Category Archives: Idioms

146. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 2)

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The continuation of this two part episode about being an English language teacher, and some of the difficult experiences that involves.

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A transcript/notes are available for this episode below.

3. The Whiteboard
-The smelly Victorian women’s hospital
-Great views
-Felt like the place was falling apart
-Old stained carpets, mould on the walls
-It stinks! – he was right
-It was never bright. I worked there for one year, including two sweaty summers and one long cold winter. Sometimes the lights would flicker and just die, leaving us in murky darkness. It’s never a good start when the students in the class can’t really see the teacher, each other or the board.
-Some of the students lived in the building and they hated it. Lots of things seemed to go wrong for me in that place. I remember once telling my students some ghost stories about London, and about that building in particular. I thought it was just a bit of light relief, a nice break from doing IELTS practice tests. The next day I saw one of the girls from that class in the corridor, in tears. Her friends told me that she was so freaked out by my ghost stories that she couldn’t live in the building any more. On Friday I saw her hurrying away from the place with a large suitcase. My fault.
-One day I was teaching and the whiteboard fell off the wall. I was teaching something at the board, writing, and the whole thing just dropped off the wall and the corner hit the floor very loudly and made a dent in the floor.
-It made a very loud noise and the students jumped, except for one sleepy Japanese guy who wouldn’t have jumped if I’d stuck 20,000volts through him, and sometimes I was tempted but the others kind of jumped a lot. I just propped the board on the wall, and carried on. I couldn’t really complain a lot about it, although I was understandably pretty angry and surprised. I couldn’t complain about it though because complaining about it would have been unprofessional, so I just propped it up against the wall and we kept going. The next day, we came back to class and the whiteboard was just gone, leaving an empty space on the wall, where the wall paint was all fresh and still glossy from when it had been applied all those years ago.

I’d planned some white board work, and I had my pens, so I just wrote on the wall where the board had been. I was pretty pissed off that I had no whiteboard so I just thought “what the hell” and wrote directly onto the wall. The students found it pretty funny, and it gave a kind of ridiculous edge to proceedings, which I find often helps somehow. The thing is, the wall was much better as a whiteboard than the old scratched whiteboard had been. The old one wasn’t even a whiteboard any more. It was so dirty and scratched. It was a grey board. So for about 3 days I happily wrote on the wall. The writing rubbed off nicely because it was a glossy surface. In the end the grey board appeared back again and it was business as usual.

It was a pretty cool class in the end, although I had to compensate for the crappy resources. The CD player always skipped, the lights flickered, the tables and chairs rocked. The students had to sit in these chairs which had little mini tables on the side. The tables were tiny though, and so people’s books and notes would fall on the floor ALL THE TIME. These things don’t help, and they can really screw you up if you’re not prepared for it. These are all standard problems which we should always be ready for!

What I learned:
Use mishaps in your classes to your advantage. They can become funny moments. Ultimately, your aim is to continue teaching, and not stand around complaining about facilities while the students do nothing. Stay professional at all times. That doesn’t mean formal and strict, but keeping in mind that you mustn’t waste any of the students’ precious time. The lesson must go on. Also, never assume that the facilities will be right. Be prepared for facilities not to work or not to be available. Learn to teach without relying on too many other things.

4. Teaching in a cupboard
-The school was full
-I had a smallish class
-My manager said, you’ll have to teach in ‘the computer room’
-This was not as cool as you’d expect
-It was basically a broom cupboard
-To exacerbate things, there was a kind of bar/counter going around the room with computers on it. This greatly reduced the space in the room. All our chairs were right against the bar.
-We’d all sit there with our knees banging together. It was definitely INTENSIVE general English. None of us could move.
-The whiteboard was behind me, leaning against the back of the door. I had to write with my arm all twisted up over my shoulder.
-Whenever anyone wanted to come in they’d open the door and the whiteboard would hit me on the back of the head. This happened a lot because as I said, this was the computer room so people were constantly trying to get in to check their emails (this is before smartphones) even though there was a note on the door – in my experience, in language schools people just completely ignore notes. Notes or notices are invisible in language schools. As are the “engaged” signs on toilets. In every language school I’ve worked, people have ignored the red “engaged” sign on a toilet door. Why is it that learners of English have to check that the toilet is occupied by trying to open the door? Like, if the sign is red, why would you try to open the door? You’re just going to walk into someone with their trousers down. If the sign is red, don’t try to open the door!
-Whenever students were late in that class they had to climb over the other students in order to get a seat. It was very awkward and weird.

What I learned:
To be honest, I’m not sure what I learned from this experience!

5. Teaching kids in Japan
-This was pretty early in my career. I was in Japan, teaching mainly adults but the school wanted me to teach kids too. I thought it might be another string to my bow so I agreed to take the training.
-During the training I was very sleepy and couldn’t concentrate. As a result, I learned nothing.
-I’ve already talked about the tight schedule of teaching. I often had just 10 minutes to finish teaching one class, complete notes and get down two floors to begin the kids class.
-The general scene was that there was a small room with a glass door so the parents could observe everything going on in the class. The parents, who were all housewives basically, would bring the kids and then watch the lesson through the window.
-3-6 year olds in one class
-Difficult to get them into the room
-Either crying or going mental
-They’d crawl all over me
-They covered me in crayon once
-Just my presence seemed to drive them into a frenzy
-They were different with the other teacher
-I had to conclude that I just had a mad energy that they could sense, and which drove them crazy
-They’d be tearing posters off the walls, climbing up onto the counter and throwing things everywhere
-I caught one kid just spitting on the wall
-They would open the cupboard and start chucking stuff out of the window.
-All the time at least one of them would be stuck to me
-One kid, a sweet kid called Dan, just could not hear me. He would be off, in his own world and I would call him back, like “DAN” etc. The other kids would join in and we’d all be going “DAN DAN DAN”. He learned that in English his name was DAN. So, I’d say, “what’s your name?” and he’d say “my name is DAN!”. Apparently, the family went on holiday once and a foreigner (probably an American) said to him, “hello there, what’s your name?” and he said “My name is DAN!” – The parents were over the moon!
-I learned to distract them with cards – it became all about card games, and races and repetition. Sometimes I would be quite impressed and in all the madness I’d catch them engaging in small bits of English. For example, “it’s mine” – which they would often pronounce as “itchi mai”, or just the colours or other words.
-One day we were joined by another kid called Ritomo. I genuinely think he had behavioural issues. He was incredible hyper and aggressive. I’d manage to get them sitting in a circle quite peacefully, but Ritomo was like a time bomb. I could see him building up, until he would explode and start reaching across, grabbing at the faces of other kids, kicking the other kids and eventually just running around the room like the Tasmanian devil. Once, he grabbed all the cards I was using and legged it out of the classroom into the stairwell, and just chucked all the cards down the stairwell.
-After contending with all this I would usually be boiling hot and very uncomfortable, sometimes covered in crayon or even worse – child saliva on my shirt. I’d then have to run upstairs and straight into a lesson with some salarymen, and I’d have to sit there sweating and wiping off the saliva from my shirt while teaching these serious guys.
-Ultimately, it was very touching teaching these kids. I didn’t realise how they’d become attached to me. When they understood that I was leaving Japan, there were tears. One kid, a 4 year old called Ryo came to school but he wouldn’t come into class because he was too upset about me leaving. He really wanted to say goodbye to me, but he couldn’t do it. Instead he just hid under a chair, crying. One of the other kids wouldn’t let me go, and grabbed onto my leg. They were adorable, but only when it was time for me to leave!

6. Hubris
-This is probably the class that I remember being the most difficult. There have been others but this one stuck in my mind. I wonder if anyone listening to this was even in that class. For me it was not nice, but I don’t know how it was for them in the end. Sometimes you just don’t know what your students are thinking. I’ve had classes in which I was convinced everything was awful and it turned out they were all happy, and the other way round. I’ve been rudely awakened by some comment that a student doesn’t like her classmates even though she happily interacts with them all day long. You never know sometimes. But in this class I knew pretty quickly that it was going to be difficult. As a teacher you start to learn to read certain signs about a class. Some things let you know that it’s going to be one of those classes. I mentioned things above. A lot of those things happened in this class.

-Basically, it’s a story of ‘hubris’ – which means when you have an arrogantly enlarged sense of self-confidence which causes you to believe you can’t fail, but then you do. It comes from ancient Greek mythology. I did one difficult course and did it well, and because of that I assumed I would be great in the next course, but I was wrong, and it was a total nightmare. Perhaps it was not all due to me, in fact I’m sure it wasn’t as I’m about to explain, but still, I look back on it as a difficult experience which I now wish I’d done differently, but from which I’ve learned a lot.

So, what happened? I hear you ask.
It was two weeks before Christmas in the middle of a cold, dark London winter. I’d just finished teaching a one week class of executive business people. This was a very important class, and I had been stressed before that, but stressed in a good way because I prepared myself fully for the lessons by checking the backgrounds of the students I had, looking at their needs and preferences for learning English, checking their professions carefully and then selecting a 30 hour course which covered all the things they needed. I spent lots of time preparing and photocopying material and generally psyching myself up. I dressed nicely and all that. One guy in particular on the course was a VIP who worked as a top-level director for a German car manufacturer. He was a really important client, this imposing German guy. So, I worked very hard on the course with very little preparation time, we worked in class for 6 hours a day. I listened, helped, recommended, prepared specialist vocabulary, facilitated, set up role plays, dealt with grammar, pronunciation, feedback, I went the extra mile, I bent over backwards and I delivered a very good course in the end. It helped that the participants were hard-working professionals themselves, who were able to concentrate and see the benefit of what we were doing, but I felt pretty pleased with myself, especially after the stress I’d felt at the start of the week. The group gave me very good feedback, and the VIP even told my boss that he thought I was the best teacher he’d ever had. Wow, I felt great. I’m a fantastic teacher, I thought.

At 5.30PM that Friday my boss told me about the course I’d be teaching starting Monday, after the weekend. It was a group of about 10 young professionals, here to study business English before finishing their degrees, or finding a post-graduate job. They were all in their early 20s with little business experience. I thought “no problem, I’m the best teacher in the world, I’ll just do my thing. I’ll be like some business English guru for them. After the tough week I’ve just had, this will be a walk in the park”. It was hubris. Pride before a fall.

A number of factors led to this being one of my most difficult courses. Some of it was my fault, some of it the fault of my students, and some the fault of factors out of my control. So, what were those reasons?

Let me first tell you what went wrong, and then the reasons why it happened, and then what I learned from the experience.

The class was going to be a combination of students from two already existing classes, and a new person. So, some of them came from a business class, others came from a difficult legal English course, and one girl was new in the school that Monday. The business class was the same course as this one, so for them it was a continuation of their normal class. Same room, same programme, but with a new teacher and other new people coming into their room. The law class were exhausted and fed up from doing so much work. They’d been doing loads of writing, role plays and exam practice, finishing with a very tough legal English exam. They were not in the mood to do any work. It was their last week before going home. These two groups were like buddies really, two groups of buddies, and they didn’t really mix. Also, they had no real reason to mix because they knew in two weeks it would all be over and they’d be going home. It’s kind of like everyone had given up making any effort. Then, there was the new girl who entered in the middle of this bad atmosphere. I don’t know if it was her, or the atmosphere of the situation she joined, but she behaved in a really bad way, being rude from the beginning, lots of attitude, not willing to work, challenging things, answering over me, flirting with me, making me feel uncomfortable and kind of spoiling activities in class. I expected the others to kind of take to her quite badly, as she was basically poisoning the class. However, they all seemed to like her and kind of let her get away with it, as if it justified the fact they didn’t have to do any work. At the same time though, I was sure that they would all be pissed off about the fact that we weren’t achieving anything in our classes. It turns out they saw me as the reason for that, not her or their weird behaviour. This new girl was quite a bullying influence in the room, and I suspect that others didn’t like her but were not willing to step in and stop it.

It was also a class full of women, except for one quiet Korean guy, who left after the first week. So, there was a kind of odd tension and the usual working friendship between the students that develops after a few hours had not developed. In fact, I found it very hard to get the first lesson really underway at all. After an hour or so I realised that we had managed to achieve almost nothing, I hadn’t put the students under pressure enough, we hadn’t really done any challenging grammar work or vocabulary development and they hadn’t been really activated with a task and I could definitely sense trouble. People were not getting involved, some seemed to be frustratingly impatient while others wasted time. I asked them to make short presentations about themselves, involving standing up and talking for 5 minutes each. Normally I write down all the mistakes they make and then give them all individual language feedback and ask them other questions after each presentation. This allows the class to get to know each other, put their English on display, give me a chance to work out their language needs, bond them together by putting them through a little challenge, and to immediately give them some very direct help by correcting their errors. The presentations all fell flat, with the speakers just grinding to a halt after a few minutes, while I attempted to encourage others to ask more questions. They didn’t seem interested in each other, and I was not able to write down any meaningful language feedback. All I could write on the board, was a few obvious and easily corrected errors. No impact at all. Instead I just got the sense that each person was making a terribly bad first impression on the others, with no sense of rapport developing at all. It was like my plan didn’t just fall flat, but sent the class in the opposite direction. At one point, a presentation ended up in a conversation between two of the girls about a very sensitive ethnic and political topic, involving a nation of refugees and a conflict over a land border between two countries. It was a very divisive and controversial topic, and a personal one because one of the girls was from that region of the world. I could feel other members of the class bristling over the direction it took. When I intervened to get the girls back on topic, they seemed personally offended that I stopped them talking about it. Everything seemed to be going wrong.

All the usual signs were there. These are the signs that things are not going well.
You give them a short task to do in pairs, the idea being that they communicate in English while also doing a language or skills class. They ignore their partners completely.
You ask the class to do an exercise. One of them doesn’t do the exercise and instead sits there trying to make eye contact with you because they’re not happy about something. Then when you ask if everything is okay, they don’t mention anything, but moodily start the exercise. While doing feedback on the exercise, someone sighs very loudly at an inappropriate moment, perhaps while someone else is talking.
The exercises I gave them just seemed to just die in the air. Usually, a class will feed on something and build it into something bigger. That didn’t happen. I felt like a fool as nothing I said seemed to have any value to them at all! Things I wrote on the board seemed badly written, uninsightful and unhelpful. It was like teaching underwater. The air was thick. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. The distance between me and the students seemed vast. I’d taught plenty of classes in that room before and I liked it because it had a comfy, warm and almost intimate atmosphere. This time it was like a cold hospital ward. Students would often come in late, or just not come back after lunch. I decided I had to put my foot down. When the difficult girl arrived late, I asked her “why are you late?” and she gave me a bad excuse, like “I slept through my alarm clock”, and then instead of acknowledging that she should be in class on time (because arriving late disturbs the class, she doesn’t know what’s going on, we waste time and lose concentration as everything has to be explained) she just kind of challenged me over it and it became an awkward conflict, which she felt like she had to win. I felt like some of these students had been to business school and had learned that you must negotiate everything, don’t make any concessions and analyse anyone in authority for leadership skills. If I didn’t fit their Jack Welch or Jeff Bezos model for leadership then I wasn’t worth anything.

Then I heard from another teacher (the one who had been teaching that class before me – a really charismatic older guy with lots of experience) that some of my students weren’t happy and that they missed his class. They said my class was “terrible” and they weren’t happy. Oh no. Bad news for Luke! I decided I would really put my foot down and straighten the class out. After lunch I had a go at them for being late, and for not taking part properly. I hate doing that in class. Absolutely hate it, because I’m not good at it. Well, I’m better now because I’m older but then I was younger and I was never good at being tough. It’s just not in my character. If I get angry or tough, it shows on my face and I don’t seem strong. I just seem upset and weaker. I don’t get confrontational or strict generally, and so it’s weird to do it. I guess they didn’t buy what I was saying because it didn’t make a difference. In fact, I suspect it caused them to lose confidence in me. Again, the absolute reverse of what I had hoped to achieve actually happened. I wanted to put my foot down, and I just ended up putting my foot in my mouth.

The next day, two of them were late for class and I closed the door, leaving a note which said they couldn’t come in. These were two girls from the law course. Young lawyers. I should have known better than to leave a handwritten note for a couple of lawyers, telling them they couldn’t do something. Of course they took it really badly. During the break a teacher told me that two of my students were really angry with me. Wow, this was a nightmare. This never happens to me! Usually the opposite if anything! So I went to see them and they were upset, saying that they had had to do something in town and had rushed back to be on time only to find my rude note. They considered my actions to be very inappropriate. They were not happy. I had to try and keep my head up and stay confident and consistent, so I maintained that it was important that they come in on time, although I didn’t mean to offend them with my note. I was just trying to impose some rules and structure. My explanation mildly improved things, but the damage had been done.

In the last session of that day, while waiting for other students to arrive after break, two of the girls told me they thought the course was going badly, and that the classes were no good. At first I was kind of glad that someone was on my side and I wasn’t alone. Then I realised that they held me responsible, rather than the other members of the class. It was my fault that the class was going badly! They probably thought that this was how things normally were with me. They didn’t know me so they knew no different. They didn’t realise that I was not such a bad teacher. This made me really angry. I was so pissed off at this point and couldn’t help saying “this never happens in my courses” before I had to kind of bitterly explain that yes I agreed that the class was not good enough – but I couldn’t explain how it was the fault of others. I mentioned it, saying things like “it doesn’t help that certain members of this class are incapable of attending on time or even taking part properly when they are here”. They didn’t really like my tone. Instead I had to kind of admit that I would do better – as if the class was going wrong because of a lack of effort on my part. I was explaining to my boss, my teacher or my parents that I wasn’t trying hard enough. Now, I do accept that I should have done certain things better, and that some of it was my fault as I will explain in a moment, but I knew that it wasn’t all me. The fact is it was my job to ensure that the class was as effective as possible. So, in a way, the actions of these people meant that I had to carry the whole circus of this class on my shoulders. The group shifted its collective responsibility over to me. I finished the day completely shattered, with a mind numbing headache, with a massive heavy load on my shoulders.

Two of the students complained to my boss, saying they thought the class was bad, and that they would write a letter to their agents explaining how awful they thought the school was. Seriously, this was quite unprecedented. Thankfully, my boss had faith in me, knowing that it wasn’t really my fault but was just one of those courses that goes wrong. He suggested that I do some ‘tutorials’ with my class, to talk to them all 1 to 1 and try and resolve any problems. I agreed, and did that the next day. Of course, the students didn’t see the value of it, and considered it a massive waste of their time. One of them said to my face that she thought I was leading the class badly and the tutorials were a waste of time. The difficult girl I described earlier decided to lock horns with me over everything before forcing me to admit that I had failed to be a strong leader. She completely ran over me with her forceful character. It was like dealing with a bully. I found it ridiculous. Of course, this was the height of rudeness. There would be no need for my strong leadership if she behaved like a grown up. I think it was a trust issue. I expect where she was from, male teachers should be much more dominant, alpha male types. I’m not that kind of guy. I’m not an alpha male. I don’t believe it’s necessary to impose yourself and your ego on everyone in order to be a good teacher. That’s all a bit macho and old-fashioned I think. But, I think that’s what she and maybe the others needed and expected. She probably needed me to be a more old-fashioned strict male teacher, and without that she couldn’t help misbehaving. Ultimately, she was responsible for her behaviour, not me. So I still disagree and believe that she was wrong.

The tutorials were not a complete disaster. I learned that some of the students expected certain types of exercise. They didn’t like role plays and case studies. They were bored with them because of the other courses they had attended. A couple of them admitted that they thought it was the fault of the school for putting two classes together. She didn’t understand why we couldn’t run two smaller groups, which would be more effective. We just didn’t have enough teachers for that, and ultimately the school wasn’t going to pay another teacher to come in and take one half of my class. This lifted the pressure from me and onto the school somewhat, but it didn’t really improve things much. Unfortunately, basic economics is something that regularly has an impact on classes. Schools can’t or don’t want to pay for more teachers. The most profitable way would be to have one teacher per 100 students, but obviously that’s not possible. What happens is something of a balance between quality (with fewer students per teacher) and profits (more students per teacher). One sign of a good school is smaller class sizes. The best schools, like The London School of English where I worked for 6 years, manage to keep their class sizes smaller, give more benefits to teachers, develop specialist courses and make an extra effort to create a special atmosphere inside the building.

Back to the tutorials. I learned that they wanted boring, challenging old-fashioned grammar work. What a surprise for a group of young forward thinking professionals. They just wanted boring gap fills and mind numbing grammar explanations, with work on writing and job interviews.

So, I did exactly that. I removed fun from the lessons. No pair work. No group interaction. Just very controlled language practice followed by quick feedback. It was like an old-school exam course. It was like a punishing series of language exercises, all of which had very clear right and wrong answer. It kind of straightened them out. Ironically, one of them complained that it was too difficult, and this is after she’d complained earlier that it was too easy. I found that putting them through boring and difficult work made them bond together more. During breaks they would be relieved and would chat to each other more, as they were all going through the same difficult experience. I’d come back into class after break and I’d find them hanging out and socialising, but when I’d enter the room they’d all shut up and go back to their desks, like ‘the fun is over, he’s back’. My heart sank a little every time this happened, as it always does when you feel like the students just don’t like you for some reason.

The difficult girl continued to be difficult, but I’d already accepted that she was not going to change, and realised she was just a spoiled daughter of a rich businessman and that no-one had ever said “no” to her in her life. She seemed an incredibly sheltered and naive person, who couldn’t really operate in the real world. Then I remembered that she would probably always be rich and successful, as no doubt her father would have some important contacts to help her get a great job in the future. That made me kind of angry too. She had privilege, but no respect for others. I lost respect for her, and felt like I should teach her a lesson in humility. I didn’t really know how to do this, so I generally didn’t give her any rope. I mean, I wasn’t patient with her, didn’t give her much response or attention. After that, she didn’t bother me so much any more. Once she made a rude comment, and I couldn’t help but laugh. This was a great moment because I wasn’t hurt by her comment, I just found it ridiculous. I felt that the others sensed this, and had become tired of her bullshit too. It was like her value or influence in the class had dropped. After that, she stopped attending. She didn’t attend the last day, but came in at the end to leave a note on my desk. The note said “Thank you for being my English teacher. I’m really glad I met you.”

Now that was surprising because she spent 2 weeks acting like she hated me, caused all kinds of difficulty, didn’t attend a lot of classes, and then leaves me that note. I’m still scratching my head trying to work out what was going on.

In the end, I managed to get a grip on the course, but the first week was a write off. It was horrible. Every day I stayed at school late trying to prepare for the next day. Then I would go home with a strong headache, not wanting to eat any dinner. A couple of times I had to walk home to clear my head. It was a dread filled week and I often remember it, and try to avoid similar experiences.

So what were the causes?
Certainly I was just unlucky with the students. Just a mix of bad personalities perhaps? I’m sure they didn’t think so. In fact, I expect everyone involved believed they were not to blame, but were the innocent victim of the situation.
Ultimately, I don’t think anyone really wanted to be in the room together. I ended up being the victim of that because I was the guy telling them they had to be in the class together. I just became their scapegoat.
Time of year was a factor. It was dark and cold. England must have seemed rubbish to them in those conditions. There is a feeling in the middle of winter in England, when you haven’t seen the sun for a couple of months, and you feel tired and depressed. It’s called seasonal affective disorder. Sometimes it hits the students for six, because they’ re not expecting it.
Everyone was just waiting to go home for the Christmas holidays so they weren’t motivated.
The class were all women – this can be difficult. For some reason women like to have some men in the class to give some balance. Either that or just women with a woman teacher, then they can relax as a group of women. Otherwise it becomes really weird. I can’t explain that, but as I’ve said before, if the women aren’t happy then no-one is happy.

Putting together two groups to make one doesn’t always work, and it can make the school look a bit cheap, like it’s saving money on rooms and teachers. Also, the two groups had already bonded, and didn’t really expect to be thrown into one group together.
I expected the course to be easier because of the previous course. This meant that I had a false sense of security. I probably didn’t try hard enough on day 1 or make it difficult enough for the students. I expected things to just work, but I hadn’t thought about it or planned carefully enough. I probably wasn’t as well prepared, or tightly organised as I had been on the previous course.
I didn’t dress very smartly. Looking back on it now, I wore jeans and a pair of slightly scruffy brown shoes. The girls were very chic and well presented. Compared to them, I looked like the student. I should have worn a suit on day 1.
Maybe there was some sexual tension there? I can’t tell really, but sometimes bad behaviour is a kind of flirtation and girls sometimes are very rude to a guy as a kind of come-on. That might explain the letter that was left for me. I don’t know.
Culture shock. I’ve explained before how culture shock can manifest itself in the sense that the culture you’re in is ridiculous or wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if these students were kind of unimpressed by London in the winter time, and couldn’t help feeling some contempt for us. I was just another annoying English person. Certainly at times I had to listen to them going through the usual complaints about the UK. The food is bad, the weather is bad, it’s noisy in London, my accommodation is cold, I don’t know why you have two taps in the bathroom, why do you do everything differently here, why do you have to drive on the left, English women are ugly (this was perhaps the most offensive) and English people are stupid because they go jogging on the pavement in the city, etc etc. That kind of thing. Maybe they were expressing culture shock.

Perhaps there was some culture shock between them too. There was quite a mix of nationalities.

Them coming late prevented me from starting classes properly. Instead I must have looked unprepared and vague.

It’s funny to me how I could go from one week of being the greatest teacher in the world, to hitting rock bottom in just a matter of days, with students saying it was one of the worst courses they’d experienced. I mean, how does that happen?

Now, I’ve just shared ONE bad course I taught, but in my defence I must say that I have an otherwise very good track record in my classes, with students regularly being very happy with me, often giving me top marks in feedback. So, this course must have been a one-off. I try to think that it was just a combination of bad elements that somehow came together at the same time, causing a bad outcome in my class. I may have been responsible for certain things, like not being strict and dynamic enough at the beginning, or showing strong leadership, but some of the students too were definitely responsible for taking part in a very poor manner.

Ultimately, I was just very glad to have finished the class. It was like going through a painful series of challenges. Each day gave me a new headache. My colleagues were worried about me. I couldn’t enjoy myself all week because of worrying what to do with these students. At the end, the students did thank me. One of them in particular came up to me in the pub that Friday night, and privately said thank you very much for you effort during the week. I think ultimately they saw that it wasn’t all my fault, and that I was working very hard. I still have the note that the difficult girl gave to me. Sometimes I see it and it reminds me of the difficult week.

What did I learn?
Never get too happy or pleased with yourself. If you think you’re doing a great job, there is probably something you’re forgetting about, that you’re doing wrong.
Pride comes before a fall.
When things go badly, don’t feel too bad because it’s not all your fault.
Equally, when things go well don’t be too proud of yourself because it’s not always because of you.
Be well presented. Make a good first impression. Impose rules on younger learners early. Treat younger learners more like adults, or they will act like children.
Remember that time is money.
Make lessons challenging at all times.

It’s hard to say what else I learned from this other than the ability to be a bit tougher. It just toughened me up a little more. I just approached lessons in the future with more experience behind me, and students could just sense that I was more experience and then felt safer in my class. Now I’m less nervous before lessons. I feel like I’ve experienced enough difficult moments not to be too shocked. Also, doing stand-up comedy helps with confidence, but really it’s been teaching that has prepared me the most.

Despite these stories, I have definitely had more good experiences than bad. Some of my classes have genuinely been amazing and I’ve met so many interesting and lovely people. If you are one of those lovely people I have met then “hello”. To everyone I have ever met through this job I would like to say “hello” and thank your for contributing to my learning process as a teacher.

To all my fellow teachers out there – I know how you feel! Keep your chin up.
To all the learners of English – keep your chins up too! I know how you feel as well now because of my experiences of learning French.

I hope you have enjoyed listening to this episode.

Remember you can read a full transcript of this on teacherluke.podomatic.com or teacherluke.wordpress.com where you can also find links to iTunes, Facebook and YouTube and you can also make those very special and important donations – as little as one pound if you like, or more, it’s up to you.

Also, you may have noticed some idioms in this episode. I’ve made a list of the idioms I used, and I will be explaining them in the next episode. Also, I use loads of other nice pieces of vocabulary, common expressions, descriptive words and collocations throughout this episode. I suggest that you listen a couple of times, or listen again while reading the transcript and pick out any expressions that you like and that you could use yourselves.

Don’t forget to leave your comments on this episode  either here at wordpress.com or at http://teacherluke.podomatic.com.

Thanks again for listening, good luck with your English and take care. BYE BYE BYE!

Luke

145. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 1)

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This episode is all about English teaching and some stories of bad classroom experiences. Transcript available below.

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Hello listeners, how are you doing? It’s a beautifully clear and sunny September day here. This time of year always reminds me of going back to school after the summer holidays. So, because of that, I’m going to talk about some teaching experiences in various schools I have worked in over the years.

In this episode I’m going to talk to you about my experiences of being an English Language Teacher. I’ll tell you what it’s like from the teacher’s point of view, share with you a few really bad experiences I’ve had as a teacher and then explain what I learned from them.

If you would like to read and study every word of what I am saying then you can because there is a full transcript for this episode, which is available at http://teacherluke.wordpress.com. Just find or search for this episode on that page. 145. Nightmare Teaching Experiences

There you can read every single word I’m saying, you can copy+paste words into google to check them, or you can transcribe some of what I’m saying and then compare it to the correct version provided on my website. There’s lots of ways to use the transcript as a tool in your English learning. If you need more ideas, just leave a comment below asking for suggestions.

You should also look out for some idiomatic expressions I use in this episode. I have scattered a number of idioms throughout the episode. I think they’re useful, common and expressive ones. Can you notice them? I will deal with them in the next episode.

So, let’s get started. Listen to my stories, leave our thoughts in the comments section and watch out for some idioms too.

I’ve been teaching for 12 years. I’ve taught in a few countries around the world, including the UK, Japan, France and Norway.
It’s a really great job.
I get to meet people from all walks of life and all different countries.
I’ve met some truly fascinating and amazing individuals.
For example, over the years I have met high-ranking politicians, expert scientists, movie stars, executives from successful car manufacturers, IT systems engineers, computer games makers, World Cup winning football players, F1 drivers, musicians, even a porn star and plenty of other interesting people.
In the classroom I’m pretty much my own boss.
I can be creative
I can have an idea in the evening and realise it during the next day
I can think up my own tasks and have the students do them (e.g. bank robbery, planning a TV show, presenting their own political manifesto, role plays, comedy improvisation games, business meetings etc)
Sometimes I can just make things up on the spur of the moment and then make them happen there and then.
I can see students learning and improving
I get to know my students and have a chance to learn about life all around the world.
I sometimes have the opportunity to make the whole room laugh, or to laugh myself at very funny people in my classes.
I have opportunities to travel and see the world, and I think that is extremely important as a way of developing a sense of perspective about life in general. So, I am very happy to be an English Language Teacher. I think of it as a proper career which involves hard work, and unique rewards.

There are some downsides to the job though, which we shouldn’t really complain about. I will at least mention some of the things which are a common frustration for career TEFL teachers.
Usually it’s that the job is undervalued by others. It seems a lot of people consider a career in TEFL to be trivial and easy. For example, I’m sure most of my friends think that basically, all I do in my job is sit in a lovely quiet room surrounded by 4 cute Japanese children, showing them big flashcards – blue, red, green and yellow! GOOD! and then have loads of holiday. It’s not like that at all. People always say things like, “so how are the kids?” or “SO I guess you’re on holiday at the moment!” and I’m like “I don’t teach kids!!! I teach finance directors!!!” and “I don’t know the meaning of the word holiday!!!” Also, lots of people consider TEFL to be a holiday job. Like, “oh TEFL, yeah I did that on my year off during university”. Some people consider it to be the job you can do if everything else in your life fails – like it’s a kind of step down to a more relaxed, less challenging lifestyle. A friend of mine told me once “sometimes I feel like just giving up, dropping out and becoming a TEFL teacher”.

The fact is, the job can be whatever you want it to be. If you consider it to be something to do while you travel, or something to do while you focus on writing your first novel then fine. It can be just a means to an end. If you consider it to be a genuine career move, you find the human interaction, the pedagogy and the linguistics to be fascinating and you’re prepared to work very hard at it, it can be a great career. There are some millionare English teachers out there. For example, Raymond Murphy, the guy who wrote English Grammar In Use. That’s now one of the biggest selling books of all time, all around the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a copy of that book yourself.

I’m thinking of writing my own book actually. It would be full of grammar and vocabulary exercises as well as lots of other things to read. It would be full of my humour, but it would also be really useful and a great companion to these episodes of the podcast. Would you be interested in that? Does that sound like your cup of tea? Let me know.

Anyway, regarding TEFL, it’s more challenging, professional, multi-skilled and demanding than people realise. It can be incredibly energy sapping, emotional and painful at times, if things don’t go well. Of course it can also be very enjoyable and rewarding. Sometimes it is easy, but sometimes it’s very stressful. It’s swings and roundabouts really, but generally I have found it to be a great career.

I think there’s a misconception going around that if you can speak English, you can teach English. Not the case at all. It takes years of experience and a couple of academic qualifications under your belt. It might even be possible to prevent people from learning if you do it wrong! I also hate that kind of charisma man – the guy who just loves the attention he gets from a class of learners of English and turns it into his own special one man show. He doesn’t realise that they give him that attention because they’re there to learn from him. Sometimes my worst fear is that I’m just another charisma man teacher. But of course, that’s ridiculous…

Learning a language is not like learning another subject, like maths or history. You’re not just learning information, but learning how to do something – and not something like cooking or playing tennis, but how to express yourself and interact with other people. There’s something deeply personal about learning a language, and often the best students are the ones who throw themselves and their personalities into the learning process.

So, teaching English means working closely with people, and this can be wonderful. It can also be very challenging, ridiculous, embarrassing and difficult. I’ve worked directly with people before, in shops, restaurants and bars and you learn after a while that a certain percentage of the people you meet will be either weird, a twat or an arsehole. It’s just the way it is. It’s human nature. There’s always one person who makes life difficult. There’s always someone who will throw a spanner in the works. Some people call it the 1/30 rule. That at least 1 person in 30 is a dickhead. It’s true in English teaching too. The majority of the students you have in your class are great, but then sometimes there is one of those ‘1/30’ students, who will kind of screw up your class, spoil what you try to do, upset other students or convince them to turn against you. Sometimes you have a few classes that are perfect, and everyone is great. You enjoy it, but in the back of your mind you’re thinking – I’m going to get 2 or 3 “30s” in my next class, I know it! The reasons for why some people have to act like total dicks is a kind of mystery. Let me give you an example of what I mean…
-Huffing and puffing a lot when you ask them to do normal exercises
-Constantly interrupting whatever you are doing with completely unrelated questions
-Being cruel to other students in the class to the point that none of them want to open their mouths
-Disagreeing with what you say even though they’re wrong – why? Nobody knows.
-Acting like whatever you are doing is really easy and boring even though they’re consistently getting it wrong
-Turning up late and getting very shirty with you if you bring up the subject
-Convincing other members of the group that whatever you’re doing is wrong and that some kind of mutiny would clearly help everyone learn English
-Preventing anyone else from speaking and practising their English, and assuming that when they speak they speak for everyone.
-Generally disrupting the class and destroying the nice atmosphere which is essential to creating the right conditions for learning – and for what reason? Usually because of ego, or because of insecurity or being an especially spoiled brat who can’t handle it if the universe is not spinning around them every second of every minute of the day…

I realise that talking about experiences like this is especially negative, and I hope you don’t get the wrong impression about my classes. The vast majority have been really great, with some super cool people and a really positive atmosphere which allows language to develop properly. It’s just that every now and then you have a bad experience which sticks in your memory, but the crucial thing is to learn from these bad experiences, which is not just true in teaching – it’s also true in life. We regret the things we don’t do, and we learn from the mistakes we make and the bad experiences we have. Which is a pretty damn good reason for going out there, being courageous and doing things for the first time.

So, back to these 1/30 people who can torpedo your class. If you’ve been a language learner in a classroom, you may have met one of these people. Usually, they have no idea they are doing doing something wrong, which is kind of frightening because it means at any time we could be acting like a total dick without realising it. Sometimes it is because they have a sense of entitlement – being spoiled by their parents means that they are not comfortable unless everything is based around them, and they have to be the centre of attention, whether that is good for everyone or not. This means they just can’t handle being in a group situation, where they have to put others first or consider themselves to be one among many who have to work together to make the experience more fruitful for everyone. Sometimes I expect these people don’t even realise they are being rude, but think that they are doing something good.

It’s not just the odd student who can derail a lesson though. There are many other reasons. The teacher probably holds the most responsibility (I’d say it’s something like about 60/40 between teacher and students) but also plenty of other things, including the time of day, the weather outside, the day of the week, the season, the nationality of all the students in the class, the facilities – the room, the atmosphere, the light, the quality of the equipment, the seating arrangement, the noise levels, the number of students in the class, the material being used (published or not, self-made or not, the condition of photocopies) and so on and so on. The list goes on.

Many of you have probably experienced things from the point of view of the student. You probably have a different side of the story for what makes a good lesson. That’s another episode of the podcast! I’d like to read your comments about experiences of being a student in a language class. Maybe you met some terrible teachers, or shared classes with terrible students. Send me your comments please! This episode really is a chance for me to share some nightmare teaching experiences with you, and then to reflect on what I learned from them as a teacher. Why have I chosen the nightmare experiences? Because they’re the more interesting stories and there are things I learned from those experiences. I think we learn more from our bad experiences than from our good ones. I’d like to share some of those things with you, and just tell you some stories that you might like to hear.

I know I have a lot of teachers listening to this too, so feel free to add your comments and stories below. Teaching is a great, important and undervalued job, and it comes with a unique set of challenges. I think part of the uniqueness of teaching is the fact that as a teacher you are kind of outnumbered by the students. There’s more of them than there is of you. As a teacher you can feel an enormous pressure to deliver the right kind of training, and if your students are not happy, that is a real nightmare for you because it means that somehow you are personally responsible. That may not be the case, because as we have seen above, there are many factors for a good lesson, but teachers often feel they are on the front line. We can suffer a lot if a lesson goes badly, whether it’s our fault or not. Sometimes weeks of your life can be full of drama and bad vibes just because your class is going badly. Of course the students suffer too – in fact that’s the main point of all this. We’re trying to help the students learn English, but sometimes it just doesn’t work that way and it can feel like either you’re fighting some kind of pointless battle, or that the gods are acting against you somehow. It’s important to learn from bad experiences in class, to learn how to prevent them or just how to react to them correctly.

As learners of English in class you also have a responsibility to make a class work well. It’s great when students know this and work together with a teacher to allow a class to be a success. One of the roles of a teacher is to be a facilitator. That means to help to create the right conditions in which the students can learn for themselves. Being a teacher should not mean just standing there doing most of the speaking, lecturing to the class like they used to in the old days. The teacher shouldn’t really be the centre of attention. The students should be at the centre of what happens in class, but that gives a lot of responsibility to those students. They have to work together, allow the right conditions for learning to develop, be unselfish, help others, attend regularly etc. With the wrong attitude, the students can totally torpedo the lesson. With the right attitude (seeing everything as an opportunity to get involved in an active learning process) they can take a lesson to new heights. All it takes is for them to accept some responsibility for the success of a class, then enthusiastically take whatever the teacher gives them, and run with it.

It’s also the responsibility of the school manager to create the right conditions for learning. Creating an air of respect or positivity in the school helps. Making sure classrooms are in good condition certainly helps. Giving the teacher the tools to do his/her job effectively definitely helps. Managing the numbers of students in class helps a lot. If you have too many students in class, it can be very hard to teach them effectively. If students are dropping in and out of classes, it’s hard to build a team spirit. If the students can move up or down a level whenever they want it can spoil any sense of unity, morale, solidarity or rapport which is essential to creating the right conditions for learning. Also, the manager should put in place some method of ensuring that the students are divided properly by level. An entry exam + interview is pretty important. Also, a good balance of nationalities and genders in class is important.

Seating the students is crucial too. If they’re all seated separately, with lots of space between them, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to engage comfortably in speaking tasks. Teachers should try to arrange the tables and chairs before a lesson to bring the students close together in comfort, so they can see each other, interact with everyone, see the teacher and the board clearly. Putting students all around one table makes them feel they are connected and working as a team. Putting them on separate tables makes it feel more like an individual test. Having them stand up and walk around can replicate real life speaking tasks and allow body language to come into play. Moving the students can help the blood and oxygen flow better and prevent people falling asleep.

Intelligence types are a consideration too. People learn in different ways. Some prefer analysing language, some prefer to see visual representations of grammar or vocabulary (e.g. time lines, mind maps or just images) and others learn best when involved in some physical movement. So a variety of activity types is important. Get the students moving around and interacting in different ways, rather than just sitting at their desks for the whole lesson.

We should also remember that you can’t please all the people all the time, and so there will always be someone who’s not really into a particular activity. On those rare occassions that everyone is into it, everyone can reap the benefits.

Preparation by the teacher makes a massive difference. The more you know about the students in advance the better. You can then try to directly meet their language learning needs. Hopefully they all have similar needs – that’s the management’s job. PLacing students in classes based on their needs (business English, exams, academic English etc). Writing a careful plan, with learning objectives and a good balance of language and skills work, with all the correct types of support exercises, communicative techniques and so on, is vital in assessed lessons, but a very good idea in other lessons as a way of ensuring quality. But then again, it’s important to know when to throw the plan away and just improvise a lesson there and then. You should teach the students not the plan.There’s no point doggedly sticking to a plan if the students don’t really need that particular language point. Sometimes it’s necessary to leave the plan, and follow something that comes up in class and which is clearly what the students need or are interested in. It’s ok to go off on a tangent as long as it is relevant and the whole class goes with you.

TTT is something we should cut down on in the language learning classroom. People often assume that as a teacher I talk all the time, and you could be forgiven for thinking that if you listen to this podcast. But I believe that a really good teacher must be a good listener. We’ve got two ears and one mouth for a reason. You must listen very carefully to your students. Listen to their English to see what they need, or what they’re doing wrong. Listen to their reactions to different things you do in class – that helps you to choose the right kinds of activities, and generally you must listen in order to encourage them to speak. People are naturally more willing to talk extensively if they feel that someone is really listening. Have you ever talked to a friend, but felt like they weren’t listening? It makes you feel “oh, what’s the point, I’ll just keep my mouth shut”. It’s the same in class. If you feel no-one cares, you’re not going to talk. So the teacher should listen, show you’re listening and encourage others to listen too.

Marketing can also have an effect on your class. If the students have been led to believe they’re going to get something from a course, that is going to affect how they react to what you’re doing. If your school has an amazing website that makes lots of grand promises they probably will come into the class with a lot of expectations, especially if it is an expensive school with a good reputation. You have to beware of those expectations and try to meet them immediately! An expensive school, with a powerful marketing drive can set the bar very high for its teachers – putting all the pressure on them to deliver the end product. That can be very stressful for a teacher, but it is also a good process to go through for training you into a good teacher, because you are forced to raise your game.

As you can see, there are loads of factors to take into account as a teacher. There are plenty of other things I could mention, but really I would like to start telling you some stories of real teaching situations I’ve encountered.

So, here are some experiences:

1. My first teaching experience
-Where to put my hands?
-Awkwardly leaned/sat on a desk
-Students were really rude to each other and completely lacked any sense of cultural awareness or sensitivity (one guy was from Iraq, and another guy immediately mimed firing a gun at him – facepalm)
-I had no idea about the language point I was teaching. I could only explain it by using the tense itself.
-I was teaching present continuous. The best I could do is print off a load of clip art with people doing things like dancing, playing basketball, and the students just had to explain what was happening in the pictures. Not bad, but that was it.
-I had no voice – I couldn’t string a really coherent and confident question together. I had no engaging classroom presence. I was not able to frame activities effectively. I came across as mild and weak.
-I was really put off by the reactions of the students. Often, students in TEFL classes will look at you with a kind of pained expression on their face. This is because they’re listening carefully and possibly struggling to understand. Whenever I saw this pained expression it went straight to my heart.
-I was crippled by nerves. I couldn’t function.
-Every day after my teaching practice I would go home and watch Bill Hicks videos to cheer myself up, wishing that I could have his confidence in front of other people.
-There was doubt over my ability to do the job at all and in the middle of the course my tutor warned me that I might fail.
-One woman said to me, “seriously Luke, why don’t you just concentrate on music? Why do you want to become a teacher?”
-It was actually quite a difficult time because I couldn’t imagine having a career in music. It was too unreliable. I wanted steady employment. But for the first 5-6 years, before doing the DELTA I was in a shaky position as a language teacher, frequently wanting to get out of it but not really knowing how to do it, and not having the courage to just do something else. In the end, perhaps I’ve decided to make a go of it. I don’t know if that matters to you or not, but perhaps you can relate to my situation then, by thinking of your situation – what was it that led you to follow the career you’re doing? Did you always want to do that? I’ve never known what I want to do with my life, or quite where it is going. I just know I want to do what I do well, and I want some level of success. TEFL might not be the high-reward job, but ultimately it is all about the individual – what can you do to make your dreams come true? With the right attitude and a desire to work, you can do anything you want to. Just be positive and work hard, don’t give up, be dedicated, don’t let failures stop you but see failures as an opportunity to learn. Look for possibilities beyond the work you’re doing now. Think outside the box. These are all standard bits of wisdom for success. I wish I followed that wisdom all the time, every day. But you’ve got to try.

What I learned: Confidence is vital. Even if you feel a bit depressed or not in a good mood, it’s important to put a smile on your face when you walk into the room. Put on a brave face because somehow your mood has a massive influence on the mood of a lesson. Also, knowing your stuff is very important. You have to study the rules of English grammar a lot so that you can answer any question that people ask you. At the beginning it feels almost like you’re making it up because you’re unsure of yourself. This confidence comes with time and experience.

2. Sweat and Stress Rashes
This is when I taught my first multi-national groups after teaching in Japan. For some reason it was terrifying. Generally the Japanese are quiet, sweet, non-confrontational. I went back to London where the standard of teaching seemed to be much higher. There were lots of people who’d been doing it for a long time. Lots of well qualified career TEFL teachers who worked for Cambridge sometimes, things like that. Lessons were observed more, and generally there was the feeling that the students had travelled hundreds of miles to come to London to study English, paying lots of money for an intensive English course, and so they want to improve fast and effectively. This was stressful for me as I was used to dealing with small groups, using the same old material time and time again, not really dealing with much grammar, but working on creating a safe environment for people to feel comfortable speaking English.
So, when I joined my new group of 16 students from around the world, it was quite a culture shock when I realised they were all from many different places I’d never been to, or met anyone from. I had students from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Japan, France, Turkey, Czech Republic and Brazil. That is quite a broad range, which is very interesting. But certainly a lot of those countries are more direct than the English and the Japanese. In fact I was quite surprised by the directness of people in the way they interacted, showed their emotions clearly (like disagreement) and spoke quite loudly with some interruption. They were all keen to learn and to be challenged. They’d been studying with another teacher who they really liked. She was quite strict and did a lot of grammar with them. They enjoyed that. So, they asked me lots of things that she had taught them, kind of checking their knowledge but also testing me too. I felt a sense of challenge, distrust and tension. They were already a group who knew each other. I was entering their circle, as the kind of leader or alpha male, and I was still relatively young and I looked young for my age too. I was probably dressed too casually too, because I hadn’t worked out that the way you look is very important. If you go in wearing a suit, people will immediately think you are professional, serious and experienced. If you wear jeans and a t-shirt, they might not feel they are getting what they paid for. I was wearing jeans, and a shirt untucked. Not bad, but these days I always make an effort to control the first impression by dressing smarter so they know they’re getting a professional. Small details can be important. Also, it’s good to be strict and not too friendly at the start, and then ease that off slowly until you become more relaxed and friendly in the middle, and then motivational and trustworthy. Humour can help a lot, but you have to use it sparingly and dryly as well. If you go for big laughs and make lots of effort, you’ll come across as a dick who is desperate for attention. If you make subtle jokes which are understated, with a straight face, there’s less chance that you’ll come out of it badly, and it will improve the atmosphere rather than make it awkward. You shouldn’t tell jokes, although I do, and pay the price for it. I mean, pre-written or well known jokes. Usually jokes are received badly because no-one understands them. Sometimes a joke comes up that people love because they learn from it, but usually they just make the students feel bad because humour excludes them. The best thing is to allow the students to be funny and make each other laugh. This is immensely rewarding for them. You can help by allowing people to laugh, laughing yourself or engaging the students in conversation with a view to them saying something funny. You may even be able to feed the students some funny lines, which allow them to say something funny in response, which lets them take the credit for any laughter which occurs.

So, I didn’t know any of that, or know how to do it then. Instead, there I was standing in front of them, not making a good first impression, very nervously attempting to keep control of myself and run an effective class. It was not a strong first few lessons. I would often get stuck on a grammar question, lose the answers in the teachers book, get the CD on the wrong track, make mistakes on the whiteboard and so on. It was really tough and embarrassing. I felt like my reputation was hanging by a thread. I went to class every day really early to get ready and I dreaded the arrival of the students. I would use copious amounts of energy running around the classroom in a stressed out state, my face bright red, sweat patches under my arms, my sweat dripping on students books as I lean over to help them. I developed a rash because of the stress. I had little red spots on my wrists and arms. Amazingly I managed to work out grammar points and answer questions about them at the same time. There’s a lot of pressure in dealing with grammar that you don’t even know yourself and trying to explain something you don’t understand, while everyone is looking at you. They say people’s biggest fear is speaking in front of people, like in a presentation or speech. It was like that for me every day. That’s pretty awful, but also ridiculous. It brought out the ridiculousness in me. I couldn’t help seeing the whole thing as some kind of bizarre joke. Here’s me in front of all these people from around the world, and I don’t even know how it happened or if what I’m doing is useful at all. I developed a slightly eccentric teaching style, with quite a lot of bizarre humour which really came from my feeling very weird to be teaching. Eventually it worked and I began to make the students laugh all the time, and laugh quite hard sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes. The key thing was that I was using laughter to aid the teaching, not just to create laughter. Students began to tell me how much they enjoyed the classes because the atmosphere was good, and that they really learned things.

In the end, that class went very well. We all got to know each other, and in some cases became friends who I am still in touch with now, nearly 10 years later.
What I learned:
You should stick to what you know – play to your strengths, but don’t be afraid to take some risks because that’s how you learn. Be yourself and add some personality to lessons. Not too much though – you shouldn’t dominate or anything, but students tend to respond well when you give something of yourself to your lessons. It seems that students are quite preoccupied by teachers expressing their own personality in classes. Don’t be afraid to be a little bit vulnerable in class, but at the same time you have to be completely sure and confident about the language. It’s a difficult combination of being human and super-human at the same time. Study the grammar, prepare well in advance, have fun and treat the students with RESPECT at all times. Never get angry, never tell anyone to shut up. Go for a drink with the students or take them out of the classroom every couple of weeks. Don’t get too close to them though, because ultimately you are their teacher, not their friend.

I looked young, and students would never realise I was the teacher. Sometimes I’d have to convince them. New students would often come into class with a form from reception. They had to give the form to the teacher. They’d come in the room and look around, then give the form to the most ‘teacherly’ looking person in there, usually the oldest. I would always have to put my hand up and say ‘I’m over here! I’m the teacher, hello, my name is Luke, like Luke Skywalker… Luke, I am my father…. etc”
I guess you should look like a teacher, or be aware that people have ideas of what a teacher should look like or behave like. You can use that to your advantage – by being ‘original’ but it can also work against you if you seem unprofessional or inappropriate.

These stories continue in part 2 of this episode – 146. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 2)

135. Raining Animals – “It’s raining cats and dogs”

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“It’s raining cats and dogs” – Do native speakers of English often use this idiom to describe heavy rain or do they use different expressions? Also, is it really possible that animals can fall down from the sky like rain?

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Introduction
What do people really say when they’re talking about heavy rainstorms?
Is it really possible for animals to rain down from the sky? What are the explanations of this phenomenon?
What is the origin of the expression “it’s raining cats and dogs?”
What other idioms about heavy rain exist in other countries and languages?
What would happen to Luke if he was struck by lightning while recording an episode of the podcast? Would he just be electocuted to death, or would he become some kind of podcasting super-hero? (probably the former option)

In this episode, I discuss all of these questions, while a thunderstorm passes overhead and the rain beats down on the roof of my apartment. Listen, and please add your comments below.

How’s the weather where you are, while you listen to this?
What idiom do you use in your language to describe heavy rain?
Do you have any stories about animals falling from the sky?
We’d like to know about them!

Extracts from Wikipedia
I read a few extracts from the wikipedia page for ‘raining animals’ in this episode. Below you can read those extracts. Time codes are also given in square brackets [15.42] – these indicate the times at which I say these things in the episode.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_of_animals

[15:42]

Raining animals

Raining animals is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which flightless animals “rain” from the sky. Such occurrences have been reported in many countries throughout history. One hypothesis offered to explain this phenomenon is that strong winds traveling over water sometimes pick up creatures such as fish or frogs, and carry them for up to several miles.
[16:10]

[17:41]
However, this primary aspect of the phenomenon has never been witnessed or scientifically tested.
[17:48]

[17:55]

Explanations

Sometimes the animals survive the fall, suggesting the animals are dropped shortly after extraction. Several witnesses of raining frogs describe the animals as startled, though healthy, and exhibiting relatively normal behavior shortly after the event.
[18:13]

 

[22:00]
In some incidents, however, the animals are frozen to death or even completely encased in ice. There are examples where the product of the rain is not intact animals, but shredded body parts. Some cases occur just after storms having strong winds, especially during tornadoes.
[22:22]

[23:35]
However, there have been many unconfirmed cases in which rainfalls of animals have occurred in fair weather and in the absence of strong winds or waterspouts.
[23:46]

[24:00]
The English language idiom, “It is raining cats and dogs” (referring to a heavy downpour), is of uncertain etymology, and there is no evidence that it has any connection to the “raining animals” phenomenon.
[24:13]

[24:52]
This is a regular occurrence for birds, which can get killed in flight, or stunned and then fall (unlike flightless creatures, which first have to be lifted into the air by an outside force).
[25:05]

[25:56]
Sometimes this happens in large groups, for instance, the blackbirds falling from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas, United States on December 31, 2010. It is common for birds to become disoriented (for example, because of bad weather or fireworks) and collide with objects such as trees or buildings, killing them or stunning them into falling to their death.
[26:22]

[27:02]
The number of blackbirds killed in Beebe is not spectacular considering the size of their congregations, which can be in the millions.
[27:11]

[27:32]
The event in Beebe, however, captured the imagination and led to more reports in the media of birds falling from the sky across the globe, such as in Sweden and Italy, though many scientists claim such mass deaths are common occurrences but usually go unnoticed.
[27:50]

[28:36]
French physicist André-Marie Ampère was among the first scientists to take seriously accounts of raining animals. He tried to explain rains of frogs with a hypothesis that was eventually refined by other scientists.
[28:51]

[29:02]
Speaking in front of the Society of Natural Sciences, Ampère suggested that at times frogs and toads roam the countryside in large numbers, and that the action of violent winds can pick them up and carry them great distances.
[29:18]

[30:30]
More recently, a scientific explanation for the phenomenon has been developed that involves tornadic waterspouts.
[30:38]

[31:31]
Waterspouts are capable of capturing objects and animals and lifting them into the air. Under this theory, waterspouts or tornados transport animals to relatively high altitudes, carrying them over large distances. The winds were capable of lifting the animals over a relatively wide area and allow them to fall in a concentrated fashion in a localized area.  More specifically, some tornadoes can completely suck up a pond, letting the water and animals fall some distance away in the form of a “rain of animals”.
[32:06]

[33:54]
This hypothesis appears supported by the type of animals in these rains: small and light, usually aquatic, it’s also supported by the fact that the rain of animals is often preceded by a storm. However, the theory does not account for how all the animals involved in each individual incident would be from only one species, and not a group of similarly-sized animals from a single area.
[34:20]

[34:45]
In the case of birds, storms may overcome a flock in flight, especially in times of migration.
[34:59]

[35:10]
The image to the right shows an example where a group of bats is overtaken by a thunderstorm. The image shows how the phenomenon could take place in some cases. In the image, the bats are in the red zone, which corresponds to winds moving away from the radar station, and enter into a mesocyclone associated with a tornado (in green).
[35:34]

[35:44]
These events may occur easily with birds in flight. In contrast, it is harder (here we have mistake in audio, should be harder not easier) to find a plausible explanation for rains of terrestrial animals. The enigma persists despite scientific studies.
[35:56]

[36:20]
Sometimes, scientists have been incredulous of extraordinary claims of rains of fish

For example, in the case of a rain of fish in Singapore in 1861, French naturalist Francis de Laporte de Castelnau explained that the supposed rain took place during a migration of walking catfish, which are capable of dragging themselves over the land from one puddle to another. Thus, he argued that the appearance of fish on the ground immediately after a rain was easily explained, as these animals usually move over soft ground or after a rain.
[37:18]

[38:11]

Occurrences

Fish

  • Singapore, February 22, 1861
  • Olneyville, Rhode Island, May 15, 1900
  • Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, July 1, 1903
  • Marksville, Louisiana, October 23, 1947
  • Kerala, India, February 12, 2008
  • Bhanwad, Jamnagar, India, October 24, 2009
  • Lajamanu, Northern Territory, Australia, February 25 and 26, 2010,
  • Loreto, Agusan del Sur, Philippines, January 13, 2012

Frogs and toads

  • Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, June 2009 (occurrences reported throughout the month)
  • Rákóczifalva, Hungary, 18–20 June 2010 (twice)

Others

  • Unidentified animal, which was thought to be a cow fell in California ripped to tiny pieces, August 1, 1869
  • Jellyfish fell from the sky in Bath, England, in 1894
  • Spiders fell from the sky in Salta Province, Argentina on April 6, 2007.
  • Worms dropped from the sky in Jennings, Louisiana, on July 11, 2007
  • According to a video, spiders fell from the sky in Santo Antônio da Platina, Brazil, on February 3, 2013. (However, it has been suggested as falling from a mass web between elevated poles.)

[40:17]

[42:22]

“Raining cats and dogs”

The English idiom “it is raining cats and dogs”, used to describe an especially heavy rain, is of unknown etymology, and is not necessarily related to the “raining animals” phenomenon. The phrase was used at least since the 17th century. A number of improbable folk etymologies have been put forward to explain the phrase
[42:47]

[43:08]

  • An “explanation” widely circulated by email claimed that in 16th-century Europe when peasant homes were commonly thatched, animals could crawl into the thatch to find shelter from the elements, and would fall out during heavy rain. However, there seems to be no evidence in support of either assertion.
    [43:28]

 

[45:56]

  • Drainage systems on buildings in 17th-century Europe were poor, and may have disgorged their contents during heavy showers, including the corpses of any animals that had accumulated in them. This occurrence is documented in Jonathan Swift’s 1710 poem ‘Description of a City Shower’, in which he describes “Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,/Dead cats and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood.”
    [46:26]

 

[48:12]

  • “Cats and dogs” may be a corruption of the Greek word Katadoupoi, referring to the waterfalls on the Nile, possibly through the old French word catadupe (“waterfall”).
  • The Greek phrase “kata doksa”, which means “contrary to expectation” is often applied to heavy rain, but there is no evidence to support the theory that it was borrowed by English speakers.
    [48:38]

[49:08]
There may not be a logical explanation; the phrase may have been used just for its nonsensical humor value, like other equivalent English expressions.
[49:18]

[49:50]
Other languages have equally bizarre expressions for heavy rain.
[49:53]

‘Heavy Rain’ Idioms From Around The World (care of Wikipedia)
Other languages have equally bizarre expressions for heavy rain:[37][38]
Afrikaans: ou vrouens met knopkieries reen (“old women with clubs”)
Bengali: মুষলধারে বৃষ্টি পড়ছে musholdhare brishṭi poṛchhe (“in a stream of mallets”)
Bosnian: padaju ćuskije (“crowbars”)
Bosnian: lije ko iz kabla (“it’s pouring like from a bucket”)
Cantonese: “落狗屎” (“dog poo”)
Chinese: “倾盆大雨” (“its pouring out of basins”)
Catalan: Ploure a bots i barrals (“boats and barrels”)
Croatian: padaju sjekire (“axes dropping”)
Czech: padají trakaře (“wheelbarrows”)
Czech: leje jako z konve (“like from a watering can”)
Danish: det regner skomagerdrenge (“shoemakers’ apprentices”)
Dutch: het regent pijpenstelen (“pipe stems or stair rods”)
Dutch (Flemish): het regent oude wijven (“old women”)
Dutch (Flemish): het regent kattenjongen (“kittens”)
Faroese : Tað regnar av grind (“Pilot whales”)
Finnish: Sataa kuin Esterin perseestä (“It’s raining like from Esteri’s ass”)
French: il pleut comme vache qui pisse (“it is raining like a peeing cow”)
French: il pleut à sceaux (“it’s raining like from buckets”)
French: il pleut des hallebardes (“it is raining halberds”), clous (“nails”), or cordes (“ropes”)
German: Es regnet junge Hunde (“young dogs”) or Es schüttet wie aus Eimern (“like poured from buckets”)
Greek: βρέχει καρεκλοπόδαρα (“chair legs”)
Hindi: musaldhār bārish (“a stream of mallets”)
Hungarian: mintha dézsából öntenék (“like poured from a vat”)
Icelandic: Það rignir eins og hellt sé úr fötu (“like poured from a bucket”)
Italian: piove a catinelle (“poured from a basin”)
Latvian: līst kā no spaiņiem (“it’s raining like from buckets”)
Nepali: मुसलधारे झरी (“a stream of mallets”)
Norwegian: det regner trollkjerringer (“she-trolls”)
Polish: pada żabami (“frogs”)
Portuguese: está a chover canivetes (“penknives”)
Portuguese: Chove a potes (“It is raining by the pot load”)
Portuguese: Chove a cântaros (“It is raining by the jug load”)
Romanian: plouă cu broaşte (“frogs”)
Russian: льет как из ведра (“from a bucket”)
Spanish: están lloviendo chuzos de punta (“shortpikes/icicles point first” – not only is it raining a lot, but it’s so cold and windy that being hit by the drops hurts)
Spanish: está lloviendo a cántaros (“by the clay pot-full”)
Spanish: llueven sapos y culebras (“toads and snakes”)
Spanish (Argentina): caen soretes de punta (“pieces of dung head-first”)
Spanish (Venezuela): esta cayendo un palo de agua (“a stick of water is falling”)
Spanish (Colombia): “Estan lloviendo maridos” “Van a llover maridos” (It’s raining husbands, It will rain husbands)
Serbian: padaju sekire (“axes”)
Swedish: Det regnar smådjävlar (“It is raining little devils”)
Swedish: regnet står som spön i backen (“the rain stands like poles out of the ground”)
Turkish: bardaktan boşanırcasına (“like poured from a cup”)
Urdu: musladhār bārish (“a stream of mallets”)
Welsh: mae hi’n bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn (“old ladies and sticks”)

Song – Why Does It Always Rain on Me by Travis

Note: Red T-Shirt designed by my bro ;)

Get the Song

Click here to visit the Amazon page for “Travis: The Singles” where you can buy their album, or buy the song “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?”

Read the Lyrics
Click here to read the lyrics to “Why Does It Always Rain On Me” by Travis, and to read some comments about the song’s meaning.

Thanks for listening to the podcast. Thanks also for messages which are sent to me all the time (even during the recording of episodes). I carefully consider everything which is written to me. All the best and enjoy this episode, Luke

132. Pronouncing ~ed Endings (with Added Romance and Horror)

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Some pronunciation, a story, some vocabulary, some romance and a little bit of horror-movie gore in this episode.

Small Donate ButtonRight-click here to download this episode.

Hi everyone, I decided to teach you some essential language this time. Here’s what to expect from this episode:

The first part is about the pronunciation of ~ed endings (e.g. agED, beggED or wastED, etc)
The second part involves some -ed adjectives.
Then I teach you some idioms and very natural expressions.
The episode also includes a romantic story with sentences you can repeat, and a little bit of horror movie violence, just in case you were bored of all the ‘romance’.

For vocabulary notes, see below.

You can make donations by clicking PayPal donate buttons on my site. It’s my birthday next Wednesday. Just saying…

VOCABULARY NOTES AND TRANSCRIPT FOR THE FIRST PART OF THE EPISODE
In this episode I’m going to teach you some really useful things. It’s been a while since I taught you things, or focused on language. Recent episodes have been interviews, which are really useful because you can listen to authentic English as it really is spoken, but I also think it’s important for us to look closely at some features of language too: either vocabulary, pronunciation or grammar (even though grammar is usually pretty boring unless you’re a grammar geek).

So, in this episode we’re going to focus on a few things.
First we’re going to look at pronunciation of –ed endings. That’s often a tricky area for many people around the world. We’re going to practice that a bit.
There will also be some vocab – some regular verbs that you might find useful, but also some –ed adjectives.

If that sounds a little basic, then worry not because I’m also going to throw in some more idiomatic language as we continue, and anyway this is Luke’s English Podcast. It’s always really fun and entertaining anyway. Darn it, I will make this entertaining as well as useful, if it’s the last thing I do!

There are language notes related to all of this on the website. I still have two websites; teacherluke.podomatic.com and teacherluke.wordpress.com.

-ED ENDINGS
So first; let’s look at ed endings.
They’re tricky for many people (particularly Brazilians)
They’re very common, so you really should be able to pronounce them all correctly
There are 3 ways to pronounce them
/t/ /d/ or /id/
Examples: asked agreed wanted
How do you know the correct pronunciation? It depends on the sound at the end of the word, before you add the –ed part.
If it’s an unvoiced sound then the –ed is pronounced /t/
If it’s a voiced sound then the –ed is pronounced /d/
If it’s a t or d sound then you add a syllable by using the /id/ sound
It’s hard to remember and process those rules during fluent speech, so don’t worry about it too much.
What you should do is practice repeating the words in sentences with correct pronunciation so you get used to saying them correctly.
For many of you this will involve unlearning many years of speaking in your native language, or many years of saying the words wrong (becquse you read the words from a page, or because no-one told you otherwise)
If you’re young then congratulations you stand a better chance of fixing this potentially fossilized error.

The verbs: Listen to the episode to hear the pronunciation of them. They’re all regular verbs ending in -ed.
touch / stop / stroll / suggest / walk / want / agree / ask / arrive / beg / blush / chat / decide / drop / enjoy / explain / gaze / grab / jump / knock / look / miss / open / phone / pick / recommend / reply / seem / scream / shock / show / skip / smile / squeeze / start

The Complete Story
1. I was sitting alone in my office when someone knocked on the door, and I stopped working.
2. The door opened, and a pretty woman walked in.
3. When she looked at me, my heart jumped. She was very beautiful. I gazed back at her for a moment.
4. My heart started beating faster. I couldn’t help noticing that she seemed nervous too. She blushed slightly when I looked at her.
5. “Are you Mr Thompson?”, she asked me.
6. “Yes, I am”, I replied. “How can I help you?”
7. “Sorry to bother you” she said. She smiled sweetly. “I’m the new girl in the office, I just arrived yesterday”
8. “Yes, I missed you yesterday, I was out of the office.”, I explained.
9. “Oh, it’s no problem, I phoned you, but you weren’t in. I just wanted to say that I’m really glad to be working with you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
10. I blushed. She was being so nice. I decided to stop working, so I could show her around the office.
11. We strolled through the building, and I showed her around. As we chatted, we connected on a deep, meaningful level.
12. She asked me if I knew any nice restaurants in the area. I recommended a really good English one near the station.
13. She said she wanted a coffee, so I used the new machine to make her one. When I gave it to her, our hands touched briefly and my heart skipped a beat.
14. After a moment, I suggested that we go to the English restaurant together, for a romantic meal of fish and chips.
15. She agreed, and inside I was delighted. Later that evening, I picked her up on my scooter. As we rode through the bumpy streets, she squeezed my waist to hold on. When I sped up to 32mph she screamed with excitement!
16. We enjoyed a wonderful evening together. She was amazing! When I dropped her off at her house, I made a quick decision. “Will you… marry me?” I asked.
17. “…get …married?” she said, shocked. “The thing is… I can’t…”
18. “Why not?!” I begged. “I love you! Please marry me!!”
19. She grabbed my arm, and said. “I love you too, but I can’t marry you, because…”
What happened next? Leave a comment to give your opinion.

-ED ADJECTIVES AND SOME IDIOMATIC ALTERNATIVES
Confused
I didn’t know what was going on
I couldn’t get my head around it
It really messed with my head

Disappointed
I was gutted
I felt really let down
I felt really dejected

Terrified
I was absolutely petrified
I nearly shat myself (very rude!)
I was shit scared (very rude!)

Embarrassed
I just wanted the ground to swallow me up
I felt like such an idiot

Delighted
I was so chuffed
I was over the moon
I felt amazing
I couldn’t believe it

Interested
I was riveted
It was absolutely fascinating
I was on the edge of my seat

Excited
I’m well up for it (enthusiastic)
I’m stoked
I’m buzzing

Exhausted
I’m knackered
I’m shattered
I just want to crash out

Shocked
It was like a slap in the face
I was stunned
I couldn’t believe my ears/eyes

Surprised
I jumped out of my skin

Nervous doesn’t mean angry or annoyed.
It means stressed and scared (like before the dentist).
Dentist: nervous
If someone is playing loud music, or clicking a pen: annoyed or angry.

That’s it!

114. Twelve Natural Expressions

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Learn 12 very common expressions by listening to this authentic and unscripted conversation.

Small Donate ButtonRight-click here to download this episode.
In this episode I am joined by Kate again, and her friend Mark. We teach you some natural expressions and get to know Mark a little bit.

12 Natural Expressions
Here are the expressions we explain and talk about in this episode:

to end up doing something = to eventually find yourself in a situation after having done lots of things. “We went to the pub, had a few drinks, went to a club and then we ended up at someone’s house party.”

to bend over backwards = to make a big effort for someone. “They really bent over backwards to make us feel at home.”

to bite off more than you can chew = to try and do more than you can do. “I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this job. I don’t think I can finish it.”

to work something out = to understand something after thinking about it a lot, “I’ve worked out what to do with my old car. I’ll sell it.”

in the nick of time = at the last possible moment, “I got onto the train in the nick of time”
by the skin of my teeth = to manage to do something but you were close to failing, “I passed the course by the skin of my teeth”

to know it like the back of your hand = to know something really well, “I know this town like the back of my hand”

once in a while = sometimes, “Once in a while I like to eat a McDonald’s”

every now and then = sometimes, “I like to eat a McDonald’s from time to time”

to sleep on it = to go to sleep before making an important decision and then make the decision after sleeping, “I can’t decide what to do, I think I’ll just sleep on it”

to get the ball rolling = to get things started, “Just to get the ball rolling I’d like to ask you a question”

to get stuck in there = to go for it and get involved, ” just get stuck in there and go for it!”

87. Six Idioms and Six Phrasal Verbs (with Oli)

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I chat to Oli about the news and teach you 6 idioms and 6 phrasal verbs. For a list of the phrasal verbs and idioms see below. Thanks for downloading!

Small Donate ButtonRight-click here to download.

I still haven’t received the Macmillan Phrasal Verb Dictionary by the way. When I receive it I will let you know.

The 6 Phrasal Verbs
(Luke’s phrasal verbs all begin with the letter L)
To lapse into something “I lapsed into a dream” -to go down into a different state
To let up “The snow just doesn’t let up” -to stop
To lust after something “They always lust after a big news story in the paper” -to really want something in a sexual way
To lash out at something “They lash out at criticism” -to react aggressively to something
To leaf through something “It’s nice to have a cup of tea and leaf through the paper” -to slowly turn the pages of a book or paper
To laugh something off “They just laugh off the criticism” -to deal with criticism by just laughing about it

The 6 Idioms
(Oli’s begin with the letter M)
To be no match for someone/something “This boxer is no match for Mike Tyson” -he’s not as good as Mike Tyson
To take matters into your own hands “He took matters into his own hands” -to take control of a situation yourself
To get a dose of your own medicine “He’s going to get a dose of his own medicine tonight” -to experience for yourself bad things which you normally do to others”
To take a trip down memory lane “Looking at those old photos made me take a trip down memory lane” -to make you remember something
To make a mental note “When you have an iPhone you don’t need to make a mental note” -to remember something
To take the mickey out of someone “They kept taking the mickey out of me for my new haircut” -to make fun of someone, to tease someone

68. Childhood / Growing Up / School Days – Phrasal Verbs and Expressions

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Plenty of good vocabulary for describing your childhood and school days, plus some stuff about Luke’s early days.

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Here you will find lots and lots of really natural and common expressions for describing your childhood, school days and plenty of other things too.

Listen to the podcast a few times to get the most benefit.

Transcript – The Section about My Childhood & Schooldays
This is a transcription of the first part of the episode, in which I describe my childhood. There is also a list of vocabulary below.

[1:40 – Childhood / Growing Up / School Days story]
Let’s get started. So, childhood, my childhood.

Well, I was born in 1977 and in fact my mum gave birth to me on a Sunday in 1977. My parents decided to name me Luke. They decided to call me Luke. Now, I wasn’t named after Luke Skywalker even though I was born in 1977. I wasn’t named after Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. Although I am a big Star Wars fan. I’ve always loved Star Wars, but I wasn’t named after him. I wasn’t named after Cool Hand Luke, the Paul Newman movie either. Instead I was actually named after my great-great-grandfather, who was also called Luke. And my mum in particular really looked up to him, because he was like very successful person in our family. So basically my mum really looked up to him. So they decided to kind of… I think they liked the name Luke anyway, but they also partly wanted to name me after my great-great-grandfather.

So I grew up in West London. That’s where we lived in a place called Ealing in West London. So that’s where I grew up initially. In fact, I grew pretty quickly, my parents used to measure me on the wall. So I’d stand at the wall and they’d use a pencil to mark a line on a wall and then every few months or something they’d measure me again and we can see how much I’d grown. I grew pretty quickly like most kids grow pretty fast. I was brought up by my parents, of course. My parents brought me up, I think, to be quite a good lad.

My parents were quite strict sometimes but not too strict. I don’t think I was spoilt as a child either. I mean there were plenty of things we weren’t allowed. For example we weren’t allowed to watch James Bond movies or The A Team. I wasn’t allowed to have a TV in my bedroom for example. I wasn’t allowed to eat too many sweets, things like that, but they weren’t too strict either.

My parents were comfortable with money, but not really well off or rich or wealthy, but they were just comfortable. So I wasn’t really born with a silver spoon in my mouth or anything like that. I’m just from a normal family. My parents and family used to say that I looked.. I took after my Dad. They said that I really took after my Dad because I looked like him and I was quite sporty and good at music, like him.

So, also I could be a bit naughty and badly behaved at times and my parents would sometimes tell me off and send me to my room but it was never that serious. Actually, I went through quite a kind of naughty phase, I was quite stubborn for a few years. I remember like my mum having trouble kind of like… she took me to the shops when we walked back if was kind of like annoyed or something, I’d just stop walking and say: “I’m not moving”. So, I was quite naughty and a bit stubborn, but I grew out of it. Actually I grew out of that phase.

I have an older brother so I would get a lot of his old clothes. So I’d wear his hand-me-down clothes. And we also used to play with toys that had been handed down by my dad and my uncle. So we had all these old toys that we used to play, that had been handed down by my father.

I kind of went through a sort of lying phase for a little while, when I was a kid. I think, that’s quite normal for children and my parents would sort of suspect that I was lying about something. You know, they would know that I was telling fibs or telling tall tales and they’d make me own up to it. But I got over my lying phase. I grew out of it. I was quite a hyperactive as a kid. I always had too much energy, I was always full of beans. My parents would wonder where I’d get my energy from. It turns out, the orange squash that I used to drink, when I was a kid, was just full of e-numbers, so full of chemicals that made me hyperactive. Sometimes by brother and I would stay up late listening to the radio or playing with our Star Wars figures. Obviously we had to be very quiet, because we weren’t allowed to stay up past a certain time.

I used to look up to my older brother quite a lot. He’s only two years older than me, but that’s quite a lot when you are a kid. So you know, I used to look up to him. He had cool friends, I’d sort of enjoy having out with him and kind of watching him do his art work. He used to do lots of artwork and I kind of sit there watching him doing his art work. So, I kind of looked up to him. To be honest, I was probably quite an annoying little brother and sometimes he would just tell me to get lost and things like that.

Birthdays and Christmas were always really great days. I’d look forward to them so much that I’d be literally counting down the days before my birthday and I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before. When you’re a kid, teeth, your teeth are quite important, because really your first set of teeth, your baby teeth or your milk teeth, they kind of would fall out sometimes and that was always quite a big event when a tooth came out. And you’d try to keep the tooth and then put it under your pillow for the tooth fairy who’d come in the night and replace it with a coin. This is like one of those things that you believe when you are a child. The only thing is that I was actually scared of the tooth fairy, I was afraid of it, frightened of the tooth fairy and so I would actually put my pillow outside my room, in the hallway with the tooth under it. And then, that way the tooth fairy didn’t have to come into my bedroom, because I was scared of it. It’s kind of pathetic, I know.

I also found out when I was a child that Father Christmas, Santa Claus wasn’t real. When one night I couldn’t sleep because I was too excited and sometime during the night someone entered the room and started filling my stocking with presents. I thought it was Father Christmas, so I pretended to be asleep but secretly watched him. It was my Dad. He wasn’t even dressed as Santa. So obviously, then I realised that Santa didn’t really exist.

I went to a nursery school, which is a kind of preschool. When you’re about sort of 3 or 4 years old. All I remember doing there was just playing games. Then I went to a normal comprehensive state school. In the UK here, in Britain, the names of our schools can be a bit confusing, because basically, first off all, you have comprehensive schools and those are ones which are paid for by the government. So they are like state schools, free schools let’s say, comprehensive school or states schools. Then you got private schools which are… you have to pay to go to one of those schools, you have to pay. And most of them have a kind of entry level exams. You have to be a certain level of student to get into a private school then your parents have to pay, okay. But then you’ve got level schools and those strangely are called public schools. Now, public schools are actually just private schools. They’re very exclusive, private schools. And what we would call a public school would be a comprehensive school. Right? Actually, in England a public school is like a very very… difficult to get into and very expensive, very high-level. These are schools like Eton and Harrow. Prince William went to Eton, I think. Just kind of give an example of what kind of school that is.

So I just went to comprehensive school. And the first school you go to is your primary school. That’s from age about 5 to 11. And then from primary school you move on to Secondary School. Secondary school would be kind of 11 to 15 or 16 years old. And then if you can… You can leave school then and get a job, if you want but if you choose to you can go on to study more and you would do.. you’d probably go to college like a sixth form college. When you’re 15 or 16 you take exams called GCSEs and most people take about 9 subjects. Things like: English language, English literature, history, geography, physics, biology, chemistry, stuff like you know maths, maybe French, drama, music, things like that. And after that you go on to do A levels which is the next level of qualification. You take your A levels when you’re about 18 years old. And most of people take about three A levels or maybe about 6 As levels. And once you get your A level, you can then sort of apply to go to university and you need a certain number of A levels to get into good universities.

In the universities here, you’ve got basically like… probably like 3 types of university here. The most famous ones are obviously Oxford and Cambridge. They’re very well established, very famous universities. And those two universities together are called “Oxbrigde”. So if you went to an Oxbridge university it means you go to a very good university. Then the next level of university and these are also excellent places, these the next level down, would be the red brick universities. And they are called that, because they’re typically the buildings are made using red brick, because they were built, let’s see, around the turn of the century, maybe a bit earlier than then. So that was typical of architecture at that time though. Buildings would be constructed using red bricks. So those are the red brick universities. They are very good.

Then, the third level of university would be the ex-polytechnic universities or former Polytechnic universities. A polytechnic college actually sort of twenty or thirty years ago would have been a college of further education that specialized in technical qualifications. And they actually gained the rights to be called universities some time ago. And then they offered similar courses to the other universities in the country. And those are called ex-polytechnic universities or ex-polys. I went to an ex-polytechnic university called Liverpool John Moores and actually the department in which I studied was very good, had a very good reputation. So all of those universities are.. sort of 3 types of university.

So I went to primary school when I was a kid, of course. I absolutely hated my first day. I didn’t want to go at all. My mum had to drag me in to the building literally and I cried. It was an absolute nightmare. But, you know, I got used to it slowly. And when I was 9 years old my Dad got a promotion in his job and so we moved out of London.

And we moved to an area, basically, in the countryside just in to the middle of nowhere. So we moved from like the city out into the countryside which was quite a big change. I went to countryside school, which was quite weird, because I was a city lad, you know, I was from the city, a city kid. And all the other kids kind of picked on me because I talked differently. I didn’t really get bullied but I did get picked on. Eventually I learned to stand up for myself and the other kids stop picking on me.

Now, I wasn’t really a swot or a teacher’s pet, but I was quite bright, if a little bit cheeky at times. I was quite cheeky to my teachers, but I got away with it, because basically I was nice. A couple of times I got told off by teachers. I got a couple of detentions and I had to write lines as punishment. In those days there was no physical punishment at school. The cane had been banned some years before. So now I usually did my homework although sometimes I didn’t do it and I’d have to give some kind of bad excuse. Like: I lost it or something like that. Some kids were really badly behaved. They’d kind of bunk off school or bully the other kids and some kids got expelled or suspended. My school was a bit rough but you know that’s quite normal really for comprehensive schools.

Obviously I had to wear a uniform in every school that I went to. I had wear a uniform. In my secondary school my uniform was that I had to wear black trousers, black shoes, a white or gray t-shirt, a black blazer which had a badge on it and a school tie which had a particular color. My school tie was black with red diagonal stripes. And my previous school was blue tie with yellow strips across it. So I had to wear a uniform which I think is quite good, it’s quite a good idea to make kids wear uniforms. Because at least it makes all the children kind of the same. You know, you don’t get that sense that some of the kids are very poor. Some of the kids are kind of very rich or well off. Instead if they all wear the same clothes, means they’re kind of on an equal kind of level which I think is a good thing. You also get the idea that when you’re in a uniform it feels like you’re being prepared for work. You know, like later on when you wear a suit when you go to work, it feels like you’re wearing a school uniform. So, I guess it’s kind of quite clever really as a way of training people to be a little bit formal or something, I don’t know.

So, I started growing up into my teenage years. So I became a teenager. I became an adolescent. You know, I had all those psychical changes. I went through puberty and basically I got through school okay, despite the difficulties that you typically go through when you are a kid. In the UK secondary school can be quite tough because of peer pressure from the other kids. You feel very sensitive at that time. And it’s hard, because you’re really learning who you are. There’s lots of hormones racing round inside your body. And you’re changing a lot psychically. It can be very embarrassing at that time of your life. Now, in the UK you have to just kind of to get by without losing the respect of the other kids. You have to be quite popular in order to avoid embarrassment or avoid being picked on and bullied. You have to try and impress girls, avoid the bullies, be popular, be quite good at sport. If you’re not good at sport, you have to be funny. You shouldn’t be too geeky or swotty. You should basically avoid trouble with the teachers, do you work, get good results and keep your parents happy. That’s basically what you’ve got to achieve at school.

It can be hard, I survived by playing football just all the time. I was completely obsessed with football and every moment would be spent playing football or thinking about football. I also learned to play the piano and that was like my own private thing that I do on my own. Just play the piano. That was very nice experience and I kind of learned that I’d had some kind of skill as a musician. I kind of lived in my own world really. I feel like I was just slightly disconnected, just in my own world. I listened to like lots of good music on my walkman all the time. And I had all these tapes that had been given to me by my uncle and my dad. And they listened to lots of really good music. So I was listening to things like Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and things like that and the Clash and the Sex Pistols and these great bands that I’d been introduced to. And I was 13 years old. I was listening on to this music on my walkman all the time. I think like… none of my friends liked that music until later until they left school and then they decided that they liked that music. So personally I feel I was like ahead of my time in that way.

You know, adolescence gave me a lot of spots. I had lots of like spots on my face, and greasy hair. I was quite self-conscious and awkward. You know, I was really too embarrassed to be cool. So I just used to make lots of really bad jokes all the time and nothing really changed there, I imagine. I was quite kind of awkward, quite uncomfortable with girls. I was, you know, fairly popular with them, but I couldn’t really imagine having a girlfriend. Because I just wasn’t really confident enough. I studied quite well at school. I mean I often would lose concentration but I was quite imaginative, so I did all right. I got above average GSCEs and particularly at drama and music. I left school at 16 and I went to college. And that was really quite a different world and I kind of realized that when I left it was brilliant. I just sort of didn’t have to wear a uniform at college. And I was with lots of other kids at the same age as me from different places that had never met me before. And I really felt like I could sort of become myself. And I actually learned to have a personality, I think, for the first time, when I went to college. And then kind of grew up and became an adult and that’s a separate story, that one, separate podcast.
[20:11]

Vocabulary
Here you will see a list of some of the expressions I used. Listen to the episode to get definitions and examples.

1. I was born in 1977
2. My Mum gave birth to me on a Sunday.
3. My parents decided to name me Luke
4. I wasn’t named after Luke Skywalker or Cool Hand Luke
5. I was named after by great-great-grandfather, who my Mum in particular looked up to
6. I grew up in West London
7. I grew pretty quickly. My parents used to measure me
8. I was brought up by my parents
9. My parents brought me up to be a good lad
10. my parents were quite strict but not too strict
11. I don’t think I was spoiled/spoilt as a child
12. There were plenty of things we weren’t allowed to do
13. My parents were comfortable but not really well off, rich or wealthy
14. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth
15. My parents said I took after my Dad because I looked like him and I was good at sport and music, like him
16. I could be a bit naughty and badly behaved at times and my parents would tell me off and send me to my room but it was never that serious
17. Apparently I went through a naughty phase
18. I was quite stubborn but I grew out of it
19. I have an older brother so I would get his old clothes, I’d get his hand-me-down clothes
20. We used to play with toys that had been handed down by my Dad
21. I went through a lying phase, which is quite normal for kids, and my parents would suspect I was lying about something
22. They knew I was telling fibs or telling tall tales and they’d make me own up to it
23. I got over my lying phase. I grew out of it.
24. I was quite a hyperactive kid
25. I was always full of beans
26. Turns out the orange squash used to contain lots of e-numbers, like E102
27. Sometimes by brother and I would stay up late listening to the radio or playing with Star Wars figures
28. I used to look up to my older brother quite a lot
29. I was probably the annoying little brother and sometimes he’d tell me to get lost
30. Birthdays and Christmas were always great days. I’d look forward to them so much that I’d be counting the days before my birthday and then I wouldn’t be able to sleep
31. Teeth were important as a kid too because your first set (milk teeth) would fall out sometimes and that was quite a big event.
32. You’d keep the tooth and put it under your pillow for the tooth fairy who’d come in the night and replace it with a coin
33. I was scared/afraid/frightened of the tooth fairy
34. I’d put my pillow out on the landing
35. I found out that Santa wasn’t real when one night I couldn’t sleep because I was too excited
36. Some time during the night someone entered the room and started filling my stocking with presents. I thought it was Santa so I pretended to be asleep but secretly watched. It was my Dad. He wasn’t even dressed as Santa.
37. I went to nursery school
38. I went to a normal comprehensive state school. Comprehensive schools / private schools / public schools
39. Primary / Secondary (GCSEs) / College (A levels) / University (degree)
40. Oxbridge university (Oxford or Cambridge) / Red brick university / Ex-polytechnic University
41. I hated my first day of primary school but I got used to it
42. When I was 9 my Dad got a promotion
43. We moved to the countryside to the middle of nowhere
44. The other kids picked on me because I had a different accent
45. I didn’t get bullied but I did get picked on
46. I learned to stand up for myself
47. I wasn’t a swot or a teacher’s pet
48. I could be quite cheeky
49. I got told off by teachers
50. I got a couple of detentions and I had to write lines
51. The cane had been banned a few years earlier
52. Some kids were badly behaved and they would bunk off school or bully the other kids
53. My school was a bit rough but that’s normal for comprehensive schools
54. I used to wear a uniform
55. I became a teenager and an adolescent
56. I went through puberty
57. Secondary school can be tough because of peer pressure
58. You feel sensitive and you’re learning about your identity
59. There are a lot of hormones
60. You have to get by without losing the respect of the other kids
61. You have to be quite popular to avoid embarrassment
62. You have to try to impress girls, avoid bullies, be popular, be good at sport – if not be funny, don’t be too geeky or swotty, avoid trouble with teachers, do you work, get good results and try to keep your parents happy
63. I was ahead of my time because of the music I listened to
64. I was uncomfortable with girls. I felt awkward and embarrassed a lot.
65. I studied quite well. I lost concentration but I was imaginative.
66. I got above average GSCE results and went to college.
67. The rest is history!

Here’s a funny sketch from a TV show. Kevin becomes a teenager.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuEY6jN6gY&w=425&h=349]

66. Top Advice for Learning English / Idioms with ‘say’ / Culture Shock

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Listen to some good advice for anyone learning English or taking a Cambridge exam such as IELTS, CAE or FCE. FULL TRANSCRIPT NOW AVAILABLE BELOW (Thanks again to Bettina from France) Also in this podcast you’ll learn some idioms with the word ‘say’, and listen to Luke talking about culture shock. There’s a bonus comedy audio bit at the end too so listen to the whole thing! Here are the idioms: to have your say she has nothing to say for herself I must say I wouldn’t say no Let’s say… say ‘cheese’ say ‘what’? say when to say the least you can say that again! you can’t say fairer than that you don’t say! Here’s the video from The Day Today about the Jam Festival:
Video Transcript
Video from episode 66:
The Day Today – Chris Morris – Jam Festival Interview
[32:11]
P – TV presenter
J – Janet (quest)

P: Tommorow sees the opening of the London jam festival selling pots of jam some made by celebrities to raise money for the homeless. With me is one of the organizers Janet Breen. Janet, thanks for joining us this evening. This must have taken a heck of lot organizing.
J: Yes, well it has actually to get all these celebrities to contribute their jams really has been quite an operation.
P: How much of your time did you put in to it?
J: Oh, I would say at least six months.
P: Six months? To raise money for a jam festival. Isn’t it rather stupid?
J: No, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s all in a good cause.
P: Good cause, yeah. How much you’re going to raise?
J: Well, we hope to have raised some, at least 1500 pounds.
P: 1500 pounds? That’s a pathetic amount of money. You’d raise more money by auctioning dogs.
J: Well, I don’t think so. I think it’s all in a good cause and very worthwhile.
P: You persuaded this celebrities to waste their time donating to it.
J: Yes.
P: Oh, who?
J: Glenis Kinnock we’ve got and Sebastian Coe.
P: I hate Sebastian Coe.
J: I think, he made a very worthwhile contribution.
P: Well to the paultry sum of 15 hundred pounds.
J: Yes.
P: Is that worth six months of your time.
J: I think it is worth…
P: I don’t think it is at all. I think the only reason you’ve done it, is to make yourself look important. How dare you come on this program and say: “Hey, look at me, I’m raising 15 hundred pounds for the homeless. You could raise more money by sitting outside the tube station with your hat on the ground, even if you were twice as ugly as are, which is very ugly indeed.
J: (sound of sobbing)
P: Has that been very upsetting for you?
J: (silently) Yes.
P: Do you have anything else to say in your defence?
J: (silently) No.
P: Janet Breen, Thank you

PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Top Advice for Learning English / Idioms with ‘say’ / Culture Shock (Transcript provided by Bettina, a listener from France)
You’re listening to Luke’s English podcast. For more information visit teacherluke.podomatic.com Well, hello Ladies and Gentlemen, you’re listening to Luke’s English podcast . That’s right the finest example of English that you can find on the Internet and that’s right. This is basically just a podcast while I sit here on my sofa tonight. It’s a Thursday evening and I’m basically just sitting here on the sofa . I have got a bit of time, so I decided to record some kind of podcast. Basically what I’m gonna do is just kind of sit here and talk just sort of talk to you about some stuff basically. I’ve got an idioms dictionary on the desk here in front of me and I’ve got sort of other bits of advice to give to you about learning English which I think will be very useful and very important for you to kind of pick up on and learn, right? So as I like talk to you, I’ll just kind of sort of maybe explain a few bits of vocabulary and talk to you about some advice and that kind of thing. Doesn’t that sound brilliant? Yes, it does Ladies and Gentlemen. Of course it does, because this is Luke’s English podcast. Now if you’re new to Luke’s English podcast if this is the first time you’ve listened to this let me just explain basically what this is all about. You’re probably a learner of English or maybe a teacher of English or something and you might be someone learning English who’s living in another country somewhere else in the world. Maybe a place where it’s difficult to find other speakers of English like native speakers of English. They’re quite difficult to find in some places. So you need to be able to try and listen to someone speaking English in a natural way, like a native English speaker almost like you’re kind of sitting with that person in a café or in a pub and you’re kind of talking to that person, right? So, that’s what you can get from Luke’s English podcast except that also within this, I can add other bits of audio, like interviews with people, interviews with celebrities and other interesting things like that but also I can throw in bits of vocabulary, phrasal verbs, idioms, natural expressions, that kind of thing. The sort of natural things that people talk about and the language that they use and also some pronunciation tips. Things about the way people speak in the real world. The way that they link their words up together and the way they stress sentences and that kind of thing, right? So, how can you get in touch with that kind of English? You can listen to various things on the internet. There’s lots of podcasts available for you to download and you can just listen to people speaking English but how many podcasts are there on the internet for learners of English? Well, there’s a few, some good ones like from the BBC and a few others but there’s also a lot of other podcasts which I don’t think are particularly good for several reasons. One reason is maybe that the sound recording quality isn’t that great and so it’s like listening to a bad telephone line or that they use like scripts when they speak . So they’re not exactly speaking naturally they’re just reading from a prewritten script, right? So that’s not really gonna be like the natural way that they speak. They just kind of , it’s more like written English in that case. Or some of them are just very kind of basic and a bit patronizing, you know? Like you get those podcasts that talk to you as if you’re an idiot and maybe spend ten minutes just teaching you one like big word that you’re never really gonna use, you know. I’m not kind of anti-American or anything like that but it seems a lot of these podcasts are often American ones. You’ve got kind of like “You’re listening to the business English pod from pod business.com. Today’s business word is ‘innovative’ , ‘innovative’.” You know, that kind of thing . I don’t think that’s a natural way that people speak, so it’s better to just listen to someone speaking naturally, right? So, that’s the idea with this podcast . It’s that so I can speak to you naturally and you can listen on your headphones or when you’re on the bus or when you’re on the toilet or something like that, right? You can listen you know, a lot people who listen to this, listen to in the car , so it’s lots of people kind of driving while listening to this. In fact so I expect that some people driving right now, while listening to this. So if you are driving then ‘watch out for that! ‘ Yeah, just a bit of a joke. They’re just for people who are driving. I hope, you know, I’ve done that before. You shouldn’t be really surprised really but anyway. Now, I thought that in this episode I’d kind of impart some wisdom. Basically kind of give a bit of advice. Now, I’m not saying that I know everything absolutely everything about the best way to acquire a second language. In fact what would be very interesting is if listeners to this show could maybe email me with some bits of advice themselves like I get a lot of quite advanced listeners for this show . I’m very interested to hear your stories. How did you manage to develop your English to a good level, right? Because that’s what people wanna know. So from people who (___) a good level of English maybe you can email us some advice . What’s the best way in your opinion to learn English effectively, right? Now, I’ve got some advice which I wanna give you now. Let’s see. Now imagine you’re taking a test in English. It could be one of the Cambridge exams, for example like IELTS or FCE or something like that. You’re taking your test in order to prove your level of English and you want to get a good score, so that you can get a good job in the future, right? So how are you gonna know, if the answers are right? Now, let’s say, you’re doing one of the kind of vocabulary exercises and you have to choose the right word to complete the gap. Now, how do you know that that is the right word? Now in some cases it’s just because of meaning but often it’s because of collocation like the fact that some words always go together, you know? Like the fact that you do your homework, you don’t make your homework or anything else. You DO your homework. Now, how do you know that those two words go together? There isn’t really a rule about the meaning of that word in that situation because , you know, you could just as easily say make your homework but people don’t say that. Do your homework is the collocation. So how do you know that? And how are you gonna know all the other very intricate, subtle differences in meaning between various bits of English? Now, if you just study, if you just study a grammar book or just do kind of controlled practice like that , you’re not necessarily going to for example be exposed to English enough, really. What you need to do is as well as study the language you also should just try and kind of read and listen to as much English as you can, right? Because, let’s say like if I do an exercise in an exam , in an English exam as a teacher, I know the answer, right? I just know what the answer is and I , first of all my instinct tells me it’s right and then
after that I think about the grammatical reasons why it’s right. Okay but first my instinct just tells me, yeah, I know that’s right and the others are wrong just because, you know, I just feel it as an instinct. But how have I developed that instinct? Well I think that is because from the day that I was born, I have been listening to other people using English and I have been reading English. And so much English has gone into my ears and into my eyes now, that a lot of it just sticks. So, I know by instinct which things are right and wrong because I know something is wrong because you know no one says that . I have never heard anybody say that before. That combination just doesn’t feel right.Your instinct tells you what’s right because you have heard it so many times or read it so many times, right? Like whenever you read something in English, all of those words go into your head , they all go in. You might not remember them all but they all go into your subconscious because you’ve seen them and so all those combinations are feeding into your subconscious, all the patterns of grammar and usage just go right into the back of your head until you eventually just develop a natural sense for when something feels right or wrong. So the advice here is that you need to try to read a lot and listen a lot. You need to try to get exposed to the language on a large scale . So that means listening to things regularly, listening to natural things in English regularly, I’m talking about every week. I mean every day would be perfect, right? If you could listen for half an hour a day or more you know? But as much as you can really, just listen to things in English . There’s lots of things you can listen to , all the podcasts on the internet, all the BBC podcasts, this one, Luke’s English podcast , there’s lots of internet radio stations and you’ve got all of your audio books that you can buy and like video, YouTube. All those things, things you can just listen to on your iPod. Then as well that you can read a lot if possible and think about what you, what you’re reading , that kind of English will they be using because if you just read the newspaper then you’re just going to read newspaper style English. So maybe think about other things you can read as well like blogs, which are quite informal and well as that you can read, obviously you can read books, all the novels and books that you can purchase and magazines and things like that . There’s lots of things that you can read. Even read like Comic books in English because that’s like a really natural way of, you know of seeing the communication happen with pictures as well kind of help and you also when you listening, you just think about what you listening to. Are you just listening to the news? Because if you do they don’t really speak naturally, no, they don’t speak like normal people on the news, you know? Like they tend to speak in a wired way, like :’For some reason, everyone on the news seems to speak like this . The sentence stress is strange, the intonation’s just weird. In fact, the sentences seem to go on forever. Nowhere really knows where they’re going to end or if they are going to end at all’ ,you know. That kind of thing. So really it might not be natural. So listen to kind of interviews or conversations if you can. Hopefully then, when you get exposed to the language enough, you start to kind of get a feel for what’s right and wrong. You should also study as well. I mean you can study from grammar books and things like that, too. If you try to do both, it’s the best way to do it but you need to get some English into your life. (Think a bit ?) like that. When you engage with the language you should do on a kind of meaningful level, even an emotional level, you know, so that you’re really feeling, you’re really interested in whatever you’re reading about or listening to in English. Just having that sense of enthusiasm or desire to do it will help you massively. I mean in my experience, the students who learn the best, are the ones who enjoy kind of engaging in some kind of active communication and who, you know, put themselves into the learning process. They don’t just expect it to happen, they actually take it. They take the bull by the horns, you could say. Take the bull by the horns. A bull, you know is a big animal like a male cow. You get bullfighting in Spain for example. A bull, and a bull has horns. Those are a sort of sharp bits on the top of the bull’s head and if you grab or take the bull by the horns you just sort of like take control of the situation basically. To take the bull by the horns. So the best learners really kind of take the bull by the horns, take control of the situation and kind of get involved in learning and you can enjoy it. You can pick up lots of other information not just English. You can find out about what’s happening in the world which is a pretty special thing. I’m sure you agree, Ladies and Gentlemen. So, there we go, there’s just like a bit of advice really for me. I wonder if there are other things I could talk to you about at this point. Just thinking about where my students tend to ask me questions on. Now, I get kind of questions about the world, family and about English food, it’s quite a common one. We have other weird things in this country that people don’t seem to understand. Like when visitors come to England, there are various things that they find strange or different? You know it’s basically culture shock. Culture shock is interesting because people using the word culture shock kind of expect the experience to be a shock like when you’re arriving in a new country, it’s like BANG, oh my god, I can’t deal with this but that’s not what it’s like because actually when you go to another country often it’s just, you know, pretty normal if when you get there it’s just normal, it’s the same. They have cars and you walk up and down the street and you know you can buy kind of coke, maybe people are speaking a different language but in many cases it’s quite of similar but slowly you start to realize that the place you’re living in is different in another way. It’s not just that they have sort of different things but they think in a different way or behave in a different way So like for example when I went to Japan first I thought it was going to be a big shock but when I arrived, I felt fine, I felt totally comfortable. In fact it was easier to live there because they have like more convenient shops and it just seems to be a bit easier, really, except for the language barrier. But then slowly you start to pick up on differences and you have some experiences that make you feel like, you know, understand what’s going on in this country and you start to realize the deeper stranger things about it. And all of the differences in culture between different countries is just based on various old traditions or principles about, you know, the way you interact with other people, that will make you behave that way. So the key thing to remember with culture shock is that whenever you go to another culture you should just be very patient and just accept the way that people behave differently because there is a reason for that, you know? Like, you know, there will be some old historical reason for why people behave in a different way.That doesn’t mean that they re doing it wrong. They’re just doing it differently. So I guess, culture shock is something that people experience sometimes when they come to London . I mean there are very strange things that they don’t understand like the fact we have two taps in the bathroom. I don’t know if you know what taps are. They are the things that you turn on and you turn off in order to get water from you bath or from your sink. And in England it’s very common to have two taps. A hot tap and a cold tap but many people from other countries seem to have a one tap which you can use to control the water and the temperature but in England we have two separate taps and a lot of people find it very strange like the fact they don’t know how to wash their hands because they turn on the hot tap and then it gets too hot and then th
ey have to turn on the cold tap as well and you kind of go between the cold and hot taps when you’re washing your hands. It’s a bit of ridiculous, but that’s just something about England. The fact is we value traditional things like our bathroom fittings. We like them to look old fashioned because we think that’s good. We like the traditional style. We think it looks expensive and good quality and so as a result our bathroom might look a bit traditional and you might have two taps rather than one modern style tap. And that’s typical about England. Another thing is that windows in buildings are not very good. They’re quite old here in London and a lot of my students complain that it’s cold in their room. But the windows they have in their house are often very very old windows from the victorian period. These old wooden windows and the fact is, they don’t really insulate your room. A lot of cold air comes through the windows. They are very bad for that. So it is cold but if you’re buying a house here in London and it’s got those old wooden windows then, you know, it makes it much nicer. In fact a house with old wooden windows would be more expensive than a house with modern windows because we really value the fact that there’re original victorian oak windows. Even though they don’t really work, they don’t even really do their job of insulating a house. They’re still valuable because of the tradition and the fact that they are kind of antique. So that’s just an interesting idea about culture here in England. The fact that we do value traditional things. We’re also very progressive in other areas but a lot of the time in terms of style we quite like the old stuff, I think. Although, you know modern styles are equally popular as well. Right, you know what I’m gonna do now? I’ll open the idioms dictionary randomly, okay? Okay, I’ve just opened it and I’ve got to the word say. That’s s a y and I think I’m just gonna teach you some idioms from this book here. Say, s a y , right? So these are all expressions that you can use with the word SAY. So let’s see. You can say: have you say. To have your say. You might get for example on a radio show where they are discussing news stories. The radio presenter might say, if you would like to have your say then just give us a call on 0208 998 4234, you know and that means to give your opinion, right? To give your opinion about something, right? So if you wanna give your opinion you can have your say, right? So on a radio show, you can call in and have your say about one of the new stories, okay? Another one is : to have nothing to say for yourself. To have nothing to say for yourself, that just means that, you know, you’re boring really. You don’t have really anything interesting to talk about.You know, you got nothing to say for yourself.You know, it just means that you’re not really good at having a conversation. You know, you might say, oh, she seems very nice but she doesn’t have much to say for herself. So for the pronunciation, let’s say that again. She doesn’t have much to say for herself – she doesn’t have much to say for herself – she doesn’t have much to say for herself, right? So that means you know, she doesn’t have anything to say , she’s quite boring. Yah and let’s see. If you’re giving an opinion and you want to emphasize it, you can say, well, I must say, well, I must say, and you can use that to emphasize an opinion. For example, well I must say, that’s the funniest thing I have heard all week. Well I must say, that’s the funniest thing I have heard all week. So you’re emphasizing. Wow, that really is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. Let’s see. Another one would be: I wouldn’t say no or I wouldn’t say no to that and it’s used to say that you would like to do something or you would like to accept an offer. So if someone says to you, would you like some tea? You say, well, I wouldn’t say no and that means yes., right? Well, I wouldn’t say no, yeah? So, would you like some tea Luke? Oh well, I wouldn’t say no, okay? Well, I wouldn’t say no – well, I wouldn’t say no – well, I wouldn’t say no. Okay, alright next one is: let us say or let’s say, okay? Let’s say. And you can use that to kind of make a suggestion or give an example. For example, well, I can let you buy the TV for, well, let’s say 100 pounds. Okay? I’ll let you buy the TV for well, let’s say 100 pounds, okay? Let’s see. Next one is: say cheese, say cheese, cheese, right? Like you know, like the food that mice like to eat. cheese. We use that when you ask everybody to smile before you take their photograph. So just before you take a photograh you’d say. Right, is everybody ready? Right? Say cheese! In some countries they say “patatas”, I think in Spain, I think it’s “patatas”, which means potatoes I think and in another country, I’m sure you say, I think in Japan sometimes they say cheesu – cheesu which is kind of like cheese but in a Japanese accent , cheeesu. A bit like that. I think, I’m sure they’ve got something else that they say. They certainly put their two fingers up in a V sign. Whenever you point a camera, at a Japanese person, their hand always comes up with a V sign to, you know, Peace. You know, that’s cool, that’s really cool. It’s amazing how every Japanese person, I have ever met, if I showed them a camera, BANG, the hand up with the V sign, Peace, like that. It’s cool you know, like Japanese people obviously really like Peace and that’s good. That’s a good thing, right? Let’s see, okay. We’ve got another: say what? Say what? Say What?, which is an American expression. So you have to do it in an American accent, say wwwhat?, and that’s say wwwhat? Say what?, so you use that to express great surprise on what someone has just said. So, for example, he is getting married? Say what? Another one is : say when. Say when, okay? That’s like when, you know, when did you go to the moon? for example, when. Right, say when. And we use that when you want someone to stop pouring a drink, you know, like for example, if they’re pouring you a cup of tea and you don’t want to give you anymore, so you want to say stop but what happens is when you pour a drink for someone, you say, say when! Meaning when would you like me to stop. So, say when and often the other person will go, when, like that, to tell you when to stop pouring. So, would you like some tea? Oh yes, please. *TEA POURING SOUND EFFECT* Say when? Like that ,okay? Let’s see: to say the least. To say the least, to say the least and we use that to say, that you’re using the least strong way of saying something. So for example, you would say, I’m not very happy with this work, to say the least, which means I’m, the least thing I feel is I’m not very happy about it. So actually, what he really means, he’s really, really unhappy with his work. I’m not very happy with this work to say the least. That means, he’s actually kind of, to say the least is used to describe the fact that you’re actually feeling a lot more angry about it, you know? To say the least. Let’s see, okay: you can say that again. This is a, I love this expression. You can say that again. I think it’s just such a brilliant expression. Basically you can use that when you really agree with someone, like really strongly agree with them. So it means, I agree completely and I already know that, right? So like, you know, if you just really wanna agree with someone. So someone might say, oh, she is the most boring person, I’ve ever met. Right, she is the most boring person, I’ve ever met. Well, you can say that again!, Yeah, you can say that again., Yeah, so you’re inviting the person to say it again because you really agree with it. Well you can say that again. So you can say that again – you can say that again – you can say that again, alright? And here’s another good one: you don’t say. Oh, you don’t say, right? And that’s a like an ironic, kind of sarcastic way of doing. So you have to be very sarcastic when you speak. Oh, you don’t say, like that and it’s used to express, it’s used to express surprise, hum? Okay, alright, I think you use, oh you don’t say to mean, when someone has said something very very
obvious, right, they’d just said something really really obvious, so, it would be, well, next year is gonna be 2012! Oh yeah, you don’t say. No, it’s kind of a bad example. Let’s see, let’s see, well, he’s gonna be really drunk if he keeps drinking that stuff. You don’t say. This is strange, you don’t say? I think, it’s just, it’s like a way of saying, yeah, absolutely, oh, yeah. Actually, wait a minute, I think I (___) wrong. Let me just think about this. Yeah, you don’t say. Funny, you know what? You know when you kind of like repeat an expression or a word over and over and over again. It just stops meaning anything. Well, that’s happened to me now with this expression, you don’t say. It’ doesn’t mean anything to me now. I’ve completely forgotten what this expression means. (___) help me? (___) help me out please? What does, you don’t say mean? I’ve completely forgotten! Right, hold on. Get it together. Just get my mind together here. You don’t say. Yeah, I’ll go with my original explanation. You don’t say is a way, sort of ironically saying, yeah, that’s obvious, you know. You didn’t need to say that. Of course, that ‘s obvious! So, you would say, well I bet that’s the Queen’s rich. Yeah, you don’t say. So it’s kind of a way of stating that something is obvious, you know in a kind of ironic, sarcastic way. You don’t say, yeah, you don’t say, like that… Yeah okay, that’s it for the idioms and I think that’s about it for this podcast. That pretty much wraps this up. Actually I wonder if there ‘s something I can play to you. I might find an interesting bit of audio which that you can listen to as a bit of fun. I’m gonna think about that but for the meantime it’s goodbye for now. Okay, I found something for you to listen to. I’m gonna to play you a piece of audio from a television program which was on TV here in the UK a few years ago and basically it’s a kind of News program but it’s not a serious News program. It’s a kind of a joke News program, right? It’s like a spoof of a News show and in this program basically, it looks like the News, it’s sounds like the News, but they have stories on there and the whole thing is actually a bit of a joke and they twist some things to make them funny, okay? So what you’re gonna listen to here is a news reader interviewing a woman about some charity work which she has been doing. Now, the situation is basically, the woman has come into this studio to talk about this charity work. Apparently she has been organizing a jam festival. So, you know, jam is like that staff that is made from fruit and you spread it on your toast in the morning like strawberry jam. So, she is talking about the fact, she organized a jam festival and she raised some money and she used some celebrities in her jam festival. All to raise money for charity but the interviewer is not very impressed by how much money she has made. She has only made a few thousand pounds and so he is very sort of surprised. Only a thousand pounds, that’s ridiculous, that’s pathetic. That’s a pathetic amount of money and he says to her: ” You could have raised more money by auctioning dogs”, right? Now, to auction is to sell something when people bid a price for something. So, for example you get a big room, an auction room. One person is stand of the front and say, okay so I have this old antique chair. Can we start the bidding please at five hundred pounds. And then people kind of go, 550 got so, 550, so I see 600. 600 to the man in the blue shirt, so I see 650. 650 pounds. 650 pounds to the man with the newspaper and it’s sold for 650 pounds. You know, that kind of, that’s an auction. So he is saying , he raised only a few hundred pounds for a jam festival. That’s pathetic. You could have raised more money by auctioning dogs. So basically, he is very kind of rude to her but he is very funny. Just because it sounds like the News and then he kind of changes it and it becomes ridiculous. So, I hope you enjoy it. The show is called ” The Day Today” and it’s fantastic. Thanks a lot for listening. Bye, bye bye, bye, bye…

61. 127 Hours / ‘Hand’ Idioms

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Listen to an interview with Aaron Ralston, learn about the movie 127 Hours and pick up some useful idioms with the word ‘hand’.

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Luke’s English Podcast is completely free and a great way to improve your English. Luke focusses on British English, specifically on natural language which is really used by people in Britain every day. You can learn vocabulary and cultural information.

In this episode, I talk about the film 127 Hours, we listen to an interview with Aaron Ralston (who is the subject of the film) and then I teach you some really useful idioms with the word ‘hand’.

True or False Statements. There is a video and transcript below.

1. The week of April 26 – May 1st 2003 divided his life into two parts.
2. The hike he went on was one of the most extreme and dangerous hikes he had ever done.
3. As he was hiking above a canyon he dislodged a boulder and they both fell into the canyon. The boulder landed on his arm and trapped him in the canyon.
4. He was 5 hours from civilisation.
5. He hadn’t informed anyone of his plan to trek in that area.
6. He realised almost immediately that he was going to starve to death.
7. By the 5th day he had already tried every possible way to escape.
8. By day 5 he was still not convinced that he was going to die there.
9. He wasn’t able to deal with regrets that he had about his life.
10. He had a dream about himself as a boy and he wanted to go back to apologise to himself.
11. He got really angry because he felt he had failed himself.
12. He made a controlled decision to break his bones and to cut his arm off.
13. He was very happy to cut off his arm despite the pain.
14. He took a really good quality photo of his hand before he left.
15. He fell 60ft into a pool of water.
16. He hiked 7 miles even though he was losing strength all the time.
17. He climbed 800ft to his truck and then contacted a helicopterto rescue him.
17. His experience in Blue John canyon totally changed his life forever.

Video (transcript below)

Transcript of the Aaron Ralston Interview

[5:56]
When I think about the week of April 26 – May 1st 2003, there was what came before and there is what came after. It was such a watershed for me that literally cleaved not only my arm, but my life into these this kind of before and after. This pre and post Blue John.

I walked into that canyon not only with two hands, but just as an adventurer on a day trip for kind of a vacation (of sorts). And midway through this hike that was pretty low-key for the kinds of things that I was doing at that time of my life. I got to a drop-off in a slot canyon in the middle of very remote desert in Southern Utah and I dislodged a boulder. I pulled it down as I was descending, this drop off and the boulder fell from my head as I was now underneath it. And as I put my hands up to try to block it from crashing into my skull that my hands, one got smashed and as the boulder ricocheted my right hand became trapped by this rock as it slammed into a new spot between these very narrow walls.

So this like bus-tire size boulder now is trapping me in a fifty foot deep slot canyon five miles from the nearest dirt road and hours from a phone or pavement or running water or help. I was by myself and told anyone where I was going, didn’t leave any kind of a itinerary and so it was just me stuck and trapped basically standing in my grave and without being able to get free I was definitely going to die there via one or the other kind of mechanisma, see either infection, dehydration or starvation, perhaps a flash flood or just by succumbing a hyperthermia during the very cold nights.

I suffered through all of these various bodily and mental degradations over not just one day and one night, but two days, two nights, three days and three nights, four days and four nights, five days and a fifth night I knew that at this point I’ve tried everything there is to try including trying to cut my arm off to get myself free and being there, I etched my name and my birth month and what I thought was my death month in the wall off the canyon above my shoulder. I used this hand-held video camera sat on a rock in front of me to strapping my hand and recorded my will and testament, I mean my goodbyes to my family, my loved ones and I was resigned perhaps or at peace with, maybe another way to say it, the fact that I was going to die here. There was no more life in front of me. I found a lot of regrets in my life too, but also I came to, I think, an understanding with myself about it to let some of those regrets, just let them be. But as a turned out it was not the end. I had a vision during that last night, that fifth night, that I was there, of a little boy. I saw myself in some point in the future with a handless right arm playing with this little blond-haired three-year-old and lifting him up and I’m holding him up on my head then, the eye contact that I had with him told me that this is my future son. And if I used to have a future son, that meant that I was going to have a future. I was going to get out of this place, a few hours later the sun came up yet again in the sixth day in the canyon, but this time with this renewed hope that I would get out of there. I actually fell into a rage of sorts. I lost control of what had previously being very controlled experience for me and in this rage I felt my bones bend and as they bent I realised that I might actually be able to break the bones. If I can break them I might be able to then use the knife which was too dull to cut through the bones, but to use that just on a soft tissues and this smile came over me. I was euphoric as I… went about first breaking one bone and then contorting my body to break the second bone and then using that knife to cut through the various tissues and cleaving the nerve which was a thousand times worse than having that boulder crashing my hand. But even when I got through that most intense pain, I knew that I was going to get out of there. I’m going to die at some point, but I’m not going to die here. I’m going to get out of this place and sure enough after about an hour and five minutes of working through the imputation I was free. It was euphoric, ecstasy that I’ll probably ever feel in my life. And I gathered myself after a few deep breaths and picked up my rope, picked up my climbing gear, picked up my water bottle that then was full of urine. I took the last photograph of this, this was good riddance photograph, but the hand that nearly tra… killed me and the boulder and I started hiking down the canyon. I made it through a few hundred yards of third and fourth class canyon until I got to a rappel that I set up and rappelled a 60 food drop and I got to a pool of water and drank from that for about fifteen minutes and then started hiking. Walked through almost 7 miles then. Slowly losing energy as the adrenaline and just the effects of all of these sleep deprivation and everything else had been mounting on me.

And at the end of this hike, I was just a mile away from my truck, where I had to leave the canyon bottom and about eight hundred vertical feet of climbing at this moment now a helicopter came out of the sky that had been searching for me plucked me out of the canyon and off we fly to the hospital.

This was such a remarkable synchronicity of me getting myself free and out in the open when I could be found and that helicopter being there within minutes when I was otherwise bled to death. It’s to me still an astonishing miracle that I did what I did, but actually that I survived and the effect of it, got to medical attention.

Putting my life back together after again this is before and after of everything that had happened leading me up to that place than that where I was go after that. It still stands even now with being married and having a little six-month old boy Leo that the experience back in the Blue John is still the defining moment in my life, what came before and what came after.

[13:20]

Answers to the true or false sentences
1. The week of April 26 – May 1st 2003 divided his life into two parts. [TRUE]
2. The hike he went on was one of the most extreme and dangerous hikes he had ever done. [FALSE – it was fairly low key]
3. As he was hiking above a canyon he dislodged a boulder and they both fell into the canyon. The boulder landed on his arm and trapped him in the canyon. [TRUE]
4. He was 5 hours from civilisation. [FALSE – he was ‘hours’ from civilisation]
5. He hadn’t informed anyone of his plan to trek in that area. [TRUE]
6. He realised almost immediately that he was going to starve to death. [FALSE – he realised he was going to die, but by many possible ways – infection, dehydration, flash flood, starvation]
7. By the 5th day he had already tried every possible way to escape. [TRUE]
8. By day 5 he was still not convinced that he was going to die there. [FALSE – he was convinced that he was going to die]
9. He wasn’t able to deal with regrets that he had about his life. [FALSE – he made peace with himself]
10. He had a dream about himself as a boy and he wanted to go back to apologise to himself. [FALSE – he had a dream about his future son]
11. He got really angry because he felt he had failed himself. [FALSE]
12. He made a controlled decision to break his bones and to cut his arm off. [FALSE – he was in a rage – out of control]
13. He was very happy to cut off his arm despite the pain. [TRUE]
14. He took a really good quality photo of his hand before he left. [FALSE – it was a ‘good riddance’ photo]
15. He fell 60ft into a pool of water. [FALSE – he rappelled 60ft and then found the water]
16. He hiked 7 miles even though he was losing strength all the time. [TRUE]
17. He climbed 800ft to his truck and then contacted a helicopterto rescue him. [FALSE – his truck was an 800ft climb away, but he got rescued by a helicopter]
17. His experience in Blue John canyon totally changed his life forever. [TRUE]

Hand Idioms
Here are the hand idioms from this podcast. Listen to the episode to get definitions and examples:

1. to be good with your hands
2. to get your hands dirty
3. (get your/keep your) hands off!
4. hands up!
5. to have your hands full
6. in someone’s hands
7. to be in safe hands / in good hands
8. many hands make light work
9. off someone’s hands
10. on someone’s hands
11. out of someone’s hands
12. take something off someone’s hands
13. with your bare hands
14. give him a (big) hand
15. you’ve got to hand it to him
16. to hand something to someone
17. to hand something out
18. a handout
19. a hand-me-down
20. handed down from generation to generation
21. handy (adj)
22. on the one hand / on the other hand
23. I know it like the back of my hand
24. to shake hands
25. holding hands / hand in hand

That’s it!

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60. The King’s Speech / ‘Mouth’ Idioms

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Hi! Learn some really useful idioms and listen to an authentic interview with a native speaker in this episode of Luke’s English Podcast.

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The King’s Speech / Stammering
This episode is about The King’s Speech – an excellent film which recently won 4 Academy Awards at The Oscars, including the award for Best Actor for Colin Firth. In the film Colin Firth plays the part of King George VI, who had to overcome a difficult stammer and become a strong leader of Great Britain at the beginning of The 2nd World War. A stammer is a speech problem which makes the stammerer (the person who has the stammer) unable to produce words or sentences clearly. For some stammerers, it is almost impossible to speak without long pauses and the inability to produce some words clearly. Basically, it prevents many people from speaking and therefore has a strongly negative affect on their lives. There are millions of people in the world who suffer from a stammer, and their struggle is not often discussed or understood fully. The King’s Speech is a very high profile movie, and has brought the subject of stammering back into the public eye.

Contents
This is quite a long episode with lots of detail and content. Here is what to expect from the episode:
A. Some background information to the story of The Kings Speech
B. An interview with a member of the British Stammering Association, which is a charity for people who have a stammer. In the interview he talks about the story of King George VI, the importance of the film for stammerers, and the subject of stammering. I explain what the man says in the interview, and clarify it for you
C. Useful vocabulary: I teach you some commonly used idioms which feature the words ‘mouth’ and ‘tongue’

This is definitely a useful podcast episode! You should listen to all of it several times to really get the benefit of it.

A. Some background Information
The King’s Speech is a true story of King George VI and his struggle with a speech impediment, or ‘stammer’. Here is a definition of ‘stammer’ from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (which is available free online here http://dictionary.cambridge.org/):

stammer
verb /ˈstæm.ər/
Definition
to speak or say something with unusual pauses or repeated sounds, either because of speech problems or because of fear and anxiety
[+ speech] “Wh-when can we g-go?” she stammered.
He dialled 999 and stammered (out) his name and address.
Synonym: stutter

stammer
noun [C usually singular]
Robert has a bit of a stammer.
(Definition of stammer verb from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)

In the film, prince George has suffered from a very strong stammer ever since he could speak. His family would correct and punish him when he stammered. As a result, George suffers from a terrible lack of confidence, particularly when speaking in public. He cannot speak in publis as it causes him to stammer uncontrollably, causing total shame and embarrassment to all around. When he addresses the public it is a shocking and disappointing failure on a national level. This happened at a time when people were not sympathetic to someone with speech problems and in a king it would have been a huge sign of weakness. But, George must become the King when his country is about to go to war with Germany, so he has to learn to overcome his speech impediment in order to regularly address the public over the radio.

So, he takes speech therapy from a therapist called Lionel Logue. It is a tremendous struggle but together they manage to develop a relationship (between a king an an ‘ordinary’ man) which helps the king to learn to speak to the public in a confident manner. It’s a fantastic film about human struggle, challenge and bravery.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzI4D6dyp_o&w=640&h=390]

B. The interview with a member of the British Stammering Association
This is an interview with a man who has a stammer. He has obviously overcome his speech problem and you can hear in this interview that he is now a clear speaker of English. Sometimes he has difficulty with individual words, but it does not prevent us from understanding what he says.

Questions
Here are the questions I ask you before the interview on the podcast: (you will find the answers further down the page)
1. How many high profile stemmerers have we had in the UK since George VI died in 1952?
2. How many decent films about stammerers have there been?
3. How have stammerers been shown in films?
4. What does The Kings Speech show people who don’t stammer?
5. Is the film historically accurate?
6. What do we know about stammering now?
7. Was the stammer caused by something that happened during his childhood?
8. How did his family and staff deal with George’s stammer?
9. How did this make him feel?
10. With today’s knowledge, what is the best way to help people with stammers?
11. What did George VI’s therapist do that the speaker’s (interviewee’s) therapist didn’t do?
12. What made George VI a difficult client?
13. What will The King’s Speech do for stammerers and non stammerers?
14. What is the danger about the near future?

Here is a video of the interview (it starts after 20 seconds): Answers below
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwuJklTw-Yw&w=480&h=390]
Transcript of the Video (Thank you Piotr from Poland)
[16:40 – The King’s Speech movie – a stammerer’s view]
Hello, I have a stammer.

There hasn’t been really high profile stammerer in the UK since king George VI died in 1952, a very long time ago, nor has there been a decent film featuring someone who stammers.

Generally speaking, we have been shown as figures of fun (ha ha). As a result of this and many other inaccuracies very few people know anything much about stammering.

But now at last we have “The King’s speech”, potentially Oscar winning film, which shows people who don’t stammer how life can be if you do. And Colin Firth does an incredibly realistic job of conveying how it is to be stuck in a block with no control over your speech, part of the audience staring at you and part staring at the ground. No film has ever done that before.

So it should be very helpful in terms of creating some greater understanding between stammerers and non-stammerers. But we need to remember that the action takes place about seventy five years ago, so it is history. From what we know, it’s a fairly realistic reenactment what was going on at that time.

Things are different now of course. We know that stammering it’s a symptom of a condition in which the brain’s neural circuits for speech have not wired normally. So the king would have been born with a neural propensity to stammer, it wasn’t caused by some deep rooted psychological problem. His character and behaviour would have been partly affected by this inability to say what he was trying to say, not vice versa.

It’s quite interesting there was a research exercise on at about the same time which is come to be known as the “monster study” in which a group of orphan children were cruelly encouraged to stammer. At the end of the exercise, none of them grew up stammering, but several of them developed psychological problems.

Of course, speech therapy techniques has changed considerably. When he was a child, stammering was thought to be a defect. So, the future king was corrected and even punished by his family and staff which made him very self-conscious and tense about speaking and that surely would just make his stammering even worse. Today where it is available and it’s available everywhere. Early intervention allows the vast majority of those very young children at-risk of persistent stammering to talk fluently for the rest of their lives.

Some adults do find ways to control their speech, but there is still no cure. The King continued to stammer, but as we see in the film, Logue helped him to control his stammering when he was making formal speeches. I must say though that the last time I went to see a speech therapist, she didn’t encourage me to swear. But then… I’m not a king, you understand. And that really is the main point of this film. It was how Lionel Logue found a way to form a relationship with a client, whose upbringing had made him reluctant to discuss anything personal.

As stammerers, we are one ideally equipped to stand up and change so many misconceptions. But we need to try. “The King’s speech” will give stammerers and non-stammerers a kind of a permission to talk to each other. It will be the greatest opportunity, I’ve ever seen, for this often embarrassing subject to be discussed openly and on such a broad scale.

So for all our sakes, please grasp it with both hands, talk about it. But remember that the opportunity will only last for a short while. After that, there is a danger that stammering will slip back into being inaudible and invisible. We don’t want that to happen. So if you feel you’d like to help, please stay tuned. But in the meantime, I just like to say: “Thank you for listening”.
[21:40]

Answers
1. How many high profile stammerers have we had in the UK since George VI died in 1952?
(None)
2. How many decent films about stammerers have there been? (none)
3. How have stammerers been shown in films? (they have been shown as figures of fun)
4. What does The Kings Speech show people who don’t stammer? (it shows how life can be if you do)
5. Is the film historically accurate? (yes – it’s a fairly realistic reenactment)
6. What do we know about stammering now? (it’s a symptom of a condition in which the brain’s neural circuits for speech have not wired normally)
7. Was the stammer caused by something that happened during his childhood? (no – he was probably born with it)
8. How did his family and staff deal with George’s stammer? (they corrected him and punished him)
9. How did this make him feel? (very self conscious and tense about speaking)
10. With today’s knowledge, what is the best way to help people with stammers? (early intervention)
11. What did George VI’s therapist do that the speaker’s (interviewee’s) therapist didn’t do? (he encouraged him to swear – to say rude words like f*ck and sh*t)
12. What made George VI a difficult client? (his upbringing had made him reluctant to discuss anything personal)
13. What will The King’s Speech do for stammerers and non stammerers? What will The King’s Speech do for stammerers and non-stammerers? (it will give them permission to talk to each other about stammering – “for all our sakes, please grasp it with both hands, talk about it”)
14. What is the danger about the near future? (after a while, stammering will slip back into being inaudible and invisible – “please stay tuned”)

Here is some information about the video interview
n The King’s Speech, Colin Firth did an incredibly realistic job of conveying how it is to be stuck in a block with no control over your speech. No major film had ever done that before, and I’m sure it has been helpful in terms of creating greater awareness of something which is largely inaudible and invisible in our society.

But there is still a great deal of ignorance about why we stammer, and very inaccurate assumptions are made about our characters. We are not ideally equipped to stand up and change these misconceptions, but we need to try. The King’s Speech has given everyone – stammerers and non-stammerers – a kind of ‘permission’ to talk to each other about stammering. It has been the best opportunity, almost in living memory, for this often embarrassing subject to be discussed openly and on such a broad scale. So, for all of our sakes, please keep talking about it!

For an interview with Colin Firth about his role as the King, please go to www.stammering.org/colinfirth.html And for more information on The Monster Study, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_study

If you want to know more about the National Appeal for Change, or to make a donation, please go to www.stammering.org/change

If you want to talk about helping in some other way, please send a message to Leys Geddes through the speakingout2 channel on YouTube or by emailing chair@stammering.org

If you are in the UK, and want help with your speech, please ring the British Stammering Association helpline on 0845 603 2001 or visit www.stammering.org

The BSA is the national charity and is run by people who stammer, for the benefit of all those whose lives are affected by stammering.

If you live outside the UK, and want advice about stammering/stuttering – or simply want to learn more – you can still go to www.stammering.org or to any of these other leading sites: www.stutterisa.org (International Stuttering Association), www.stutteringhelp.org (USA), www.stutteringhomepage.org (USA) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stammering.

If you like to see an adaptation of this video, spoken in Swedish, please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB9TDLkovm4

C. Useful Vocabulary – Idioms with the words ‘mouth’ and ‘tongue’
I thought it would be appropriate to teach you some commonly used fixed expressions which feature these two parts of the body which are so important for speech. Here are the idioms with examples and definitions. All this for free? You lucky people!

“Me and my big mouth!”
-use this when you have said something you shouldn’t have said, like when you give away a secret by accident. “Oh, me and my big mouth!”

“to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth”
-this means to be born into a rich family. It is often used to complain about people who are born into a rich life.
“Prince William doesn’t know what it is like to work hard like normal people. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”
-use this to say that you should accept a gift without checking it for problems first. Don’t look for problems in the gift too much, just accept it. “I didn’t want to accept my uncle’s old car, but he told me not to look a gift horse in the mouth”

“live from hand to mouth’
-this is when someone lives on very little money – they spend the money they earn and can’t save anything. “There’s no way we can go on holiday this year, we are living from hand to mouth”

“melt in your mouth”
-use this to describe delicious food that is so soft and tender that it feels like it is melting in your mouth. “The steak here is so delicious, it just melts in your mouth”

“put your money where your mouth is”
-show that you really mean what you say, by doing it rather than just talking about it. “You’re always talking about running a marathon, so come on, put your money where your mouth is. Why don’t you run the London Marathon with me next year?”

“Keep your mouth shut! / Shut your mouth!”
-this means ‘shut up’ or ‘don’t way anything’. It’s a bit rude. “When the police arrive, just keep your mouth shut, all right?!”

“to leave a bad taste in your mouth”
-for food it means that it tastes disgusting and the bad taste stays in your mouth. We can also use it to describe a bad experience, which leaves us feeling bad afterwards. “The argument just left a bad taste in my mouth”

“Watch your mouth!”
-be careful what you say!

“by word of mouth”
-use this to say that information is transferred by people talking to each other. “Publicity for the film spread by word of mouth”

“to put words into someone’s mouth”
-this means to suggest that someone has said something which in fact they haven’t said. “I didn’t say that! You’re putting words into my mouth!”

“to bite your tongue”
-this means that you stop yourself saying something
“When he asked me about the missing biscuits, I just bit my tongue and kept quiet”

“has the cat got your tongue?”
-use this to challenge someone who is unable to say something, keeping quiet
“So, what about the missing biscuits then? Huh? What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

“mother tongue”
-your first language
“English is not his mother tongue”

“on the tip of my tongue”
-this means you can’t quite remember the word – you can nearly remember it
“What’s his name? Errrmmmm…. wait, I can remember… oh! It’s on the tip of my tongue! Oh, no, I can’t remember”

So, that is it for this episode. There’s a lot of content here for you. I recommend you listen to this episode several times. Try to use the idioms and other words you have learned here. Use them in conversation, or just say a few sentences to yourself. Personalise the sentences. Use the idioms to talk about your own life and experience. This will help you learn it.

You could donate some money to me to help me with the podcast, but really I think it would be better to donate money to help people in Japan who are suffering from the terrible tsunami which struck last week. There are many many people who have no food, shelter or electricity. Search on google for your local charity organisation, or give money here http://www.redcross.org.uk/japantsunami/?approachcode=68816_googlePAD10JpTs&gclid=CNqNvd-70acCFdFX4QodMVXiDA .
You could save some lives.

Thanks for listening.

Luke