Category Archives: Learning

174. How to Learn English with Luke’s English Podcast

This episode contains lots of ideas, advice and suggestions for ways of improving your listening, reading, writing and speaking using Luke’s English Podcast. A transcript is available below. ;)

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This should be a useful episode. I’m going to go through a whole bunch of ways that you can improve your English with Luke’s English Podcast. You’ll find a list of these points on my website. I’m going to expand on them here.

I’ll be talking about key areas: listening, reading, writing, speaking, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and discourse. Much of what I’m saying is written on my website. Just find the episode called “How to Learn English with Luke’s English Podcast”. I’ve written a lot of this down because it contains lots of specific bits of information which I wanted to make sure I included. I try not to do too many episodes in which I read things to you. I promise that the next one will be unscripted. Anyway, I’ll do my best to make this sound as natural as possible, which is an art in itself. Actually, you could use this script to help you practise your pronunciation, you could record yourself reading this too, and compare it to my version. What are the differences in your version and mine? What can you learn from that? Record yourself doing it again, and compare that to your first attempt. It’s bound to sound a lot better. In fact, I guarantee that you’ll sound more natural and convincing with each attempt. More on that later.

For now, here is a list of tips and advice for learning English with LEP. ;)

Just listen
First of all, you don’t really have to do much more than just listen to the episodes. I realised some time ago that a lot of the students of English that I met at school in London did not listen to enough authentic English. They were willing to spend money and travel across the world in order to improve their English, and yet most of them, for some reason, were not prepared to take a bit of time every day to listen to something in English. Why? I think partly this is because they didn’t know what to listen to. A lot of people watch TV and movies in English. Fine. But honestly, that might not be the best way to improve your English. Film is very visual. A lot of what you understand from a movie is the visual storytelling. It’s important to just focus on the audio – on the language. So, a lot of students didn’t know what to listen to. They thought that they didn’t have much choice. Actually, there’s plenty of choice out there. The BBC has plenty of podcasts, there are loads of podcasts on different topics on iTunes – but they’re all made for native speakers. They’re too difficult to listen to, and ultimately, that’s not motivating. There are some podcasts out there which are made for learners of English, but a lot of them are just focused on language learning, at the expense of entertainment. They’re useful, but they’re a bit dull. This is less the case now, because 5 years after starting this podcast, there are more interesting things out there for learners of English, including my podcast. So I decided that I’d try and create something for learners of English to listen to that they would actually want to listen to, beyond just learning English. Ultimately, I think to listen to English for extended periods of time, you have to have an interest in what is being talked about, or you have to find it entertaining. Otherwise, it’s hard to really sustain your concentration and it becomes like a chore. There is real value in listening to English for extended periods of time, but it’s difficult to achieve because you get put off by not understanding things, or because the recording is a bit patronising and dull. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet here too much, because I’m sure that my podcast is not always as entertaining or as engaging as it could be, but I think the only way to get people to keep listening, is to try and make it entertaining as well as informative about English. So, I record this podcast with you in mind, but I try to keep it as authentic as possible. I try to avoid being simplistic. I try not to grade my English too much. I know it might be challenging for you sometimes but I attempt to hold your attention by talking in an enthusiastic way about subjects which I personally find interesting. Hopefully, the result is that you keep listening, and that you feel personally involved in it somehow. Then, by exposing yourself to lots of English in this way, you are able to acquire the language – to pick it up, in a variety of ways.

Stephen Krashen & Language Acquisition Theory
Let me now refer to the language acquisition theory of Stephen Krashen. This theory is very well known among language learning theorists, and it underpins a lot of what we know about learning and teaching English. Krashen believed that there are two ways to develop our language learning skills. One is through language acquisition and the other is through language learning. Language acquisition means that it is possible for adults and children to learn language in a subconscious way – meaning, in a kind of passive way – by simply engaging with the language. The important thing is that you focus on the message in a bit of language. So, when listening to Luke’s English Podcast this means focusing exactly  on what I really mean, rather than just on the specific items of language I’m using. The primary focus is to just understand what I mean (hopefully at a fairly deep level – in order to laugh at something I’ve said, or feel moved by it) and then you kind of ‘pick up’ the language as a result of that. You might not be immediately aware that you’ve learned some new language in this way. In fact, this kind of acquisition probably informs your passive knowledge of the language. According to Krashen, another type of language development is language learning. This is when you focus on learning specific forms  – like studying grammar rules for example. It involves having some instruction by a teacher, perhaps in the form of error correction, or from a grammar book which explains the ‘rules of English’. The downside of this kind of learning is that it is rather dogmatic, can be boring, complex and abstract. It doesn’t necessarily replicate the organic way in which we pick up language as children, and doesn’t quite allow the subconscious acquisition of language that occurs from just engaging with the language in order to understand a message being communicated.

Alright, so how does this apply to the way you can learn English? Well, I think it’s pretty important to get both aspects of language learning into your life. This is what I call “having a balanced diet”. You shouldn’t just study the grammar rules in a dogmatic way, although that is undeniably important. You should also attempt to just engage with the language as it is used in natural, authentic and meaningful situations. How can you do that? Ideally, this would mean going out into the world and doing things in English. In fact, this might be the best way to improve your English. If you get a job that requires you to use English all day you will improve quickly. It’ll be really hard, but you’d be forced to improve. That’s like a boot camp for language acquisition because you’re not really studying the language, you’re just attempting to survive in it. You’re really focusing on the communicative acts you are trying to achieve. You’re really focusing on meaningful messages, and you naturally learn the most direct and effective way to understand and communicate meaningful messages. You might not be able to do that in your life. You might not have access to native speakers in that way. So, my podcast can be a substitute. It’s not really the same as attempting to work in an English speaking environment, but the key point is that you can replicate aspects of that experience by just attempting to follow/keep up with what I’m saying, and do that regularly, over long periods of time, and you’ll pick up massive amounts of English.

So, just listen, try to follow everything I’m saying, try to enjoy it and engage with it, listen regularly, listen for extended periods. This will all contribute to your acquisition of English, as described by Stephen Krashen.

That’s language acquisition, but you can also do more traditional language learning alongside Luke’s English Podcast. First of all, outside of listening to the episodes, you can do your formalised language studying from a book or in class, and use LEP as a companion to that. Study the language, and then try to notice aspects of the language that you’ve studied in episodes of the podcast. For example, if you’ve studied verb tenses, you can listen to a story I’ve told on the podcast and try to notice those verb tenses, how I’m using them, how I’m pronouncing them, and so on. It can back up, confirm or clarify the language study you’ve been doing. You should always refer to authentic language usage as a way of checking language that you’ve studied.

Also, you can study the things I say in the podcast more directly. The podcast can be a study tool. Here are some ways you can do some active language study with the podcast:

Use transcripts
You could read a transcript and check new words in a dictionary as you find them. Pay attention to the way I use the words, including the grammatical context, collocations between words and pronunciation. Any new words or structures you find, make a note of them and practise using them yourself.

You could attempt to write your own transcripts. This reveals a great deal about the gap between the English you know, and the English that I use in the podcast.  Try transcribing a section of one episode. You could do an episode that has already been transcribed. Listen carefully to it, and try to write down every single word. There may be certain utterances that you just can’t identify. Mark them with question marks. Listen again and again. You could just focus on a specific 5 minute section of an episode. Keep listening until you’ve done your best. Now check the proper transcript for that section and compare it to what you wrote. What are the differences? Now you can identify the gap between what you understand, and what I said. Try to close that gap. Check the words you didn’t know. Identify why you missed the pronunciation of something. Think about how I say these words and phrases, and their definitions. Then you can start working them into your English when you speak. We’ll look at ways of developing your speaking in a few minutes.

A note on transcripts. You may be aware that a lot of my episodes have transcripts, which can really help you to study the language (although you shouldn’t read them all the time). But you can also contribute transcriptions to my website. If you fancy transcribing a few minutes of an episode, please send it to me and I’ll be able to correct it and publish it on my website. I have a transcript collaboration going on using Google documents. You might already know about this because I did an episode on that subject a couple of months ago. You can go to my website and click “transcripts” to find out more. Basically, writing transcripts of my episodes is not only a great way to use the podcast to improve your English, it also helps me to provide an even better service to my listeners.

So, Luke’s English Podcast is best consumed as part of a balanced diet. Listen freely and just try to enjoy and understand what I’m saying, and let your mind naturally acquire the language, but also mix this with more formalised language study to get the full 360 degree effect.

You might think the formalised language study part of that is boring and time consuming. That’s fine. You don’t have to do any of that, but as a compromise, what you can do is just be mindful when you’re listening. Your first aim is to focus on the message, but you can also try to notice specific aspects of the language too. Try to identify words, phrases and grammatical structures. You don’t have to formally study them, just notice them as you hear them. Like “oh he’s saying depend on” so it must be “depend on” in English, not “depend of”. Things like that. Just be mindful when listening.

I record different types of episode here. My main aim is to engage you and keep you interested, while presenting English to you in an authentic way. In some episodes I try to draw your attention to the language more specifically. For example, I teach/explain/demonstrate vocabulary items referring to a topic, or bring your attention to an aspect of pronunciation. In those episodes, you can just chill out and follow what I’m saying, but you can be more active, and make notes of the vocabulary, try to remember phrases, listen again and pause the recording to test your memory.

Listen in comfort, and enjoy the experience. Krashen also writes about the affective filter hypothesis. This relates to the conditions in which learning takes place, and how these can have a big effect on the successful acquisition of language. Basically, good conditions for learning are: motivation (the listener really wants to hear what’s being said, and is keen to learn the language), high self-esteem and relaxation. These things allow the flow of acquisition to move freely, without being blocked. Mental blocks occur when the learner is stressed, anxious or feeling bad about themselves. This creates a mental block to the acquisition of language. I guess this relates to one of those situations in which you’re in an unhappy language class. You feel stressed because of pressure from the teacher or from the judgement of your classmates, you feel low self-confidence because you don’t get any positive reinforcement from taking part in a communicative exchange and you’re just not enjoying the experience of being there in the classroom. As a result, there is a kind of mental barrier which really prevents you learning anything. In fact, it might even make it worse because you associate learning English with painful or boring classroom situations. The advantage of Luke’s English Podcast is that the emphasis is on fun, a lot of the time. You have nothing to fear or worry about when you listen to this. In fact, it can be an extremely pleasurable experience. I’m not just bigging myself up here. I know what it’s like to listen to your favourite podcast. It’s quite a personal experience. I listen to Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo’s Film Review Podcast on my way to work, and I can’t begin to explain the joy of listening to it. They’re like my friends, and I’m sharing a really nice conversation with them. I listen to their voices in private, through headphones, while I’m sitting on a smelly underground train with miserable people all around me, but I’m in my comfort zone. In fact, sometimes I’m disappointed when I reach my metro station, because I just want to keep listening to the podcast. Hopefully, listening to Luke’s English Podcast is a similar experience for you. That’s certainly the idea. This should be a personal and enjoyable experience for you, and I invite you to just enjoy being part of the podcast community, and remember that all around the world there are other people like you, listening to me ramble on about stuff. There’s no chance of the affective filter giving you a mental block in this situation because you should be in your comfort zone. That’s the advantage of podcasting. You really can listen to this whenever and wherever you want, and you are free to get as comfortable as you please. As I’ve said before, feel free to listen to this in the bath, on the loo, or as you softly and slowly drift off to sleep at night. Of course, you can also listen at your desk, with a pen in your hand, or while typing, in order to make notes or write transcripts. You can also sit up and read transcripts. It’s up to you. The main thing is to just enjoy yourself and let the English go into your head. Just imagine that my voice is bouncing around inside your mind, and lots of the words, and sounds are sticking in there.

You should certainly listen to episodes more than once. In fact, if you’re interested in really learning English from this podcast, I think it’s vital to listen several times. Once is not enough. In fact, you might only scratch the surface if you listen just once. Listening again and again will allow you to get really familiar with what’s being said. You’ll notice and remember things that you didn’t catch the first time. Repetition is really important as a way of helping your brain notice patterns. After a couple of listens, you’ll remember certain phrases, bits of intonation or responses and they will be reinforced when you listen again. It might be asking too much of you, but you could even start to remember and repeat some of the things you’ve heard on Luke’s English Podcast. I don’t necessarily expect you to repeat everything I say, but perhaps you could memorise the lines of a comedy sketch that I present to you, and then repeat the lines to yourself or your friends, or just while you’re listening again. I’m a bit of a geek and I love Star Wars. When I was a kid I used to watch Star Wars on heavy rotation. I’d watch it again and again. Now I can remember all the lines from the film. In fact, I don’t just remember the lines, I remember the bits of music and sound effects too, as they occur in the film. It’s the same with Monty Python films and sketches. I’ve watched them so many times that I can repeat a lot of the script from memory, and in fact some phrases from those movies have found their way into my vocabulary. You can do that too, by listening to episodes more than once, and listening to some comedy sketches which I present to you many times. Soon I’ll be doing an episode about Monty Python. For some reason, Monty Python’s sketches are very memorable. In fact, there are several generations of people in the UK and America who grew up watching Monty Python films and who are able to recite whole sketches to each other. Again, you can do the same thing, realise that there are some terrifically funny things in English, and use that as a way to pick up language.

There are a number of different areas to focus on with English.
4 skills:
Listening
Reading
Writing
Speaking

Language systems:
Grammar
Vocabulary
Pronunciation
Discourse

Listening
I’ve already talked a lot about the benefit of just listening for fun, or listening in a more active way. I did mention that it’s good to be comfortable when listening. I should add too that I think it’s important to try and listen to things that you don’t completely understand. It’s fine to listen to things that you don’t understand completely, and the general opinion on this seems to be that you should push yourself when you listen, and don’t get put off if there are things you don’t understand. It’s in that challenging experience that your brain is really piecing things together. For example, if you struggled to understand my conversation with Daniel Burt, that’s fine – in fact, that struggle is good. Listen again, and keep trying. Don’t give up. Push through those moments when you don’t understand. Keep going. Don’t let confusion stop you.
Also, try to identify subtle differences between accents. You may only notice little differences at first, but eventually you’ll be more and more aware of the differences between accents. Eventually, you’ll be able to say “this guy is from the north of England”, “This one’s from Australia” or whatever.

Reading
Reading transcripts on my webpage.
Outside of the podcast – read a variety of texts. Again, try to find things that you enjoy. You should also be aware of your purpose for learning the language. What are you going to use English for in the future? You may need to read emails, or business reports. It may be worth reading articles that talk about business trends. Otherwise, just reading any well-written text for enjoyment is a really good way to improve your literacy. I must add a page on my website with recommendations for reading. There’s loads of reading you can do – blogs, newspapers but also books which you can download free online. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m planning to give you a list of some good things to read.

Writing
Again, this is not one of the things that I focus on a lot on Luke’s English Podcast. The focus is mainly on spoken English. However, transcribing podcast episodes can be good for your writing. You could also write your own blog which contains your opinions or your outlook on a topic. Feel free to write a response to episodes of my podcast in the comments section. You should aim to concisely express your opinion, in a structured way, using the most appropriate words you can find (perhaps including some words you’ve picked up from that episode of the podcast). Think about the person reading the comment – make it easy and enjoyable for them to read, and focus on stating very clearly and efficiently exactly what it is you want to say. Considering those ideas can help you to make your writing more effective.
If, however, you need to practise writing for the IELTS test, you will need to do more specifically focused writing practice, probably using an IELTS preparation book, or following an IELTS course of some kind. My podcast can help you with general skills (vocab, etc) but for specific kinds of writing work, you should do some specific writing practice. Practice practice practice. As I said before – to get the best out of Luke’s English Podcast, use it as part of a balanced diet.

Speaking
Perhaps the best way to improve your speaking is to actually practise it in real-life situations. The requirements of that situation will train you to say the right things at the right time, with the right tone. You should certainly be aware of how intonation is important in affecting a message. These are things you can learn from trying to enter into meaningful acts of communication and learning from your mistakes. You might also need a teacher to actively correct your errors. But, you can definitely use Luke’s English Podcast to improve your speaking too. Let’s look at some ways to do that:
Just try to take some aspects of my speech and apply it to your speech. You could just add some words or phrases you’ve heard from me, and use them yourself. Or you can pick up some speech patterns, pronunciation from me and add that to your speech too. If you like, you could use my speaking as a kind of model for your own speech.
More specifically, you could copy and repeat some of my sentences. Listen to a line I say, and then repeat it and try to sound exactly like me. You could listen to phrasal verb episodes, and whenever I present an example sentence, pause the episode and repeat it after me. Keep doing that until you feel you’re version is pretty similar to mine. So, just listen and repeat until you’ve worked out how to make the same sounds as me. Think about vowel & consonant sounds, combinations of consonants and how to make those sounds with your mouth, think about connected speech – what happens when words are pronounced fluently together in a sentence – they might get pronounced differently, certain sounds may be dropped when words are linked, and some sounds may be added when words are linked too. Pay attention to these aspects of pronunciation. I should do a whole episode on connected speech, and it’s one I’ve had in the back of my mind for ages.
Pick an extract from the podcast, with transcript, and record yourself saying it. Compare your version with my version. Then, work on the transcript. Underline the stressed words, add lines to represent pauses for emphasis, identify word links in pronunciation. Listen to me saying that extract again, and check your ‘sound scripted’ transcript. Now record yourself doing it again, this time adding the intonation, pausing and sentence stress. Compare that to the original. This can help you develop awareness, and control of speech patterns.
Record yourself just talking in response to one of my podcast episodes. If I’ve talked about UFOs for example (not yet, but I will!) then you could record yourself talking about UFOs too. Try to include any words I’ve presented to you on that topic. If you like you could leave an audio comment on my Audioboo page, and let the world know how you feel about something.
Or, you could start doing your own podcast, like Zdenek from Zdenek’s English Podcast. He’s not a native speaker, but following a suggestion in one of my episodes he decided to do his own podcast. He now has followers and listeners and he’s really into it. Listening to his episodes I get the sense that his confidence is developing and he’s finding his own voice. It must be very good for his English (which, of course, is already excellent). You could do it too if you want.
The main thing is practice. Use as many opportunities to practise as you can. Join clubs to meet English speakers. Use the internet. Find groups on Meetup.com in which people are doing language exchanges. Put yourself outside your comfort zone. Don’t be shy, give it a try. Take the initiative. No-one can do the speaking for you. There’s no shame in making mistakes. You have to be in it to win it, so open your mouth and get talking. Remember that English is about what you can do, not just about what you know. Be active, find your voice in English. If you’re in a classroom – don’t be one of those quiet students. It’s completely up to you to start talking, and why not do it in the safety of a language class. That’s the whole point! Speak up in class and use that as a safe place to experiment and make mistakes. Experiment! Switch off your editor! Don’t listen to the voice in your head which is telling you to keep quiet, or telling you that you can’t say something because it might be wrong. It does not matter if you’re wrong. Remember that you have to say something wrong about 5 times before you get it right. Get through those 5 times nice and quick, and then you’ll be fine! Sometimes, opening your mouth is the hardest thing to do, but once you’ve started speaking it gets easier. Keep up the momentum. Keep your voice warm. Stay positive, enjoy expressing yourself. Your teacher will love it if you are an active member of class. In fact, you need to prove to your teacher that you’re making an effort. We always like those talkative and positive students. Use that to your advantage – you’ll be more likely to get good grades, and get levelled up. Be nice, be friendly, be talkative. But also listen to others and help them too. That’s a recipe for success for any language learner!
Actually, I just sent Zdenek a message and asked him for his comments on the subject of using LEP to improve your English (particularly speaking) and here are his comments, which I agree with wholeheartedly. In fact, before I read his comments it may be necessary to remind you that Zdenek is a well-qualified teacher of English from the Czech Republic who lived in the UK for a number of years and who has got a master’s degree in English Language. So, he definitely knows what he’s talking about. I’m sure many of you listening to this have similarly good advice and comments on this subject. I am very keen to encourage you to share that information – you can leave text or audio comments under this episode. So here are Zdenek’s comments:
How can listening to LEP improve your speaking skills? It can mainly improve the following skills/subskills:
1) listening (obvious)
2) reading, spelling (reading scripts, additional notes)
3) writing, spelling (script, feedback or thanksgiving emails to Luke),
4) grammar (listening to grammar patterns as part of exposure theory)
5) vocabulary (learning new vocab also guided by the exposure theory),
6) pronunciation (passive listening)
As for the speaking, it is a different question. If you want to improve your speaking through LEP, you have to approach this actively. Not everyone is willing to do this. Some people tend to be shy, have approach anxiety etc…and prefer listening to the podcast as passive recipients. That is fine. However, here are some suggestions on how you can actually improve even your speaking skills.
1) Contact someone via LEP community. There are a lot of interesting people eager to learn English from all around the world. Contact those who have a similar level as you – this way you can both benefit and learn from each other and no one will get bored. Ideally, have an interest in common (sci-fi films, sport, you already have one important topic in common = LEP)…try to befriend these people, add them on facebook, start skype conversations with them or something.
2) Record yourself speaking about a topic. Ask yourself questions related to LEP. Answer these questions or just practice vocabulary Luke teaches you. Listen back to yourself. Try correcting your errors. Re-record. Compare your recordings you made some time later to see your improvements.
3) Record comments in Audioboo (max 3 minutes) –why is everyone so shy? Is everyone afraid that they will be judged? Who cares? Just be friendly and you should be accepted by the community. Luke is a teacher. He deals with mistakes every day. We all make mistakes. Never be afraid to make mistakes. A man who never made mistakes, never made anything. Are you afraid to take on a challenge and face our greatest fear – public humiliation? Well don’t be! If we fight it actively without fear, we can significantly improve our speaking skills this way.
[I just want to add a couple of points here about making a fool of yourself, my experience of speaking French, and of fear of public speaking]
4) Try running your own podcast. Most of you can do it. Again it is only about facing your fears of making mistakes and exposing yourself to the public. This podcast can be just for you and your friends. I make loads of mistakes in my podcast and I am a teacher. I feel ashamed; I have to edit them out. But if you are not teachers, why worry? And even as teachers? You shouldn’t worry.
5) You can always speak to yourself in the mirror and go crazy. Become the next Hamlet. Speaking is not about passivity so move your arse and find some interaction
Note: By following these tips, you will work on your English speaking skills, pronunciation (actively), grammar, vocab (you can focus on trying to use expressions Luke has taught you), listening skills (as you listen to your friends talking for example). There are so many benefits to active speaking practice.

Thank you Zdenek. As I said before, I welcome your comments too. Let’s share our thoughts on this subject together. It’s time for my LEP ninjas to come out of the shadows and deliver some powerful advice! LEP NINJAS – ASSEMBLE!!!

Regarding language systems, I have some things to say about grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and ‘discourse’.
To be honest, I’ve already spoken enough about grammar & vocab. Let me just remind you of the theory of ‘exposure’. I have talked about this before. The idea is that by listening to lots of English over extended periods, you’re feeding your subconscious with all the patterns of English usage. Your brain is hearing all these patterns of English, including frequent word combinations (like prepositions), tenses, features of pronunciation etc. Ultimately, it all goes into your head, and informs your sense of instinct for the language, so that when you come to do a test in English, you feel the answer. You know that this particular preposition goes with this particular verb, just because you’ve heard it a number of times before and so it feels natural. Feed your head with English. Feel the English rather than knowing it. Use the force young jedi, and remember, the force will be with you… always. Oh, and don’t forget – you’re never too old for this. Language study is a great way to keep your mind fresh and supple. My grandfather is over 90 years old and he’s still really sharp. Perhaps this is because he’s still going to French and Spanish classes on a regular basis.

Regarding pronunciation – a lot of the tips you’ve been given here will help with that. But, I just want to add that improving your listening skills will naturally improve your pronunciation skills too. The two things go hand in hand. The more you’re able to understand natural spoken English, the more you are able to decode the sounds used to make it. Understanding this natural sound code can allow you to start using it too. There is a direct connection between listening and pronunciation, but to fully reap the benefits, you need to need to actively practise pronunciation. The methods I’ve mentioned already in this episode – repeating, recording, re-recording, comparing, speaking in front of the mirror, etc – they’re all good approaches to practising and improving your pronunciation. Don’t be shy, give it a try. You’ve got nothing to lose, just things to gain. Go for it!

As for discourse, this is really about how you structure your speaking. How do you link your ideas up? When you listen, try to notice any specific phrases I use to link my ideas together, move from one topic to another, deal with moments when I don’t know what I’m saying and so on. What are the tools I use to perform certain functions. Can you identify these things and take them on yourself? Try talking about a topic for 5 minutes. See how difficult it is to talk on your feet. Do it again and again until you develop methods of thinking and talking at the same time. Listen to discussions and focus on the ways in which people interrupt, agree, disagree or whatever. Think about the way we use the language to be polite or indirect. How is humour added to what we say? How does intonation affect the hidden meaning behind our words? Explore these ideas when you listen, and then test them out in your speaking.

That’s it for this episode. I hope you have found it motivating, and inspiring. Leave your comments, and I wish you all the very best of luck keeping up your English. I’m sure you’re doing great. Well you must be, because you’re already listening to Luke’s English Podcast – and long may it continue.

BYE!

171. A Cup of Tea with Daniel Burt (Part 2)

[2/2] Here’s the second part of my conversation with Daniel Burt, who is a journalist, comedy writer and performer from Melbourne, Australia.

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In this conversation we talk about these things:
Daniel’s move to London
Aussie pubs in Paris and London
Cliches about Australian people
Australian pronunciation
Typical Australian English phrases
The Australian character and national identity
Australian politicians
The future of Australia & Australia’s image of itself
Sport & competition
Interviewing Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Martin Freeman (The Hobbit), Matt Smith & David Tennant (Doctor Who)

To contribute a few minutes of transcription for this episode, click here to work on the google document:

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

All the best,
Luke

Daniel’s Video Showreel
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9V3cKGvISU&w=500&h=281]

170. Basking in My Moment of Glory / Vocabulary of Success & Failure

I won the competition again! I got a hat-trick! Thanks for your votes. I’d like to teach you some expressions related to success and failure in this episode.

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In this episode
I’m just going to talk about it for a little bit, but I’m not just going to bask in this moment of glory, I’m also going to present and then teach some phrases to you. The phrases are all associated with success and failure. I’ll also teach you some really common things you can say to someone who has won, or lost something.

Phrases related to success or failure
So, I’m going to bask in my moment of glory for a few minutes, and talk about winning this competition. I’m going to use about 40 expressions. Yes 40! See if you can notice them. Which phrases or expressions are the ‘target language’ of this episode? Listen carefully, and I’ll explain them properly in a few minutes.

So, I came in first place in the competition, in my category, and I’m really pleased.
This year the competition was a bit different. I had no idea of the vote count.
For all I knew, I could have been in the lead, or neck and neck with the others, or falling behind. I had no idea.
I had my doubts of course.
Lots of people reassured me. “It’s in the bag mate”, “no worries” “it’s a sure thing” “it’s a dead cert” “You’re bound to win”.
But I had no idea if it was a sure thing or not. I didn’t think it was a dead cert or anything. I knew there was some stiff competition.
In fact I was thinking, well, every dog has its day. Maybe I’ve peaked. Maybe that’s it. For all I know, most people are fed up with me now. Maybe I won’t get three. It’ll be a fall from grace – from the heights of winning it two years in a row, maybe I’ll just fall flat this year. Perhaps this podcast is just a flash in the pan, and it’s all going to the dogs now. Perhaps my plans for Luke’s English Podcast will just go up in smoke. Maybe everyone’s just fed up with me now, after all this time. Maybe I’m yesterday’s news.
It turns out that I had quite a considerable lead. I didn’t realise, but I was the front runner in this competition. I was ahead of the pack by quite a lot of votes.
The results came through by email, and everything came up roses.
I won and in the end, in fact I smashed it.
I knocked the ball right out of the park.
I won by about 700 votes, which is a clear majority. It was a landslide victory.
And I owe it to you my listeners.
It’s pretty simple – if you hadn’t voted for me, to the tune of 1017 votes, I wouldn’t have won.
I guess, the reason that you voted for me is not just that you’re generous people, but those people were expressing their appreciation of the podcast. So, that’s very satisfying. It’s a win-win situation.
I guess what I should do now, as has always been the case, is take advantage of this win, and use it as a springboard for more exposure and success. Now I’ve got a foot in the door, so to speak, I could perhaps get more listeners, and attract sponsors and things like that. I’m getting about 4,000 page views a day (which is incredible – and I guess this means that not all the people visiting my page voted for me – in fact, just a fraction did – I wonder why. Maybe some people just don’t realise how incredible Luke’s English Podcast really is. Or perhaps, voting is not why they came to the website.)
so the podcast is coming on in leaps and bounds.
Sometimes I must admit that I feel at a bit of a low ebb. I mean, sometimes I feel a bit low. It can be hard to achieve everything you want, and I think that I’m putting lots of time into this without reaping the benefits (although it’s nice to get comments and recognition), but I usually bounce back from that, and most of the time I’m just really chuffed to have an audience, and the opportunity to talk to people around the world.
Other doubts are that I’m just not getting anywhere, and that I’ve missed the boat somehow – meaning that I should have cashed in on this earlier, and that the opportunity to make this into a profitable venture has already passed, somehow. Sometimes I think that I’ll have to pack it in eventually, like if I have kids, because I won’t be able to devote as much time to it, but then again I think I’ll always be doing something related to Luke’s English Podcast. I’m certainly not planning to throw in the towel any time soon. I have too many ideas that I’d like to create.
At the moment though, I’m riding high. You could say that I’m on cloud 9, because I’m just over the moon to have won. You’re probably fed up with hearing me go on about it now, but at the moment I’m top dog, so I feel I deserve my moment of glory! You’ll just have to bear with me for a few more minutes, and then it’ll be business as usual again, and I won’t bask in the glow of victory any longer. I’ll just focus on teaching you useful things. At the moment it feels like things are on the up and up, and I’ve got the world at my feet. Thanks to everybody for rising to the occasion and showing your support. You’re the best.

Vocabulary
Let’s look again at some of the vocabulary I just used

  1. a hat-trick
  2. to bask in this moment of glory
  3. I came in first place in the competition
  4. be in the lead
  5. be neck and neck with
  6. falling behind
  7. It’s in the bag mate”, “no worries” “it’s a sure thing” “it’s a dead cert”
  8. You’re bound to win
  9. stiff competition
  10. every dog has its day
  11. Maybe I’ve peaked
  12. It’ll be a fall from grace
  13. maybe I’ll just fall flat this year
  14. Perhaps this podcast is just a flash in the pan
  15. and it’s all going to the dogs now
  16. Perhaps my plans for Luke’s English Podcast will just go up in smoke
  17. I was the front runner
  18. I was ahead of the pack
  19. everything came up roses
  20. I smashed it
  21. I knocked the ball right out of the park
  22. It was a landslide victory
  23. if you hadn’t voted for me, to the tune of 1017 votes, I wouldn’t have won
  24. It’s a win-win situation.
  25. use it as a springboard
  26. Now I’ve got a foot in the door
  27. the podcast is coming on in leaps and bounds
  28. I must admit that I feel at a bit of a low ebb
  29. without reaping the benefits
  30. but I usually bounce back from that
  31. I’m just really chuffed to have an audience
  32. I’m just not getting anywhere
  33. I’ve missed the boat
  34. I should have cashed in on this earlier
  35. I think that I’ll have to pack it in
  36. I’m certainly not planning to throw in the towel any time soon
  37. I’m riding high
  38. I’m on cloud 9
  39. I’m just over the moon to have won
  40. at the moment I’m top dog
  41. it’s business as usual
  42. things are on the up and up
  43. I’ve got the world at my feet
  44. Thanks to everybody for rising to the occasion

What to say if someone wins:
Well done!
CongratulationS (don’t forget the ‘s’ at the end of that)
Nice one
Good job!
That’s great news.
I’m really happy for you.
You deserve it.
You’ve done really well (sounds patronising!)
I’m proud of you.
You must be chuffed to bits.
I’m really glad for you.

What to say if someone loses:
Commiserations
Bad luck mate
Sorry to hear that
That’s a pity
Chin up
Oh well, you did your best
Never mind
Don’t let it get you down
Better luck next time
Don’t beat yourself up

I have a few questions for you:
-How are the phrasal verb episodes? Are you listening to them? Are they useful? I just want to make sure it’s worth me doing them regularly.
-Which episodes have you liked best recently?
-How was my conversation with Daniel Burt? Did you find it hard to understand him?
-How do you listen to the podcast? What context are you in?
-How’s my website at the moment?

Do leave other comments too and let me know what’s going on where you are.

Thank you very much for listening and for voting.

Memory, Mnemonics & Learning English (How to Remember Vocabulary)

How to improve your memory and learn English more effectively with memory techniques & mnemonics.

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The following is a transcript of this episode of the podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Today, we are going to take a journey into the palace of the mind! We are going to venture into the deepest parts of your brain, and in the process we’re going to clean it up, brighten it up, sweep out the cobwebs and make it a much more effective place for learning and remembering English. Have a glass of water, take a deep breath and get ready for a brain upgrade because this episode of the podcast is all about memory, mnemonics and learning English!

Recently I’ve been doing a series of mini podcast episodes called “A Phrasal Verb a Day”. It’s quite a popular series, which is great. Lots of people have been listening to it, and I’m updating it every day. You can find a link to the episodes on my webpage https://audioboo.fm/LukeThompson. I’m hoping to do 365 phrasal verbs this year, that’s one a day, which may be a little ambitious but we’ll see. 365, that’s a large number of phrases for me to teach, but also a large number for you to remember. You might be thinking – this is great Luke. 365 phrasal verbs, all explained by you with examples and transcripts, but how am I going to remember them all? Well, you don’t have to remember all of them, but you definitely can. Your brain is an amazing thing. It’s capable of remembering massive amounts of information. It’s just a question of how you get the information in there.

English has one of the largest vocabularies of any language in the world, which is quite an overwhelming prospect for those of you who are trying to learn all of those words, even just a portion of them – like the commonly used ones. But it’s not just the words, it’s the phrases, the idioms, the spelling, the rules of grammar. It’s a challenge, but you can do it. The question is: How? Well, let’s look into it.

In this episode we’ll be looking at ways to improve your memory and some specific mnemonic devices for remembering English vocabulary and spelling. So strap in, this is going to be a useful one. With the methods in this episode, you’ll be able to remember massive amounts of vocabulary, and you’ll be able to remember the spelling for loads of difficult-to-write English words. There’s also a transcript for this which you can read at www.teacherluke.wordpress.com. You’re welcome.

The techniques I talk about here are well-known methods, used by lots of people including some of the most famous brains in the world. The illusionist Derren Brown is an example. He’s famous for being able to remember vast sequences of information, and uses this technique in his magic shows. Then, there’s the world famous detective Sherlock Holmes. I know he’s not a real person, but in the modern TV adaptation called “Sherlock” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, he uses a mnemonic device known as a  mind palace in order to remember all kinds of information, which allows him to solve deeply complex criminal cases. You can create your own mind palace too, or just use memory techniques to help your remember names of people at a party, business contacts, telephone numbers, lists of phrasal verbs or the way English words and spelled and pronounced. We’ll be looking at all these things in this episode.

These are tried and tested techniques and I invite you to try them for yourself, even if you’ve never considered the idea of improving your memory. They’re a lot of fun and surprisingly useful, and you don’t need to try very hard to just play along. I don’t want to go on about it too much, but if you just listen – it’ll be quite entertaining, but you’ll get the most benefit from actually trying these things yourself, and if you do that – if you try to apply the memory techniques in this episode, it could transform your English learning in a really exciting way.

You might need a pen and paper, so you can join in with some activities. Don’t forget you can read everything I’m saying by visiting teacherluke.wordpress.com.

Let me give you a run-down of the systems I’m going to talk about here:

1. Firstly I’ll talk about some advice for learning English more effectively, based on mnemonic devices. I’ll give you a summary of what I’ve learned from reading about this subject.

2. Then I’ll outline some specific systems for remembering lists of things such as a shopping list, people’s names, the order of adjectives in English, or lists of vocabulary.

3. Then, we’ll go through some specific mnemonics for remembering English spelling, which can help you to improve your spelling massively.

Just to explain, a mnemonic is a method of remembering something. It’s a memorising technique. Mnemonic has slightly weird spelling. It’s spelled M-N-E-M-O-N-I-C but the first M is silent. So that’s pronounced “NEMONIC”. There is a mnemonic device for learning the spelling for the ‘mnemonics’. It goes like this Mnemonics Now Erase Man’s Oldest Nemesis, Insufficient Cerebral Storage. The first letters of the first words in that phrase all spell “mnemonics”. Say it again… Mnemonics Now Erase Man’s Oldest Nemesis, Insufficient Cerebral Storage. Again, you can read that on the webpage, and you can check out words like insufficient (not enough), cerebral (of the brain) and storage (where things are stored, or kept.

I’ve discovered while reading about this subject that the key aspect of mnemonics seems to be that you have to push the thing you’re trying to remember deep into your mind, and make links to things you already remember well. The more personal the the connection to that word, the more likely you are to remember it. How do we do it? This means creating an image in your head and making it as vivid and clear as possible, attaching some kind of narrative or story to it or connecting it to an already existing deep memory. I guess this is because in your brain there are electrical pathways – the brain is like an electrical system. Each electrical pathway is a connection to that word. It’s a way for your brain to access that particular bit of information. So, the more electrical pathways, or connections you have to something in your brain, the more likely are to be able to access that thing later, and remember it.

How does this relate to learning English? Let’s see if you this confirms that you are already learning in the right way, or if there are some new approaches that you can pick up.

First, you should really engage with the learning process. Don’t let information just go in one ear and come out the other. It has to go deeply into the brain. So, as a learner, you need to put yourself and your personality right into it, and become an active member of your class (if you’re studying in a class) with a sense of independent responsibility for your own learning. Remember that the stuff you’re studying (like vocab or grammar) is not just abstract information but something that involves you in a very personal and specific way.

So we’re talking about personalising new words. Think of examples or definitions of new vocabulary in a way that is meaningful specifically to you or your life. Put yourself into the examples of vocabulary you use. Imagine that you’re living these words and phrases somehow. Picture yourself acting it out. If I teach you a phrase like “to doze off”, meaning to go to sleep, just imagine a time when you’re really tired and can hardly keep your eyes open, even though you want to stay awake. Then imagine yourself reacting to that by saying “oh god I keep dozing off!”. Imagine people you know in your examples of new grammar or vocabulary. Vividly picture something familiar to you when you’re trying to remember the words. Bring the language to life in your own head. Create stories with the new language. Involve you, your friends or family in those stories, and make them really vivid, colourful and dramatic – like my Pink Gorilla story for example. Make your own pink gorilla story and aim to include lots of new language in it.

When you’re trying to practice using new grammar or vocabulary, don’t just make a random sentence. Make a sentence which you really feel or really mean. Obviously, this is not always possible – for example if you’re doing an exam practice exercise in a book or if you just have to play with the grammatical structure of a phrase quickly – in that case you might have to just dash off a quick sentence with the phrase in it, for structural purposes. But at some point you should aim to use the phrase to express something meaningful and personal to you.

This works for teachers as well. When explaining new words, try to give vivid examples. Bring the expression to life. The more vivid and colourful, the better. If you can, try to attach some personal element to it. Put yourself into the example perhaps. If you need to use the 3rd person, pick a real person, like a famous person or someone in the class, rather than just a name. I know it’s not always possible to think up these vivid examples, or you can’t always share personal details, but just remember – the more lively and vivid the example, the easier it is for the students to internalise. It also might encourage them to personalise the language enthusiastically too, when it’s their turn to use the language.

New words can be quite abstract, so try making them familiar by attaching them to things you already know. For example, maybe the English word looks like a word in your language, or perhaps it reminds you of somebody’s name. You can then associate the English word with that name, and it sticks in your mind more effectively. For example, the Japanese word for apple is ‘ringo’. I always remember this because Ringo is one of the Beatles and the Beatles’ record label is called Apple, so now I think of an apple, and I think of The Beatles, and Ringo. This method is common sense really, but we often just don’t apply these techniques to remembering things as much as we could. Instead we just try to cram information into our head, without doing it in a meaningful way, and as a result we just fail to remember things.

It works with names as well. I have to remember lots of names in my classes. At the moment at university I have over 200 names to remember. Sometimes the only way I can do it is to make an association to something. For example, I had a Saudi student once called Faisa. It can be difficult for me to remember Arabic names, because they’re quite foreign to me. We don’t have many Arabic names in English. So, Faisa was quite a difficult one to remember at first, and it’s important to remember names in class because referring to someone by their name helps get their attention, but it’s also a nice way to establish rapport with that person. So, Faisa – F-A-S-I-A. In English, we have a similar sounding word, which is ‘phaser’, spelled p-h-a-s-e-r. A phaser is a kind of laser-gun, like the guns they have in Star Trek. “Set phasers to stun!” for example.  I imagine the old Star Trek TV series, in which they used these laser guns, with cheesy special effects and sounds. In the classic 1960s version of Star Trek which I used to watch on TV during the 80s and 90s there was always a scene in which Spock and James T Kirk went to an alien planet, and they took their phasers with them. So, I just imagined my student Faisa, in Star Trek, beaming down onto an alien planet (England?) with her phaser set to stun. It didn’t take long – just that image of Faisa in Star Trek, with a phaser, maybe shooting an alien. I didn’t tell her this. She had no idea she was in Star Trek, but it helped me to remember her name. This could work for anybody, at a party for example – when you’re introduced to someone, as soon as you get their name, make a point of connecting that name to something you know well. For example, if the person’s name is John – imagine him with John Lennon, or imagine him wearing John Lennon glasses, walking across Abbey Road. JOHN. Perhaps you have another friend called John. Imagine the new John and the other John together, perhaps having a fight – like Street Fighter 2. John vs John. “Round 1 – fight!!! Hello John, hello John! PERFECT… John, wins….” You won’t forget it. Do that with everyone at the party, or everyone at the business conference. You’ll remember their names, and you’ll have fun doing it. Just remember not to tell them. For example, if you get drunk a bit later, don’t go up to John and say “Hey John! How’s John Lennon?? How are all the other Beatles. When’s the new album coming out?? JOHN! I love you John… ” Don’t do that.

Sometimes it works against me though. I have a student called Charles, and to me he looks just like Roger Federer, the tennis player. Sometimes I call him Roger by mistake, and he has no idea why I keep calling him Roger. I haven’t explained that I think he looks like Roger Federer, and that’s because he doesn’t look enough like Federer for everyone else to agree with me. They’d probably just think I was weird, and I’m supposed to be a professor, y’know. Anyway, there’s just something Federer-ish about this student. So, I mistakenly call him Roger sometimes, even though his name is Charles. What I need to do is imagine Federer meeting Prince Charles, and perhaps being knighted by Prince Charles for being such a great tennis player. Roger Federer and Prince Charles. – that should help. You might think that remembering all these connections is more complex than remembering the individual words or names themselves, but it’s not true. We’re just making connections to things that already exist in our heads. The more connections there are, the more likely you are to remember the words. Words that exist with no connections at all, are just lost in space, in your brain. Disconnected and missing. Words like to hang out with other words. They’re all connected in some way. It’s worth remembering that, and people often draw mind-maps to create visual representations of the connections between words. This is a good vocabulary learning strategy.

Also, it can help people to learn new words when they find out the origin of those words. There are lots of TEDed videos which explain the origins of many words. You can find TEDed’s youtube channel online. Again, go to my page and I’ll give you a link. Here is the link to the TEDed YouTube channel: http://ed.ted.com/series/mysteries-of-vernacular

So, in all these mnemonic devices, the words that come up a lot seem to be these ones: vivid, personal, funny and weird. So, when you’re linking a word to an image – make it vivid, personal, funny and weird. That’s how you really lodge the word deep in your brain. You could probably create a mnemonic to remember that! Vivid – meaning bright and clear, personal – meaning related to yourself or something you know personally, funny – just something that makes you laugh, and weird – something bizarre, out of the ordinary and strange. I’m just imagining The Simpsons, like Homer Simpson, just glowing! They’re vivid because they’re bright yellow and have big bulging eyes. They’re funny, obviously. At its best The Simpsons is one of the funniest shows on TV (in English – I’m not convinced it’s as funny in other languages, but in English it is generally hilarious sometimes). They’re personal because it’s about a family, we know them well, we’ve grown up watching them on TV. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. They’re weird – because they’re yellow, that’s strange. They only have 4 fingers, and the sense of humour in the show is pretty bizarre. Also, they’ve been on TV for 20 years and yet they’ve always stayed the same age. Bart has never grown up. That’s pretty weird. So, vivid, funny, personal and weird. Those are the key qualities for mnemonic images.

So, I’ve just given you some quick memory techniques for learning English, as they occurred to me, but let’s have a closer look at some specific tried and tested memory techniques and mnemonic devices.

Some specific memory systems

These might seem like pretty weird techniques, but as I said earlier, if you just listen to this you won’t get the full benefit. You’ll just enjoy listening to it as entertainment. So I invite you to try them for yourself, because only then will you realise just how effective these things are. It can make a huge difference to your life.

Let’s listen to a short presentation from The University of Western Sydney. This video is available on YouTube and also on my website. This video is about 5 minutes long and it clearly explains some mnemonic systems. The guy in the video speaks with an Australian accent. It’s not a strong one, but you might be able to notice the way he says some words, like numbers 1 – 9 for example.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoYOb2sPnqA&w=500&h=281]

So, that’s Acronyms (a word – each letter represents something, eg. ROY GBIV), Acrostics (a sentence in which the first letter of each word spells out the thing you need to remember),  The Peg System (words represent numbers, and you can then create an image using those words), Image Mnemonics (I’ve talked about this with the John Lennon example), Chunking – grouping individual bits of info together to make them easier to remember (This helps with vocab because words are often grouped together – so you should not just remember a word, but remember a whole group or chunk of words – for example if that word is followed by a particular preposition or verb form), Mind Maps (we talked about this – but you can make your mind maps as personal as you like – create any kind of connection between words that will help you remember them)

At my university course, I have to remember some details of the assessment procedure. Students often ask me. For some reason, they can’t remember it themselves so they’re always asking me. They should remember, and I definitely have to remember. Basically the grading system was continual assessment which included lots of different criteria, like their development through the course, their English in a presentation, their attendance, absences and the way they took part in class. To be honest, it was hard to remember those 5 items, but I managed to group it together as “the 5 Ps” – progress, presentation, presence, punctuality and participation. Knowing that there were 5 things, and that they all began with a P, allowed me to quickly recall and summarise the assessment type, in the middle of a lesson.

Let’s consider the linking system. This can help you to remember lists of apparently unrelated items. It could be a list of nouns, or it could be a shopping list. I’ve taken this explanation from a book actually. It’s a really great book called “Tricks of the Mind” by Derren Brown, who, in my opinion, is one of the world’s best illusionists, and a bit of an expert into mind control techniques, hypnotism and mentalism. If you’re interested in the subject, I suggest you get a copy of Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown. He deals with the subject in a very common-sense and scientific way, without all the mysticism that often accompanies this subject. So, let’s try an experiment.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZcHoU-QR8&w=500&h=375]

Mind Palace
This is what Sherlock Holmes uses in the TV show. It’s an amazing idea – apparently you can remember massive amounts of information if you create your own memory palace. That’s a massive space, in your own head, where you keep memories. It works by making connections to a place you know really well. It could be your house, for example, or the route you take to work (if you know it well) or a part of a city that you know well, or your school building or something. You imagine you’re walking around this place, and in key spots you plant a vivid image of each thing you’re trying to remember. Then, all you need to do is imagine walking around the place, and you’ll be able to remember everything. Also, when you’re doing it you can say “Hold on, let me go into my mind palace” which sounds pretty cool – especially if you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan.

Let’s hear Derren Brown explaining how he uses his mind palace.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPY3I8yTkY&w=500&h=281]

Spelling Mnemonics
I may have left the best until last here, because now we’re going to look at lots of common mnemonics for learning difficult spelling in English. Don’t forget you can read all this on my website, which is teacherluke.wordpress.com

Let’s get started. I’ve taken this list from Wikipedia, and added some of my own as well.

Characteristic sequence of letters

  • I always comes before E (but after C, E comes before I)

In most words like friend, field, piece,pierce, mischief, thief, tier, it is i which comes before e. But on some words with c just before the pair of e and i, like receive, perceive, e comes before i. This can be remembered by the following mnemonic,

I before E, except after C

But this is not always obeyed as in case of weird and weigh,weight,height,neighbor etc. and can be remembered by extending that mnemonic as given below

I before E, except after C
Or when sounded “A” as in neighbor, weigh and weight
Or when sounded like “eye” as in height
And “weird” is just weird

Another variant, which avoids confusion when the two letters represent different sounds instead of a single sound, as in atheist or being, runs

When it says ee
Put i before e
But not after c
  • Where ever there is a Q there is a U too

Most frequently u follows q. e.g.: Que, queen, question, quack, quark, quartz, quarry, quit, Pique, torque, macaque, exchequer. Hence the mnemonic:

Where ever there is a Q there is a U too (But this is violated by some words; see:List of English words containing Q not followed by U)
  • When two vowels go walking the first does the talking

For words like “oat” or “eat”, here the second letter a is silent and first letter o and e respectively are pronounced in the examples

Letters of specific syllables in a word

  • BELIEVE
Do not believe a lie.
  • SECRETARY
secretary must keep a secret
  • PRINCIPAL
The principal is your pal.
  • TEACHER
There is an ache in every teacher.
  • MEASUREMENT
Be sure of your measurements before you start work.
  • FRIEND
A friend is always there when the end comes.
Fri the end of your friend
When Friday ends, you go out with your friends.
  • SPECIAL
The CIA have special agents
  • BEAUTIFUL
Big Elephants Are Ugly
  • SLAUGHTER
Slaughter is laughter with an S at the beginning.
  • PIECES
Pieces of a pie
  • ASSUME
When you assume, you make an ass of u and me.
  • SEPARATE
Always smell a rat when you spell separate
There was a farmer named Sep and one day his wife saw a rat. She yelled, “Sep! A rat – E!!!”

Distinguishing between similar words

  • Difference between Advice & Advise, Practice & Practise, Licence & License etc.

Advice, Practice, Licence etc. (those with c) are nouns and Advise, Practise, License etc. are verbs.

One way of remembering this is that the word ‘noun’ comes before the word ‘verb’ in the dictionary; likewise ‘c’ comes before ‘s’, so the nouns are ‘practice,licence,advice’ and the verbs are ‘practise,license,advise’.
  • Here or Hear
We hear with our ear.
  • Complement and Compliment
complement adds something to make it enough
compliment puts you in the limelight
  • Principle and Principal
Your principal is your pal
A rule can be called a principle
  • Sculpture and Sculptor
A sculpture is a kind of picture
  • Stationary and stationery
Stationery contains er and so does paper; stationary (not moving) contains ar and so does car
A for “at rest”, e for envelope

First letter mnemonics of spelling

  • DIARRHOEA
Dashing IA Rush, Running Harder OElse Accident!
Dining IA Rough Restaurant: Hurry, Otherwise Expect Accidents!
Diarrhoea IA Really Runny Heap OEndless Amounts
  • ARITHMETIC
A Rat IThe House May Eat The Ice Cream
A Red Indian Thought HMight Eat Tulips IClass
  • NECESSARY
Not Every Cat Eats Sardines (Some Are Really Yummy)
Never Eat Crisps, Eat Salad Sandwiches, And Remain Young!
  • BECAUSE
Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants
Big Elephants Cause Accidents Under Small Elephants
Big Elephants Can’t Always Use Small Exits
Big Elephants Can’t Always Use Small Entrances
  • MNEMONICS
Mnemonics Now Erase Man’s Oldest Nemesis, Insufficient Cerebral Storage
  • GEOGRAPHY
George’s Elderly Old Grandfather Rode A Pig Home Yesterday.
  • TOMORROW
Trails OMOld Red Rose Over Window
  • RHYTHM
Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move

So, there we are. The transcript ends here!
OH BY THE WAY – CAN YOU REMEMBER THE LIST OF WORDS IN THE MEMORY TEST? I BET YOU CAN!

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Do you love this subject, and want more? Here’s a fascinating TED Talk about amazing feats of memory that anyone can do:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6PoUg7jXsA&w=500&h=281]
Oh, and here’s another one! This one is about mind mapping, which is particularly important in recording new vocabulary.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMZCghZ1hB4&w=500&h=281]
memoryPODPIC

155. A Cup of Coffee with… Sarah Donnelly (Part 1)

In this episode I am joined by the lovely Sarah Donnelly, who is also an English teacher and stand-up comedian, like me. She is originally from the USA and is now living in France. In the episode we respond to questions which listeners posted on the Luke’s English Podcast Facebook page. Enjoy!

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Here are some topics we discuss in this Euro/American episode:
Coffee making techniques
Differences between English and French
Regional Accents of the UK
Shakespearian English
Learning French
Teaching English
And plenty more…!

There is a second part to this episode, which I will upload soon. :)

Sarah performs stand-up comedy regularly in Paris, and sometimes in other European cities, as well as in the USA when she is back there. Click here for details of her show “Girls Gone Funny” which she performs every Thursday, along with Phyllis Wang.

Links
Here are some links to things we mention in this episode.
BBC Learning English Pronunciation (a great way to understand and practice British English pronunciation)
The British Library – Sounds Familiar (a very in-depth study of British English dialects and accents – you can listen to recordings of different accents from all over the UK)
David Sedaris, Kurt Vonnegut (two of Sarah’s favourite American writers) www.meetup.com (a service which you can use to socialise with people in your local area – it’s a good way to meet English speaking people)
Roald Dhal (one of our favourite British authors – he’s actually Welsh, with Norwegian parents)
Nacho Libre (a film which is not too difficult to understand – it uses pretty simple English, although with a slight Mexican accent)

Any questions? Feel free to leave a comment below.

149. Backing Up Into The Cloud

Hello Dear Listeners, I’ve been a little bit quiet recently but I’m still here.

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This episode is a chance to explain what’s been going on recently, and to answer some of your questions and comments from Facebook and Twitter. Apologies for the slightly poor sound quality on this one.

Yesterday I devoted over an hour to recording an episode only to be let down by my recording device which ran out of memory space. It was very annoying indeed because I lost all the work that I had done on that recording. I’ve since learned the importance of regularly backing up your work on an external memory card or alternatively “backing up into the cloud”.

I hope you enjoy the episode and more episodes will follow before long, including the continuation of my series on The A – Z of British Slang.

Cheers,
Luke

p.s. Here are videos of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, and Queen performing at Live Aid in 1985. Enjoy!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ&w=400&h=300]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQsM6u0a038&w=400&h=300]

146. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 2)

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

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A transcript/notes are available for this episode below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope you have enjoyed listening to this episode.

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

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

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

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

Luke

140. Ghost Stories – True Tales of Really Creepy Experiences

Keep cool in the hot summer weather with some chilling stories. *Transcript available below*


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This is a long episode so I recommend you download it and listen to it in sections. If you use your iPhone or an mp3 player it should remember the point that you stopped listening, and it will carry on from that point. Or, you can sit down with a cup of tea and listen to it all in one go!

This episode is all about ghosts, strange things, the unexplained, demons and things that go bump in the night. I’m talking about the paranormal, ghosts, phantasms, specters, spirits, poltergeists, unexplained phenomena, and all that kind of weird stuff that you don’t want to hear about when you’re alone in the house at night. I hope you’re not alone right now, because this could be the creepiest episode of Luke’s English Podcast so far. To help you feel okay I suggest you get a teddy bear to hold onto or a pillow to hide behind, close the doors, close the curtains, do not look in the mirror, and keep the light on. You could burn a candle if that makes you feel better, as traditionally it is said that a flame can protect you from evil spirits. Ideally, listen with other people around. People say that undead spirits and demons can be attracted by accounts of paranormal activity. If someone talks about ghosts, it brings the world of ghosts closer to you, and in some cases can attract spirits into your world. So if you notice anything strange going on around you while listening to this, I suggest that you stop listening, turn on the lights, get a drink from the fridge in the kitchen and just put scary thoughts out of your mind. I don’t believe in it myself, but who knows what is really out there in the darkness. I’ll give you some more tips on that later. Basically, in this episode I’m going to tell you some scary and weird stories, which I thought of or which are completely real and really happened to me.

Do you believe in ghosts? Is it really possible that our world could be visited by spirits or other beings that we don’t normally see? The answer you’re thinking of may be “no”. But have you ever experienced something really strange, which you can’t explain and which, when you think about it without ignoring it, it makes you really frightened? To tell you the truth, I have had some strange experiences that I can’t explain and that I don’t like to think about very often.

Personally, I consider myself to be a rational person. I don’t really believe in ghosts. But I believe there are things in the world that we don’t understand yet. I don’t think we should always conclude that unexplained things are the result of supernatural or paranormal causes, but at the same time I know that there are plenty of things about the world that we really don’t understand and can’t even see. Even in science there are many mysteries. Massive puzzles that scientists are trying to work out. Quantam physics, our basic understanding of space and time, the origins or destiny of the universe, parallel worlds, other dimensions, the possibility of ghosts living around us or inhabiting certain spaces in our homes or outside our windows. These are all areas of mystery to us. 500 years ago people were relatively clueless. People thought the world was flat, that headaches were caused by evil spirits and that tobacco was good for you. All completely wrong. Like, totally wrong. These are quite big things to get wrong. Imagine if we are similarly wrong about what we know now. Maybe we’ve only just scratched the surface of knowledge about the world. There could be so much more that we don’t realize. Answers to the questions of what happens to us after we die, is there such a thing as the soul and does it live on separately from us, are there other invisible worlds full of demons or spirits living all around us, that we can’t see. Is it possible for us to disturb these spirits or upset them by doing wrong things without realizing it? As I said, I don’t believe in ghosts or the paranormal because I require evidence for these things. But still, there are things that I just can’t explain. And to be honest, that is frightening sometimes. There are things I’ve experienced that have freaked me out, and continue to bother my memory today. Sometimes these memories make me scared. Maybe it will be creepy but I’m going to share those things with you in this podcast episode.

I’m going to tell you some stories but some real ones, not made up ones. The stories I’m going to tell you are all ones that I’ve experienced personally. They’re not fictional bedtime stories or anything. They’re not fun stories for kids. They’re real accounts of some weird and scary stuff that has happened to me at various times. I don’t often talk about these things with my friends or family these days. They say it makes them feel uncomfortable. A lot of people don’t really like their world to be challenged by strange unexplained things. They’d rather not think a lot about things they don’t really understand, or things which are disturbing. But sometimes I can’t sleep and I think of weird things I’ve experienced and they make me quite scared, but they’re fascinating to me too so I thought I would share these experiences with you. Maybe you can explain them, or maybe you’ve experienced similar things. Some people might say that I shouldn’t talk about these things publicly or share them, because it could scare people, or even attract spirits into the homes of people who are listening to this. I’m not sure about that but I’d like to suggest that you listen carefully to this episode. If you are easily scared then just think twice about listening to this. It might disturb you. Don’t listen just before you go to bed. Turn on the lights if you’re in a dark room, so you can see everything. Close cupboard doors or doors to dark rooms so that you don’t get scared when you imagine that something or someone is waiting in there while you listen to this. If you’re not too scared, try to have a look under the bed or behind the sofa, because sometimes you can be very disturbed by the thought that there is something or someone there, watching you and waiting. Try not to imagine dark shapes or the idea that there is a person with you, because your mind will play tricks on you.

If it is night time and there are windows in your room, just quickly close the curtains and make sure the windows are sealed so you don’t worry about things that our outside getting inside, and so you don’t worry about seeing a face appear in the window, even for a moment. Closing windows or closing curtains will make you feel more comfortable because you won’t be able to see whatever is out there, and if there’s something out there, it won’t be able to see you either. Just be careful, when you close the window, do it quickly and don’t look out of the window into the darkness.

Quickly check empty rooms in your house if you aren’t too scared. It can really freak you out when you get the feeling that you’re not alone in your own home, and that there’s something or someone in another room, and maybe they’ve been there for some time without you knowing. So, if you can, have a quick look around the house. Go upstairs or downstairs and visit empty rooms, just to make your mind feel more comfortable and so you don’t get too scared while you’re listening to my voice. And if you need to go to the toilet or the kitchen you’ll be frozen because you don’t want to go alone so try to remember there’s someone there in the house with you, even if you are alone, there’s someone nearby and you can hear my voice and you’ll be okay. You could stop listening and wait until the day time if you like, but I suggest that you listen to all of this, just so that you can get to the end of it, hear the music at the end of the episode and although it might be frightening to be in silence, you know that you completed the episode and that’s the end of the scary stories and everything will be back to normal again.
One other thing – don’t look in the mirror while you listen to this. In fact, avoid reflections of any kind – seeing your reflection in a window, the glass of your mobile or computer monitor. Mirrors or reflections are said to be like portals to the spirit world. I’m not sure I believe it but it’s better to be on the safe side, certainly when discussing ghosts or demons. Who knows what elements of old folklore are based on knowledge that we have lost? Maybe folklore is all true to an extent. The subject of spirits and the supernatural was very popular in England during the 19th century and lots of strange events were documented during that period. Many well respected people such as Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories were very interested in this subject, and wrote about their experiences. Apparently, people used to gather together in séances (meetings often took place in dark rooms in houses that were said to be haunted or regularly visited by apparitions or other phantoms) in order to contact the dead, or communicate with the spirit world. They used various devices to contact the other side, including oiji boards but also mirrors. What these practitioners would do was to read pages of old texts designed to attract ghosts from the other side, and then at certain moments they would all stare without blinking into a mirror in order to see the spirits appearing. Apparently, the mirror was one of the most common ways that spirits reveal themselves to the living. They might appear just as a shape or shadow, sometimes overlaid on top of someone else’s face (very weird) or they would appear clearly as someone else in the room, usually standing behind the people). There are also lots of urban myths about standing in front of the mirror and saying special words, which bring a demon into the room with you, with your reflection. The story goes that once the demon has arrived in your mirror, he will always be there in any reflection of you, until you find a way to remove him. The only way to remove him is to tell someone else about it, persuading them to say the words while looking in a mirror. The demon is then transferred into their reflection, leaving you free again. Finally, the only solution is for a blind person to say the words in front of the mirror. They take the demon, but can’t see it and so it has no power over him.

I said before that traditionally people believed that spirits can be attracted by talking about them, and that describing or thinking about the other side can make the gap between our world and the world of spirits thinner, allowing them to visit us more freely. That’s why people tend to whisper or speak quietly when talking of these things. You shouldn’t go around shouting the names of demons or spirits, especially at night, and you should not look in the mirror while listening to this, or soon after listening to this. It’s not advisable and I would warn you not to do it. I mean, I don’t necessarily believe it myself and I don’t know what you believe, but sometimes it’s worth paying attention to traditional wisdom even if science disagrees with it. Sometimes science can be proved wrong, as I said before. So, avoid mirrors during this episode.
I hope you’re not getting freaked out or scared by all this talk of scary monsters visiting you. If you are superstitious, then you do what you’ve got to do. Say a short prayer if that helps, or try repeating some words to yourself in order to make yourself feel okay. Apparently, a common thing that people can say to protect themselves from evil spirits is this, and you can try repeating it quietly to yourself if it makes you feel any better.
“I am alone – I know they are not here”
“I am alone – I know they will not come”
“I am alone – I know they have not found me”
Say it three times. Just make sure you get the word ‘not’ in the correct position. Don’t say “I am not alone – I know that they are here” or “I know they will come” or “I know they have found me” – don’t say that three times while looking into a mirror, at any time. OK? Do not do that. I hope that’s clear.
If you’re with someone else, good. I recommend that you just squeeze the person’s hand or just touch them on the shoulder, just as a way to say “you’re here too”! If they react badly to that, like, if they tell you “get off!” or “what you doing?” Just explain calmly that you’re just making physical contact with another person in order to create a protective boundary between you and the spirit world in order to prevent any weird or scary things from happening. I’m sure your friend or loved one will understand. If you are on public transport, you could try touching the person sitting next to you but I am not responsible for the consequences. All I’ll say is that sometimes people on busses and trains can be much more dangerous than ghosts…

Finally, if you do get scared while listening to this or you notice anything strange going on around you, leave a comment explaining what has happened. It could be fascinating to read about it. Also, if you have any other strange things you’ve experienced, and how you explain them, let us know by leaving a comment.

OK let’s get started. I’m going to tell you about some strange things that have happened to me over the years. Let me know what you think? How would you explain some of this stuff?

The Japanese running tap

I spent 3 weeks during the summer, alone in my apartment while waiting for another flatmate to come. During that time some pretty weird things happened in the flat, and I don’t mean earthquakes although I did experience some of them. Not earthquakes, but something that I can’t explain.
The kitchen tap kept turning on by itself. I would go to bed in the tatami room. In the middle of the night I would wake up to noise coming from the kitchen. I went into the kitchen to find the kitchen tap running cold water. Freezing cold – much colder than usual. I’d have to turn it off by turning the tap around in my hand, before going back to bed. This happened 3 times. The third time was the worst because I distinctly remember making sure the tap was turned off before bed. I remember getting myself a glass of water, and then turning off the tap. When I woke up to hear the sound of the tap running, I DID NOT want to get up, but I had to investigate and I had to stop the tap. Perhaps the worst part was walking past an empty room which had large windows at the other side. I couldn’t bear to look into the room because I had a horrible feeling about it. It felt like there was something in the apartment with me. Turning off the tap, it was very cold again. I didn’t want to turn round to go back to my room and I must admit I was very frightened and I left the light on in the kitchen. I’m not normally scared by stuff, but sometimes I can’t stop thinking about that tap. How on earth is that possible? Can a tap turn itself on? Water pressure? Water which is left in the pipe coming out? Perhaps I did it in my sleep – maybe I walked to the sink and turned on the tap, which is pretty scary – why would I get up in the night, do something and then not remember doing it? I told all my students in Japan about it, and a lot of them were not really surprised by it. A lot of people in Japan are quite superstitious. Apparently there are many different types of ghost in Japanese folklore, and belief in ghosts and ghost stories is quite common in Japan. One particular old woman I used to teach on Fridays, was very knowledgeable and told me a lot about it, saying how ghosts or Yuurei are quite common, and even accepted by most people are being real. Apparently, these yuurei are spirits of people who have been prevented from having a peaceful afterlife because of the way they died or the trauma they experienced during their life, which is basically the same explanation given for ghosts in the UK too. It’s weird that ghosts feature in folklore from so many cultures around the world, and they all seem to be explained by this idea of a spirit that can’t rest. Anyway, this woman suggested that my tap thing was caused by, and I’ll never forget the name, a Zashiki-warashi or the ghost of a child. Apparently Zashiki-warashi are often mischievous, meaning they do naughty little things, rather than seriously scary or dangerous things. She said they commonly arrive and do things during the Japanese ‘witching hour’ between 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning, which is when the gap between our world and the spirit world are closest. She said that strange things that happen at night in Japan are sometimes attributed to zashiki-warashi. This didn’t make me feel better though, because the idea that I had some little Japanese child ghost in my apartment between 2 and 3 o’clock at night was not fun. The tap thing stopped after I got a new flatmate called Peter in August. For a couple of weeks though, I had a slightly disturbing time alone in the apartment, trying not to think of the tap. It hasn’t happened to me since, so maybe it was just then. If it does happen again, I will freak out I know it. Ive never told me girlfriend about it, because it would worry her. Any ideas what that was? If you’re from Japan, have you heard of zashiki-warashi, or other types of ghost? Do you think the woman was making it up or not?

*This is where the transcript ends. You can read some notes for the other stories below*

The bouncing ball

Freaky and still disturbs me to this day, even though I didn’t really want to believe it at the time.

Frozen in bed and the weird clock

Very scary at the time, but there is a rational explanation.
Here is a link to the TedEd video about sleep paralysis:

The Lapworth Walk

Nothing particularly weird or supernatural happened directly to me, but it was a time when I was really genuinely scared.

I’m originally from London. I was a city kid until I was 9. Then my parents moved to the countryside. Moved away from all my friends to a new place. I didn’t know the area. The countryside is different. Spooky. Owls at night etc.

Teenager – went out in Birmingham. Had fun with friends. Time to go home. Train on my own. Avoided fights in Birmingham. Everyone left the train. I had 20mins more journey. Then I had to walk through country lanes to where my parents lived. Often it would be able 1AM.
Walking through darkness in the countryside is very scary. I can remember the walk very clearly because I did it so many times.

Town, houses etc.

Turn right at the end, the streetlights stop. You have to walk into the darkness, leaving the houses and lights behind. It doesn’t feel natural.
Hump backed bridge over the canal. Something under the bridge? In fact, there could be something on the other side of the bridge. Don’t let your mind wander. All my friends are at home, in bed. I’m walking in the dark, miles from home, scared.

Baddesley Clinton House

Here is some text from the National Trust website about the haunted old house I had to walk past on the Lapworth Walk

“A lovely old manor house I have visited several times is Baddesley Clinton in Knowle, Solihull. This building dates right back to the early Middle Ages, and it is thought to be haunted by one of its former owners, a man called Nicholas Brome.

The Brome family lived here during the Wars of the Roses and, unfortunately for them, in 1461 they found themselves on the losing side. This led to a serious falling out with the Earl of Warwick, culminating in the murder of the family’s patriarch, John Brome. Shortly afterwards, John’s son, Nicholas took a bloody revenge and stabbed to death the Earl of Warwick’s Steward. Nicholas Brome had an appetite for violence and people crossed him at their peril.
One night he returned home to find his wife in a compromising position with no less a person than the local parish priest. The priest, it seems, was tickling his mistress, “under ye chinne”. This was more than enough to send Nicholas into a terrible rage.

He drew his dagger and slew the amorous priest on the spot. Killing a man of God was a serious offence and could have cost Nicholas his own life, however he had the good fortune to be pardoned by both the King and the Pope. His penance was to build nearby St. Michaels church, where he was eventually buried standing up (another penance for his many sins).
It could be that Nicholas Brome, his soul never properly laid to rest, still wanders the dark rooms and hallways of Baddesley Clinton. (A dark red stain on the wooden floor of the library is said to be the priest’s blood, but I must say I am not entirely convinced!).

In the Tudor period the house was taken over by the Ferrers family who bravely gave sanctuary to catholic priests during the reign of Elizabeth I. The tiny “priest holes”, where they would hide from Elizabeth’s soldiers, can still be seen.

This must have been a particularly frightening time because the punishment for observing the “old religion” was terrible indeed. Priests could be burnt at the stake, while their protectors ran the risk of being “hanged, drawn, and quartered”.

Traumatic experiences do seem to trigger paranormal activity. Members of the Ferrers family and many visitors to Baddesley have reported hearing raised voices and hurried footsteps coming from empty rooms. Could this be the chilling echoes of long dead catholics trying to evade their protestant hunters?”

Let me know of your scary stories. Leave a comment below.

126. Your Emails, Comments and Questions

Luke responds to your messages with questions about English, and more.

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Thank you very much for your emails and comments over the last few months! I am going to reply to some of them here.

I get loads of emails in my inboxes and unfortunately there’s no way I can respond to them all. I’d end up spending all my time at my computer and that’s neither possible nor healthy. Nevertheless, please continue to send me messages. I really love hearing from you. I find it motivating and encouraging. Also, your messages tell me a lot about the people I am talking to on the podcast.

There are lots of ways to get in touch with me: FB, twitter, comments on Pod, comments on Blog, emails, youtube comments, youtube emails, LinkedIn, AudioBoo etc. I appreciate your messages, but I can’t always respond. I like it best when people leave comments on this website, either under episodes of in the forum (click the Discussion Forums link in the menu above).

Below you can read some comments, messages and questions I have received in the last few months. In the podcast you can listen to me responding to these comments. This is just a selection of some of the messages I’ve had. Not every comment is included here. Some I have already replied to or dealt with before.

THE BACKGROUND MUSIC is all produced/made by my brother. You can check out his youtube channel here to listen to more tunes.

COMMENTS, MESSAGES AND QUESTIONS (I reply to these during the episode)

I just listened to your first podcast and I was wondering, do I have to do the ‘interactive’ things (like asking questions, etc.,) now? I mean, the first one is not new so I don’t know if I’m supposed to do it or not.

Rei

Somebody left a comment on your episode:I love when you bring more people to the podcast because that’s when it really becomes natural English. In my opinion you use rather simple expressions when you speak on your own, probably because as you are a teacher and you are used to using words that your students understand. But do no misunderstand me, I love your podcast. I always listen to them on my way to uni. Sometimes I have to turn up the volume of my mp3 to a harmful limits, because I cannot hear with all the noise of the bus.Is there any possibility that the podcasts were louder? (I’m sorry if I sounded too fussy). Thanks for your podcasts and keep doing a great job!
Somebody left a comment on your episode:I like your accent and voice, Luck
Somebody left a comment on your episode:Teacher Luke! I’m sure you will make great podcasts in Paris. I’m sad I couldn’t have time to answer your questions… I’m so sorry. I wish I could have contributed to your next podcasts. Could you talk about british bands, please ? : ) Just yesterday I listened to my competition entry again and I noticed that nowadays I sound much better than that. That’s because I always take your pieces of advice ( not adviceS ) for learning and try to copy your pronunciation because you speak clearly without patronizing your listeners. I’ve been listening to your podcasts for about 8 months now and I can say that my english it’s not the same anymore. It’s visible that you enjoy what you do because when people love what the y do, they do it much better. Thank you so much !!

hello,luke!how are u doing?i am ABDENOUR from Algeria and I am a regular listener of your podcasts.in fact I do listen to them almost everyday.yet,it’s been a long time since u haven’t recorded a podcast;we do miss your qualitative and educative podcasts really!luke,can I ask you afavour? i would really like it if u record some podcasts on british culture.that would be a mind-boggling thing really…

Somebody left a comment on your episode:I love Sherlock Holmes stories!!!!!!

October – XxxYyy wrote:

Have you ever said something more about collocations? I just realized how important they’re to sound naturally.

ps. Have you mentioned Radiohead in the latest episode? Was in used just as an example or not? If not, high five! Their music has grown on me recently. So much I’m die hard fan now.

Thanks for sharing your awesomeness with all of us.

Don’t let wild city cats to eat you.

Somebody left a comment on your episode: (Vocabulary Review 1-11)Good idea to brush up on old stuff. I’m really into this kind of episode. Thanks Luke and Kate!
Somebody left a comment on your episode:why don’t u have the full transcription of this podcast??? I need it :(

Somebody left a comment on your episode:write the full transcription,,please!
Somebody left a comment on your episode:Do you know how long it takes to write full, accurate transcripts of these unscripted episodes? It takes ages!! Hours and hours. I simply can’t transcribe every word, even though I would live to. You can find a transcript of the story by clicking the link. Have you done that? If I have time I will work on a transcript but only if I have some available time . Remember this is a free service. I can’t work on it like it is a full-time job! Luke
Somebody left a comment on your episode:Luke, Unfortunately I can’t copy the transcript straight from the page,(page does not allow to copy from it), May I get this vocabulary comments transcripted from somewhere else?

Somebody left a comment on your episode:

Wow! Sorry Luke for asking you to do something unnecessary, you are not only a great Master in English,but also an awesome computer teacher.

COMPUTER TEACHER! :=[]
NoHealer JustPain left a comment on your episode:Luke, as I proceed to listen a strange thought occurs to me, you could simply dub cartoons for children, and for adult as well. P.S. Excuse me for my excessive activity.

Carlos Vega (cool name)

Hi Luke!! what’s up?

Please, can I ask you a question? I need your help about an english issue…

Take a look please:

1) I’ve got several fruits in the kitchen, such as apples, oranges, bananas,…

2) I’ve got several fruits in the kitchen, for example apples, oranges, bananas,…

3) I’ve got several fruits in the kitchen, for instance apples, oranges, bananas,…

My question is: are all them correct sentences?? If so…which one would you use?? (I mean, as a native speaker, which one is the most common??)

Thanks in advance, I’m really following your podcasts as I told you on my last email, good job man.

Cheers from Barcelona…Spain :p

lloydo commented on Messing Around with Accents and Voices

I love talking about accents with my students. As a Canadian I like to point out how my English is different from Standard American – which from the point of view of a Brit probably isn’t that big. It’s also pretty interesting to talk about what you can learn about a person from their accent; there is actually quite a lot! It’s also great to get them thinking about accents in their own language too.

Hi, I’m Chiara from Italy and I NEED to improve my english because my boyfriend leave Italy to stay in Ireland. So I think this is a nice way to try to reduce the “distance” :) thank you!

Somebody left a comment on your episode:Some more minutes talking about Bob Dylan music and so on would have been great. Not so bad the idea of English Anxiety Podcast :-) Thanks both for the episode.

Somebody left a comment on your episode:

Hey Luke, this has been really an interesting and different kind of podcast. When you said that there is probably someone out with that profile I thought it could be me becouse a few weeks ago I had a dream in wich you appeared. I dont know why I was in your flat and I dont know why I had the flat´s key either. I just remember that you were there with your girlfriend and we had a normal conversation ( but it was kinda strange becouse we talked to each other as we have met before when it wasnt really like that ). I think I had that dream becouse sometimes I listen to your podcast before I go to bed. But definitely Im not the person from your profile lol. Take care Luke.

Hi teacher Luke, My name’s Diego Lucas and I really want to thank you for all your videos on youtube, they are all very usefull to me.

Teacher, I really want to understand why sometimes I can understand every single word that you speak and it’s so hard to understand people that speak to you on your videos.

Greeting from Brazil, Sao Paulo.

Hello Luke,

I’m Thomas, Frenchman currently settled in China, I’m from Lille, maybe you heard of it since it’s not far from England. I’m moving to the English-speaking part of Canada next year and try to improve my English by listening Pod casts , series, reading novels or  using any material I can find through the internet.  I stumbled upon yours today and really appreciate it, I’ll recommend it to all my English learning Chinese friends, keep up the good work, please. I can fairly well understand English but never have the chance to speak it. During my first weeks in Canada, I’m going to stay in a farm where I’ll work as a volunteer, I want to make a good first impression  and I fear not to be able to socially interact properly. How to use words in English to sound polite, how to make jokes, what is culturally acceptable to joke about without sounding like a jerk. There are that kind of nuances in my own language and I’m sure it’s the same in English. Do you what I mean ?

Hi Luke,

I am a teacher of English in Russia and I’d like to thank u for the podcasts I can use at my lessons.

I wonder how u find time for such lots of work. Are u married?

Best regards,

Igor

Hi Dear Luke.

First of all I would like to say thank you. I started listening to your podcast.

I’ve found very useful your podcast for me.

I have some question for you:

– Where is your school located. Is your school as language schools – St Giles International or Malvern House?

– Do you have a private English lesson via Skype? If you have, how much does it cost per hour?

www.londonenglishclasses.com – This is my friend Martin Aaron’s website. He offers Skype lessons. Check him out if you’re interested.

Somebody left a comment on your episode:i’m going to use your podcast to do some grammar dictation and challenge my FCE students a bit. Great work! Thank you.
Somebody left a comment on your episode:Hi
Somebody left a comment on your episode:Enter your comment

Hi Luke,

I’m Nina from Germany. I started listening to your podcast because I wanted to improve my (spoken) english. English is one of my – I don’t know how you call it, but I’d say “main subject” in school, I have it 4 times a week.(and I’m going to take my A-Levels in it and maths)

Besides I just really like London and the UK and I’d love to have an british accent ;)

Well, I wondred if you could do something about Harry Potter?

I’m a huge fan and I think it’s just so british.

A podcast about Harry Potter or about what you brits think about it would be great.

Thank you and keep on with your good work,

Nina

Somebody left a comment on your episode:I’m laughing… You’ve made me happy, Luke. You’ve achieved your aim all right!

It’s me again

Sorry, I forgot something:

A podcast about style or british designers (I love Burberry) would be nice too.

And I think it would be really interesting to hear which prejudices there are about Germans, Frenchmen,…. in the UK or what people imagine a “typical” German etc. to be/act/ look like.

Now that’ all. I won’t annoy again ;),

Nina

Dmitry

I think past perfect sentences are easier to understand than present perfect. :)

I got on a train today in the morning and I saw a girl which was sitting alone. I realised that I had never met such a beautiful girl in my whole life. I came closer and said to her – HELLO! :)

Somebody left a comment on your episode:hi Luke, great job! Only a question: why i can understand your speaking and i cannot understand other people speaking (for example people in London interwievs)??
Thomas left a comment on your episode:you’re not going to tell us exactly how you open your trousers…? What a pity! :)
Somebody left a comment on your episode:Fortunately, I came this site not because I placed my coffee on my laptop….it’s intentional.. I really want to listen to. …and I’m not in the gym, too..I think I’m probably relaxing?hmm..

About the sick in Japan episode

Somebody left a comment on your episode:Wow, thank God you’re alive teacher Luke! I wouldn’t be able to hear such a bizarre but wonderful story of yours if…. Anyway, when my grandfather had a liver disease, He never recovered until he died a few years from now. I don’t know how the disease was called but it seemed that his liver shrunk. The doctor said there was a lot of holes in it and he kept on releasing blood. And so, my grandmother who was as drunkard as my grandpa was, decided to stop drinking even though she can’t help it sometimes….. I’ve been to taiwan (shortly, just 5 days) and the only problem I had there was that I got dandruff in my head.. gladly, my scalp returned to normal when I got home. Maybe it was just because of the shampoo…I don’t know. Just as I live in a hot country ( I mean, the weather is hot), the Philippines, we just normally put lotion on exposed skin with higher spf.. and use umbrella most of the time.. I had a great time listening to the podcast! Not only was it entertaining but there are also some note-worthy things like those related in medicine… Thank you teacher Luke! ( btw, i said that in british accent!) ;)

Somebody left a comment on your episode:

Thanks Luke for sharing such an interesting experience, at times your report sounds kind of a fight for survival! For some reason it’s more amusing to tell not so nice travel experiences rather than the good ones :-) I spent a month volunteering in a Gloucestershire farm two years ago, leaving Italy with a few stitches on my shoulder. A nurse in the farm removed them but she wasn’t so confident and eventually said: “You’d better go to a clinic”. I feared an infection since I felt pain, anyway it was nothing serious. Something similar may happen when you travel off the beaten track, but it’s definitely worth it! By the way, antibiotics are useless and even harmful for mononucleosis, that’s why you had a rash.

evgenia derevnina left a comment on your episode:

It’s 4 a.m here in Irkutsk. Outside around 15 degrees below zero. I can’t sleep (too much energy probably) So instead of wasting time rolling over in bed, decided to listen to another Luke’s podcast. Thank you again Luke that we have you.

evgenia derevnina left a comment on your episode:

This is a great real life episode! Luke must be a very brave person to have got through all this experience. It’s just impossible to stay calm while listening to it. Man! It was hard! Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. Be healthy and happy in all your lives! I remember once staying in India in may, in a valley of Kangra District. It was about +40C or more, very hot and humid, I noticed you can’t even think properly in such heat. some friends slept on the roofs at night, but it didn’t help anyway. There was no air-conditioning, just fans in the rooms. Don’t know why I just kept on drinking hot tea with milk,it felt good drinking hot tea while the air was hot too.

Cheers.

Hi Luke,

I’ve just started to listen your podcast and I’m very grateful to you for the work you’ve done. About the podcast n 2, I’ve found really difficult to understand the meaning of some sentences said by you and your father during your interview; especially when you use expressions like these: Mind you you do see (why here Rick uses do + verbs)

Luke! One of my friend who is an english speaker said, “i am going back to ‘me’ home.”

Is that wrong? because he is native speaker so…

Thx!

Billy

Somebody left a comment on your episode:Please, how can I download the podcast. I liked it so much.

LENA

Somebody left a comment on your episode:A very shrewd analytical piece, funnily presented,capturing and rib-tickling in some places.The key words – champagne, a smell of perfume and urine,water in gutters, fresh bread aroma,car sirens, morning sunlight,stone colors – all these refer to senses rather than to mind and give a very insightful and penetrating picture. It was a pleasure.
Somebody left a comment on your episode:Enter your comment
Somebody left a comment on your episode:i m from pakistan keep it up luke..

Hi Luke,

What’s meaning of “half 12”?

I know American got anyother way to say it, but what is it?

thanks!!

Billy

 Zahid

Hi Luke

sorry to disturb you. i just to want to ask u a question.Which is the correct sentence.?

who do you live with?

or

whom do you live with?

I am a bit confused about the use of who and whom.

Thanks

 

luke,

In what situation will you use ‘he don’t’ instead of ‘he doesn’t’?

Thanks a lot!

Billy

Somebody left a comment on your episode:help me speak english please Luke

Somebody left a comment on your episode:

Brillant!!!! Very nice episode, I enjoyed every second!!! Thanks!!

Somebody left a comment on your episode:Faux pas= literally means “misstep”. Faux means something wrong, a mistake,”pas” means step…

Super Luke!! How’re you?

Still podcasting?? I’m still on my way to improve my english, so listening to your podcasts in between of doing CAE exams! Also reading some grammar…actually I wanted to ask you if you could help me with some short issues, please? I’d be very pleased if you do that Luke since I’m not attending any lessons in my city, I’m just studying on my own! (I think at certain level is much better and fast to study in that way…anyway I’ll go to some lessons maybe 1 or 2 month before the CAE exam)

1) Well…first af all I’ve read a sentence like this:

NEITHER MARGARET NOR JOHN WAS THERE

Question: Why ‘was’ and not ‘were’? Margaret and John…two people…so should be ‘were’ no? (no because it’s ‘neither – nor’)

2) Which one would be the correct preposition after the verb TO BE FED UP??

3) in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, at night, at midday……ARE ALL THEM CORRECT?

Hanouf left a comment on your episode:

You don’t mind if try to add to your list of expressions do you? How about saying: Mind how you go as a way to say bye. 

 

Dear “Mister. Bean”, I’m delighted reading your Paris notes! Do you teach only English? Don’t you teach English Literature or Philosohpy? You’ve got a nice sense of humour and you are just a very good person. Have you read something from Russian Literature? (Olga)

NEW TRANSCRIPTS AVAILABLE from Crista Bartels and other listeners. Episodes 1-6 are now fully transcribed, and a lot of other episodes. Keep checking the blog for more transcripts in the future.

Hello Luke,

It is me, Andrew again, one of the student addicted to your podcasts.

I found having transcript or at least more difficult phrases indispensable part of my method of learning English which is:

1. listening to the material at least twice

2. writing down everything exactly what is said there

3. reading aloud following the speaker, sentence after sentence

4. moving useful words, phrases, expressions, sentences etc. to SuperMemo application

5. and of course trying to used all of that stuff during lessons with my local teacher of English, who is really great too.

Thank you for your really great job. I appreciate it very much.

— Best wishes,

Andrzej

It’s now been 11 days since ZAHID sent you an ecard.

Luis commented on What is this?

Hi Luke!!! This is Luis from Spain.
I just arrive to London two months ago, and i have been listening the people, they usually use a lot of verbs ended with up or off…
Could you please make a podcast with the most common verbs that you use ending with up, off,down…?
Thank you so much
Great work

Hello, Luke

How are you?  Are you in England with your family or in France?  Wherever you are, a happy new year!

The last three or four months, I have not be able to make donation due to Japanese law (they say).  Every time I try to, they say:  PayPal does not currently support Donation Payments from buyers in JP. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Actually, it is extremely inconvenient!!  I would appreciate if you give me some advice of any other way to donate, so that I can support you and enjoy your wonderful podcast.  Many Japanese must have this kind of problem, I guess.  Please help us to make a donation.

With best regards,

moriya

I am writing just to thank you for doing the Luke’s English Podcast!

Sometimes I focus so much on the listening that I start smiling or even laughing with my headphones on, while no one around knows what is going on. Then I feel a bit stupid because some people start looking at me like I was a freak or something :D

But whatever…I will keep listening because it’s just fun!

Best regards,

Michaela

listener from Prague, Czech Republic

Daniel commented on Who is Luke?

Hi,
I enjoy your lessons and would like to donate as you actually deserve it.
Unfortunately I’m unable to find where is the link with Paypal in your site.
Could you help me please ?
Daniel
An elder english learner and lover.

New comment on your post “Episode 4 – Joaquin Phoenix”

Author : gerardo

URL :

Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/186.79.136.177

Comment:

Hello. I’m gerardo from Chile ;) I was wondering what’s the difference between he may have an emotional problem and he may be having an emotional problem ;) that’s it thanks for your podcasts ;))) bye

hi luke, just wanna ask how do you read the word “negotiation”? ne-go-she-a-tion or ne-go-c-a-tion?

THX

billy

*Billy always asks me very quick and very specific questions. They’re pretty easy for me to answer, so he usually gets a response. If you do ask me a question, make it quick and specific. Very long and very open questions are much less likely to get responses. I don’t have time to write an essay. Please don’t ask me questions like “How do I  improve my pronunciation?” – it’s too big a question to get a response from me, know what I mean?

Hello

I like your podcasts very much and i have a question about learning english.

You said Try to speak in english with people more.

Could you recommend me a website where i can speak with other people in english (voice chat) ?

Best wishes

Gábor

http://www.sharedtalk.com/ (If anyone else knows any good sites for this, please leave comments below ;)

    • Hello Teacher Luke
    • First of all , you are totally the man. You totally rule. Thanks for your great podcast.
    • Second, you mentioned in a recent podcast “Maybe your name is Jose and maybe you want to speak like me” or something like that. You got it right. My name is Jose and I would really like to speak like you do.
    • Thirdly. I was practising my english the other day and a phrase came up: “One of the most Interesting things that have happened to me” My question is , is it have happened or has happend, I googled it but I found examples of both, How a londoner would say it?
    • Thanks again. Cheers.
  • Luke’s English Podcast
    • Ah ha! I knew someone called Jose would be listening to the podcast! Nice to hear from you.
    • And it’s ‘has’ in that sentence.

Luca Ricci

Hi, I’ve got a question about the use of “ain’t”.

I’ve noticed that you never use it in your podcasts and i don’t remember to have heard it from any of your guests.

In some website I’ve read that it represents an american semi-unpolite grammar form and it should be better not to use it. What do you think about that?

103. The Queen and The Royal Family

Opinions, facts and gossip about The Royal Family, as The Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee this weekend.

Small Donate ButtonRight-click here to download the episode. 
Listen to Luke have a conversation with English Robot 4000 about The Royal Family. We talk about everything you need to know about the Royals, including the shocking rumour about Prince Harry (listen to find out more).
Thanks for listening, and remember your donations make this podcast possible.
Luke