‘would’ in the contracted form, for example ‘we’d eat them at the bottom or ‘ we’d buy each other chocolate eggs every christmas, not christmas, what am I talking about? Not Chrismas! Sorry! We ‘d buy each other chocolate eggs every easter. Right? Um, this use of ‘would’ is very similar to ‘used to’. We use it to talk about things we did regularly in the past. Okay? For example for me, when I lived in Japan, I’d see businessmen asleep on the underground everyday, okay? I’d see businessmen asleep on the underground everyday. Or I’d sometimes get woken up by noisy motor bike gangs in the middle of the night. Right? I’d sometimes get woken up by noisy motorbike gangs in the middle of the night. That’s true actually. I used to get woken up all the time by motorbike gangs because I lived in, I lived near Yokohama and sometimes in the summer there was these big motorcycle gangs, they would ride around, hum, in the city in the middle of the night and that was so loud, so for example, you know, I used to wake up to the noise of these motorbikes and I’d get up and I’d go out onto my balcony and I’d look down on the street and I’d see all these motorbikes riding past. It’s quite frightening because they were quite scary because some of them had samurai swords on their backs which is quite scary.

Anyway, anyway, I was talking about ‘would’ so for example’ I’d sometimes get woken up by noisy motor bike gangs’. Okay? So try to use ‘would’ like that in the contracted form to talk about regular things that happened in the past. Now, it’s very similar to ‘used to’ but it is different. The only difference with ‘used to’ is that we don’t use, we don’t use ‘would’ like this with state verbs, okay? Now, you’ve got state verbs and you got action verbs. Action verbs are the most common ones. Action verbs all describe an action. Right? For example, something that you do rather than a kind of state or condition that you’re in. So an action verb might be to go, to play, to eat, something like that, okay.

Right so we don’t use, okay that’s action verbs. play, go eat an so on. Now, state verbs are not used to describe an action but they describe a situation or a state or a condition. Right? These include verbs like live, know, like, understand, hate, okay? Now, we can’t, we don’t use would in the contracted form to talk about past habits with state verbs. Okay?
So for example, you can say ‘I used to live in London. Right? ‘Live’ is a state verb. You can say I used to live in London but you can’t say ‘I’d live in London’ if you’re talking about the past. Okay? That’s because ‘live’ is a state verb. So you can say ‘when I lived in London, I’d take the underground to school everyday and I’d often go to the pub after school on a friday. So you can say that because ‘take’ is an action verb and ‘go’ is an action verb. Alright?

So, remember that, you can only use, ‘would’ contracted for past habits with action verbs and not state verbs. If you’re interested in, action verbs and state verbs and what the difference is, it’s really simple. Just go to Google. Right? Go to the Google search engine and type ‘state verbs’. Have a look at the results and you’ll see lots of grammar pages from, you know, Oxford, um, University or something like that and they’ll show you lists of state verbs and action verbs and the differences between the two. Okay? Umm, that’s it. That’s, that’s the end of the language section.

Um, so, erm, yeah, I hope you found that useful. Don’t forget you can email me questions. If there is something you don’t understand or there is another question you have about language, email me. The email address is : luketeacher@hotmail.com and I will answer questions that you, that you sent me in the podcast. Now, I might not be able to answer every question that is sent to me because I, I get quite a few questions. So if, if I don’t answer the question, you’ve sent me, I’m sorry. I’ll try to answer all the questions that I get sent but sometimes I can’t answer them all. Umm, okay, so that’s, that’s the end of the podcast.
Now, I’m gonna end with a final question and the question this time, umm, is about skateboarding. Now, it’s about skateboarding because erm, I was talking to my brother recently and he loves skateboarding, right. He’s, he’s a, he’s a skater, he skates a lot. Now, I was talking to him about it recently and I was thinking that I might interview him for the podcast in the future. So I might have an interview with, with my brother James about skateboarding but I’d like to ask you a question about skateboarding. What do you think, is skateboarding popular in your country? Right? And do you think skateboarding is vandalism or is it okay? Now what does vandalism mean? Vandalism is when people damage public property. Okay? So what skateboarders do, is, is, they use public property, umm, for their skateboarding. So they do things like, eh, they will ride on, hmm, on like a bench or they will ride on a handrail for their skating and it damages the bench and it damages the handrail and a lot of people in this country think that skateboarding is vandalism, that it damages public property but a lot of people think it’s kind of like an art form or a sport or something. So what do you think? Do you think skateboarding is vandalism or do you think it’s okay? So that’s the question.

Umm, that’s the end of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and don’t forget to email me luketeacher@hotmail.com and I’m looking forward to hearing from you. So, that’s it! Cheers, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye……..
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
(Thanks to Bettina for providing this transcript – Thanks Bettina, I appreciate it very much and I’m sure the listeners do too)

2. Easter / Interview with my Dad / Language Focus: Adverbials

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A conversation with my Dad about Easter, and a language point about adverbials. Full transcript available below.

Right click here to download this episode.

Small Donate Button This is the transcript to “EPISODE 2 – EASTER”
Hello, and welcome to Luke’s English podcast, the real British English podcast. This is episode two of the podcast and I’m very pleased because I’ve already had a couple of emails from a couple of people who’ve listened to the podcast, and one of those emails comes from Jose Manuel in Alicante in Spain and he asks me about Easter because it’s Easter at the moment. He asks me what we do normally in the UK at Easter and, well it’s funny you should ask that Jose (Jose, I’m sure that’s how you say it) because right now I’m at my parents’ place. I’ve travelled up on the train from London and I’m at my parents house which is in the countryside in Warwickshire and this is a typical thing that people of my age do, they normally travel back to their parents’ houses and they spend time with their families together and actually in this episode I’m going to be joined by my dad so I’m going to interview my dad about Easter, so he’ll tell you some typical things about Easter time in the UK and so that’s going to be our feature in part two and then at the end of the podcast I’m going to talk about some adverbs, some useful adverbs in response to another email that we got and so that’s what’s going to happen in today’s podcast.

Luke: OK, so I’m now joined by my dad, Rick, but obviously I call him Dad, I don’t call him Rick. Hi Dad,
Rick: Hello Luke
Luke: How are you?
Rick: I’m fine, thank you very much
Luke: Good, so, obviously I’m here at my parents’ house because it’s Easter, at your house. This is what I normally do, isn’t it?
Rick: Yes, it is, it’s a time to get together with the family
Luke: Right, ok so, so Easter then. Now Easter is a season when we remember the death and rebirth of Jesus Christ by telling our children that a large rabbit comes in the night and leaves chocolate eggs in the garden, now I don’t know about you but that seems a bit strange to me I don’t know what the connection is between the Jesus thing and a big rabbit and chocolate and eggs and things, what do you think about that?
Rick: Well this idea of the Easter rabbit coming and bringing eggs is a bit of an American idea really and I think that it’s a very interesting mixture between Christianity and old pagan beliefs, I mean, obviously the Christian celebration of Easter is, as you say, about the crucifixion and, after three days, the resurrection of Christ, so it’s a crucial celebration and stands alongside Christmas, the birth of Christ and then the death of Christ, the two big Christian festivals.
Luke: That’s the Christian thing, you said something about Pagan, what does that mean?
Rick: Well of course you know experts will tell you that 2,000 years ago when Christianity started to spread across Europe it did, if you like, take over the Pagan festivals that already existed
Luke: So Pagan is the kind of religion that people had …
Rick: it’s pre-Christian …
Luke: … before christianity,
Rick: Yes and it’s got a lot to do with various gods and superstition and of course pagan times there was a big winter festival and there was a big spring festival and the spring festival was of course the festival of fertility and growth and new growth …
Luke: …and new life
Rick: … of new life and of course if you lived in a society where it was very important that the crops didn’t fail this was a time when you wanted to have all the good luck you could get, to have the gods on your side to make sure that the crops had a very successful season …
Luke: OK, so before Christianity then, Easter was a festival, a pagan festival when people celebrated the start of new life and spring time and good luck for your, you know, farming for that year, right?
Rick: yes
Luke: now I understand the egg connection because an egg is the symbol of new life right? But why … now actually one of my students asked me this last week, why do we have chocolate eggs, why chocolate?
Rick: Well I must admit I’m not entirely sure, but my guess is that people have given each other eggs at Easter time, or if you like, at spring time as a gift because it is, as you say, the time when all the birds are laying their eggs
Luke: right, chickens and stuff
Rick: well chickens but all the wild birds are nesting and making nests and laying eggs and remember that in the old days people used to use the natural resources very very much, the berries and the eggs were a resource …
Luke: so they …
Rick … and they would go out into the countryside and gather the eggs and eat them …
Luke: right, so they used …
Rick … so the egg season came in and people would no doubt give each other eggs and presents and then when we discovered the joys of chocolate I suppose it was a natural thing to give people chocolate eggs instead
Luke: just a sort of gift …
Rick: … a gift which symbolises new life
Luke: so its nicer really to give someone a chocolate egg than just an egg because just an egg, I mean, it’s alright, you can boil it or fry it or something but it’s nicer as a gift to give someone a chocolate egg I suppose
Rick: yes I suppose
Luke: right so let’s see, what do English families usually do then at Easter in the UK? oh um yea, what do English families normally do at Easter?
Rick: well it is a traditional time for the family to get together and it’s a long weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and those four days is when most families, you know, get together and these days they get in the car and they drive to the parents or the grandparents and it is very much a family get together and they give each other chocolate eggs in most households.
Luke: When I was a kid I remember what you and mum used to do is at Easter you used to hide eggs, you used to hide chocolate eggs around the house or around the garden and me and James, (James and I) would go and try and find the eggs, so that was always fun.
What did you do when you were a child?
Rick: Well I remember I used to go to my grandparents’ house. They lived up in the north of England in the countryside, and they had real boiled eggs, hard boiled eggs which were boiled in water that had been coloured with something so you were given a pink egg or a blue egg or a green egg and we would roll them, this was really quite a well established tradition that you roll the eggs down some kind of bank, down a hill, you roll the eggs down a hill, why I’m not sure but that’s what people did, they used to roll the eggs down the hill and run after them as a kind of game
Luke: so you’d walk up a little hill with your blue or pink eggs and then you would sort of roll them down the hill and then run after them and have a lot of fun running after some blue and pink …
Rick: … that’s right and if your egg broke it didn’t matter because it was hard boiled it was cooked and then you would eat the egg at the bottom of the hill, that’s what you did, you rolled the egg down the hill and you chased after it and you caught it and you ate it.
Luke: Right, well that sounds like lots of fun I suppose these days if … I think probably children are so lazy now that if you hid some chocolate eggs in the house they would probably, you know, be too lazy to get up and try and find them, you’d probably have to leave ipods or something around the garden, because if you left an ipod in the garden then a child would probably get up from in front of the TV and try and find it. I think kids these days are too lazy to do anything really unless there’s an ipod involved.
Rick: I don’t really agree with you Luke and I know you’re really just teasing, but the point is of course is that it’s fun and kids do like to search for things, to hunt for things whether it be a little chocolate egg or indeed a little chocolate rabbit and sometimes you hide little chocolate rabbits around the house and ask the children to find them and they love it.
Luke: I hit a rabbit the other day in the car when I was driving.
Rick: Really?
Luke: There’s lots of rabbits around here, you know I was I – um my parents live in the countryside, listeners – and there’s lots and lots of rabbits especially at this time of year and I was driving the car to the station to pick up my brother James, and a rabbit ran out in front of the car and I didn’t hit the rabbit with the wheels so I didn’t squash it but the rabbit went under the car and I heard a kind of noise …
Rick: … clonk …
Luke: … a kind of dum noise as the rabbit, probably the rabbit hit his head on something under the car. I looked in the mirror and there was just a dead rabbit
Rick: what a horrible thought! Mind you you do see an awful lot of dead rabbits on the roads these days there are thousands of them and they do have a terrible habit, a rabbit habit of running out in front of your car …
Luke: they’re stupid aren’t they?
Rick: … they wait until you’re coming and then they run out
Luke: They’re just stupid really aren’t they. Anyway there are so many of them that it doesn’t matter
Rick: Well it’s a pity for that particular rabbit but there’s nothing much you can do about it when it hurls itself in front of your car
Luke: Well there’s plenty of food for the birds
Rick: That’s quite right lots of birds eat the dead rabbits – the crows, the magpies and the buzzards, they live on the rabbits which are killed on the roads.
Luke: Well, thanks very much Dad for, you know, for agreeing to talk to me, yea, it was very nice, thank you
Rick: ok and I hope you have a very happy Easter Luke
Luke: Yes, happy Easter to you too
Rick: Thank you.

Ok so that was my dad, um a very nice man, very well educated, he knows a lot of things about history and all sorts of things so I’m very lucky to be able to interview him.
Now like I said at the beginning of the show, I had another email about an English question, now I got an email from Miho in Yokohama in Japan and she asked me what ‘basically’ means, because she heard me in the first podcast using the word ‘basically’ a lot and she’s right I do say ‘basically’ quite a lot, it’s a very common word, particularly for me. Lots of people use the word ‘basically’. Now the word ‘basically’ is an adverb and adverbs are great words, very useful words that you can use at the beginning of a sentence. Now a word like ‘basically’ doesn’t really mean very much but people use it almost like a habit. Really, ‘basically’ is used to say … before you say something you use the word ‘basically’ to show that you are going to say something in a simple or basic way, OK? So for example if I use the word ‘basically’ you put it at the beginning of the sentence and you’d say something like this: “basically, this is a podcast to give learners of English some listening practice” OK?
Now there are lots of other adverbs that you can use in a similar way at the beginning of a sentence and you’ll probably know adverbs because most of them end in ly, now we get lots of different kinds of adverbs in different positions in the sentence but the adverbs I’m going to teach you now are ones you can use at the start of a sentence. So we’ve got adverbs like basically, actually, obviously, strangely enough, frankly speaking, recently, unfortunately, amazingly and hopefully. Ok so I’m just going to give you some examples of that now, so we’ll start with ‘actually’:
“Actually this is only the second podcast I have ever done” ok? So there’s an example. Now if you speak Spanish and some other European languages, ‘actually’ in your language means ‘currently’, meaning ‘now’ so actually doesn’t mean ‘now’i t just means ‘as a matter of fact’, right? So, “actually this is only the second podcast I have ever done”.
The third one is ‘obviously’. Now we use “obviously” to say something that is obvious, so say something that everybody knows. Now, football players use ‘obviously’ a lot when they are doing interviews now, just as an example you might say “obviously we were the best team in the competition” right? Now you would say ‘obviously’ because your team won so of course your team was the best one. “Obviously my team was the best team in the competition” for example.
The next one is ‘strangely enough’, now that’s used to say something that is strange. OK, so for example, “strangely enough I don’t really like fish and chips, even though I’m English” right? So that’s strange because most English people like fish and chips, so “strangely enough I don’t really like fish and chips even though I’m English”.
The next one is ‘frankly speaking’, now this is something you would say that’s rather honest, OK, so for example, “frankly speaking it was the worst film I’ve seen in a long long time” so if you are being very honest about something you can say ‘frankly speaking’, “Frankly speaking it was the worst film I’ve ever seen”.
The next one is ‘recently’. Now you probably know ‘recently’, we use it to say something that happened in near or close time. Right? So for example “recently I’ve been listening to lots of Rolling Stones records”. Ok? “Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Rolling Stones records”.
The next one is ‘unfortunately’, and we use that one to talk about something bad that’s happened, OK? something that you regret, OK? So for example, “unfortunately, I had to leave before the end of the lesson” OK ? “unfortunately I had to leave before the end of the lesson”. So that would be a bad thing because, obviously you want to be in the classroom for the whole lesson, but “unfortunately I had to leave before the end of the lesson and I missed the most important part”, for example.
And finally, the next one I’d like to teach you is ‘amazingly enough’. We use that one to describe something amazing for example “Amazingly enough, I’ve never been to Edinburgh” “Amazingly enough I’ve never seen a musical” and “amazingly enough I’ve never been to Harrods”. Now that’s amazing because I live in London and I’ve never been to Harrods, right? So “amazingly enough I’ve never been to Harrods”, OK?
Oh there’s one more, and that’s ‘hopefully’. Now if you hope for something then you can use ‘hopefully’, for example “hopefully this podcast isn’t boring” right? Ok?
Right, so that’s the end of part three and that’s the end of this podcast. Don’t forget to email me. I’d like to end with a question again now, and the question this time is: what kind of music is popular in your country at the moment? so what are people interested in at the moment in terms of music in your country? So, for example is it mainly English language music so music from American or Britain, or is music from your country more popular than English Language music? So, don’t forget to email me, that’s: luketeacher@hotmail.com and I look forward to hearing from you very soon. That’s the end of the podcast, bye bye bye bye bye…..