Category Archives: Idioms

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

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

Right-click here to download this episode.

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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Right-click here to download this episode.

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’.

Right-click here to download.
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.

Right-click here to download.
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

55. Mini Podcasts Collection 1

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My first 7 mini podcasts in one full length episode. Idioms with ‘about’, politics, how to make a perfect cup of tea, a comedy song about badgers and some sentence stress and intonation practice.

Right-click here to download this episode.
Mini-Podcasts – Overview
There are 7 mini podcasts in this episode:

1. Introduction (losing my voice)
I talk about the new mini mobile podcasts and what to expect in the future.

2. Idioms with ‘about’
I teach you some common idioms and expressions using the word ‘about’

3. Government Cuts
At the moment in the UK the government is making large cuts to public spending. What will be the effect of those cuts on the funding of BBC Learning English? Are we going to lose BBC Learning English? This is an example of how we are living in an increasingly connected society where economic conditions in one country immediately effect people in other countries.

4. How to make the perfect cup of tea
I talk to my colleague Richard McNeff about making the perfect cup of tea. Listen closely for language for ‘how to describe a process’ – which is exactly the kind of thing you need to do in an IELTS writing exam.

5. Computer Games
Are games an art form like movies and television? What about the characters, the stories and the graphics?

6. New Guitar
I’ve got a new guitar and I’d like to play you a song. It’s a comedy song – remember that – it is supposed to be funny! So, look for the jokes in the lyrics of the song. The lyrics are printed below:

Bill Bailey – Hats Off To The Zebras (Tribute to Brian Adams)

The horse is a noble beast
From the mustangs of the west
To the stallions of the east
But the horse has a distant cousin
It lives I-do-not-know-where
But it’s message of racial harmony is one that we all can share

Hats off to the zebras
They are black and white
But they don’t fight
‘Cos they’re not very good at it

In a world of confusion
We all need a sign
If only we could live side by side
Like the stripes down a zebras spine

Hats of to the zebras, yeah

The humble badger
Takes a sip of morning dew
He’s totally colourblind
So he can’t judge you

But the badger is a dreamer
The badger has a plan
He knows that his destiny
Is to help his fellow man

Hats off to the badger
He is black and white
But he doesn’t fight
Except for mating rights and territory

Black man and a white man
Both they need to shave
United by the badger brush
He’s helping from beyond the grave

Hats off to the badger
What about the tapeer
Half zebra half pig
Imagine the stig-ma
But the tapeer stands proud
Hats off to the tapeer

Badgers and zebras
Skunks, oh yeah
Little ring-tailed leemurs
Living together in harmony

And if the killer whales can do it, why can’t we?
Tell me why can’t we?

It’s a song about how we can use the examples of black and white animals to learn to live together in racial harmony.

For the the funniest lines are “because they’re not very good at it…” and “except for mating rights and territory”

7. Sentence Stress / Intonation / Get Candy!
In this one I demonstrate the importance of sentence stress and intonation in emphatic speech. Listen to the same text read twice. First time I read with flat intonation. It sounds dull and meaningless. Second time I add emphasis, stress and intonation – it sounds more passionate and meaningful.

Here’s the text below. You should practise listening to it, marking where I pause and emphasize. Then say the text and try to copy the way I do it. Listen to the previous podcast about halloween to head a real comedian reading the text.

So the first time you hear the concept of halloween, when you’re a kid. Do you remember the first time you even heard about it? It’s like, your brain can’t even… “what is this? who’s giving out candy? Someone’s giving out candy? who is giving out this candy? Everyone we know is just giving out candy?? I gotta be a part of this, take me with you, I want to do it, I’ll do anything that they want! I can wear that. I’ll wear anything I have to wear. I’ll do anything I have to do. I will get the candy from these fools, that are so stupidly giving it away!”

50. Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

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Useful and natural vocabulary and expressions on the subject of Waiting and Being Patient.

Right-click here download.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

Welcome back to Luke’s English Podcast. This is Luke, and this is the long awaited next episode! I expect some of you have been waiting for the next episode to be uploaded. Well, here it is! Proof, surely, that good things come to those who wait.

In fact, that is what this episode is about; waiting and being patient. I’m going to teach you some useful words and expressions on the subject of waiting.

Here are the expressions I will be teaching you. First I will list them, then I will talk and use them in context. You will have to listen to the podcast to hear me give definitions and explanations.

Vocabulary and expressions: Waiting and being patient (23 items of vocabulary)

Good things come to those who wait
Persevere
Stick at it
Don’t give up
Keep going
It’s worth it in the end
Hold on
Hang on
Hang in there
Hold tight
Hold your horses
See how things go
Wait and see
Bear with me
All in good time!
Don’t be impatient
I’m looking forward to it/doing it
I can’t wait for it
I can’t wait to do it
Don’t hold your breath
An anticlimax
To queue up for something
To hold out for something

Here are the expressions in context. Listen and notice the expressions. You can read and find them here too:

They say that Good things come to those who wait, and I’m sure it’s true. If you have the patience to wait for a long time, eventually something good will come to you. For example, if you’re looking for Mr Right or Mrs Right – if you want to get married, it’s no good if you just marry the first person you meet. You need to be patient until you find the right person for you. If you’re starting a business, you might need to persevere before you get success. Success might not come immediately – if you think you have a good business idea, just stick at it and eventually success will come along. Good things come to those who wait – patience is a virtue! So, if you’re waiting for something, don’t give up – keep going! This is true for learning English – it is a long term thing. You can’t get big success in a short time, you have to stick at it. Keep listening a lot, keep studying, keep taking risks with English. It is worth it in the end. You’ll improve in the long run. There’s no short, quick solution to learning English, unfortunately. So, if you’re impatient to become a fluent speaker, keep practising and hang in there. Hold on, hang on and hold tight – you’ll get there in the end if you keep trying. Sometimes students ask me what their English will be like in 3 months time, or 6 months time. I usually say – if you work hard and have the right attitude, you could make a lot of progress, but I can’t really predict the future – you’ll have to just wait and see. Sometimes my students are so keen to improve that they ask me to give them extra work to do after school (don’t worry – I have plenty of students who are happy to do nothing after school!) and usually I have to say “OK, I’ll have to go into the teachers’ room to photocopy something for you. Just bear with me, I’ll be back in a few minutes”.
Sometimes if my students do a test in class, they want to know their results immediately, but they have to wait until I’ve checked their answers. “Can I see my score please Luke?” They say. “All in good time! I haven’t checked your tests yet! Don’t be impatient!” I might say.
Often at school, the students work pretty hard and they just want the weekend to come so they can go out and enjoy themselves. They might say “I can’t wait for the weekend!”. Some students get tired of living in London because they’re homesick, and it’s cold here and the food isn’t very good. They might say something like, “I’m really looking forward to going back to my country”.
Sometimes, teachers at my school organize trips out of class (e.g. to interesting places in London). The students often look forward to these and say things like “I can’t wait for the trip into London”, but I might say “Don’t hold your breath! – it might not be that good. It might rain or something, and that would spoil the trip, wouldn’t it?” There’s nothing worse than building something up, expecting it to be great, and then it being an anticlimax in the end.
Some students think that the British are naturally patient people because we seem to enjoy queueing up for things. They always see people standing in lines at ATM machines or outside theatres. Perhaps it’s true – maybe we are quite patient. I think we like to queue up because it makes life easier. Who wants to live in a place where people push and shove and don’t respect each other?
So, are you finding this episode useful? I know some of you have been holding out for this one for a while. I hope it is what you expected, and not too much of an anticlimax.

That’s it. You’ll have to listen to the podcast in order to hear my explanations and examples of the 23 items of vocabulary listed above.

You can also hear me chat with English Robot 3000.

If you listen to this podcast, please donate just 1 dollar to me via PayPal. You can do that by clicking the ‘Donate Via PayPal’ button in the top right of the webpage.

Hang in there!

24. Music Idioms

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Learn some music-related idioms. Full Transcript available below.

Right-click here to download this episode.

Learn English! Some music idioms for you to use. Luke’s English Podcast is a free service for everyone in the whole world to use. Download the podcast, listen, laugh and learn. Get new vocabulary, listening practice, pronunciation drills for speaking and some interesting cultural information. Email me at luketeacher@hotmail.com. You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter.

This podcast is about music idioms. Idioms are difficult because they are fixed expressions. The individual words mean something different on their own. You have to learn the meaning of the complete expression. Here are some useful ones that relate to music in some way. You can use them to talk about anything.

The idioms

it rings a bell
to pull out all the stops
to play it by ear
it’s music to my ears
to be fit as a fiddle
to face the music
to change your tune
to blow your own trumpet

Here are the transcripts of the badly acted dialogues (sorry about the terrible American accents):

A: Have you ever met Jack Miller?
B: Well the name rings a bell
A: He work in the Nakatomi Plaza
B: Oh yes, I remember. He was the guy who sealed the OCP contract. He wouldn’t stop blowing his own trumpet about it.
A: Yes, he kept going on about how he’d closed the deal, saying how Cyberdine were going to be the number 1 agency in the country.
B: Yeah, what a pain in the neck

OK guys! Summer is the busiest time of year for us. Lots of tourists with their £50 notes. What they really need, is London souvenirs. OK, so pull out all the stops this month. I want you to SELL SELL SELL. More British flags, more models of Big Ben, more photos of the Queen, more toy London busses, more postcards of punks, more Beatles T-shirts, more London Eye photos, more We Will Rock You tickets, and more umbrellas!!

A: Sir?
B: Yes?
A: It’s Miller. We’ve closed the OCP deal.
B: Oh, that is music to my ears! I can’t tell you how important it is to Cyberdine.
A: No sir, you don’t have to tell me.
B: Excellent!

A: Hey Miller!
B: Yeah?
A: Are you going into the OCP negotiation?
B: Well, yes I am.
A: Don’t you need your notes? Where’s your file?
B: Oh, I don’t really need them
A: How are you going to manage the negotiation without them?
B: Oh, I’ll just play it by ear

A: Well Miller…
B: Yes Doctor?
A: I’m pleased to tell you that you have a clean bill of health. You’re fit as a fiddle! It’s quite surprising really considering your age. I expect you have the body of someone half your age. How do you do it?
B: Well, just lucky I suppose
[terrible, unforgivable acting]

A: Hey Miller! The board is furious! They say you screwed up the OCP deal. They say Cyberdine is in jeopardy.
B: Damn it! Did they say anything else?
A: Yeah, they say they want to see you immediately. Time to face the music Miller.
B: I suppose so…

Serious APOLOGIES for the bad acting and for the slightly offensive American accent. I do like America, and mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery (apparently).

Here are the idioms and their definitions:

it rings a bell – it’s familiar, or it reminds me of something

to pull out all the stops – to do everything you can to achieve a result

to play it by ear – to improvise, to not follow a plan

it’s music to my ears – it’s exactly what I wanted to hear

to be fit as a fiddle – to be in perfect health

to face the music – to accept the negative consequences of what you have done

to change your tune – to change your opinion of something, and the way you talk about it

to blow your own trumpet – to go on about or boast about something you did well or are good at
That’s it folks! Cheers, bye bye bye bye bey bye bey bey bye bye bey bey bey bey bey

24. Music Idioms – Transcript

You are listening to Luke’s English podcast. For more information visit teacher Luke.podomatic.com (teacherluke.co.uk)

Hello, folks and welcome to another edition of Luke’s English podcast. Now, the last podcast I did was about music festivals. So, I thought that I’d stick with the theme of music this time and teach you some music idioms.
Now, just a little note about idioms. Of course, an idiom is a kind of fixed expression that, you know, is used a lot in general conversation. Now, they are quite tricky because the meaning is difficult to understand. If you try to understand the individual words one by one in an idiom you probably won’t understand the idiom. It’s very difficult because the idiom as a whole has a different meaning to the individual words. So, for example if you look in a dictionary and try to understand the expression word by word you won’t understand anything. It’s got a different meaning as a fixed expression.

So, I’m going to teach you some idioms that are sort of related to music in some way and I’ve selected these ones myself, handpicked them to make sure that I was teaching you idioms which are actually quite useful because some of the idioms that you learn are not really useful.
There are so many that some of them are not used very often or are a bit old-fashioned and I think these ones are okay.

So, the idioms I’m going to teach you and you’ll be able to read all of these idioms with transcripts on the web page. So, the idioms of this….and I’m not going to tell you what they mean, yet. First I’m just going to read the idioms to you and then I’m going to read you little dialogues that include the idioms and then at the end I’m going to explain what the idioms mean. Okay?

So, the idioms then, one by one.

First on is: it rings a bell or that rings a bell. Right?
Next on is: to pull out all the stops- to pull out all the stops. To pull out all the stops
Okay? So that’s it rings a bell and to pull out all the stops.
The next one is: to play it by ear – to play it by ear. Right? To play it by ear. Right?
The next one is: It’s music to my ears – it’s music to my ears. Right? Okay?
The next one is: to be fit as a fiddle – to be fit as a fiddle – to be fit as a fiddle. Okay?
The next one is: to face the music – to face the music.
The next one is: to change your tune – to change your tune or to change your tune. Right?
And the last one is: to blow your own trumpet – to blow your own trumpet – to blow your own trumpet. Okay?

So, don’t worry if you don’t know what those idioms mean and don’t worry about trying to understand the individual words necessarily because sometimes they don’t really help you.

So what I’d like you to try and do now, is listen to these little stupid dialogues that I have written which I’m going to perform. They’re not very good dialogues and I’m not a very good actor but I’m going to try and perform the dialogues to you to make it more realistic or interesting. And as you listen to the dialogues try to notice the idioms that I’ve used and try and guess what they mean from the context of the situation. Okay? Don’t forget at the end I’ll explain what they mean. Alright?

So, I’m going to start with the first dialogue.
All these dialogues are in some way related to work, basically.

It’s a kind of work themed situation in which a man had to do a negotiation to win a contract, and what happened. Okay?

So, here we go. Here is the first part of the dialogue.

Have you ever met Jack Miller?
Well, the name rings a bell.
He works in the Nakatomi Plaza
Oh, yes, I remember, it was the guy who sealed the OCP contract. He wouldn’t stop blowing his own trumpet about it.
Yes, he just kept going on about how he’d closed the deal, saying how Cyberdyne were going to be the number 1 agency in the country.
Yeah, what a pain in the neck!

Okay, that was my first dialogue. I do apologise for the terrible acting but there is nothing I can do about it. I am not a professional actor. I am a teacher, so I’m just doing the best I can. Anyway, I hope you managed to catch the idiom there. It was to blow your own trumpet.
He said, he wouldn’t stop blowing his own trumpet about it.

Okay, the next situation, if you can imagine is like in a big souvenir shop in the centre of London in the summer time. Okay? And this is like a motivational speech by the sales manager of the souvenir shop. Okay? Here it is:

Okay, guys! Summer is the busiest time of year for us. Lots of tourists with their 50 pound notes. What they really need is London souvenirs. Okay? So pull out all the stops this month. I want you to sell, sell, sell. More British flags, more models of Big Ben, more photos of the Queen, more toy London busses, more postcards of punks, more Beatles T-shirts, more London Eye photos, more We Will Rock You tickets, and more umbrellas!!

Okay, so that was the souvenir manager and the idiom there was…oh, what was it? The idiom was there – the idiom there – uh, I can’t speak.
I’ll start again: The idiom there was to pull out all the stops. Right? Okay!

Now, the next one is back with the story of Jack Miller and the negotiation.

Sir?
Yes,
It’s Miller, we’ve closed the OCP deal.
Oh, that is music to my ears. I can’t tell you how important it’s to Cyberdine.
No, sir, you don’t have to tell me, sir.
Excellent!

Okay, I’m getting kind of embarrassed now because I realised that these little dialogues are just awful, I think. I am not very pleased with them. I think they sound terrible. My acting is awful and my accents are really rubbish. But I’m gonna keep doing it because I’ve started it now, so I’ve got to finish. Anyway! That idiom was: that’s music to my ears. That’s music to my ears. Okay?

Okay, here is the next dialogue! Here we go, more bad acting and even worse accents coming right up:

Hey, Miller
Yeah?
Are you going into the OCP negotiation?
Well, yes I am
Don’t you need your notes? Where is your file?
Oh, I don’t really need them.
How are you going to manage the negotiation without them?
Oh, I’ll just play it by ear

Okay, I think this is a pretty awful and embarrassing mainly because of my acting. I thought that I was a bit better than this but clearly I’m not. I’m rubbish in acting. But, that’s not important. The important thing is that you learn some English. Isn’t that right? I think so.
So, yeah, the idiom there was I’ll play it by ear, to play it by ear. Right? Okay!
So there are two more dialogues and here is the next one.
It’s in a doctor’s surgery, so our man, Jack Miller is going to the doctors to get a check up. Okay, so here it is.

Well, Miller
Yes, doctor
I’m pleased to tell you that you have a clean bill of health. You are fit as a fiddle. It’s quite surprising really, considering your age. I expect you have a body of someone half your age. How do you do it?
Well, I am just lucky, I suppose

More bad acting for you there. A kind of posh doctor character. Anyway! the idiom there was: You’re fit as a fiddle. You’re fit as a fiddle. Okay?

Now, here is the last dialogue and the last of my terrible performances. Here we go. It’s back to the story of Miller and the negotiation.

Hey, Miller, the board are furious. They said you screwed up the OCP deal. They say Cyberdine is in jeopardy.
Damn it! Did they say anything else?
Yeah, they say they wanna see you immediately. Time to face the music Miller.
I suppose so.

So, that’s the last dialogue. I hope you enjoyed the story of Miller and the negotiation and, yeah, sorry about the awful acting. Next time I’ll get, you know, Johnny Depp and Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and Christopher Walken to come and perform one of my dialogues.
I think maybe next time I’ll do Christopher Walken and Robert de Niro. I think that will be quite a good combination. So, anyway the meanings of those idioms …well, actually in the first dialogue there were two idioms. That was: It rings a bell and he kept blowing his trumpet. Right?

So it rings a bell means it’s familiar – I think I remember it. It’s familiar or reminds me of something. So, if someone says something like: Oh, do you know Jack Miller. And I say “the name rings a bell”. So, it’s like there is a little memory of it in the back of your head. But you can’t really remember it. It’s like a little bell ringing in the back of your head. So, his name rings a bell. Right? So, it’s familiar.

The other one in that first dialogue was to blow your own trumpet. To blow your own trumpet. And that’s basically to boast about how good you are. So if you keep going on about how great you are you are just blowing your own trumpet. Okay? Right!

In the next dialogue we had to pull out all the stops. To pull out all the stops. It was, okay pull out all the stops this month. And if you pull out all the stops it comes from….well, pull out all the stops means you do everything you can in order to achieve the results that you need. So, you kind of go full power into your work. You pull out all the stops. Now, that comes from old organs like church organs which use pipes and to get the loudest sound of your organ, you would pull out all the stops and stops are like little buttons that you can pull out or press in and they change the sound of the organ. So, if you pull all of the stops out it makes a really loud sound of the organ, so now we use the expression to pull out all the stops to mean to do something full with all our power. You know, to do everything you can in order to achieve the result, right?

Now, the other idioms like I just said: It rings a bell. Well, a bell is like a little thing you have at the top of a church. Ding, ding, ding, ding like that, okay? So it rings a bell. Like I said it rings a bell in the back of your head like a memory.

The other one is to blow your own trumpet. So, a trumpet is a musical instrument which you blow into. I am sure you know what a trumpet is. If you don’t know what a trumpet is I’ll play you a little bit of trumpet. I don’t play the trumpet but I’m gonna play you a little bit of someone else playing the trumpet. Here it is:

trumpet music

Okay, so that was a trumpet being played. That was actually Donald Byrd there. A great trumpet player. So, to blow your own trumpet means to go on and boast about how great you are. Okay? To blow your own trumpet.

Okay, in the next dialogue we had: That’s music to my ears, that’s music to my ears and if you say that when basically someone has said something that is exactly what you wanted to hear. It’s exactly what you wanted to hear. So, something that makes you very happy. That’s music to my ears. Okay?

Now, the next one was….let’s see….I’ll just play it by ear. I’ll just play it by ear and in that one Miller’s colleague said to him: How you are going to manage the negotiation without your notes and Miller said: I’ll just play it by ear. So, to play it by ear means that…eh….let’s see ..you improvise you don’t follow a plan. You just react to whatever happens there. So, Miller is going to go into this negotiation without his notes. He’s not going to use a plan, he’s just going to react as things happen. He is just going to improvise. Okay? So the origin of that to play it by ear is a bit like: when you play a piano when you play a piece of music without music, without sheet music. You are not reading the music you are just playing it by ear. Okay? So, that’s where that comes from. At least we use that expression to say when you do something without planning, you just improvise. You play it by ear. Okay?

So, in the next dialogue, we had….you are as fit as a fiddle. And that’s what Miller’s doctor said to him. You are fit as a fiddle which means you are very healthy. You are in perfect health. To be fit means that you are healthy. You are —you know, you do lots of exercise and your body is in good condition. But if you are fit as a fiddle it means you are really, really healthy. And a fiddle is another word for a violin. So, I am not sure why they say fit as a fiddle. Why is a violin fit? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because the strings are tight and it’s kind of …I don’t know, in good condition or something. But fit as a fiddle. Here we go.

And in the last dialogue we had: time to face the music, to face the music.
Now, if you face the music it means you accept the negative consequences of your actions. You accept like if you don’t… something that caused a really bad reaction you have to just accept that and just face it. For example when lots of people are angry about a decision you made and they are in a room and they are all angry, you just go in there and speak to them. You need to face the music. Right? Okay!

So, that’s it. Actually I’ve just realised, I realised something at the beginning of this podcast I said that I will teach you all of those idioms like it rings a bell, to pull out all the stops, to play it by ear, it’s music to my ears, you are fit as a fiddle, to face the music, to blow your own trumpet and to change your tune. But I didn’t explain to change your tune. I’ve just realised that.

So, basically you change your tune, you change your opinion of something. Change the way you talk about something. So, for example if maybe one month John always talks about – I don’t know – “U2, like the rock band U2 if usually he says: Ah, U2 are rubbish, they are boring, you know, they are not very good at music, their songs are really bad and Bono can’t sing and he’s really annoying. So, I hate U2” and when that’s what for example John says about U 2 and then, like the next day after he listened to one of their songs, the next day he says: “Do you know what, U2 are really good actually, yeah. I think, you know, possibly one of the best bands in the country in the moment. As a matter of fact, I’ve purchased 2 tickets and go to see them life in concert.” Right?
And you would say to him: “What are you talking about, John? You’ve changed your tune. I thought you hated U2.” Right? So, to change your tune is to change your opinion of something and to change the way you talk about something.

So, that’s it!
So, I hope those idioms are useful for you. Let me give you actually just a couple of drills for those …just drills for those idioms. Okay?
So, these are just sentences I’m gonna read to you. I’d love you to try and repeat them. It’s good practice for your pronunciation. Think about how all of the words in the sentences are linked together when I say them and try to copy it. Okay!

Here is the first one:
His name rings a bell.
We’ve got to pull out all the stops.
I’ll just play it by ear.
That’s music to my ears.
You’re fit as a fiddle.
Time to face the music.
You’ve changed your tune
Don’t blow your own trumpet

And that’t it for this episode of Luke’s English podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you’re using these drills to practice your pronunciation.
That’s it for me and have a very nice day.
Cheers buy, buy, buy, buy, buy

Hi, folks
You are listening to Luke’s English Podcast. That’s right, this is Luke. I’m just sitting here right now, playing the piano. I play the piano maybe three, four times a day. Sometimes, if I have the time and I’m not teaching English or doing a podcast. I came up here to start playing the piano. Kind of makes me feel good. I am sure it makes everyone else in the neighbourhood feel good. I know my neighbours particularly enjoy the piano playing all hours of the day. Sometimes they bang on the ceiling there, just out of pure enjoyment I think. They sure love it when I play the piano.
So, I just thought I’d play this short piece for you right now. Just to give you another side of my personality, ladies and gentlemen.
And I’ll be doing another podcast for you real soon so until then have a very, very nice week. I’ll catch you soon. Thanks a lot, good night!

8. Dating and Relationships

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This episode is about words and expressions related to dating & relationships. In part 1 I talk about what I’ve been doing recently, and talk about the Present Perfect Continuous Tense. Part 2 is the feature section which is about dating & relationships. I play you a BBC TV comedy sketch about a blind date. Part 3 – I teach you some of the most common words and expressions that English people use when they talk about dating & relationships.
FULL TRANSCRIPT NOW AVAILABLE BELOW!

Right-click here to download.
Hello, and welcome to Luke’s English Podcast. This episode is in 3 parts:
Part 1 – I’m going to talk about what I’ve been doing recently, and I’m going to talk about the Present Perfect Continuous Tense
Part 2 – This is the feature section which is about dating & relationships. I’m going to play you a BBC TV comedy sketch about a blind date.
Part 3 – I’m going to teach you some of the most common words and expressions that English people use when they talk about dating & relationships.

Part 1 – What have you been up to?
A typical conversation between friends who haven’t seen each other for a while would be like this:
A: Hi, how’s it going? (Hi, how are you?)
B: Fine thanks, you?
A: Not bad. What have you been up to?
B: Not much. I’ve been working hard recently. Work is really busy at the moment…

So, we use this question to ask about recent activities: “What have you been up to?” or “What have you been doing?”
‘up to’ – means ‘do’ or ‘doing’.
The tense here is the Present Perfect Continuous tense: have/has + been + -ing
This tense is used in the question and answer: “What have you been doing recently?” “I’ve been working hard”
It’s very common for people to use this when they see their friends.
E.g. “Hi Luke, what have you been up to?”
-I’ve been teaching a legal English course recently
-I’ve been playing football in Regents Park
-I’ve been enjoying the good weather
-I’ve been looking forward to the new Star Trek movie
-I’ve been listening to a lot of funk music
-I’ve been on a couple of dates recently
(Present Perfect Simple tense)

Part 2 – Here’s the transcript of the comedy sketch:
Woman: I’m really glad Lisa set us up together
Man: Me too Woman: I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers
Man; Yeah
Woman: Thing is… all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid… I think you’re different though… well, touch wood! [she knocks on the table]
Man: [thinking it is the front door] Sorry, that’ll be the door… [he walks to the front door]
Woman: Good…

Part 3 – Useful expressions for talking about relationships & dating
To flirt with someone: When you like a boy or girl, you act in a way which shows that you like them. E.g. girls will laugh at a boy’s jokes, she might play with her hair, she might smile at him a lot, she might touch him on the arm and laugh… When a boy flirts with a girl he might try to make her laugh or show her how strong he is.
To fancy someone: This means that you think someone is attractive. E.g. “I really fancy Jane! I think she’s really good looking.”
To chat someone up: This is when you talk to someone to make them fancy you. E.g. when a man sees a nice woman in a bar, he might chat her up by asking her if she wants a drink. “Would you like a drink? Do you come here often? You’ve got beautiful eyes…”
To go out with someone: This has 2 meanings. 1 – It means that you go on a date with someone. 2 – It means you are someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend. E.g. “We’ve been going out with each other for 2 years. We’re getting married next year.”
To ask someone out: This means to ask someone to go on a date. “Would you like to have dinner with me on Friday?” -he asked her out.
To have chemistry: This means there is a natural magic feeling between people who fancy each other. Chemistry is very important in a relationship.
To fall for someone: This means to fall in love with someone
To drift apart: This is when a relationship goes bad. You drift apart when you become interested in different things, and you don’t enjoy being with each other any more. It means that you slowly become bored with your partner.
To split up with someone: This means that the relationship finished. E.g. “Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston split up with each other a couple of years ago”
To dump someone: This means that you leave your partner and end the relationship. E.g. “She’s really sad because he dumped her. He told her that he didn’t love her any more and that he didn’t want to see her again…”

OK, so that’s it! Those are really useful expressions for talking about dating. Don’t forget to email me if you have any questions or comments. luketeacher@hotmail.com Bye for now!

p.s. here’s the comedy sketch on YouTube:
The TV show is called Man Stroke Woman (BBC)

TRANSCRIPT TO 8. DATING & RELATIONSHIPS

Hello, welcome to Luke’s English Podcast. Thank you very much for listening and downloading. Um… I’ve been getting various messages from people. Um… Basically saying that they love the podcast and some people are using it just to learn English when they are, for example, driving to work, or travelling on the bus, or on the underground, and some people are teachers who are using the podcasts in their English lessons. So, I’m happy about that, very glad that it’s becoming so popular. Um, you can, of course, find this podcast on iTunes. If you go to the iTunes Store, you can do a search for Luke’s English podcast and you will find it there and you can subscribe to the podcast using iTunes there. And also, you can leave a short review of the podcast on that page. Um… and I’ve had couple of ratings but I haven’t had any reviews yet. So, please leave a review saying how brilliant the podcast is, okay? I mean, I’d like you to say how brilliant it is of course so that way I can get more listeners, yeh? You don’t have to say it is brilliant. I mean you can be honest, for example, and say ‘I think it’s quite good but I found some of the episodes are a bit too long these days’ or something like that. Or you can say ‘I think it’s very useful but the problem is Luke doesn’t write a transcript for the episodes. It would be better if there is a transcript,’ something like that. Just write a comment, leave a message. I’d like this to be an interactive podcast. So the more messages you send me, the better. So you can leave a review on my iTunes page or you can send me an e-mail by teacherLuke… no, it’s luketeacher@hotmail.com.

Now, in today’s podcast, first of all, I’m just going to tell you what I’ve been doing recently. So I’m going to give you an update on things that I’ve been doing. And, when I talk about that, I am going to be telling you as well about the present perfect continuous tense and how useful that can be when you are talking about recent news, okay? So, the first part would be little bit about my recent news and the present perfect continuous tense. Then, in the feature section, you are going to listen to a small comedy sketch about a date, okay? And then in the language section at the end of the podcast, I’m going to teach you some really really really useful and very important expressions that you can use to talk about dating and relationship, okay?

[3’08” Jingle playing]

Right, so what have I been up to recently? What have I been doing? Well, I’m going to tell you in a second. But before I do that, I’m going to teach you something really useful about English, some really useful and important language, okay? Now when you see your friends, for example, if you haven’t seen your friends for a week or two, in English, it’s very very common to say something like: ‘What have you been up to?’ or ‘What have you been doing?’ Right? ‘What have you been up to?’ or ‘What have you been doing?’ And those questions are about your recent activities, okay? Maybe since the last time you met. So, a common conversation might be something like:

A: Hi, How’s it going?

B: Fine. Thanks. You?

A: Not bad. What have you been up to?

B: Well, …[and then you talk about what you’ve been up to.]

Okay? So that’s ‘Hi, How’s it going.’ ‘How’s it going’ is another way of saying ‘how are you’.

A: How’s it going?

B: Fine. Thanks. You?

A: Not bad. What have you been up to? [‘Up to’ means ‘doing’ actually.]

B: Well, nothing. [Very common for people to say nothing. ]

‘What have you been up to?’

‘Well, nothing.’ [Nothing really or nothing special.]

But sometimes, you know, you can talk about the things that you have been doing. Right? And when we talk about recent news like that, we often use the present perfect continuous tense or sometimes the present perfect tense. Okay? So, the present perfect continuous tense is structured like this, we have ‘have’ or ‘has’ + ‘been’ and then an ‘-ing’ form. For example, ‘I’ve been teaching English’ Right? Or, ‘I’ve been playing a lot of football recently.’ Yeah? I’ve been doing something. And we use that form in the question as well, ‘What have you been doing recently.’ Yeah? So, for example, if you ask me: ‘Hi, Luke. How’s it going?’ And I’d say: ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’ And you’d say: ‘What’ve you been up to recently?’ Well, I’d say:

I’ve been teaching a legal English class recently. Um… At school at the moment, I’m teaching a law course – Legal English, which is very interesting. It’s quite difficult. Some of the language is a little bit complicated. But it’s very interesting to be teaching a different kind of English, in this case, English that is used to describe a legal system or civil court procedures and so on and so forth. That’s very interesting. Also, I’ve been playing football in Regents Park. Regents Park is one of the many parks in London. It’s very beautiful there actually. It’s close to London Zoo. And it’s right in the middle of the city. And every Wednesday, I play football in Regents Park. So, I’ve been playing football in Regents Park recently. Um, I’ve been enjoying the good weather. At the moment, it’s spring here in the London and the sun is shining and the birds are singer and it’s really really nice. London is so much better when the weather is good. It’s really fantastic. So, I’ve been enjoying the good weather. Um… Let see, what else… I’ve been looking forward to the new Star Trek movie. So ‘looking forward to’ means waiting for something because you want it to happen, right? So, waiting for something that is good. Something that is good is going to happen. I’ve been looking forward to the new Star Trek movie. Now I’m not like a big Star Trek fan. I prefer Star Wars actually. But all the critiques say that the new Star Trek film is very very good. So, I’m looking forward to seeing it. I might see it later today actually. And then I can tell you what it’s like. You can see the trailer for the new Star Trek film on the Internet if you go to YouTube and type Star Trek movie. It should be a very good science friction movie, very entertaining. Um… I’ve been listening to a lot of funk music recently. Now, I love music, right? And probably my favourite genre of music is funk or jazz funk. And that sort of music that was being made in the 70s and it’s good music to dance to. And it also got some jazz in it. So there’s [re] some really great solos in jazz funk or funk music. And the musicians are excellent. So it’s really a real pleasure for me to listen to that kind of music. If you don’t know what jazz funk or funk sound like, well, it sounds a bit like this.

[8’35” Funk music playing]

I think you get the idea. Isn’t great? Sounds fantastic, doesn’t? Um, you might say that it’s a little bit cheesy. Right. But I love it. I love that kind of music. Anyway, what else have I been doing recently? Well, I’ve been listening to a lot of funk music like that. And also I’ve been on a couple of dates recently. Um… Now, I’m single at the moment and I’ve been trying to meet someone. So, I went on a[n] online dating service. Now, you might think: Ugh, online dating? That’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Well, I mean it’s not really sad anymore. In London lot and lot of people sign up to online dating services. A lot of my friends are on various online dating services. Lot of people do it here in London. It’s actually a good way to meet people I think. It’s not really sad anymore to do that. So, I signed up for one called Guardian Soulmates, which is run by the Guardian newspaper here. And I’ve had a couple of dates actually from it, which is great. Now, I’m not going to tell you any more about that because it’s person and private. And it’s, well, it’s none of your business really, is it. Yeah, so, I’m not going to tell you any more about that. You will just have to use your imagination to try and guess how those dates went and what the girl was like and all those things. So, yes, I’m not going to tell you any more about it. Instead, I’m going to move very quickly on to the feature section of this podcast, which is all about dating, actually. So, there you go. Just before we move onto the feature section, let me just summarise the little bit of grammar that I told you about there. So, we use present perfect continuous to talk about things that like activities that we have done recently. And, so, you should start using present perfect continuous like that. When you have conversations with your friends. So:

Hi! How’s it going?

Fine. Thanks. You?

Pretty good. What have you been doing recently?

Well, I’ve been listening to Luke’s English podcast.

Luke’s English podcast, what’s that? It sounds fantastic.

Well, it is fantastic actually. It’s brilliant. It’s a really interesting and useful way to learn English.

Wow, what’s the address?

Well, it’s teacherluke.podomatic.com and so on.

Okay? So, don’t forget to use present perfect continuous to talk about your recent activities. Now, let’s move on to the feature section of the podcast. Here we go.

[11’54” Jingle playing]

Okay, so, the feature section today is about dating. Um… Right, going out with people. Trying to find someone so that you can have a relationship with them. Now, in England, people meet their girlfriend of boyfriend in lots of different ways. Um, so, how do people meet each other? Well, it might be that their friends hook them up, right? If your friends hook you up with someone, it means that they know you and they know you are single, they also know someone else. So, it might be they know you but they also know a girl, or a boy that they think will like you. And, so, they arrange for you to meet. So they hook you up, right?

Um… And it could be a blind date, for example. They might hook you up on a blind date. So you end up meeting somebody that you’ve never met before. And that’s usually quite a difficult kind of date to go on because it can be very embarrassing if you don’t like each other. It can be a bit difficult and you have to try to make conversation. Ugh, it’s usually quite an awkward situation – a blind date. But a lot of people meet like that. How else? Some people meet at work. You know, I think actually most people in relationships meet their boyfriend or girlfriend at work. It’s very very common.

So, they might, for example, meet at work and flirt with each other and chat each other up at work, and then go out with each other. It might be the guy if he fancies a girl at work. They might flirt with each other and then he might ask her out. And then they go on a date and then you know, who knows, they might fall in love or something. I think it’s very common. By the way, I might use some English expressions in this part of the podcast that you don’t understand. But don’t worry, I m going to teach you those useful expressions at the end of the podcast, okay? Listen to this now and if you don’t understand something, I will explain it later. Also you can send me an email of course if you got any questions.

Okay. So they might meet at work. A lot of people meet in a bar or in a pub or in a nightclub, and it’s a very very common way to meet someone actually. People tend to go out on a Friday or Saturday night, they dress up in their best cloths, they put some perfume or aftershave on and they go out and they drink usually so they get a little bit drunk, which makes it easier to meet someone I think. And they go out and they dance with people and they chat each other up. And then eventually maybe get a telephone number form them and then arrange to meet up on a date in the future. Right? So a lot of people meet each other when they are drinking in a pub or in a club or something. Some people, especially these days, meet each other on the Internet.

So, if you are single, you might decide that you’re going to sign up to an online dating agency. And then you can find someone very quickly and very easily. But the problem is that there are so many people on the Internet that you have to kind of go through a lot of people before you find someone who is right for you. As well as that, a lot of people meet on holiday. [It is] very popular to go to places like Ibiza or Spain or other popular holiday destinations and you meet lots of other people who are at the same age as you. And something being on a holiday means that it’s a romantic situation. And so lots of people have meet[met] their boyfriend or girlfriend on a romantic holiday or something.

And these days some people go speed dating. Now, speed dating is a kind of very quick way to meet lots of people in one night. What happens in speed date is you go to a bar and first of all you have to sign up, so you apply to do it over the telephone. And then you go to a bar, and there might be about 10 or 15 tables in the bar and all the girls sit at the tables. And all the boys have… Well, you have 3 minutes, basically, to try and chat each other up. And after 3-minute, someone rings a bell – ding, ding ,ding – and then you have to move, all the boys move onto the next table. And you talk to the next person. And you got 3 minutes to talk to them. And then the bell rings again and you move to the next table and meet the next girl and talk to them and after about an hour, you have met about 15 people in one night. And then at the end, you write little comments on a piece of paper about them. And you can decide who[m] you’d like to meet again. If both people say that they’d like to meet each other, then they can exchange telephone numbers and have a date in the future. So, it’s very popular these days. A lot of people do it.

Um… Now, you’re going to… I’m going to play you, now, the audio from a little comedy sketch, which is from a BBC television programme, a comedy programme. Now, in this sketch, you are going to hear a conversation between a man and woman who are on a blind date. Okay? Now their friends have set them up, they’ve hooked them up with each other. And you hear the girl talking about how usually it’s very difficult when her friends hook her up with men. And usually, the men that her friends hook her up with are very stupid. But she is very pleased that this guy seems to be different. So, she’s very happy that they met each other. But there is a little joke, a comedy joke in the sketch. Now, I’m not going to explain any more about it. I’m just going to play it to you now. And I’d like you to see if you can understand what is funny about it. What’s the funny thing about this little sketch, okay? So, I’ll explain it to you afterward if you don’t understand. So, here is the sketch:

[18’57” Comedy sketch playing]

Woman: I’m really glad Lisa set us up together
Man: Me too

Woman: I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers
Man; Yeah
Woman: Thing is… all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid… I think you’re different though… well, touch wood! [she knocks on the table]
Man: [thinking it is the front door] Sorry, that’ll be the door… [he walks to the front door]
Woman: Good…

Okay. Now, don’t worry if you didn’t understand that or you didn’t find it funny. Um… It’s very difficult to understand comedy if you are learning the language. And probably comedy is one of the things that you will appreciate or enjoy later when you become a more advanced speaker of English. So don’t worry if you didn’t find it funny. The main thing here that I’d like to do is to help you understand what happened in that sketch. Now, maybe you understood it but if you didn’t, I’m going to explain it for you bit by bit now. So let’s just quickly listen to some of the sketch again. So here is the first little bit:

Woman: I’m really glad Lisa set us up together

Man: Me too

Okay. So she says, ‘I’m so glad that Lisa set us up together,’ and he says, ‘me too.’ So, I’m so glad that Lisa, that’s her friend, set us up, that means arranged for us to meet. Okay? ‘I’m so glad that Lisa set us up together.’ ‘I’m so glad that Lisa arranged for us up to meet.’ And he said me too. Fine, easy. Now, here is the next bit.

Woman: I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers
Man: Yeah

I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers. Okay? So, when a friend pairs you off with someone, it means that your friend put you in a pair with someone. So, your friends arrange for you to meet someone so that you’d become a pair, you’d become a partner. Okay? Now, a complete stranger is someone that you’ve never met before. So, she means I usually hate it when my friends put me on a blind date with someone. Okay? Right, here is the next bit.

Woman: Thing is… all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid…

The thing is all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid. Okay? Now, ‘the thing is’, that’s like saying, ‘the problem is,’ all the guys I’ve been out with recently. So, to go out with someone means to go on a date with them. Right. So, all the guys I’ve gone on a date with recently have been unbelievably stupid. So, ‘unbelievably stupid’ means really really stupid. Okay? Now, so, here is the next bit.

Woman: I think you’re different though

Okay, she said, ‘But I think you’re different though.’ But I think you’re different though. She thinks that he’s not like the other guys that he’s not unbelievably stupid. Okay. Well, she hopes so anyway.

Woman: Well, touch wood!

Okay, there she says, ‘well, touch wood.’ Now, to touch wood in England is a superstition. It’s like a kind of good luck thing. So, if you hope that something will happen or you hoped something is true, you touch wood like that. Okay? So, she’s saying ‘you’re not stupid like the other guys’. Well, I hope you are not anyway. Touch wood, right. Yeah, so, that’s what that bit means.

Man: That’ll be the door

Woman: Good…

He says, ‘Oh, that will be the door.’ Right, so, what happen is, she said, ‘I hoped you are not like the other guys, I think you are not like the other guys. Well, touch wood. Actually, he thought that was somebody knocking on the door. So he is very very stupid actually. Because when she went touch wood, he said that would be the door and he left the table because he thought somebody was knocking on the front door. So, he is very very stupid, yeh, or an idiot. And then she said ‘good’ at t he end but she doesn’t really mean it. I think she is shocked or surprised. So, I’m just going to play you the whole sketch again, so that you can listen to it from the start to the finish.

[23’24” Comedy sketch playing]

Okay, so there it is. I hope you enjoy that, I hope you find it funny. Now, in the next section – the language section, I’m going to teach you really useful expressions to talk about dating and relationships.

[23’56” Jangle playing]

Okay, in English, there are numbers of expressions that we always use when we are talking about romantic relationships, boyfriends, girlfriends, and going on a date. Okay? And you really have to learn these expressions because people always use them when they are talking about this subject, okay? So, these expressions are really important and really useful for you. So, I recommend that you learn them and use them, okay? Now, I used some of these expressions in the feature section when I was talking about dating, okay? So, you… I’m going to explain some of those expressions for you now. Okay, so, let see. First expression is a verb, and it’s ‘to flirt’, to flirt with someone, ‘to flirt’. Um… To flirt with someone is when you… If you like someone, if you think someone is attractive, then you act, you behave in a way show that shows you like them. Okay? So, for example, girls might play with their hair. Right? They often play with their hair when the flirt. Or they laugh at everything that the guy says. So, even if the guy says really bad jokes, she’ll laugh about it. ‘Oh, you’re so funny.’ And she might, for example, back her eye lids at him, or just act in a way that shows she really fancies him, she really likes him, okay? Um… Guys when they flirt, they try to make girls laugh, they might try to show how strong they are, show off their muscles or something, so that’s flirting. And people flirt all the time. When they like someone. Okay?

Another expression is ‘to fancy someone’, ‘to fancy someone’, and ‘fancy’ is a verb. And if you fancy someone, it means you think they are attractive, you think that they are good looking. Okay? So, if you fancy someone, you might start flirting with them, for example. So, ‘fancy’. Yeah. Um…

Next expression is ‘to chat someone up’, ‘to chat someone up’. And that’s a phrasal verb – ‘To chat up, to chat someone up’. If you chat someone up, it means that, first of all, you find them attractive, you fancy them, and then you start talking to them, to try to make them fancy you. Okay? Now I think usually, traditionally, men chat women up. Um… These days, women chat men up a bit as well, but traditionally it’s men who chat women up. And, so, for example, if a man sees a girl in a bar and he fancies her, he might walk over to her and start to chat her up. And there are typically things that man say when they chat women up. So, they’ll say ‘hi, would you like a drink?’ or ‘hi, do you come here often’ or something like that. And then they start chatting, talking to try [to] make the girl fancy him, okay? So, typically things are: ‘Do u come here often,’ ‘Can I buy you a drink,’ or ‘you’ve got lovely eyes,’ that kind of things. So that’s to chat someone up.

Next expression is to go out with someone, to go out with someone. And, there are two meanings of these really. One meaning is to go out with someone means to go on a date, right? So, to go out with someone just means to go on a date. ‘I went out with her last night.’ But we also use ‘to go out’ to mean that you’re someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend. And, often in a continuous form, so, ‘I’m going out with her,’ means she is my girlfriend. Or ‘are you going out with anyone at the moment,’ means do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend at the moment? Yeah? I’ve been going out with her for 6 months, for example, means she’s been my girlfriend for 6 months. Yeah? ‘To go with someone.’

Another useful expression is ‘to have chemistry with someone’, ‘to have chemistry’. Now if you have chemistry with someone, it means that you get on with each other and there is some like magic between you, so you just really get on with each other and you both fancy each other and just naturally, when you are together, there’s like a magic feeling between you, and that’s called chemistry. And chemistry is really really important in a relationship. You have to have chemistry, because it’s the chemistry actually, the interaction between you that makes it exciting, that makes it interesting, okay? So, for example, if you go on a date with someone, and there is no chemistry, then the date will be really boring. You will think that whatever they are saying is not interesting; it’s not exciting. Yeah? But if there is chemistry, it’s kind of exciting, you fancy each other, you know, you might want to kiss each other, and there’s a good feeling between you and that’s called chemistry. Chemistry is also the word of the name of kind of science. But we also use it to mean good feeling between boy and girl, Chemistry.

Now you can, if you fall in love with someone, you can say that you fall for someone, so ‘to fall for someone’. So, for example, you know, she’s been going out with him for about four weeks, and she really fancies him, and actually, I think she’s starting to fall for him means she’s starting to fall in love with him. So, ‘to fall for someone’. Okay.

Now, for example, if you meet some one, you fancy each other, you flirt with each other, you stat to chat each other up, maybe, if you fancy them, you can ask them out, so, to ask them to go on a date with you. You ask some one out. So, may be the boy fancies her, he asks her out and she says yes, so they go on a date with each other. There is chemistry between them and they start going out with each other so they start becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, and then, maybe the fall for each other And then, eventually, perhaps, who knows, they get engaged and get married and have children and live a lovely happy life.

But sometimes it goes bad; sometimes a relationship will go wrong. Okay? And, so there are few expressions that we can use to describe when a relationship goes bad. For example, you might say that, um… You and your girlfriend are drifting apart. To drift apart, so, that means you are slowly moving away from each other, slowly moving away, so you are drifting apart, okay? Um… And if u are drifting apart, if you don’t love each other anymore, then you may split up with each other. So that’s a phrasal verb, ‘to split up with someone. So if you split up with each other, it means that the relationship is s finished. Okay? So, for example, they were going out with each other, but then they split up with each other and now they are single. Okay? ‘To split up with someone.’ Now, you can also use an expression to mean that you leave some or you’ve finished a relationship, and that is to dump someone. Okay? So, for example, if, you know, she was going out with him for three months. But after three months, she realised that he was really boring and she didn’t fancy him anymore, and so, she dumped him. Right? When you dump someone, you have to tell them a reason, you have to say, ‘look, I’m sorry but I don’t think this is working’ or ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t fancy you anymore’ or ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not you, it’s me you know. I’m not ready for a long relationship.’ Okay? And when you say that, you’d say, ‘I don’t think we should see each other any more.’ Then you dumped that person. It’s very sad. It’s not a good thing to do over the telephone, for example. Although a lot of people do it over the telephone, so to dump someone. So, those are some of the sort of most important expressions, I think, to describe a dating and relationships.

There are more expressions that you can use. And I think that because this is a good subject, I’m going to do more podcasts about this in the future. And, in fact, what I’d like to talk about in the future would be good chat up lines, so that’s good things you can say to chat someone up. And things that people often say when they dump each other. I think it’s a interesting subject, so, hopefully, I’m going to interview some of my friends and get their good chat up lines and things that they might say if they dump someone, okay? Now I will write all of the expressions that I’ve explained on the podcast home page, which is, of course, teacherluke.podomatic.com. You can see all the expressions written and I’ll also write a transcript of the comedy sketch that you listened to. So, don’t forget to visit the site to get some of the words and expressions that I’ve explained for you here. And also, don’t forget to send me an email. I’m going to end this podcast with a question. And the question is, ‘how do people meet each other in your country.’ Now, I told you about how people meet in England, but I know that in some countries like, for example, in Japan, there are different ways to meet your partner. So, how do you meet each other in your country? Send me an email; I’d very much like to hear from you. That’s the end of the podcast. I hope you have a nice day. And I hope you enjoyed listening. Take care. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye….

7. Susan Boyle

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This podcast is about Susan Boyle, the Scottish singer who recently became very famous all over the world on YouTube. The language section is about idioms to describe personality.

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Transcript available below.

Hello everyone around the world, and thank you very much for downloading the podcast. I’ve had lots of downloads in lots of countries recently.

This podcast is about Susan Boyle, the Scottish singer who recently became very famous all over the world on YouTube. The feature section is about her and her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical Les Miserables. Why was it so special? Why have so many people in the world seen it? Why has she become so famous? Why do the Americans love her?

Below this text you can read a transcript of her conversation with the judges on Britain’s Got Talent (TV show), and the lyrics of I Dreamed A Dream. I explain some of the words and expressions from the conversation.

The Language Section is about some common idioms which you can use to describe people’s personality and appearance. You can read the idioms and definitions below.

What do you think of Susan Boyle? Is she famous in your country? What do you think of Luke’s English Podcast? Is it too long? Would you like me to change anything? Email me: luketeacher@hotmail.com

Here’s the transcript of the conversation from the video of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. (The tapescript starts from 0.40 seconds into the video:

SC = Simon Cowell AH = Amanda Holden PM = Piers Morgan SB = Susan Boyle

SC: What’s your name darling? SB: My name is Susan Boyle SC: Ok, err, Susan, err, where are you from? SB: I’m from ??? near Bathgate in West Lothian SC: That’s a big town…? SB: It’s a sort of, a sort of collection of … (she thinks) … villages. I had to think there! SC: And how old are you Susan? SB: I’m 47… and that’s just one side of me!! SC: Ok, and what’s the dream? SB: I’m trying to be a professional singer SC: And why hasn’t it worked out so far Susan? SB: Well, I haven’t been given a chance before, but here’s hoping it’ll change… SC: OK, and who would you like to be as successful as? SB: Elaine Paige… SC: Elaine Paige SB: …something like that PM: What are you gonna sing tonight? SB: I’m going to sing “I Dream The Dream” from Les Miserables

She sings: (A presenter says: You didn’t expect that! Did you?? Did you?? No!)

I dreamed a dream in time gone by When hope was high, And life worth living I dreamed that love would never die I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid When dreams were made and used, And wasted There was no ransom to be paid No song unsung, No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night With their voices soft as thunder As they tear your hopes apart As they turn your dreams to shame.

And still I dream he’ll come to me And we will live our lives together But there are dreams that cannot be And there are storms We cannot weather…

I had a dream my life would be So different from this hell I’m living So different now from what it seems Now life has killed The dream I dreamed

She starts walking off the stage when she is finished…

PM: Come back here!! SC: All right, and thank you very much, err, Susan. Piers? PM: Without a doubt that was the biggest surprise I have had in 3 years of this show. When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said “I want to be like Elaine Page”, everyone was laughing at you. No one is laughing now! That was stunning! An incredible performance. Amazing! I’m reeling from the shock. I dunno about you two, but… AH: I am so thrilled because I know everybody was against you. I honestly think we were all being very cynical and I think that’s the biggest wake up call ever, and I just want to way that it was a complete privilege, listening to that. SC: I knew the minute you walked out… SB: Oh Simon! SC: …on that stage that we were gonna hear something extraordinary and I was right. Susan, you are a little tiger, aren’t you. SB: Oh, I don’t know about that. SC: You are. OK, the moment of truth. Piers – yes or no? PM: The biggest yes I have ever given anybody. SC: Amanda? AH: Yes. Definitely. Brilliant. SB: Amanda?! You too?!! SC: Susan Boyle. You can go back to the village with your head held high, because it’s three yesses! Presenter: Well! I think you enjoyed that just a little bit! PM: What a voice. AH: Incredible. Presenter: Congratulations! SB: Oh my God! Oh my God! Presenter: How do you feel? SB: …bloody fantastic! Presenter: Piers says that’s the biggest yes he’s ever given on the show… in 3 series. SB: Oh my God! PM: The most extraordinary shock we’ve ever had. SB: So emotional… Unbelievable and emotional and fantastic…

Here are some of the words and definitions: SB: “That’s just one side of me” = That’s just one part of who I am SC: “Why hasn’t it ‘worked out’ for you?” = why hasn’t it been a success for you? PM: “…with that cheeky grin on your face” = cheeky means a little bit rude, but joking too. A grin is a big smile. A cheeky grin is like a fun, rude smile! PM: “I’m reeling from the shock” – ‘reeling’ means that you’re struggling to recover from the shock AH: “Everyone was against you” = No one was supporting you AH: “We were being very cynical” – Cynical means when you expect bad things to happen because you believe the world is not a good place, you don’t believe people are good, honest, truthful, etc. AH: “It was a complete privelage” = a privilege is like a special opportunity that only a few people have. SC: “Go back to the village with your head held high” – Go back feeling very proud.

Language Section: Idioms to describe character & appearance

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” – You shouldn’t judge people by appearances only. You need to get to know them first before you judge them. “There’s more than meets the eye” – There is more to a person/situation than just how it looks. “A class act” – if someone is a class act, they are excellent at what they do. “A laughing stock” – Someone is a laughing stock if they’ve done something stupid in public, and then everyone is laughing at them and thinks they are stupid. “Moral fibre” – Moral fibre is the inner strength to do what you believe to be right in difficult situations Example: He lacked the moral fibre to be leader . “To have the courage of your convictions” – If you have the courage of your convictions, you are brave enough to do what you feel is right, despite any pressure for you to do something different. “To be bold as brass” – Someone who is as bold as brass is very confident and not worried about how other people will respond. “His bark is worse than his bite” – Someone who’s bark is worse than their bite may well get angry and shout, but doesn’t take action. “A barrel of laughs” – if someone’s a barrel of laughs, they are always joking and you find them funny.

Transcript for this Episode

Episode 7 – Susan Boyle

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

Hello, welcome to Luke’s English podcast. You are listening to episode six. This is Luke of course. Hello, how are you? I hope you are well. I am fine thanks; I am just sitting here in my living room again. It’s a Thursday evening. I always seem to do these podcasts on a Thursday, for some reason. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I usually do nothing on a Thursday. But anyway, it’s Thursday evening. I am relaxing, having a nice evening and I have had a few emails recently and I had one email from Miho in Japan again – a regular e-mailer.

Hello, hello Miho, how are you and she emailed me saying: Have you heard about Susan Boyle, right? She is asking me about someone called Susan Boyle and have I heard about her because she is very famous at the moment in Japan and well, it’s funny she’s asked that because I have heard about Susan Boyle, of course, because everybody now knows about Susan Boyle. It seems that she is famous all over the world now, which is incredible. It’s a sort of big incredible story that everybody is talking about. It’s quite interesting for lots of reasons. One of the main ones being that she’s become famous overnight. She is suddenly very, very famous.

Now, if you don’t know who she is, I am going to tell you about her in the feature section of the podcast. So I am going to talk about Susan Boyle. Who is she? Why is she famous? Also I am going to interview a few people – some of my friends – just to see what their opinion of Susan Boyle is. I am going to be teaching you some bits of language that you are going to hear people using in those interviews, and then the language section at the end of the podcast is going to be some idioms – some useful common idioms that people use to describe personality, character and appearance, okay?

It’s section 2 coming up now. The feature section Susan Boyle– here we go….

Right then, Susan Boyle – who is she? Well, I am going to explain it for you now.

Susan Boyle is a Scottish singer who recently appeared on the TV show ‘Britain’s got talent’.

Now ‘Britain’s got talent’ is a very popular show here. It’s broadcast on Saturday night on ITV – that’s one of the TV channels here. It’s very popular and in Britain’s got talent what happens is – you get singers – musicians from all over the country. They may want to become famous. So they are just normal ordinary people – members of the public who want to become famous. And they can go on Britain’s got talent as a chance of becoming famous, okay? So they go on the show and they have to sing a song in front of three judges, okay. So the judges are a man called Simon Cowell who is a kind of music industry executive who has started the careers of lots of British pop stars. So he is a kind of British pop star manager. That’s Simon Cowell.

ITV:Independent Television

The second one is a woman called Amanda Holden. And she is an actress – a very famous actress in Britain and the third judge is called Piers Morgan. And Piers Morgan is a journalist who used to be the editor of the Daily Mirror. That’s one of the biggest newspapers in the UK.

Okay? So those are the three judges and the members of the public come on the show – they sing a song in front of the judges and the judges have to decide if that person is going to go through to the next round, okay? So the judges say yes or no. If they get the right number of yes-votes, these people go through to the next round until eventually you get one person at the end who wins and I think they get a record contract. But the person who wins usually becomes very rich and famous. Now Susan Boyle recently appeared on Britain’s got talent and she sang a song from the musical ‘Les Miserables’ and it was actually a very special moment in the show because…basically when she came onto the stage all of the audience and the judges immediately made judgements about her appearance because she – she’s actually 47 years old. She is very ordinary looking. I mean …It’s not rude, really to say …it might be a bit rude to say it, but she is not pretty. She is not really good-looking.

I mean, she, you know, she is not exactly beautiful, right? So, she is very ordinary looking. She doesn’t look glamorous. She looks a bit like your next door neighbour or something, you know. Very ordinary looking. And she does look a bit strange, as well, actually, to be honest.

So, when she came on stage nobody expected her to be talented at all. In fact, because on the show normally, they get lots of people who are very strange – they get always weird, strange people who think that they are very talented and they sing and they are absolutely terrible and everyone laughs at them and the judges criticise them and they don’t win, right.

So, that’s what happens a lot. So, when Susan Boyle came onto the stage, everyone expected her to be awful and have a terrible voice. But, she didn’t. She had…she actually has a fantastic voice and it was a very touching and a very moving performance. The way she sings and you could see it in the audience and you could see it in the judges faces – everyone was very emotionally touched by her performance and something about the fact that she looks normal, she looks ordinary, but she has got a beautiful singing voice has made Susan Boyle into a massive, international star. She is very, very, very famous in America now. She is famous all over the UK, and she is famous all over the world. Even Miho in Japan knows all about her. You’ve probably heard about her yourself.

The clip of her performance is available to watch on you tube. So if you go to you tube and type in Susan Boyle, you can see it. And more than 100 million people have seen her performance on you tube. More than 100 million people. And I think that is the most watched clip on you tube, ever.

So, it’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing how famous she is. And this has happened in really just a couple of weeks. So it’s really, really incredible.

Just a bit more information about Susan Boyle.

She is….let’s see …She left school when she was 16 years old and she doesn’t really have many qualifications. She has been unemployed for most of her life. She isn’t married. In fact, she says that she is never been kissed, even.

So she hasn’t really had much of an exciting life, actually. She is very normal, very ordinary. She has never really sung or performed on stage before. She sings karaoke in her village sometimes. But for some reason she has got an incredible voice.

Now, I am actually going to play you a clip from the performance. A clip from Britain’s got talent.

So, what you are going to hear is Susan Boyle coming onto the stage. You are going to hear some people talking. You hear the audience sort of laughing at her. Susan Boyle answers a few questions and then she starts to sing and you can hear the audience’s reaction. They are really amazed and you can hear how beautiful her voice is. I don’t usually like this kind of music. I don’t usually listen to music like this, but even I think that it is a beautiful voice and there is something special about her performance.

So, I am going to play it for you now. There may be some things that you don’t understand in this clip. Don’t worry, because I will teach you or I will explain some of the things that they said after the clip.

Now, if you listen to the song and you can’t understand the words, don’t worry you can read the lyrics, you can read the words to the song on the web page at teacherluke.podomatic.com. You can actually read the words there and I hope you enjoy it. It should give you an idea of why this is so special.

I will also post a link to the video on you tube. So you can actually watch the video on you tube as well.

Okay, here is the clip. I hope you like it.

SC = Simon Cowell AH = Amanda Holden PM = Piers Morgan SB = Susan Boyle

SC: What’s your name darling? SB: My name is Susan Boyle SC: Ok, err, Susan, err, where are you from? SB: I’m from Blackburn, near Bathgate in West Lothian SC: That’s a big town…? SB: It’s a sort of, a sort of collection of … (she thinks) … villages. I had to think there! SC: And how old are you Susan? SB: I’m 47… and that’s just one side of me!! SC: Ok, and what’s the dream? SB: I’m trying to be a professional singer SC: And why hasn’t it worked out so far Susan? SB: Well, I haven’t been given a chance before, but here’s hoping it’ll change… SC: OK, and who would you like to be as successful as? SB: Elaine Paige… SC: Elaine Paige SB: …something like that PM: What are you gonna sing tonight? SB: I’m going to sing “I Dream The Dream” from Les Miserables

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame

And still I dreamed he’d come to me
That we would live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed

PM: Come back here!!

SC: All right, and thank you very much, err, Susan. Piers?

PM: Without a doubt that was the biggest surprise I have had in 3 years of this show. When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said “I want to be like Elaine Page”, everyone was laughing at you. No one is laughing now! That was stunning! An incredible performance. Amazing! I’m reeling from shock. I dunno about you two, but…

AH: I am so thrilled because I know everybody was against you. I honestly think that we were all being very cynical and I think that’s the biggest wake up call ever, and I just want to say that it was a complete privilege, listening to that.

SC: I knew the minute you walked out…

SB: Oh Simon!

SC: …on that stage that we were gonna hear something extraordinary and I was right. Susan, you are a little tiger, aren’t you.

SB: Oh, I don’t know about that.

SC: You are. OK, the moment of truth. Piers – yes or no?

PM: The biggest yes I have ever given anybody.

SC: Amanda?

AH: Yes. Definitely. Brilliant.

SB: Amanda?! You too?!!

SC: Susan Boyle. You can go back to the village with your head held high, because it’s three yesses!

Presenter: Well! I think you enjoyed that just a little bit!

PM: What a voice.

AH: Incredible. Presenter: Congratulations!

SB: Oh my God! Oh my God!

Presenter: How do you feel?

SB: …bloody fantastic!

Presenter: Piers says that’s the biggest yes he’s ever given on the show… in 3 series.

SB: Oh my God!

PM: The most extraordinary shock we’ve ever had.

SB: So emotional… Unbelievable and emotional and fantastic…

Oh my god, oh that’s just so emotional. Och, I am not really crying. But, well quite emotional. Everyone sort of amazed about it. Extraordinary! The most amazing experience in my whole life, right. So, you can see how passionate she was and see how impressed the judges were. Let’s see then. Maybe some language that you heard there, that you didn’t understand. It might have been a bit difficult to understand everything they said. So, go to the web page. You’ll see a script of the conversations and a script of the song, the lyrics so you can read them and understand everything. But I am also going to teach you a few things or explain a few things that they said as well.

So, let’s do that now. First of all Susan Boyle is from Scotland, so she has got a Scottish accent. Sometimes for learners of English that’s a little bit difficult to understand. So she has got a bit of a Scottish accent which makes it hard to understand.

She said….let’s see….Simon Cowell said: .How old are you Susan, and she said I am 47. And that’s just one side of me. When she is saying that’s just one side of me, it means that is just one part of my personality.

So what she is saying is: I am 47. I am a normal, ordinary middle-aged woman but there is another side of me which is exciting and passionate and talented.

So, Simon Cowell said: What’s the dream? She says: I am trying to be a professional singer and Simon Cowell says: Why hasn’t it worked out so far, Susan?

So it is a phrasal verb there. To work out. If something works out it means, it is a success. It is successful. So he said, why hasn’t it worked out so far and he means why haven’t you had any success, yet being a singer.

Okay, so after Susan sang her song, Piers Morgan said: Without a doubt that was the biggest surprise I have had in three years of this show. When you stood there with that cheeky grin and said I want to be like like Elaine Page everyone was laughing at you No one is laughing now.

A cheeky grin, a cheeky grin. Well, a grin is like a smile on your face, yeah? And a cheeky grin is one that …let’s see, it’s difficult to explain. Cheeky means that you are a little bit rude, but you are joking, as well. Like for example, if you have a child in a school. A child who maybe asks a slightly rude question to the teacher, that’s a cheeky child and it’s a collocation. We say cheeky grin. So, it is like a sort of slightly rude little grin on your face, a rude little smile. A cheeky grin. Okay?

Let’s see! Piers Morgan also said: That was stunning, an incredible performance. Well, you know stunning means like shocking, amazing. So amazing that I didn’t know what to do. So amazing that I couldn’t move. It was stunning.

And he said: I am reeling from shock. I am reeling from shock. So, if you are reeling it means you are struggling to recover, okay? You can’t quite recover. So, perhaps you can’t think straight or you can’t control yourself. So, I am reeling from shock.

Amanda Holden said: I am so thrilled because I know everybody was against you. So, to be against something means to disagree with it or to not support it. So, everyone was against Susan Boyle because of her appearance. So she says: I am so thrilled because everybody was against you. I honestly think we were all being very cynical. Now, cynical means, when you expect only bad things. So, for example you expect people to be selfish. We expect people to …not be talented. So, for example when everyone saw Susan Boyle and her appearance, everyone just expected her to be crazy or expected her to be….to have a very bad voice. So, cynical. So being cynical means that you expect only the bad things. So, that’s cynical.

Amanda Holden also said, she said: I just want to say that it was a complete privilege listening to that. So a privilege is like….when you have a very special opportunity to do something. So, a special opportunity that most people don’t have. So for example, Amanda and the audience were very privileged to see Susan Boyle singing because most people didn’t have the opportunity to do it. So she was, you know….. She had a very special opportunity. She was privileged. Okay?

We often say that rich people in society are privileged, because they have more opportunities than everyone else, because they are rich.

Okay, so when Simon says yes, he said: Susan Boyle, you can go back to the village with your head held high because it’s three yesses.

So, to do something with your head held high means that you can do something with a feeling of pride. So you can feel very proud that you’ve done something very well. So, hold your head up high. It’s the opposite of letting your head go down. So, if your head is down, it means you are ashamed or very disappointed, but if you hold your head high, it means you are very proud, very pleased that you have done something.

Right! So those are basically the things that they said in that clip. What I would like to just talk about now is why…why is Susan Boyle such a famous person. What is it that has made her so special? And I’ve done a bit of research. I’ve been kind of reading some different articles about her and so on and it seems that basically this is about appearances and the fact that we judge people by appearances.

So actually, Susan Boyle did an interview with the Washington Post, an American newspaper, and she said it very clearly. She said: Modern society is quick to judge people on their appearances. There is not much you can do about it. It’s the way they think and it’s the way they are. But maybe, this could teach them a lesson or set an example.

So, what she is saying is that these days in society people just judge you by the way you look. But, hopefully this situation could help people to realize that it is not just the appearances that it’s what inside that counts, okay?

Other newspaper articles on the internet said that this situation, this story is really about ….it’s really a victory for talent and artistry. So it is a victory for talent and artists.

In a culture which is obsessed with physical attractiveness and physical presentation, yeah…so

Amanda Holden again said that everyone was cynical when she came out. But listening to her sing was a wake-up call. A wake up call. A wake up call is something that wakes you up. Something that sort of makes you realize something. A wake-up call.

Maybe you get a wake-up-call in a hotel in the morning. That means that the front desk, the …what are they called? The receptionist, the customer services will call your room. So wake you up in the morning. That’s a wake-up-call. But it is also used to mean something that makes you realize something. Something that opens your eyes. So it is the greatest wake-up-call ever.

Other newspapers are saying that this story is interesting because it’s about the contrast between Susan Boyle’s appearance and her singing. So, the fact that, you know, she looks so ordinary, a little bit ugly, but actually her singing was so good. It was a big surprise and it makes it very interesting. It just makes it a kind of exciting experience to watch.

Other people are saying that this is an under-dog story.

Now, an underdog is the person or the team …if it is a football game…the person who you expect to lose, okay. So, that’s the underdog. The person that you expect…or the team that you expect to lose. So for example in a football game ….let’s see…..if it is Manchester United against maybe like a small local Japanese team. So it could be like Manchester United against Shonan Bellmare., who are a kind of low quality Japanese football team. From Chigasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture . So it is Manchester United versus Shonan Bellmare, then obviously Shonan Bellmare is the underdog. Nobody expects them to win. But, people like to support the underdog. And if the underdog wins, it’s fantastic and everyone is very excited and pleased about it. So, really Susan Boyle’s story is an underdog story. It has a very powerful effect on the audience.

Other people are saying that this is really a victory for middle class …sorry…middle-aged women. Not middle class women. Middle aged women. Because usually in our culture, you know, pop-stars and …on TV the media is obsessed with younger women, you know. Like sexy younger women. And that’s all you see in music videos on MTV. But this is really a victory for older women, middle-aged women.

Susan Boyle is an every-woman. She is an every woman. That means that everyone can relate to her. Everyone feels the same as her. Everyone feels like they are similar to her. Everybody knows somebody like Susan Boyle. She could be your next-door-neighbour.

She could be, you know, your math teacher at school or something. So, she is just like everybody else. She is an every-woman. And that means that people can relate to her story.

Also, the Americans love Susan Boyle. And there is something very American about her story. But she is not American. She is Scottish. But the Americans love an underdog and they obviously believe in the American Dream which means that anybody can get to the top. So, even the most normal ordinary person can go straight to the top. And this is a good example of the American dream. Susan Boyle came from nowhere went on this show, sang beautifully and now she is famous all over the world.

So, that’s the story.

Recently she has been in papers here in the UK. There are pictures of her that have been taken. She has had a make-over. So now, you can see her in the newspapers, wearing a leather jacket and a burberri scarf. You know, she looks cool and everything now, but really I think the people will remember her as being the ordinary middle class – sorry – middle-aged Scottish woman who made everyone feel very emotional, and surprised everyone with her fantastic voice.

Now, I expect that Susan Boyle won’t stay famous for very long. She will probably be famous for, you know, a few months or so but after that, I think, people will just forget about her.

The artist, the modern artist Andy Warhol said a famous quote, once. I think in the ninety sixties. He said: In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. And I think this could be proof that Andy Warhol is right and I think that Susan Boyle probably won’t be famous for very long. She will be famous for 15 minutes. Well, not literally 15 minutes, but it means she will have a short period of fame.

I think she is going to release a CD which Simon Carol is going to publish. So you might be able to listen to her singing on CD. She’ll probably become very, very rich, but I expect that she won’t be famous for very, very long. That’s my prediction.

I might be wrong. I might be wrong. She might become, you know, the next big, big thing who is famous for a long, long time. But I think it’s really just that one moment when she appeared on Britain’s got talent that will be remembered.

Okay, so that’s that.

Don’t forget, if you have got questions about that or if you have comments, please let me know. I would like to hear what you think of Susan Boyle. Is she famous in your country? What do you think of her? And do you think that she will be famous forever? Or will she just be famous for a few months.

Okay, now what I am going to do tomorrow is record some of my friends. I am going to interview a few people and ask them what they think of Susan Boyle.

So, I will post those interviews in another podcast. So, I am going to post this podcast on the internet tonight and I will do some interviews tomorrow and I will post those interviews in another extra podcast that you will be able to download. Probably over the weekend, okay?

So, next you are going to hear the language section where I am going to teach you some idioms.

Okay, so, idioms! I thought it would be interesting to teach you some idioms about appearance and about people’s character and personality. I feel like it’s relates to the Susan Boyle situation quite well. Just a little bit of information about idioms.

What is an idiom? Well, an idiom is a fixed expression that people often say as part of their normal conversation. It’s a fixed expression which is very difficult for learners of English to understand. And that’s because you can’t understand it just by looking at the individual words. So if I give you an idiom and you just look up the words in the dictionary, you might not be able to understand what it means.

So, the words together have another meaning. Everyone has idioms. You have…you will have idioms in your languages that would be difficult to explain to someone who is learning the language and we certainly have a lot of idioms in English. And they are rather difficult for learners to learn but they are also difficult to understand when you hear them being used in conversation. Native speakers use idioms all the time when they are talking, when they are writing to each other and so on.

So, I am going to teach you some useful idioms that you can use to describe personality and character.

Okay, so the first idiom is: Don’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Now, you could say that that’s not an idiom. You can probably understand what it means, actually. But don’t judge a book by its cover means, you shouldn’t judge somebody just by the way they look. You need to get to know them first before you can make judgements about them.

So just like you wouldn’t judge a book by looking at the cover, by looking at the picture on the cover. You have to judge a book by opening it and reading it.

It is the same about a person. So for example if you look at Susan Boyle you’ll think she is just a boring, middle-aged woman, right? But don’t judge a book by its cover. Actually she is very interesting. She’s got beautiful voice, she is very talented, yeah.

Now, the next one is very similar in meaning and it’s: There is more than meets the eye’. There is more than meets the eye, okay. So there is more than meets the eye means the same thing as don’t judge a book by its cover., really. It means the way someone looks or the way something looks doesn’t show you what is inside. Or doesn’t show you what it really is.

So, again, again, Susan Boyle you look at her and think: Oh, she is just sort of ordinary person. But no, there is more than that. There is more than meets the eye. Actually she is very talented and interesting. Okay, there is more than meets the eye.

The next one is: She is a class act. She is a class act. So a class act is somebody who is excellent of what they do. Somebody who is very, very good what they do. So, Susan Boyle is a class act because she has got a great voice.

Okay, the next one is: He is a laughing stock. He is a laughing stock.

So, a laughing stock is someone who has done something very stupid in public and now everybody is laughing at them. Nobody takes them seriously anymore. And everybody thinks that they are stupid.

So, for example, if Susan Boyle hadn’t sung very well, she had had a very bad voice or she had done something very stupid, then she would be a laughing stock.

She isn’t a laughing stock at all. She is actually great. I think she is fantastic. But a laughing stock is somebody who has done something really stupid and everyone is now laughing at them.

Let’s see, you could say perhaps that George Bush is a bit of a laughing stock because of his bad English, right? He often made bad English mistakes when he spoke and so he is a laughing stock. Particularly in America. I mean, the Americans love to laugh at George Bush now. Some of them don’t, but a lot of them do. Yeah, he is a laughing stock, I think.

The next one is: to have moral fibre. To have moral fibre. So, moral fibre is the inner strength. So, the strength that you have in your personality which helps you to do what you believe is right in a difficult situation. So, for example you could say: He didn’t have the moral fibre to be a leader, right? He didn’t have the moral fibre to be a leader. So, in order to be a leader, you need to have like strength of personality and we describe that as moral fibre.

So, for example you need to have a lot of moral fibre to be a good president.

So, probably Barack Obama seems to have a lot of moral fibre, alright?

Okay, a similar expression is to have the courage of your convictions. To have the courage of your convictions. Now if you have the courage of your convictions, it means you are brave enough to do what you feel is right, even if other people disagree with you.

So, for example, okay let’s take the example of Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin was the man who came up with a theory of evolution. Now he came up with the idea that nobody else believed in evolution.

He was the only one and everyone else disagreed with him, but he had the courage of his convictions. He wrote books about it and now we now, that he was right. That evolution is true.

You know, I believe in evolution. So Darwin had the courage of his convictions and now we know that he was right, actually.

Another expression is: To be bold as brass. To be bold as brass.

Now, if you are bold as brass, it means that you are very confident. You are sort of….you are so confident that you are not worried about how other people will think about you.

So, for example, Susan Boyle walked onto the stage and she was bold as brass. She wasn’t worried about what people thought of her. Bold as brass. Okay.

Another nice expression is: His bark is worse than his bite. His bark is worse than his bite.

This means, if someone’s bark is worse than their bite, it means that they might get angry, they might shout. They might seem to be very frightening and scary but actually, they are not really scary. They won’t do anything dangerous.

A bark and a bite we associate with a dog. So we can use it to talk about a dog who makes a lot of noise bark bark bark bark bark, like that, barking, but the bark is worse than the dog’s bite.

So it barks a lot but it doesn’t bite. It’s bark is worse than his bite.

But we can also use that expression to talk about people. So, if there is someone you know, who is perhaps very angry. They shout, they get angry very easily, but actually they are not very dangerous as a person. Actually, they are quite friendly, you can say: His bark is worse than his bite.

So, maybe someone like Simon Cowell one of the judges on the show, he seems to be a very angry guy and he is critical. But actually when you get to know him, he is probably quite a nice person, I think. He has got a big heart. So his bark is worse than his bite.

And the last idiom I am going to teach you is: She is a barrel of laughs. She is a barrel of laughs.

A barrel of laughs means someone who is really, really good fun. Someone who is very, very funny. Someone who laughs a lot and someone who makes you laugh a lot.

So, for example, if you know someone who is really funny, when you spend time with him, you laugh a lot and you have a really good time, you can say: She is just a barrel of laughs.

Now a barrel is a kind of container, like a wooden container that you can use to keep beer in. You might put beer in it, yeah? So, if you have a barrel full of laughs, right. I think you can imagine what that is: a barrel of laughs. A barrel full of laughs. So we use it to describe someone. He is an absolute barrel of laughs. You have a great time with him.

Okay, so that is the end of the language section.

Don’t forget, look at the web page, teacherLuke.podomatic.com.

You can see all the idioms that I have just introduced to you there on the page with definitions. You can also see a picture of Susan Boyle and you will see a link to the you tube video and you can also read the scripts of the conversation between Susan and the judges and you can read the lyrics of her song.

That’s it! Don’t forget to email me. Luketeacher@hotmail.com.

Let me know what you think of Susan Boyle. Let me know what you think of the podcast. This is the longest podcast I have done, yet. Each podcast is getting longer and longer every time. I hope you don’t mind. This is about 45 minutes long.

So please let me know what you think of the podcast. Give me some feedback, give me some comments. If it’s too long, let me know. I will make them shorter.

That’s the end of the podcast.

Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye

Thanks for downloading Luke’s English podcast.

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Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast

Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Category Archives: Idioms

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

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

61. 127 Hours / ‘Hand’ Idioms

Video (transcript below)

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

50. Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

24. Music Idioms

8. Dating and Relationships

7. Susan Boyle

Video (transcript below)

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