Category Archives: Messages from Listeners

692. WISBOLEP Competition Entries – Listen & Vote!

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Listen to recordings sent in by listeners and vote for who you think should be on LEP.

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Episode Transcript

Introduction

This is an episode about the WISBOLEP competition and it is your first chance to listen to recordings sent by listeners and vote for who you think should be on LEP.

Just in case you haven’t heard previous episodes or you got abducted by aliens or something and you don’t know – WISBOLEP means “Why I should be on LEP” and it is a competition which I launched in episode 681 as a way to invite one LEPster onto the podcast to be interviewed in a full episode.

Also thank you if you listened to me talking in episode 687 about the possible options (options 1- 4) for the next stage of this competition, and thank you to those of you who gave your input in the form of comments and emails.

After thinking about it, scratching my head and trying my best to do this in the most fair way possible I have now made my decision about how to proceed with the competition.

In the end I’ve gone for a combination of Option 3 and Option 4 which I outlined in episode 687.

I just decided that this was the best way to do it, and I’ve made my decision and I’m sticking to it.

Here is that decision.

My decision for WISBOLEP

I’m being the judge for round 1 – in fact I’ve already done it.

I have now listened to all the recordings in round 1 (and there were 101 recordings in total). I’ve listened to them all a few of times, and I’ve chosen 16 people who will go through to round 2.

I made an executive decision and narrowed it down to 16. I think in episode 687 I said it would be 20 recordings, but I decided even that 20 would be a few too many and that I had to do my best to narrow it down even further to 16.

So, I’ve done the unenviable task of whittling down 101 entries to just 16 and these are the 16 people you can vote for – and you will be able to listen to their individual recordings a bit later in this episode, after I’ve done a bit of explaining.

I must say, choosing 16 candidates out of 101 was not an easy decision to make at all, but I think that ultimately doing it this way is the best way.

Why wasn’t it easy Luke? Why was it difficult?

It wasn’t difficult to listen to them all. That was great. But the tricky part is that there were so many great recordings that I had to reject. The general standard of entries was really high this time, so while attempting to select just 16 people, I had to reject lots of entries which I still thought were really strong.

Profuse apology warning

I just know I am going to feel a strong urge to constantly apologise to the 85 people who I didn’t select. I’m really sorry you didn’t get picked, and you are probably going to hear me say that a few times as you listen to this.

“It’s ok Luke – no need to apologise too much, we understand”

Ah, thank you for saying that. It reassures me.

Why have I chosen to do it this way?

(No voting in round 1, me choosing the final 16 myself)

The reason for that is that there were so many recordings that I couldn’t think of a fair way to organise it.

If I’d asked you the audience to listen to all 101 recordings, it wouldn’t have worked.

There was no way I could run the competition fairly in that way, asking the audience to listen to every single one of the 101 recordings and then choosing one person from that long list. I don’t think people would have listened to all 101 recordings, and they might not have remembered them all if they did. So I think you can see that voting like that just wouldn’t work.

So I had to be very selective myself first, which as I said, was not fun. Well – the selection process wasn’t fun. Listening to all the recordings from lovely LEPsters has been amazing (and you can still listen to them all – details in a minute). But having to reject so many of them was not a pleasure for me. But, so be it.

Can I just be super clear then…

A quick summary – Just to re-cap

  • I received 101 recordings, but you’re not voting for the 101.
  • I’ve selected 16 recordings for round 2. You’re going to listen to them (in this episode) and vote for them. www.teacherluke.co.uk/wisbolep
  • Then a winner will be chosen based on those results and I’ll interview that person in an episode.
  • I think I will probably have 2 runners-up as well, who will get half an episode each.

But Luke, what about the other 85 recordings?

85 AMAZING LEPSTERS STILL WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION

I have not just thrown away all those other recordings that I didn’t choose. I didn’t just throw them in the bin. I’ve published them all on my website and in the LEP App, and you can listen to them all if you want. And I highly recommend that you do that. You can listen to 85 LEPsters who are still very worthy of your attention, and there is some sumptuous video footage there too for you to enjoy while you listen.

You will find all the recordings on the website in one long YouTube video (with timecodes so you can skip to different LEPsters quite easily if you like) and that video also includes a few little comments from me after each recording. Actually, this video turned into something amazing. Let me tell you about it. This is the WISBOLEP Round 1 video “85 Amazing LEPsters still worthy of your attention”.

You can see the video at the bottom of this page.

What happened was, I collected the 85 entries and then recorded myself playing them all one after the other, and I added little comments after each one. The whole track is about 3 and a half hours long and it’s just audio. The plan was to put it up on YouTube so I could embed it on the website page as an unlisted video. Originally I planned to just have a single static image on the screen (like my normal audio episodes on YouTube) but when I was editing it all together I thought “I wonder if I can find some video footage to accompany this recording?” So I found loads of stock video footage – video footage of things like British landscapes & monuments, street scenes in various parts of the UK, drone footage of the British countryside, some footage from other parts of the world. I collected over 3 hours of it and then added the audio track on top. The result is quite mesmerising. You can listen to all the 85 rejected recordings and my comments while gazing at stunning views of Scottish mountains, cosy English villages, the busy streets of London and other locations. I really recommend that you watch it.

You will find that video embedded on the page for this episode (at the bottom). The link to the YouTube video is in the show notes for this episode, and I’m also adding the audio track into the LEP app, as an app-only episode, so you can listen in the app if you want, and you can pause and it will remember where you stopped just like a normal episode.

So that’s the WISBOLEP Round 1 recordings “85 Amazing LEPsters still worthy of your attention”. No voting, but you can listen to them and I hope you do. The voices of 85 LEPsters from around the world who are charming, funny, who have little stories to share and who have had success in their English learning journeys. Link in the description, embedded video on the website page for this episode, audio in the app-only category in the LEP App. Check it out!

Here’s how the rest of this episode is going to work

  1. In a moment I’m going to say some specific things for the 85 people who sent recordings but didn’t get picked for round 2.
    Then we’re going to move on to round 2 – that’s the voting round.
  2. I’m going to give you some advice for making your votes.
  3. We’re going to listen to the 16 recordings.
  4. Then you can vote for your favourites on the website (at the bottom of this page).

I hope you listen to all of this because I want you to know my decision making process, and also I really want you to listen to all the competition entries for round 2 in order to be able to vote.

1. Some words for those people not chosen for round 2

I’m now talking about the 85 people who have not been chosen for round 2.

First and foremost I want to say a big well-done to everyone who took part and sent me recordings. Seriously → Well done. You did really well. I am really impressed by the general standard this time.

I really want everyone who sent me recordings to know that I am your fan, and that I hope that everyone who listens to this podcast – all the LEPsters – I hope that they actually choose to listen to all of the recordings that have been sent to me. It’s not difficult – the recordings are just a click away – as I outlined a moment ago.

The responsibility to actually listen to all those other recordings is now over to you – the audience. It’s your choice.

Again, those of you who sent me recordings, I want to say well done for going out of your comfort zone, making the effort and taking the time to do that.

Even if you haven’t been selected for round 2, I want you to know that I think you are great. There are plenty of recordings that I didn’t pick which are still excellent. You are all interesting and inspiring for me. I wonder if I could do the same thing in French, so please know and remember that I’m proud of you and you deserve to feel really good about entering the competition in the first place.

You probably want to know my reasons for choosing the 16 people, or not choosing 85 people. I’ll explain in a few minutes.

Why 16, Luke? Why not 20 or even 25?

The reason for choosing 16 is to make it much easier for all the LEPsters who will now have to choose their favourite in the next round. I think that limiting the number of people will make it much more practical for you the audience. Also, it will make the voting more fair. If there were too many people in round 2, it would be too difficult to listen to all the recordings, too hard to remember them all, and therefore too hard to choose.

How did I choose the 16 people? What’s my criteria?

As a teacher I don’t like rejecting people – because my job is to be encouraging, to help build people’s confidence and maintain their motivation. As well as instructing people in the ways of the English language, and correcting people and so on, my job as an English teacher is also to give my students a confidence boost. So, it has not been great fun for me to essentially say “no” to 85 people.

The criteria for my decision were simply these questions: (and I want you to think about these things when you come to vote for your favourites after listening to this episode fully).

Who do I think would be a good guest on the podcast?
Who would I like to hear more from?
Who do I think my audience would like to hear more from?

This is based on more than just the standard of English on display.
Ultimately, it’s about connection not perfection.
It’s about what you say, not just how you say it.
Here’s the thing. In the end, English is just a tool. It’s a tool that we use to communicate ideas, to help people, and to connect with people, to get things done.
I wanted to reflect that in the choices I made and try to pick people who have particularly specific, insightful, inspiring or entertaining things to say.
Now, I don’t mean that language ability is not important. Of course it is important because having sufficient control over the language helps you to achieve things in English – it helps you make connections, it helps you effectively communicate ideas. But remember that it’s the ideas, the connections, the enjoyment – these are the important things. So, to what extent are these things being achieved?

Who has insightful things that the audience might want to hear?
Who can share some really useful or interesting things about learning English?
Who has some interesting or entertaining stories to share?
Who grabbed my attention?

I keep saying this has been difficult because I’m worried that the people who didn’t make it to the final 16 – that you will feel like your recordings didn’t meet any of these criteria – but in many cases, they did. It was hard specifically because so many recordings did suggest insightful, interesting and entertaining things – but because I was forcing myself to narrow down the list to 16 I couldn’t pick them all.

You will see that even with just 16 candidates it will be really hard to choose a favourite.
You will almost definitely want to hear more from almost everyone and I’m sure there will also be people from the 85 recordings that didn’t qualify who you will also want to hear more from.

Disclaimer – No level assessments, language feedback or error correction

I think that some of you probably expect me to give English assessments of the competition entries. You might want me to comment on things like the accent, grammar or vocabulary of each participant, perhaps giving level assessments.

Well, I am afraid that I am not able to do that. I’m not giving full responses/feedback to all the competition entries.

So if you are expecting to get an assessment of the English of each person, sorry – it’s not going to happen.

That’s not the purpose of the competition, and I believe that kind of language assessment is a very personal thing, a complex thing and also a professional thing and since this is not a level-checking test, or an official English proficiency test, or an IELTS speaking exam or a level-placement interview that I might do at school, I’m not going to go through that process.

You’ve heard me explain my criteria for choosing candidates, and so that is all I am going to comment on.

I really want to encourage you to start developing your own sense of assessment, anyway.

And by assessment I mean judging the quality of someone’s English.

Let me refer again to this idea that it’s all about successfully communicating ideas and emotions. The ability to grab people’s attention, make connections with people, to communicate ideas and feelings in a clear and concise way.

This is the ultimate assessment of someone’s English. It’s the end result.

Also, I am not going to do error correction at this stage. Some of you will hear errors and you’ll want them to be corrected. I understand that.

I’m not doing error correction in these competition episodes, but I am planning to do it in a premium episode. I’ve been noting down certain language errors while listening in order to collate them and then I will record a language-oriented premium episode involving error corrections, but I will do it anonymously. I won’t name names. That’s just what I’ve decided to do and that is that. So, an anonymous error correction episode will arrive in the premium section after doing this competition.

So, from now onwards I would like you to turn down the volume on the “language judgement” part of your mind, and turn up the volume on the “community spirit” part. Let’s enjoy hearing from all these fellow LEPsters from around the world and look forward to hearing more from one of them in an upcoming conversation.

2. Round 2 – The voting round

This is where you finally get the chance to listen to those 16 recordings and then vote.

I’m going to play them all to you in just a few minutes.

How to choose

Simply this: Who do you want to hear more from?
Do you want to know more about a particular person?
Maybe they have hinted at a story that you’d like to hear.
Maybe they have insights into learning that you’d like to hear about.
Who would you like to hear talking to me in a full interview?

Remember – it isn’t about who has the best English per se, although this may be a factor.

It’s more about whose story you want to hear the most. Remember: Connection, not perfection. [Thanks “All Ears English Podcast” :) ]

Who is the most the most intriguing, the most interesting, the most likeable, the most engaging, the most sincere, the most insightful or just the most enjoyable person to listen to? Who has the most potential for a good conversation with me?

Tips

Prepare to make a note (mental note or written note) of the people you want to choose.
When you hear someone you might vote for, note down their name / nationality / other details.

Then go to the voting page and select the ones you noted. Yes I am saying “ones” and “people” because you will be able to vote for more than one person.

Voting rules

  • You can vote for up to 5 people
  • You can only submit your vote once and you can’t change it after you have clicked “Vote”, so be sure about your selection.
  • You won’t be able to see the results of the voting until the voting has closed.
  • The voting closes on Sunday 6 December at midnight CET.

3. Let’s listen to the 16 recordings (Finally!!)

Here are the 16 recordings for round 2. These are the people you can vote for.

I will say the person’s Name & Nationality or any other remarkable features, and then their recording.

I won’t make any other comments after them, because I don’t want to influence your decision. I will only say things to help you remember who you heard.

I am presenting them in alphabetical order by first name.

If you want to hear these recordings again, you can find them all on the page for this episode. Just go there [www.teacherluke.co.uk/wisbolep] and you can listen to them as many times as you like. You will find the audio and the voting form at the bottom of the page. You’ll need to scroll past the transcript I’m reading from.

Remember, if you sent a recording and you’re not here (that’s most of you) – please do not feel too disappointed. It’s quite possible that your recording was also fantastic – but, you know, I forced myself to pick 16. This is the way.

Let’s start.

*Play recordings – they’re all available at the bottom of this page, with the voting form*

One thing is clear from listening to these recordings

It is possible to improve your English to a really good level in adulthood, and you can do it in your own way.

4. VOTING IS NOW OPEN – Please vote for your favourites

What happens next?

When the voting is closed on SUNDAY 6 DECEMBER AT MIDNIGHT (CET), we will see who has the most votes.

If it’s a draw, I will cast the decisive vote.

The winner will be featured in a full episode. It’ll be a conversation between me and the winner.

I also plan to feature the two runners-up in an episode too (they’ll get half an episode each).

Reminder: If you want to listen to those 16 people again, you can find the individual recordings on the page for this episode (with the voting form)

Final words

Well done to everyone for taking part in this competition.

I want to urge you to also check out the other recordings “WISBOLEP ROUND 1 – 85 LEPSTERS STILL WORTHY OF YOUR ATTENTION” (video below) and enjoy the nice views in the video.

https://youtu.be/rsBttoN1UHA

Feel free to leave your comments in the comment section as usual.

For the 85 other LEPsters – I must say I am still curious about what they have to say and I think they could be very interesting to hear from. I have suggested that they record themselves and make the recording into a YouTube video which I can then share on the website. Perhaps if someone out there already has their own podcast or would like to start one they could consider interviewing some of the people who took part in this competition.

I will let you get in touch with each other in the comment section of this episode. Please feel free.

That’s it! Please vote, please listen to all the other recordings and please be excellent to each other!

I will speak to you again about WISBOLEP after 6 December, when the results are in!

Voting is now closed

688. Sean Connery

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I recorded an episode about Sean Connery, who died yesterday. I didn’t expect to get emotional, but I did (a bit). Here it is. Hope you like it.

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Episode Transcript & Notes

Hello listeners, 

Sean Connery died at the weekend. Sir Sean Connery as maybe I should call him. So here is an episode about Sean Connery, or at least an episode in which I ramble on about Sean Connery.

Just in case you don’t know – Sean Connery was an actor from Scotland who played James Bond (technically not the first, but he’s considered to be the first proper James Bond) and plenty of other roles in other films. Which ones?

Right, so hopefully you know now who I’m talking about.

Did you hear the news? Is this a big moment for you, or for people where you are? I don’t know how significant this is to you, although I know that some of you were definitely moved by the news and that you want me to talk about it. 

I’ll tell you about how I learned about his death yesterday, and I’ll give some of my personal thoughts and stuff in a minute.

Of course, it’s sad because we loved him in films and he’s gone now and it’s also strange whenever anyone dies because we can’t quite come to terms with the fact that someone who we knew is no longer in the world, they’re just gone now. It’s difficult to come to terms with that.

At times like this, when a public figure dies, I think we want to hear or read tributes to them, to revisit some of their finer moments, to appreciate them, maybe to re-evaluate their significance in the world, which may be the case with Sean Connery because to some extent he was quite divisive. 

I wasn’t planning to do this episode, because well, as you know, I’ve got my work cut out at the moment (I’ve got lots of work to do) with things like the WISBOLEP competition (still working on it), LEP Premium content (also working on it) and other upcoming episodes. 

I have another interview/conversation episode with one of my friends who you haven’t heard before, coming soon – probably in the next couple of days – here I am again, probably uploading too many episodes too close together… I hope you listen to them all.

But I digress. The point I was making was that when I heard the news of Sean Connery’s death I did feel sad (as I’ll describe in a minute) but I didn’t immediately think “Oh I must do an episode about this”  – the main reason being that although I used to enjoy watching Sean Connery in films, and I’ve always had fun imitating his voice, and people sometimes say my dad looks like him (my Japanese friend Moto was really struck by this when he met him once “Your dad looks like Sean Connery!” I think he was a bit intimidated) Despite those things, I don’t feel I really know enough to record a full episode on him – or at least I feel I don’t know enough about him to do the sort of tribute that you might expect. I mean, one filled with all the key facts about his life. A full retrospective of the man’s life and work. That kind of thing. I’m not really able to do that, in the time that I have. All I can do is just talk to you about what he meant to me personally. 

As I said, I’ve always enjoyed watching him in films (and by the way the James Bond films are not my favourite Sean Connery films) and I’ve always enjoyed having fun with his very characteristic voice, I was never a massive Sean Connery fan. 

Some of you out there listening are probably bigger fans of his than I am and you might know more details about his life than I do (and please feel free to add things in the comment section if you feel I have missed something significant) You may have read books about him and so on. I haven’t read those books, or seen all the documentaries about him, or watched all the interviews with him (but I have seen a few), but I will talk about him because he was a huge figure in popular culture, and he was British, of course. Although actually, I think he was Scottish, first and foremost. He was a very proud Scot and a vocal supporter of Scottish independence, so let’s say that while, technically, he was British (because Scotland is part of the UK) in his heart he considered himself to be Scottish first and foremost.

Also, another reason for me to do this episode is that I think quite a lot of you out there have been expecting me to talk about Sean Connery. I know this mainly from social media and comments on my website over the last 24 hours. I’ve had messages requesting an episode on Sean or messages from people saying that when they heard the news they immediately thought of me and expected an episode about him, which is interesting, because I suppose for many people I am your portal to British culture and you’ve heard me do my Sean Connery voice on this podcast quite a few times.  

Anyway, I think that when I get a few comments from people it’s usually just the tip of the iceberg and those few comments probably reflect the thoughts of many more of my ninja listeners who don’t get in touch with me.

So, I’m mainly doing this episode in response to the desire of my listeners to hear me talking about this. 

It’s going to go like this.

I’m going to give my personal thoughts about how I learned about his death and what went through my mind.

I’ll read from a BBC article about Sean Connery – just so I can cover some of the main facts about him, and perhaps read some quotes from public figures who have paid tribute to him in the last few days.

And finally I think it could be fun to consider his voice and do some impressions of him and tell a couple of jokes, because his voice was definitely one of the iconic things about him. 

So, once again, I will probably explain to you how to do a Sean Connery impression. We might listen to some samples of him speaking too, if I can find something appropriate.

My personal thoughts

How did I hear about it?

What was my response?

I posted a picture on Twitter which probably just confused everyone, I think. Let me explain.

BBC Article with Tributes

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54761824

Sean Connery on whether he was worried about being typecast

Jokes

What time does Sean Connery arrive at Wimbledon?

  • Tennish

Why does Sean Connery hate crabs?

  • Because they’re shellfish

What did Sean Connery say when a book fell on his head?

  • I can only blame my shelf.

687. WISBOLEP Problem / Polite Requests / An Inspiring Email / Fly Me To the Moon

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A rambling episode with some news about a problem I have with the WISBOLEP competition (ooh!), some tips on making polite requests, an inspiring email from a LEPster and a song on guitar at the end.

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Episode Transcript (95% complete)

Hello everyone,

How are you doing? 

This is a weird period of history in which we are living? I hope you’re getting on ok. Here in France the government has just put some new lockdown restrictions in place and we’re all trying to work out what they really mean. I don’t want to go on about covid on this podcast too much, except to say “hang in there everyone” and keep calm and carry on. Check out my episode from earlier this year which is all about language for talking about lockdown and dealing with lockdown, including the word lockdown, if you’re wondering what that is.

Here’s an episode in which I’m on my own, doing a bit of housekeeping – general podcast admin. I’m mainly going to talk about the WISBOLEP competition (as you can see from the title of the episode), but also I’m going to ramble about a few other things too including teaching you a bit of English – just some simple advice about making polite requests, also an inspiring message from a listener and maybe a song on the guitar at the end, we will see.

I’m publishing this episode hot on the heels of the last episode, which was my conversation with Christian from Canguro English (LEP686). Have you heard that? I only published it a few days ago and conventional podcasting wisdom says that you shouldn’t publish another episode so quickly after the last one, because the last one will sort of get ignored, lost, forgotten or sidelined as people won’t notice it and it won’t get as many listens as it should. 

I think it’s a good episode, so if you haven’t heard it – be sure to listen to episode 686 with Christian. There’s also a video version of it on YouTube. It’s had a great response with people saying generally positive things, which is nice. Some people are requesting more video content. My position on this is that most of my content will always be audio, because that’s what I do – I make audio content, but every now and then I’ll do video versions of episodes and stick them on YouTube as well. OK. So subscribe to LEP on YouTube to make sure you get notified when I publish a video episode. I’ll probably tell you on the podcast too.

Also the episode before last has had some really interesting comments on the website. That was the episode about bilingual children in which we heard Alex in Moscow and his daughter Alice. Very interesting to read the comments from LEPsters or LEPlanders who are also bringing up their kids to speak English. Go to the episode archive and find 685 and read the comments. It’s all interesting stuff. I will do more of those bilingual kids episodes at some point. It’s a bit hard to mentally keep track of everything. There are a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous – a lot strands in this old dude’s head, man.

WISBOLEP Problem

The deadline for sending in your entries was 15 October, so that’s long gone. One person is now freaking out.

The results aren’t ready yet or anything. You still have to vote for your favourites and all that – “how can we vote?” Steady on, the voting’s not ready yet either. All in good time. 

All the recordings are sitting there in my inbox and I haven’t had a proper chance to work on the next stage of the competition yet. Things take time around here, you know how it is. 

First of all I should say that it was great to get all the entries. I’ve managed to listen to almost all of them. I should say that it’s amazing to hear the voices of some of my listeners (some of them – obviously only a tiny portion of you sent in recordings because the vast majority of you are ninjas as we know, and that’s fine). It’s inspiring to hear little snippets of people’s stories of learning English, with the help of this podcast in many cases. That’s also quite flattering –  that’s not the point of it all of course – just to flatter me or something. The point was to encourage you to step out of your comfort zone a little bit and record something and send it in, to celebrate my audience a bit and also to just find a new guest with an interesting story to tell in an episode of the podcast. I want to say well done for everyone who plucked up the courage to record a sincere entry into the competition. Some of them are particularly inventive and… well, you will see.

It’s going to be very difficult to choose a winner, because there are quite a lot of really interesting people and I’m sure you are going to want to hear more from many of them. 

But the thing is, I have a bit of a problem. We have a bit of a problem with this competition. It’s a logistical issue. Logistical refers to the organisation of something complicated.

It’s not a major problem. It’s not like a Tom Cruise jump out of a plane to save-the-world Mission Impossible to problem or anything – no explosions. It’s quite a good problem really, but still, I’ve been scratching my head and wondering what to do about it.

What’s the problem Luke?

The problem is… I’ve had 100 entries – each one 2 minutes in length – that’s about 200 minutes in total, and that’s about 3 and a half hours if I play all the entries back to back without any pause or comment from me between them and without any introduction from me, and I will have to do some kind of introduction at the start, and it will also be necessary for me to say the names of each person again plus maybe one or two other things to help you remember them. 

So, 200 minutes or 3.5 hours, plus an introduction in which I explain the voting rules etc, and little comments from me –  that’s at least 4 hours of audio.

It’s too much, isn’t it? It’s too much audio for me to expect everyone to listen to. And I need everyone to listen to it all because I want to do some kind of fair voting process for this. Hmmm.

I like doing long episodes, but this goes beyond that, especially since I would like every single two-minute entry to be heard and you’ll need to remember which one or ones are your favourites in order to vote for them on my website.

Imagine a presidential election with 100 candidates, all presenting themselves to you one after the other. You’d never remember who they were, even if they were all extraordinary.

So this is the issue. Too many entries. It’s become a bit of a logistical nightmare.

It’s my fault. I take full responsibility of course. I set the 2-minute time limit for each recording because I thought you’d need that long to say something meaningful.

What did I expect though? For some reason I thought not many people would enter, but I don’t know why I thought that. I should have known that I’d get at least 100 entries! 

Anyway, what’s the problem? You might think.

Let’s go through the options I have ahead of me now and we’ll see.

Why am I telling you this? 

Transparency – I want everyone to know what’s going on, so that I don’t get loads of messages from people asking my why I’m doing it this way, and not that way and why didn’t you do this, and I thought you would do that, and I’m disappointed with this and why didn’t you play my recording, and I thought you’d play them all, and I was disappointed by the last Star Wars film and English is too complicated because the spelling and pronunciation are weird and there are too many accents and why can I understand you Luke but I don’t understand other native speakers and can you explain the Russian Joke and why why why and all that kind of stuff. 

To avoid confusion and questions, I want you to know the situation like I do.

Also I’m curious to see what you think and I would like you to tell me your thoughts because it can help me make the right decision. (although to be honest I think I’ve already made up my mind)

I’d like to have some input from you but ultimately, I do maintain supreme executive power, so I will still do what I personally think is best, but nevertheless, I am interested in your ideas and I want you to know my decision making process.

Some of you will think this is all unnecessary and that I’m overthinking it, but I disagree. I think it’s necessary and I’m applying the appropriate amount of thinking and talking time to this. So there. 

The main things we need to do are:

  • I want you, the audience, to be able to hear all the entries that have been sent to me (because I think people sent them to me with the understanding that they would be published for public scrutiny) and I want you to be able to vote for your favourites, rather than it just being a solo decision from me. 
  • I would like to give an introduction before playing all the entries, because there are things I need to say about the voting process and stuff like that. Also I would like to make one or two little comments after some or all of the entries, as well as repeating the names of the contestants. All those things will increase the time this will all take, of course – so we’re looking at 4hours plus in total.
  • Then, based on the voting by you the audience, I will interview the winner. There might be a couple of runners up too, we will see.
  • I want to do this in a way which is fair, and which gives everyone an equal chance (because I am committed to maintaining some democratic standards in this world!)

Options

Here are the different options which I’m considering. None of them are perfect, because of the whole “too many entries” issue. (by the way, saying “too many” does sound negative, but like I said before, this is quite a good problem in a sense. It’s a bit like having too much chocolate in your cupboard or something, or too much cake. Oh we’ve got too much cake! When and how will we eat it all? We can’t throw it away can we?) You see? Yes, you see. The cake metaphor is good. 

So, the options I’m considering. And I’ll say right now that I think I’m going to choose option 4. Anyway, here we go.

Option 1

I play all the entries (in alphabetical order, or chronological order) in one single epically long episode – probably about 4 hours long or more.

Problem: This is obviously far too long and just not a practical length for one single episode of the podcast. The chances are, people will not listen to the whole thing and most of the entries will not be heard and so the voting will be unfair.

Option 2

I play all the entries, but in a series of episodes (that all get uploaded on the same day). It would probably be 5 or 6 episodes → Introduction, WISBOLEP 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. 20 entries in each episode. Each episode is about 45 minutes long.

Problem: It’s more or less the same as option 1. Will people listen to all the entries? The people in parts 4 and 5 might not get as much attention as the ones in the first part. 

Also, I have to say that I have to be a bit careful about what I publish to my podcast feed.

Dropping 5 episodes of only competition entries into my podcast feed is not the greatest idea – and I say that as a podcaster and podcasters must be fairly careful about what they publish. I have to be honest, I think that the majority of my audience aren’t that invested in the competition and the entries. 

I have a survey on my website asking people to vote for their favourite types of episode (find it in the CONTANT section) and this kind of episode – competition entries from listeners – is actually the least popular type of episode that I do. I like doing them, but I have to make sure I do it right. I think the reason this type of episode got low votes in my survey is because the last time I did this (YEP competition) I published all the entries from round 1 (8 episodes in total, all in a row) and it probably wasn’t what a lot of people wanted in their podcast feed. I shouldn’t really do that again.

Option 3

I choose what I think are the best entries and create a shortlist of something like 20 entries, and play them in one episode, and let people vote on just those 20.

Problem: 80 people’s entries just get rejected and never get played or published in any way, which is a pity and I think that would disappoint about 80 people who took the time to record something thinking that it would appear on LEP. I don’t think I ever said that all the entries were guaranteed to be played on the podcast, but I may have given that impression.

This would essentially solve the main problem of there being too many entries, but I don’t really want to just just chuck 80 recordings in the bin. Those people recorded them expecting them to be heard by more than just me.

Option 4

I create two rounds of voting. 

The first round is done on the website only, meaning that all the entries are posted on my website but not played in an episode of the podcast.

That way, the people who really want to listen to all the entries and vote for them, can do it by going to the website and listening there. I would probably post all the audio as an unlisted YouTube video because I can create time stamps for each entry, making it easier for you to find them and hear them.

So, the episodes would all be available for listening on the website (so they are made publically available) and people can vote for their favourites there. The winners of the first round could be decided by a combination of votes from listeners and my own choices.

Round 2 would be something like the most popular 20 entries from round 1 and all of them would be played in an episode of the podcast.

This would make it much easier for the whole audience to vote.

The winner of round 2 would be interviewed on the podcast.

It might be possible for some runners up to be featured too.

So, which option do you prefer? 

To be honest, I’m leaning towards option 4. I think I’m going to choose option 4 but I’d also like to run it by you to see what you all think.

The chances are, you’ll all have different opinions and different advice, which is fine.

I get the final say and you’ll just have to trust me on that.

Let me just recap

  • Option 1 – one mammoth 4 hour episode with all the entries. No.
  • Option 2 – one mammoth 5-part WISBOLEP series. I don’t fancy it.
  • Option 3 – I choose the top 20 entries and publish them, and just bin the rest, never to be heard by the public.
  • Option 4 – Put all the entries on the website and those people who want to listen to every single one, can do it, and they can vote too.The most popular 20 (let’s say) will then be published in a single WISBOLEP episode for the second round of voting. The selection process will be based on a combination of the listener voting and my own judgement (which will probably be more or less the same I expect).

Again, some of you might say I’m overthinking this whole thing. But I’m just trying to do it properly and fairly.

I think I’m going to choose option 4, but as I said, let me know your thoughts. 

You might have an idea for an option 5 for example, so feel free to share that. 

But do bear in mind that I also have to limit the time and cost that is involved on my side for this.

For example, if your idea for Option 5 could be for me to do a YouTube live stream in which I play all the entries one by one, with some comments from me… well, that could be fun, but it would also mean me live streaming on YouTube for a lot more than 4 hours probably, and it’s rare that I ever get 4 free consecutive hours in my life these days! So, that would just not be practical from my side. [Do it at night!] No, sorry. I need my beauty sleep.

My name is Luke not Luck / look / Mr Luke / luke (lower case L) or Luke’s

I’ve been doing this for 11.5 years, nearly 700 episodes (a lot more in fact) and I’m still talking about how to spell my name (I remember saying this in episode 1 of the podcast).

People often spell my name Luck → but maybe it’s autocorrect!

Proofread your emails and comments before you send them! (advice for us all)

So this whole “Luck English Postcard” thing might just be a conspiracy by computers and phones that are “just trying to make the world a better place” by helping us with our spelling (and yes, “postcard” is often what people type when they mean podcast – maybe that’s because they think the word is postcard – it is the sort of word people learn in lower-level English classes, or it’s because your computer doesn’t have very good English and it’s “helpfully” autocorrecting podcast to postcard. I don’t know.)

Having said that, I remember many many times when I was actually called Luck, look, ruku or rook or whatever by learners from around the world that I have met, but again that’s probably because it’s hard to pronounce Luke, or people don’t realise that Luke is a name and they think my name is Luck. 

For example, if I was learning Chinese or Russian or any other language with words that look different to English I am sure I would make similar errors and worse probably. I do it in French. 

Basically, what I’m saying is I forgive you. But please do remember to proofread your emails and comments. ;)

Making Polite Requests

Another language point here with reference to people getting in touch with me: making requests.

People often request certain things from me. Like for example they’re very keen to hear me talk about a certain topic.

  • Luke, make an episode about Peaky Blinders.
  • Luke, do more videos.
  • Luke, publish an episode about Ricky Gervais.

Honestly, when I read that, probably in the queue at the supermarket or something, my first reaction is “no”. “No-one tells me what to do! … well, except maybe my daughter, and my wife, and my boss at work, and the government, and.. well ok fine, some people tell me what to do, but you get the point.”

Even though I would quite like to do an episode about Peaky Blinders, or Ricky Gervais and I like doing videos when I can. 

My first, stressed out, overloaded mind, trying to not catch COVID reaction is “no – don’t tell me what to do!”

I think this is just because of the way the request has been presented to me.

In most cases, when people request things from me, I am sure they are being very well-meaning and there is no malice behind it at all, quite the opposite. They’re showing their enthusiasm and it’s motivated by positive feelings. They like the podcast and would love to hear something about Peaky Blinders or whatever it is.

What I’m saying is, think about how you word your requests. 

Think of the difference between a request and an order (or an imperative).

Requests are polite (they should be), orders are not really polite. Orders are what the police do, for example. “Get in the back of the van!” 

I could get into the fine details and all the linguistic specifics, but this is not LEP Premium, so let’s just keep it simple.

Order / imperative

Make an episode about Ricky Gervais.

Even your boss at work doesn’t use imperatives.

“Write this report and send it to me by 5pm Friday, and also come in to work on Sunday, we need you.” –> if you work in a horrible place with a boss who doesn’t care about your feelings even a little bit.

Usually bosses will at least sugarcoat their requests a little bit, to help the medicine go down.

“If you could wrap up this report and ping it to me by end of play on Friday, that would be great, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to come in on Sunday – there’s nothing we can do about it – I’ll see if I can get you a day off later in the year maybe.”

Request

Let’s consider how to turn an imperative into a simple and polite request.

Luke, make a new video with Amber and Paul.

You could add a “please” to that, because we all know that adding please makes it more polite, right? 

Luke, please make a new video with Amber and Paul.

That’s better, but adding please to an order isn’t enough. It is still an order, and it just sounds like you are a rich person giving commands to a member of staff or something. 

Also, adding thanks at the end makes it sound a bit dismissive and a little bit rude even. 

Luke, please reunite the Beatles on the podcast. Thanks.

Saying thanks for something before it’s been done, I think, sounds a bit pushy. It’s like assuming it’s going to be done.

We sometimes write “Thanks in advance” at the end of an email with a request, but it can still come across as a bit pushy. [Thinks: I need to do an online course about writing emails…]

The issue is with the structure. Any imperative structure still sounds quite rude even if you add lots of stuff at the start or end, because it is still an imperative. It’s still an order.

Luke, please consider making an episode about James Bond. [good, you’ve added “please consider” – a nice bit of hedging but you’re still ordering me to do it.]

Luke, if you have time, please consider making an episode about James Bond. [“If you have time” is a thoughtful thing to add, but again this is still an order.]

Both those things are better, but this is still not what I’m looking for.

What are you looking for Luke?

You need to make your request into a question. To cut a long story short I just recommend that you add “Could you” at the start and “please” at the end. That’s it. That’s probably enough, probably. Don’t forget the question mark.

Luke, could you make an episode about Ricky Gervais please? 

This is much better. It just comes across as much more polite and nice and I don’t feel like I’m being ordered to do something. I’m more willing to have an instantly positive response to that.

Even better would be a bit more hedging (adding things before or after the main statement), just to show more respect. 

You don’t have to go too far. 

Luke, your podcast is a work of genius unrivalled in all forms of art, culture and human endeavor, and I am certain that in your infinite wisdom have you have considered all possible topics for an episode of your esteemed podcast. Having said that, and I pose this most humble of requests to you with the deepest level of respect, sir, would it be at all possible if you could consider spending even a tiny speck of your most valuable time on the consideration of an episode devoted to the subject of Richard Gervais. I am certain that you would bring new insights and depth to this topic, and that all other commentary on it would pale in comparison to the profound work that you would undoubtedly produce.

That’s obviously too much.

But you could do this:

Hi Luke, thanks for your episodes. I particularly enjoy the ones about comedy, especially the one you did about Karl Pilkington. Could you do an episode about Ricky Gervais at some point, please? I’d really like to hear your thoughts on his stand up and TV shows. Don’t know if you’ve already considered that, but it would be really interesting to hear your thoughts.

Or, more simply – Luke, could you do an episode about Ricky Gervais please? 

I know online culture is to just put things in the simplest and quickest way possible, but let’s not abandon the pragmatics of politeness in the process.

This is not just me by the way – I’m not just ultrasensitive or anything – this is a cultural thing and I think it’s true across the English speaking world. 

Some of you might think that my comments here are waaaay too much and that it’s completely mad, unnecessary and over-sensitive to phrase your requests like this, but if you want my professional opinion I’d say → this is the right way to do it.

And that’s it. 

Just to recap. If you are requesting something from me, just add “Could you…” at the start and “please?” at the end. Nice one.

Inspiring message from Daniel ER on Facebook

Dear luke, [actually it should be Luke with a captal L :) ]

I´m not sure whether you will have time to read this comment but here it goes anyway.

Three years ago, I got a ticket to Australia. With no English at all, I was determined to have an amazing adventure, live in another country, and obviously, learn English.

To be honest, it was really hard at the beginning. I had to play music in the street to earn some cash and I felt bad when I couldn´t say what I thought to the kind people of Australia.

Six months went by like nothing so I grabbed my backpack and accordion and took a road trip towards the north of Australia (Queensland).

I could [was able to] get a job in a resort as maintenance and although I [‘ve] gotta say that Australian English “is a thing”, all of them helped with my English, they were really patient with me.

Most of the time I was sad: People speak too fast, where is that accent from? What do you mean by “smoko” mate? It was then when I found your podcast. I had lots of time to listen to Spotify while I was fixing something at the resort so I took advantage of that. This really helped me a lot, I couldn´t be more grateful. I won´t forget episode 297 called “be positive” as I listened to it just on time, just when I was feeling that this fight wasn´t worth it.

Now, being fully aware that my English is not the best one, it is at least functional and that´s the point of all this, isn´t it? We must keep improving but at the end of the day you should be nicer to yourself, I mean that we have to recognize the achievements done so far.

I am back in my country (Chile) and I could [was able to] get an amazing job in which I speak English all day long, and you don´t know how awesome that is to me.

I honestly believe that maybe you are not fully aware of what do you actually do… you help people to achieve their dreams so be proud of all your efforts because we – your listeners- will be eternally grateful.

If someone out there is reading this comment and you are feeling frustrated and sad, just keep going! You can do this, it is not impossible and you have everything you need to learn this beautiful language. The key, in my opinion, you must be willing to go through the tough and uncomfortable moments that are on this path. You will remember them since they are the ones that teach us most. (quite sure I wrote that badly hahaha)

Thanks a lot for everything and I´ll certainly be listening to the podcast.

A huge hug from Chile.

Daniel — in Santiago, Chile.

www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo

I’m working on Premium content which will arrive soon. This will be audio premium episodes and hopefully some pronunciation videos too. 

SONG – Fly me to the moon

Lyrics & Guitar Chords

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/frank-sinatra/fly-me-to-the-moon-chords-335196

681. New Competition: Why I Should Be On LEP (WISBOLEP) / Story: The First Time I Said F*ck

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Announcing a new LEP competition which everyone is welcome to enter, plus an anecdote about the first time I said a rude word in front of my parents. Send your competition entries to podcastcomp@gmail.com

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LEP is brought to you by LEP Premium. This is how I pay for this podcast, along with donations from kind philanthropic listeners using the PAYPAL DONATE BUTTONS. LEP Premium though is my paid subscription service which includes loads of audio and video content to help develop your grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. You can get episodes in the LEP App or online, with PDFs, tests and pronunciation drills. For all the information you need go to www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo 

Notes & Transcriptions for #681

Hello everyone! In this episode I’m going to tell you about a new competition for LEP, which you can enter, and then I’m going to tell you a true story of something that happened to me when I was a child. In fact, the title of the story is “The First Time I Said F*ck”. I’m reluctant to blurt out the F word so early in the episode, but anyway, the story is about the first time I swore in front of my parents, and it’s a story I wrote for doing stand up comedy on stage, but I’m going to read it out on the podcast today.

But first, what about this new…

Competition

I’ve decided to launch a new competition and I’m going to tell you all about it in this episode.

I hope you feel welcome to take part. Everyone is invited to enter this competition, and that includes you, so I hope you consider taking part this time.

I mentioned this in the last episode and got a number of positive responses from people saying things like “I really hope you do the competition!” and so on.

Again, I want to say thanks to a listener called Vadim for prompting me to do this. 

It’s been ages since the last competition (the last one concluded with episode 407 – the interview with Kristina from Russia) and I sort of wasn’t planning to do a new one, but then Vadim sent me this email and I just thought “OK, why not!?”

Here is Vadim’s message (with some error correction).

There are a few errors in here I’m afraid, Vadim. I’m going to correct those errors as I go along, hope you don’t mind.

New Competition?

Vadim

Hello, Luke!

I have an idea for new competition! It’s been awhile, since you have launched one.

I have an idea for a new competition. It’s been a while since you launched one.

So, an idea is very simple. It will be called WSIBOLEP, or Why Should I Be On Luke’s English Podcast [Actually, I’ll call it WISBOLEP – Why I should be on LEP]. 

So, the idea is very simple. It will be called WSIBOLEP

All you need, it’s just ask your listeners to record a little voice message, telling Why you MUST interview them on your Podcast. 

All you need to do is just ask your listeners to record a little voice message saying why you must interview them on your podcast.

Because I believe that you have a lot of interesting people listening to you. Russian oligarchs, pornstars, ex-nazis hiding in Argentina, bobsleigh world champions, writers, celebrities, presidents, royal family members etc, etc.

And then your listeners will vote for the person who has a story that they want to listen to in more detail.

What do you think about it? I believe that it will be a good way to encourage people to do a bit of a practice and stop being a ninjas [being ninjas]. And those who don’t want to take part in this competition can just have a fun [just have fun], listening to exciting intriguing stories from all around the world.

Well, I actually think this is a fine idea and I’m curious to see what happens. 

Let’s do another competition on LEP.

The prize this time – being interviewed in a full episode. I hope you consider that to be a prize!

WISBOLEP (Why I should be on LEP)

So let me summarise the plan for this competition.

You have to:

  • Record up to 2 minutes of audio explaining why you should be interviewed on LEP, then send it to me at podcastcomp@gmail.com (only)
  • Listeners will hear all of the clips and vote for the person they want to hear, then I’ll interview the winner.
  • Remember: You are talking to the listeners, not to me. 
  • You can use a script, or no script, but I encourage you to not use a script, and instead make some notes and do some improvising too. If you do read from a script, make an effort to make it sound natural, rather than robotic.

Also, if you’re wondering how to record – it’s pretty easy these days. You could make a voice recording on your phone and send it to podcastcomp@gmail.com or you could use Quicktime on a Mac or the equivalent on a PC and then email it to podcastcomp@gmail.com or you could use SpeakPipe.com – just go to speakpipe, record a message, put your name on it, then send the link to podcastcomp@gmail.com

What am I going to say?

Now, you might be thinking, “what am I going to say?”

Well, first, remember that you’re trying to persuade the audience that you should be on the podcast, so think of some reasons you should be on, and not just because you really want to (although that’s ok too).

Basically, you’re saying “Hi listeners, Hi Luke. Thanks for this opportunity, and this is why I think I should be on LEP…”

Then you’d need to explain why you should be on LEP (obviously).

Remember, you have UP TO 2 minutes. This means that you don’t have to do 2 minutes. It could be 1 minute if you like, but no more than 2 minutes. 

2 minutes is your maximum allotted time. 

You might be thinking “Just two minutes?? That’s not very long.” 

I’ve chosen 2 minutes because I need to keep this manageable! I have no idea how many people will send me entries to this competition, but since I’m going to be playing the audio recordings on the podcast, I need to limit how long they are, otherwise I’ll have too much audio. So, 2 minutes MAX, please. If your recording is over two minutes, it might not be entered into the competition.

Here are some ideas of why you should be on LEP.

Ideas

  • Maybe you have an interesting story to tell – either related to English, to the podcast, or to neither of these things! Do you have something interesting you could share with us? Some kind of story, perhaps related to you or someone else?
  • Maybe you want to talk about how you learn or have learned English, and give some advice.
  • Perhaps you’ve had some success with a particular technique that you could share with the listeners. 
  • Perhaps you have experienced progress in some way, and you could share that. 
  • Perhaps you discovered the podcast in a special way. 
  • Perhaps the podcast has been a way for you to connect with other people. 
  • Perhaps you met your partner because of LEP, or got a job because of LEP.
  • Maybe you have an interesting story or experience relating to English that you can share.
  • Perhaps you have a cross-cultural experience you could talk about.
  • Maybe you are involved in something interesting that you think people will want to know about.
  • Perhaps you are particularly funny, or have something to offer to the audience.
  • Or maybe you’re just up for a proper conversation with me, on the podcast!
  • And maybe you just have something original to say.

In any case, prepare two minutes – with or without a script – in which you convince the audience that you should be picked for a feature length episode of LEP. 

Then record it and send it to me! And then maybe you will be on LEP.

This competition is open to everyone. Anyone and everyone can take part, regardless of your level of English. 

This is Why I Should Be On LEP – WISBOLEP

I expect the rules this time might limit the number of participants, because some people will be too shy. But I still hope that people send me recordings! 

I expect there will be fewer entries than before, but hopefully I’ll still get some people! 

So, if you have something to offer the audience, get in touch and try to persuade everyone to pick you for LEP!!

In terms of level of English, as I said – there are no rules at all. 

You can have a low level, you can have a high level. 

It’s not about who has the best English. 

It’s more about who would be the most interesting and engaging guest, not just because of their level of English. 

DEADLINE

15 October. That’s your last chance. Midnight on 15 October 2020. [Previously the date was 31 October, but I have changed it]

As I said, I’ll probably get fewer people sending me recordings this time, but we’ll see – I often underestimate this kind of thing. 

Last time I had over 100 recordings which was great, but obviously that was a ton of preparation work for me – downloading all the recordings, preparing them, balancing out the sound levels of each one, making them into podcast episodes, dealing with the voting and counting etc. Quite a lot of work as you can imagine! I don’t mind of course, I liked hearing from everyone, but it messed with my workflow quite a lot!

But do send me your recording, especially if you have something interesting to say to the audience. 

When I’ve received all the recordings, I’ll edit them together, play them on the podcast and let you vote for the one you want.

Then I’ll arrange an interview with that person, and Bob’s your uncle.

So there you go! That is the new competition – WISBOLEP – Why I Should Be On LEP.

  • 2 minutes max
  • Persuade the audience to choose you for a full-length interview
  • Send your recordings to podcastcomp@gmail.com
  • Competition closes at midnight 15 October 2020.

I hope you take part even if you’re not completely sure. 

Go to the page for this episode on my website to read the rules and the details again if you like. Teacherluke.co.uk then click EPISODES and this is episode 681.

Feel free to ask questions in the comment section.

———

Premium LEPsters, I just wanted to remind you that P24 is drawing to a close. We’ve been through my massive list of homophones and expanded your vocab a bit in the process, now there are just two episodes left and they’re the ones that feature the jokes (not just crap ones made up by me). So P24 parts 11 and 12 are in the pipeline and will be coming to your Premium subscription soon.

To get the premium episodes, download the LEP App on your phone to listen to the episodes, or listen online. For all the info you need, go to www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo

675. An Unplanned Pre-Holiday Ramble (July 2020)

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This episode is unedited and contains all my pauses, mistakes and thoughts while I attempt to talk about what’s coming up on LEP, my recent appearances on other people’s podcasts, comments and emails of the week and a couple of songs on the guitar.

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Luke on Other People’s Podcasts

The Real English Conversations podcast with Amy Whitney

Can you learn English without studying grammar?

Listen here

https://realenglishconversations.com/english-lessons-learning-tips/

Instant Feedback podcast with Markus Keeley

Talking to comedian Markus Keeley from Northern Ireland about identity, accents and a test of my knowledge of the Ulster Scots dialect of English.

https://instant-feedback.pinecast.co/episode/ffccfed122c9438c/32-luke-thompson

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Emails / Comments of the Week

An Amazing Beatle-inspired email from Elma

What’s your name? Elma

Do you have any other comments or feedback?: “Please please me” and read this email!

Dear Luke
„Because“ I don‘t know if I deleted my first email or if I sent it „Across the universe“ to the other Luke, I decided to write another special one „ From me to you“ „ With a little help from my friends“! I‘ve been listening to your Podcast since February and „Do you want to know a secret“? The „Chains“ are broken, „I‘ve got a feeling“ for the English language and my listening skills are „Getting better“ and better all the time. I listen to LEP „Here, there and everywhere“ „Eight days a week“!Don‘t „Ask me why“ I discovered it so late. With LEP „In my life“ „I feel fine“ every day, especially in these difficult times.
„Your mother should know“, that she has an amazing, kind, honest, funny and creative son (her two „Boys“ are so special) and an amazing family!
I want to tell you, that LEP is a great „Help“ for English learners! „Yes, it is“! I hope, „It won‘t be long“, till my English is as good as I would like it to be. „Don‘t let me down“ and please keep going in „What you‘re doing“!
I send „All my loving“ to you and your family especially your sweet little „Girl“. I wonder if her name is „Michelle“;) Stay healthy, take care and if it is too much loving at „The end“ because we don’t know each other I just say
„Good night“!
Greetings from Elma

PS. :) I hope, this is not a grammar disaster!! It is not my fault, my friends from Liddypool whispered the words in my ear!;)

Luke’s Reply:

I am the Eng-man! Goo-goo-ga-joob!

Hi Elma,

I love getting emails like this “Any Time At All” because it makes me feel like it’s my “Birthday” or “Something”. I’m “Flying”! I really “Dig It”. “Every Little Thing” in that email is impressive!

Would you mind if I read out the email on the podcast at some point? I’d like to share this with my listeners. I won’t reveal your email address, and If you prefer I can keep your name anonymous, or not – it’s up to you. Some of my listeners don’t want their name to be read out on the podcast for some reason.

Anyway, I should probably “Get Back” to my wife and daughter because “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party” we are having together this Sunday afternoon.

So, let me say again, “Thank You Girl” for sending your “Words of Love” about my podcast.

More episodes are coming soon, and when you want to listen to something in English, “You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)”.

All the best!

Luke

Another comment of the week from Victoria

This appeared under episode 674 about driving insurance claims and car crashes.

I did some corrections and edits while reading the comment on the podcast. This version is how the comment was originally written.

Really enjoyed this episode! And you singing at the end of episodes is like the cherry on the cake!
And as for the topic of the episode… I’ve never been in a car crash myself, though, Ihave a story to tell.
It happened about 6 years ago when I was in my second year in college.
It was a few minutes after a class started when my friend – Lena – stormed into a classroom and slumped into a chair in front of me. Her winter coat was slightly dirty, her hair was a bit of a mess and her hands were trembling while she was fishing out her textbook and other stuff. Lena is a type of person who always is in a rush and bumps into something. And so knowing that, I didn’t ask her what happened right away. However, as time went on, I noticed that she was rubbing a side of her body and occasionally her knees. My other friend who was sitting right next to me noticed that, too. When we asked Lena what’s wrong she said that a car hit her just a few minutes ago. To say that we were gobsmacked would be an understatement… Her tone of voice was casual and it seemed that she didn’t give much attention to the whole situation. We asked her how she feels and she said that she feels a bit dizzy. My friend and I told her to go to a nurse. But Lena refused and carried on writing in her notebook. We tried several times convince her to go to a nurse but she didn’t want to hear us out, apparently. All this time Lena didn’t stop rubbing some spots on her body… When it was time for a short break we noticed that she was paler than usual. Though, she smiled and chatted with us. She told us that when she was in the middle of a zebra crossing a traffic light changed to red all of a sudden. It was supposed to blink green a few seconds before going red. This traffic light was known for its acting up. She started running towards the other side of a road but was hit by a car. Lena was a lightweight girl. The next thing she registered was that she was laying on a bonnet of that car. Apparently, a driver of the car started pulling off without looking at a zebra crossing so they didn’t notice a rushing pedestrian. Lena hopped off the hood of the car and headed over to a college building. To be honest, I don’t really remember whether the driver got out of the car and offered some help or not. After Lena told us this story she lifted up her sweater slightly and we saw a few forming bruises. Shortly after that she said that she feels worse. In the end, she went to a nurse and then was sent home.
She didn’t show up at classes a few weeks after the incident. She got a concussion.

————-

Song Lyrics

For No One by The Beatles (Paul McCartney was the main writer) 1966

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beatles/fornoone.html

Here, There & Everywhere by The Beatles (also mainly by Paul McCartney) 1966

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beatles/herethereandeverywhere.html

The only time John Lennon paid Paul McCartney a compliment (the only time he told Paul he liked one of his songs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hho-TIY1L2w

Thanks for listening! Premium content is coming soon, and hopefully some free episodes before I go on holiday in August.

668. LEP LIVE! Ask Me Anything / Hang Out With Luke (AUDIO VERSION)

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Listen to the audio version of the recent LEP Live Stream on YouTube including an audience Q&A, learning English tips, some crap ‘Dad Jokes’ and 3 songs on the guitar.

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Intro Transcript

Hello dear listeners, how are you? I hope that you are well, wherever you are in the world, whatever you are doing, whatever situation you currently find yourself in at this moment in time.

Because we do often just find ourselves in situations, don’t we? I do, anyway. Oh, I’m living in France, and I’m married and I have a daughter now… wow, how did that happen? Now I’m in a French bakery ordering a baguette. Now I’m walking down the street with the baguette under my arm and I’m stopping to say “Bonjour” to a shop owner that I am on speaking terms with. Not something I really planned to be doing a few years ago before I moved here. That’s just life, isn’t it? Wwe just find ourselves in different situations, unless of course your life only contains moments which you have prepared, expected, planned for and constructed. In which case, congratulations. How did you manage that?

And then last Wednesday I found myself sitting in front of my computer about to start live streaming on YouTube, the tube of you – a tube full of you. I was about to start talking into a camera to who knows how many people, to talk about who knows what. I did it. It went fine, I had lots of fun, it was cool to talk so directly to my listeners (or viewers as they were on Wednesday) – maybe you were there – if you were, then hello! I hope you enjoyed it too… and now, in this episode in fact you can listen to the audio of that recent live stream I did on YouTube. That’s what this episode is. 

Obviously, this was a video live stream and I was talking to viewers who could see me and send messages and questions to me via the chat and I was responding to those messages and questions during the live stream and because this was a video live stream, some of this might come across a little bit weirdly in the audio version because you’ll be missing certain visual clues like the expressions on my face, body language, objects I’m showing you on the screen, the text in the chat and so on, but if you prefer to consume your LEP content with your ears rather than your eyes, then here is the audio track of the live stream for your listening pleasure, and I hope it is pleasant to listen to, even if it is a bit different to a normal audio episode.

The experience of doing YouTube lives is a bit odd for me because it’s hard to do anything other than respond to the comments coming in from the chat, which is different to the way I usually record audio episodes, because normally I get to prepare myself more in advance and I know that people aren’t watching me, and it’s not live so I can edit afterwards, in case I say something that, on reflction, I probably shouldn’t say, and that sort of thing. This means that doing live videos is a bit intense, it’s quite hard to think straight and I found myself saying stuff off the top of my head that I might not have said if I had had time to really think about it. But I did find it fun. It’s just a bit different and takes some getting used to. 

You’ll hear me jump from one topic to the next quite quickly. Some of the questions that came in were quite serious, and others were a bit more silly. Also, I sang 3 songs. You can find links to the lyrics to those songs on the page for this episode on my website. There are some crap jokes and In terms of the other stuff it’s a mix of questions related to learning English, some fairly personal questions, slightly bizarre questions and some funny questions.

Anyway, I will let you discover it for yourself. If you haven’t seen the video and would like to, you’ll see the video embedded on the page for this episode on my website. Also you can see it on my YouTube channel (search for Luke’s English Podcast on YouTube – and subscribe / hit the bell icon to get notified if I do more live streams in the future).

If you watch it on my youtube channel you’ll be able to watch the live comment feed as well, so you can see the comments I was reading at the time. I might upload the video to the LEP App as well, but it’s a large file and so it would be a bit costly for me to do so (I get a certain amount of uploading data per month).

Anyway, enough rambling. I’ll now let you listen to the audio from the slightly chaotic but fun YouTube live stream from last Wednesday, 10 June 2020. I’ll speak to you a bit on the other side of this recording.

_____________

Song Lyrics & Chords

Walk On By (Dionne Warwick)
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/dionne-warwick/walk-on-by-chords-848867

Piggy In The Middle (The Rutles)
https://genius.com/The-rutles-piggy-in-the-middle-lyrics

I’m Looking Through you (The Beatles)
https://genius.com/The-beatles-im-looking-through-you-lyrics

_____________

Ending Transcript

Again, to actually watch that video, go to my youtube channel. You’ll also find various other videos there, including last year’s YouTube live for episode 600, plus some videos of me recording a few other episodes from the archive, including a couple of episodes with Amber & Paul and more…

I had fun with this but, to be honest (and don’t tell YouTube) I still prefer doing normal audio episodes of the podcast. This is what I do. I make audio podcasts. I’ll do more YouTube stuff and live streams in the future, but I’m still going to focus my main energy on these audio episodes. I love doing audio content.

If you’re wondering when the next YouTube live will be. Honestly, I don’t know yet. I might even just randomly go live like I did the week before. 

Anyway, if I do another proper live stream I will let you know in advance.

Coming up on the podcast I have some more interview episodes, plus some more episodes with funny stuff like some comedy, plus some more specific content about learning English and plenty of other things.

Thank you to those of you who have sent me messages of encouragement on social media, on my website and by email. It’s great to get your messages, especially when they are basically first hand accounts of how regularly listening to my content has helped with your English. That’s really encouraging. I am always very happy to find out that people enjoy the podcast, but I am especially pleased when people tell me that it has made a genuine difference to their English. I actually find that I am becoming more and more convinced of the value of podcasting for people’s English, so that this is probably the most rewarding teaching experience I have – more rewarding than classroom teaching in many ways.

Anyway, the point is – thank you for your messages and I apologise if I haven’t got back to all of you.

Also, thank you sincerely for donations. You are keeping the project alive.

And thank you to my premium subscribers. I hope you’ve been enjoying the premium content, including P23 which I uploaded recently. I’ve had some great comments about the pronunciation drills in particular recently, proving to me that I am doing the right thing and so I will keep pushing on with that kind of content, so stay tuned for more premium content coming soon, with specific language teaching from me to you.

OK, enough rambling! Thank you for listening and for being a stakeholder in LEP.

Until next time, good bye bye bye bye bye!


658. [2/2] Why do Brits sing with American accents?

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This is part 2 of a double episode exploring the question of why British people often change their accent when they sing. This episode contains more examples, including some (dodgy) singing from me in order to hear how it sounds when different songs are sung in different accents. Notes, lyrics and transcriptions available on the page below.

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Notes & Transcriptions

Introduction

Hello, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you’re doing ok out there in podcastland during this difficult period.

It’s necessary to say that isn’t it these days. You have to acknowledge the fact that everyone’s struggling, or you have to explain that things are perhaps not happening normally because of the coronavirus and there are various ways of saying it – both informal and formal, perhaps in a work email or something. I saw something on Twitter which made me laugh and I retweeted it. If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen that. My Twitter handle is @EnglishPodcast by the way. So the thing I saw on Twitter was just a little meme about how in normal English we say “because of the coronavirus” but in  formal writing (like in a work email) we have to dress that up in more fancy language, like “due to the ongoing situation regarding covid-19”.

So I hope that you are not having too much of a bad time because of the coronavirus, or perhaps I should say “I trust that you are managing to maintain your working routines effectively in the context of the current situation regarding covid-19.” 

This is episode 658 and it’s part 2 of a double episode. This is part 2. Don’t listen to this, until you’ve heard part 1. Seems obvious, doesn’t it, but I just want to make it clear. Part 1 contains loads of context and details which I think you should hear before listening to this.

In part 1 I started answering a question from a listener, and the question is “Why do British people sound American when they sing?” It’s actually a bit complicated. It’s all about the conventions of modern pop music which has its roots in the USA. But there are also plenty of examples of British singers singing in British accents. It’s a mix of language, identity, music and phonology. In part 1 I answer the question in some detail and also point out some features of what I’m calling the American Singing Accent, including things like the way certain words which I pronounce with diphthongs (that’s double vowel sounds) become ‘flattened’ to single long vowel sounds, like in the words I, find, time, mine in the line “I need to find my time to get what’s mine”.

So let’s continue and in this part, which is part 2 I’m going to continue to explore this whole area by singing some songs in different accents and by listening to some samples of music. I hope you enjoy it and find it interesting. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comment section or perhaps links to YouTube videos with other examples that you can think of – examples of British artists singing with American accents, or perhaps British artists singing with British accents, or artists from anywhere else for that matter, singing in any other accent. It’s not just British and American of course, there are so many other accents that you might hear in English language songs. Reggae music from Jamaica for example is usually sung with a Jamaican accent of course.

Anyway, let’s carry on with part 2 and here we go…

Singing songs in different accents

I want to experiment with this by singing some well-known songs in either an American accent (The American Singing Accent as defined above) or a British accent (again, which one? Probably my own standard British RP but also I might try some cockney or maybe Liverpool or something).

Brits singing with American accents

What happens when you sing certain American songs in a British accent (let’s be more specific, let’s say my British RP)

If you sing some songs in a British accent they usually sound weird and wrong. You might disagree, because you might have a soft spot for British accents (and in fact more recently there have been some very successful artists who seem to sing in British RP as a stylistic choice) but I think overall, most people would think it sounded wrong, like my previous example with “Shallow”.

My Girl by The Temptations

Tell the story (briefly) of someone who sang “My girl” at a party once. It was ridiculous.

I’m now going to sing the songs in their normal American voice, then in a British accent.

“My Girl, talking about, my girl!”

Lyrics: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-temptations/my-girl-chords-86366

Take it Easy by Eagles

Eagles’ “Take it Easy” in a British accent (especially the 2nd verse)

Lyrics: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/eagles/take-it-easy-chords-14322

Hit me Baby One More Time by Britney Spears

Lyrics: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/britney-spears/baby-one-more-time-chords-279810

Under The Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers

Lyrics: https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/red-hot-chili-peppers/under-the-bridge-chords-44981

Songs by British artists sung in an American accent

I could pick almost any song by a British pop artist and the chances are that it’ll be sung in an American singing accent.

Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin

We Are the Champions by Queen

Weirdly, Freddie seems to drift from an English sounding voice in the verse to an American one in the chorus. Listen to how he sings “time” (Time after time) in the verse and then “time” in the chorus (No time for losers).

This is so tricky! The accents seem to drift around while people sing.

Ultimately, I think this shows that when people sing they change their voice to suit the music. Freddie Mercury wasn’t just a rock singer, he was also quite operatic and theatrical and I think he probably chose to sing in different ways depending on the feeling he was choosing, including some bits where he sings with a more English sounding voice and some bits where he’s in full-on rock mode and sounds American.

British bands/singers singing with British accents

Let’s consider some songs which are clearly sung in British accents, or moments where British accents are more obvious. 

There will be billions of examples of great British bands who sing in British accents. Here are some ones which I can think of right now.

The Beatles

They’re a difficult case because it’s quite hard to tell when they’re singing with American accents, when they’re singing with Liverpool accents but there are definitely times when their Liverpool accents came through.

It seems to me that their accents became a bit more English as they went on because in the early days they were (to an extent) imitating American artists they loved like Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Chuck Berry & so on (especially when doing cover versions like “Long Tall Sally” (“Oh baby, some fun tonight”) and “Twist & Shout” (“And let me know that you’re mine”).

But later as they wrote more of their own music and became more original, their own accents came in. They also used to make a point of singing in a Liverpool accent sometimes.

Penny Lane by The Beatles

“In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer” 2:00

Lennon singing Polythene Pam (intentionally putting on a strong Scouse accent)

John Lennon – Norwegian Wood “I once had a girl” – the “I” is rounded like Lennon would say it.

Paul McCartney – I’m Looking Through You

Paul McCartney’s English accent is quite recognisable in “I’m Looking Through You”
“I thought I knew you… what did I know?”
“Why tell me why did you not treat me right?”

Although some bits still sound a bit American – “You’re naaat the same”

Steve Earle – I’m Looking Through You

But when US country singer Steve Earle did a cover version of it, he did it in a Southern sounding American accent.

“Aaah thought aaah knew yewwww whut did aaaaah know?”
“Yurrr voice eis soootheuyin , but the wrrrrrds arrrrnt clearrrr”
“Whaaaaa tell me whaaa did you naaat treat me right?”

The Smiths – Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

“Why do I give valuable time” –all with rounded diphthongs

The Undertones – My Perfect Cousin

The Undertones were from Northern Ireland and you could hear it in some of their songs, like this one.

“He’s sure to go to heaven”
“He thinks that I’m a cabbage because I hate university challenge”

A lot of Britpop bands sang with British accents, because it was Britpop. BRITpop, you see.

Blur – Parklife (they were making a point of singing in a British accent)

There are billions of other examples, I’m sure.

But it’s weird and not black and white.

It’s not like all punk bands or all Britpop bands sang with their local accents. Sometimes they did, sometimes it was definitely American.

There’s no escaping that rock & roll is basically American.

Singing in an American accent when it should be British, and people get annoyed

Alesha Dixon sings the national anthem in a “soul” voice. Basically, she sang the word “god” in an American accent, which pissed off the Daily Mail readers.

She got quite harshly criticised for this. She said she did it on purpose because it was a “soul” version of the anthem. Naturally a lot of Brits were triggered by this.

What’s the conclusion?

  • Singing is different to speaking.
  • Accents change to suit the music and the social rules are a bit different when people sing.
  • Singing is a more open and free form of expression than speaking. Our accent when we speak is completely tied to our identity. But when we sing it’s more tied to the feeling we are trying to create or express.
  • Some types of music or some songs just have to be sung in an American accent and it’s usually not a big deal.
  • Some artists sing with British accents because they are expressing something uniquely British, like a folk singer such as Billy Bragg or a rapper like Stormzy.
  • It’s also interesting to note that a lot of non-native speakers of English can sing in a native-like accent, but when they speak English it’s not the same story.

    For example: Paul Taylor’s bit about his wife saying “Hello how are you?” –> His wife can sing “Hello” when she’s singing along with Adele’s song but when she has to say it, she says “‘ello ‘ow ‘are you?”

Leave your comments, thoughts and video suggestions below

650. British Music: Jungle (with James)

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An in-depth episode all about an innovative British form of dance music from the 90s: Jungle (aka Drum & Bass). Includes discussion with James about the origins of the music, how it sounds, its position in UK culture and a few anecdotes too. Notes & music playlists available on the website.

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Hello dear listeners, how are you today? I hope you are well. Here is another episode about British Music with James. This one is about jungle – a form of dance music. 

We did this one in response to a request from a listener who wrote a comment on the website. While recording the episode we couldn’t remember the name of that listener but I have checked and found his name and his message and it goes like this.

Kirill Hannolainen • 2 months ago (January 2020)
Dear Luke,
I have already told you how amazing your podcast is in general and how particularly moving those episodes are in which you speak to James about music. They are just brilliant. That’s when the magic happens.

Is there any chance I could suggest a new topic for discussion with James – Electronic music developed in England. I mean your country brought the world irreplaceable genres of music, such as jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, big beat, ambient and stuff like that, and I think these ones are just a few examples.
I grew up in the nineties in Saint Petersburg listening to jungle music made by DJ Aphrodite and drum ‘n’ bass provided by Goldie. We had some good times.

Now I’m really into ambient music from the early 1990s – artists such as the Orb, Aphex Twin and the KLF.

I would be over the moon if you could make an episode on this subject. I’m more than sure James and you know a thing or two to tell us about.
Thank you in advance.

I’d also like to wish you and your beautiful family Happy New Year! Best wishes for peace and prosperity in 2020.

Thanks Kirill!

We’d been meaning to make an episode about jungle music for a while, even before we got this comment, and James has lots of the old tunes on vinyl. So here it is. This is our attempt to explain this music, where it comes from, what influenced it and more. You’ll also hear little bits of music during this episode, not just jungle music but also other types of music that have inspired it.

You’ll see that this episode is long, but it’s as long as it needed to be for us to cover the subject properly.

The music won’t be for everyone. It’s not to everybody’s taste. I know this is quite a specific topic, but hopefully you can learn things from it and even if you don’t like the music, I hope you can still enjoy listening to the two of us explaining and describing this subject.

This episode is accompanied by detailed notes, links and music on the page for this episode on teacherluke.co.uk, including YouTube videos for almost all the tunes that we talk about, a Spotify playlist and a special jungle mix done by James, especially for you, on his decks using vinyl records in his collection.

We hope you enjoy it. Here we go.

James & Luke start talking together (about 4m30seconds into the episode)

Episode notes used while recording this conversation

THE INTRODUCTION

Hello, we’re going to talk about a British genre of music called Jungle.

What follows is a music documentary of sorts. We will be dipping into James’ vinyl collection as we go through this in order to play you little samples of the music we’re talking about as we continue.

So this is a history of a certain musical genre from England in the 90s: Jungle. Both James and I were really into jungle at that time and it’s also a good example of a uniquely form of British music that doesn’t get talked about much.

The period of time we’re talking about is from around the mid to late eighties to the mid to late nineties, so while the Berlin wall was coming down and so many other changes were going on in the world, this is one of the things that was happening in the UK at the time.

It won’t be for everyone! But I have had requests for this I promise! UK jungle or drum & bass, like UK EDM is pretty big around the world. We usually talk about guitar music on this podcast but this is uniquely British music from a different genre and background.

What is jungle music?

Jungle is a form of dance music that evolved out of the rave scene in the UK (more in a bit) which is personified by fast, intense, looped breakbeats over the top of deep reggae style bass lines with atmospheric sound effects, some vocals (often sampled) and maybe MCing over the top.

Complex drum patterns, and sub bass.

It evolved in the UK in the early to mid 1990s.

It was a really interesting and original new kind of music that was exciting because it kept changing and became really sophisticated and original quite quickly, and went from being a form of music that was considered the lowest of the low to being much more critically accepted by the mainstream.

The music is really intense. We’ll play you some. Listen to this, it’ll blow your socks off.

An example of a jungle track from James’ collection

River Niger – Nookie 

When did you get this record?
How did it get that scratch?
Why have we chosen this one?
– Atmosphere
– Nice stuff
– Heavy stuff
– Not an obvious anthem

Why do you want to talk about this on LEP?
– Personal connection to it (LEP has always been personal)
– Uniquely British (we always talk about British stuff)

It’s not the kind of thing that usually gets talked about and analysed – when you talk about British music from the 90s it’s always Britpop, Blur and Oasis but we weren’t really listening to that. Jungle gets overlooked.

Not understood by the music press originally, which was into guitar music.

They didn’t know how to review it.

Do all British people listen to jungle music?
– No

Underground music
Criminal music
Black music (to an extent)

How did you first get into it? Can you tell the story?

Mystery track (1993/4)

Luke:
I heard jungle or rave stuff and always thought it was not for me. It was overheard from cars driven by very dodgy geezers. The compilations were on sale in record shops. It was associated with the slightly scary underground rave scene.

But I was into electronic music like ambient and stuff.

We listened to guitar music and funk from the 70s and Stone Roses and some hip hop.

Matt and Eggy – our friends who were into heavy metal and stuff like that. They were in a car and listened to this tape for a laugh and decided it was amazing and played it to us.

How did we used to get jungle music? How did we have access to it?

Tapes found in small record shops or handed round and copied.

It was mysterious – it was word of mouth, or by discovering them on tapes. You didn’t know what they were called. They were anonymous. It wasn’t like in pop music where there was an image and press, there was really no information about it beyond maybe a weird name.

When/how do you listen to jungle music?
– Clubs (although we never really went to the proper jungle and hardcore raves in the early to mid nineties)
– Walkman
– Travelling
– Listening in different contexts (You’re listening to a big rave and you’re on the bus in the countryside, listening in a car with big bass speakers)
– DJing
– Mixing at home
(You need speakers with good bass)

What is the origin of this music?

THE INGREDIENTS 

American stuff – techno and hip hop (1980s)

Chicago and Detroit techno, based on Kraftwerk and other influences.

Can you feel it? – Mr Fingers (aka Larry Heard) – Chicago (86)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeiH9Mm0E5Y

Rhythim is Rhythim (the dance) – Derrick May – Detroit – 1987

NYC hip hop (samples)
Run DMC 1990
House
Euro techno

DJs in the UK were mixing up everything – techno, hip hop, breakbeats, other obscure stuff, diverse influences

UK hip hop / breaks

20 Seconds to Comply – Silver Bullet (1990) ~including samples from Robocop

Bring Forth The Guillotine – Silver Bullet (B side)

Breakbeats (what are they?) – Luke’s Breakbeat Lecture

A break in the music where the drummer plays alone for a bit – maybe does a solo but probably just keeps the music going. James Brown used them, lots of others too.

Also, musically they are dance beats played with some syncopation.

The drummer uses ghost notes to add extra little beats to help it skip along in a way that you can dance to. I suppose the origins of that skipping breakbeat in funk music goes back to things like jazz, latin influences, R&B and the general shift towards syncopated dance beats that have a pattern which starts and concludes on the first beat of the bar.

Apache – Incredible Bongo Band

Think About It – Lynn Collins

Amen Brother – The Winstons

Hip Hop DJs sampled these drum breaks, often looping them in crude ways with tape machines, or mixing them on decks.

Jungle DJs also created their own breakbeats by chopping them up, and often creating amazingly complex beats that sometimes sound like a jazz drummer chopping it up.

This was the great change that happened in hip hop – where anything and everything became fair game, as long as it had the kind of break that you could rap and dance to, it was ok, with weird stuff being sampled that you wouldn’t expect.

But new music was being made directly using old music. A weird post-modern form of inward cultural appropriation.

Over in the UK – Acid, rave, hardcore

Break beats, techno, pianos = acid / rave / hardcore

A typical mix of UK hardcore from 1992

V cheap, naive, basic, simple, unsophisticated! (but also great in its own way)

Using samples, early computers like Ataris and Amigas, some hardware like bassline generators or drum machines.

Considered the nasties, lowest, crappiest, low class music listened to by criminals and low level scumbags in cars.

The breakbeat samples get all mixed up – several generations of people sampling and then being sampled.

The sound becomes more and more compressed, The texture changes from speeding it up and adding other drum samples on the top. This was heard in a lot of hip hop and dance music at the time. The same samples being used by everyone and often several samples at the same time.

So in the UK also had a sort of hip hop dance craze that involved sampling breakbeats.

There was also this very nasty music called acid house, rave or hardcore which was very electronic, fast, had some nasty synth sounds and bleepy squidgy noises and stuff. It had an awful reputation. More on that later.

Reggae influence

Also in the UK because of the carribean communities particularly around London and the West Midlands.

Reggae / Dub – deep sub bass, atmospheric sound effects, echo, delay, reverb.

King Tubby – Good Time Dub

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOEcXyD967Y

White Rum – Sly & The Revolutionaries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ijxB9D0gTY

Scientist mix (1980)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4XHAZ9hPcs

Reggae sound systems, toasting, MCing, ragga

This was actually hip hop before hip hop.
– Big sound systems
– Sub bass
– MCs toasting over the top of music
– People dancing

2nd gen black/carribean kids

Not American – a uniquely UK thing (a multicultural mix)

Eclectic rather than purist

Led by DJs trying to get the right reaction on the dancefloor

Acid / Rave / Hardcore

Jungle came out of a scene called hardcore, which came from rave, which came from acid.

What were raves?
Warehouse raves
Moral panic
Drugs

Generally it was seen as a lawless threat and a disturbance to public peace, and maybe they had a point to an extent.

Before it gained any acceptability it was on the fringes and underground.

Later the raves became legal and took place in clubs and this was all part of how the music became more accepted, ultimately.

1993/1994 – Jungle

Inner City Life – Goldie

This is when jungle started appearing in the mainstream and fully established itself as a genre of music in its own right.

Also there were other forms of music coming from the same origins. It wasn’t a single narrative. (Techno continued, happy hardcore, big beat, “trip hop”, ambient, etc)

Musical differences & features compared to acid, rave, hardcore…

DA FLAVA

What does jungle actually sound like?

What are the distinguishing features, musically?

– 150-170 BPM (James says 168BPM specifically!)
– No 4×4 bass drum
– Sampled drums from funk records looped and sped up, sometimes re-sequenced and chopped up
– Multiple break beats from different samples layered over the top
– Gives a sort of jungle feel because
– Everything is v compressed, sped up which raises the tone of the drum track – this emphasises the higher frequencies and leaves the mid range quite open and empty and then there are deep sub basslines a bit like reggae basslines
– This feeling of space and echo with a deep soft layer at the bottom and a canopy of sound at the top creates this feeling of being in a tropical jungle – quiet a deep and heated atmosphere – like in a rainforest. Sometimes there are the sounds of tropical birds or a drop of water.
– Then spacey sounds like synth pads, possibly piano lines, some soulful vocals but plenty of space and sparseness – a bit like in dub reggae
– Fast but slow
– Fast upper rhythm in double time to a reggae bassline played at half speed
– Things come in more slowly with slower patterns
– Losing the beat
– It can sound like a drum kit falling down the stairs
– It might sound like total chaos

What would our Mum think if she listened to it?

Dead Dred – Dred Bass (1994)

Babylon – Splash (1994)

The Spectrum – Wax Doctor (1995)

The Lighter – Sound of the Future

LTJ BUKEM & MC CONRAD “Chrome” Live in Leamington Spa 1995 (this is the tape I used to listen to all the time)

Different types of Jungle

A lot of people disagree about the names etc

Luke: two types → Harder, darker stuff and then the lighter more atmospheric stuff.

– Progressive jungle
– Intelligent jungle (or whatever it’s called)
– Drum & Bass
– Liquid Drum & Bass
– Jump-up jungle
– Two-step
– Ragga Jungle

It went mainstream and then moved on

Started appearing in adverts and other people’s music

Roni Size win the Mercury Music Prize in 1997 (but it should have been won by Goldie who wasn’t even nominated in 1994)

Heroes – Roni Size (1997)

Little Wonder – David Bowie (1997)

Big DJs and names

– Dillinga
– Goldie (didn’t win the Mercury prize in 94)
– Grooverider
– LTJ Bukem & MC Conrad
– Fabio
– DJ Rap
– Jumping Jack Frost
– DJ Hype
– DJ Randall
– DJ SS
– Kenny Ken
– Aphrodite
Tons of others

Source Direct interview

Ending

I won’t add anything else here really. I don’t want this to be ridiculously long.

All I’ll say is that I sincerely hope you enjoyed this episode. James and I put our heart and soul into this episode so I hope it comes across. It’s a bit ambitious because this music is never going to appeal to everyone, but I hope you’ve got something from this in any case.

If you like some of the things you’ve heard and you’d like to hear more, or if you’d just like to listen again to any of the stuff we’ve been talking about then you should head over to the page for this episode on teacherluke.co.uk where you will find a plethora of music for your ears, including…

  • YouTube videos or Soundcloud links for almost all the music in this episode – all the tracks, and even some full length mixes 
  • A jungle mix by James, with actual vinyl records (scratches and all) made especially for listeners of this episode (includes some pirate radio MCing by James) uploaded to my Mixcloud page 
  • A Spotify playlist that I’ve made featuring some of the tunes in this episode (it’s called LEP Jungle if you want to find it on Spotify on your phone)
  • All the notes we used while recording (so you can check some words that you might want to spell)

Thank you for listening, and I’ll speak to you again on the podcast soon.

Spotify playlist for this episode

James’ LEP Jungle mix

For more music mixes (various genres), check out James’ Mixcloud page here

…and my Mixcloud page here

649. An Unedited Ramble (March 2020) Never Explain, Never Apologise? / No Stress / Method To The Madness / 3 Songs on Guitar

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Luke talks on his own without stopping, restarting or editing, including responses to comments about recent episodes, thoughts on the methodology behind this podcast, some vocabulary teaching, a few songs on the guitar and more. This is no-stress episode, and a chance for me to just check in on you and make sure you’re all doing ok out there in the world! 😉

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Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay.

Episode Notes

These are just notes and not a full transcript. Some chunks of target vocabulary are highlighted in bold.

In this episode you’re going to hear me talking on my own, which probably means it’s going to be easier to understand and follow what I’m saying than some of the episodes I’ve uploaded recently, because I’ve uploaded some pretty challenging episodes over the last few weeks and months, and years… I try to mix it up a bit, with some challenging ones and some easier ones. Let’s say the easier ones are when I’m on my own and the more challenging ones are when I’m with other people or when we are breaking down recordings of other people.

But this one is just me, and you, because you’re involved. You’re listening aren’t you?

I hope this will come as something of a relief to you, at least to those of you who are pushing yourselves by listening to my podcast, and who might have quite a tough time understanding the more challenging episodes.

I know that some episodes are difficult to follow sometimes, because of the speed of English you’re hearing from my guests and me, and because we might be talking about subjects that you aren’t so familiar with.

Anyway, no stress today, there’s enough stress in the world. The plan here is just to chat to you, have a good old-fashioned ramble on LEP.

So you can have a bit of a breather today and just enjoy listening to this. And I hope you listen to all of it, from start to the finish. If it makes any difference to you, I will sing you a song or two with my guitar at the end. So if you’d like to hear me singing again, as I do at the end of episodes sometimes, then stick with it and keep listening until the end. Don’t be tempted to skip forward. That’s cheating.

Two words: deferred gratification.

It’s important to have a bit of self-discipline and I’m talking to myself there as much as I’m talking to you. 

When I decided to do this episode I thought (and it’s always like this, with these rambling episodes as I’ve come to call them) I decided initially to just talk without preparing anything in advance. Just no pressure, no specific agenda, just speak my mind and try to express the ideas which have been building up in my head since the last time I spoke to you like this.

The idea is that I can keep it authentic, in the moment and I don’t have to spend ages working on it before I even start recording. That’s what I think when I decide to do an episode like this.

But that’s easier said than done, because…. (What happens Luke? How do you end up writing so much in advance?)

Basically: I want to talk with no preparation, but then I have to write some things down or I won’t remember to mention them, but then I end up starting to type out everything in advance. 

It’s hard to know when to stop preparing and when to start recording.

So I’ve decided to just get started here without worrying too much about having every single detail prepared in advance. 

I know it’s probably not an issue for you, but I’m just giving you bit of insight into what goes through my mind when I prepare and record an episode. 

So → No more preparing, it’s time to start talking, which might mean there is some rambling here, which is fine and great.

Episode Aims

  • The main aim of this episode is to check in on you (make sure you’re doing alright) but not check up on you (to investigate, gather information, spy on someone)
  • And just chat to you about various things on my mind, things that I think are of interest to you as a member of my audience.
  • Talk a bit about recent episodes, just to establish where we are.
  • Give a few bits of news.
  • Respond to a couple of comments I’ve received
  • Have a bit of a laugh → just have some fun on the podcast because that is one of my favourite things about doing this. Just messing about and having fun, with no stress involved!
  • Sing one, two or maybe three songs on the guitar, which I will leave until the end.

As we go through all of this, I am sure that there will be various expressions, vocabulary and other language points that will come up. [A lot of it is highlighted for you here]

When I talk in episodes of this podcast I am sure that some people don’t notice what the method is. Most people like to think there is a specific pedagogical method at work and in my experience it is necessary to tell people (my students for example) exactly what the method is in order to put their minds at rest so they know they’re in safe hands.

What I will say is this – it might not be obvious all the time, but there is method to the madness I can assure you. I’ve been teaching for nearly 20 years now and to an extent I am now just always teaching. I’m always in teaching mode. This means that I’m always thinking about what you while I am talking. I’m always thinking about the listener not because I’m so selfless and wonderful but because I know what I’m doing.

*You don’t need to justify it Luke*

Let’s just say this → Even when it’s not obvious that I am teaching you, I am teaching you. Every minute you listen to this (and indeed most other things you could listen to, but the difference here is that I am doing this specifically for you as a learner of English and even more specifically as a LEPster) … every minute you listen to this is a minute in the bank of your English. 

I’ll talk more about methodology and this podcast in a bit. I’m still technically in the introduction here.

I have no idea how long this will take, but it usually takes longer than I expect, so this could easily be two episodes.

But seriously, let’s forget about the clock for a while, ok? Don’t worry about how much time is passing. If you need to stop for some reason, just stop. Your podcasting app will remember where you were when you stopped and you can carry on again when you’re ready.

The main thing is: just listen, just try to follow everything. If you can follow it all without trouble, then fantastic, give yourself a little pat on the back. If you can’t follow it all, just do your best, keep going, don’t give up, rewind and listen to certain bits again if you need to. 

And this is where your podcasting app will help once more because you should have those helpful buttons which let you skip back by a few seconds. I use them a lot when I’m listening to podcasts, including ones in French (Any good french podcasts to recommend Luke? I’ll add that to the list for this episode – see below) 

You will see various notes on the page for this episode. This is all the stuff I wrote down before recording. It’s not a transcript, but if you hear me saying something and you’re wondering what it is, check out the page and you might see it written there.

I understand that checking a website isn’t all that convenient, even when you have a smartphone to hand. 

But anyway, it is there. If you’re listening in an app (including the LEP app) check the show notes → There is a link there that takes you right to the relevant page each time. That’s one of the fastest ways to get straight to the correct page. Otherwise, join the mailing list to have the link sent to your inbox, or just check out the episode archive on teacherluke.co.uk where you can find everything.

Is everyone ok out there? Let’s be honest, this is a pretty crazy time. I hope you’re doing ok. Hang in there, stay positive!

Recent episodes 

Ian Moore → It’s interesting that Jack in the comment section mentioned that he found it waaaay easier to understand Ian this time compared to last time. This could well mean that his English listening skills have improved in that period – considering there are about 300 episodes between Ian’s first appearance and his second. So, I’m very happy to hear that, basically. 

I’m also happy to have had Ian on the podcast again. He really is a very witty man, not to mention well-dressed. There are a few videos of him online, doing comedy, being interviewed on TV and so on, and he is very good. 

Alan Partridge episodes

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. (or so they say)

“You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” (and you shouldn’t try to) ~originally attributed to John Lydgate and then Abraham Lincoln.

Slightly puzzling stats for the AP episodes. Part 4 and 6 have a similar number of listens, but episode 5 has about 25% fewer listens. What’s that all about? 

The Intercultural Communication Dance with Sherwood Fleming → The main point is, focus on the message, not how the message has been delivered to you. I would also add: be thoughtful, be respectful, think about the other person, listen to them and pay attention to them, adapt your style accordingly. Ultimately it comes down to compassion. Be compassionate. Think about the other person, think about their situation, be less self-involved. Thinking about the other person, what they want and what they are really trying to say → this helps a lot. It helps you avoid conflict and it helps to bring more respect to you. In theory.

Recent Amber & Paul Episodes

It was fantastic to speak to them on the podcast recently. I think it’s best when the three of us have a specific aim for an episode, especially if it is a game of some kind. 

Amber had her baby! It’s a girl. Mum and baby are both doing fine. I’m hoping to speak to Amber soon about it, with Paul there too. Congratulations to Amber, her husband, and their little boy who now is the brother to a little baby sister.

Quintessentially British Things 

James – A few people going Hmmm. Some saying how fun it is to listen to the two of us, a couple of people saying they found James to be a bit rude because he kept cutting me off. We have a close relationship, but like all brothers we fight sometimes etc… conditions for recording, we both had a lot to say, etc. We mention it at the end of an upcoming episode we’ve done about music.

James’ comment

Hi people, sorry if I came across as rude / impatient. It was late, we were tired, and I’m afraid to say I was very, very drunk. ; )

Ones with Mum and Dad – all positive saying they found them interesting and lovely and I’m lucky to have a family like that, and I am. Episodes of Gill’s Book Club (which it will probably be called) should arrive this year. RT report too, when we feel like it!

A lot of conversations with native speakers at normal speed. What is your method, Luke? 

Upcoming music episode with James

Thoughts about the challenge of listening to some of my episodes.

I like to consider the thoughts of my listeners but ultimately I have to go with my gut and use my own judgement

The majority of comments come from LEPsters with pretty good English. So I don’t hear from lower-level listeners so much. 

Comments on the website → More people came out of the woodwork and that’s great. I’m not concerned. People need to go out of their way to visit the website, find the episode page, find the comment section, possibly sign into the comment section (Disqus) and write a comment in English. Most people just end up being ninjas often because there are various little barriers in the way. I get it! 

People comment in various ways → comment section, email, twitter, facebook, Youtube. The LEPsters’ comments are spread out all over the place. So they’re not all consolidated in one place. Maybe I should just stick to ONE platform, but I think this would ultimately make it more complicated for people to listen.

Premium → I am working on new stuff all the time. I say it’s about grammar, vocab & pron, and it is, but that sounds a bit dry doesn’t it? Remember – it’s still me, I’m still trying to do it in the LEP way, which means I make efforts to keep it entertaining at all times, as well as clear. Upcoming episodes will be about common errors I’ve noticed in comments and emails and things.

LEPster meet up in Paris + stand up show from me?

World Book Day – Thursday 5 March. https://www.worldbookday.com/

You’re reading a book, right? What are you reading?

Name: Miguel

Message: Hello there Luke, it is a great pleasure to be one of your thousands of listeners. Must admit that I am on the ninja´s listener side…Just a quick question, What kind of book would you suggest I should read in order to improve my english comprehension? I am going for the c1 advanced by the way and the big deal for me is the huge amount of sources offered on the Internet…

Thanks in advance my friend, carry on the good work!

Luke’s Reply

To be honest Miguel, you should just pick a book that you really want to read and that you will probably enjoy. You could pick the English version of one of your favourite books or perhaps a book of a film you like. 

You can also get graded books at the C1 level, which would also be a good idea. 

I’m assuming you mean reading novels rather than grammar/vocab books. 

Hope that helps. 

Check these episodes from the archive

439. Reading Books to Learn English
256. Reading Books in English (and listening to them too)

French podcasts (difficult to find the right one for me, I must be quite picky)

Un Cafe Au Lot 7 → Louis Dubourg chats with French stand-up comedians, including some of my friends and acquaintances. Paul is interviewed there, so is Seb Marx and also some other big names like Fary and Gad Elmaleh.

French Voices → Conversations with interesting people with some things to look out for in English at the start)

French Your Way Podcast –> Specifically about teaching us French, making things clear and memorable, correcting certain mistakes, a lot of it is in English. Jessica is on maternity leave, starting in June. She’s probably fully involved with her baby. I hope she comes back soon when she is able to.

This comment is sponsored by LEP Premium – www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium

Message: Hello Luke,

I have been a regular listener of your fantastic podcasts since 2018 and I am the one who requested an episode on the topic of “articles” a couple of weeks ago.

I just finished the fifth episode of this series this morning and I must say that it is the most brilliant episode that you have ever recorded. I didn’t not think you were capable of doing that in 2009 because this requires a lot of experience. I do not know if the Lepsters realize the amount of work that you have performed to complete this series. During the last 20 years, I have often searched for such a lesson focused on the right use of articles but I have never found it. There are so many rules but also exceptions that it drives me nuts. As a neuroradiologist at Lille University hospital, I regularlly write scientific papers on neurovascular diseases in international journals and I am frustrated to systematically see the editorial office of the journal change my sentences by adding or removing articles. I feel more confident now even if it takes a long time to master the correct use of articles.

I don’t know if I have correctly used the articles in this message but I am very happy to get a comprehensive document on this topic.

Thanks a lot Luke and keep it up. You are such a lovely person who is very inspiring to me.

Take care

Xavier

Luke’s response

Oh what a wonderful email, thank you very much Xavier. 

Yes, you used all the articles correctly in this email. I’m glad to see my episode has helped you!

I’m also very glad to receive emails such as this, from interesting and intelligent people who actually use my content to actively improve their English. It’s very inspiring.

TRANSCRIPTION PROJECT

This is a community effort in which LEPsters can transcribe episodes of the podcast. 

I’ve mentioned it before, now I’m mentioning it again.

Antonio’s comment

The transcription project is one of the most powerful options we have in this podcast.

Since I started learning English, I’ve always heard the same piece of advice from teachers I’ve been listening to, which is: “We must read, listen and write to have better English skills.”

Well, the transcription project is the perfect example and could allow us to reach this goal entirely.

The transcription project does not only involve transcribing but also proofreading episodes. That’s why I created two teams. The Orion team makes the transcriptions, and the Andromeda team proofreads and corrects the texts done by the Orion team.

And I want to tell to people, asking to join the project, that we can fulfil our goals staying in this project longer than one or two episodes. Nobody is going to encourage us or give a hug or give a kiss. Still, the joy of seeing this project growing up and becoming better than when we started participating in it is immense. Staying for an extended period allows you to see your real improvement.

When you proofread the episodes you did one year before, you are going to find a lot of mistakes and misheard words. That means that you can hear sounds and terms you couldn’t hear previously. That also means that you are becoming a better English speaker.

As I’ve often said, the transcription project is a hard task to do, sometimes we can feel bored, but we can not forget why we are doing it and what goal we want to reach. Mastering a language when you don’t live with native speakers is very hard. This project and Luke’s English Podcast episodes allow us to fill the gap. However, we need something more to stay in this project longer. We need to have another goal. A different goal than learning English. A goal which means giving back something to others.

Yes! Learning plus giving back is something much more powerful. We learn English for free, and we transcribe episodes and correct them for free.

Doing that we fulfil another goal: We help everyone coming to LEP to learn faster with our transcripts. The number of them is close to 342. (probably more since this was done – because 618. The Climate Crisis is also finished now and needs to be proofread).

I started my collaboration in 2015, and even if I am not as good an English speaker as I want, I know I am much better than then.

Thanks to people joining the Orion and Andromeda teams, staying with me, and helping me to continue with this project.

Cara Leopold → ptholome/Antonio • (Paraphrased / a reply to a different but similar comment also by Antonio)

I don’t think people realise how important it is to keep listening and coming back to the same material, instead of just moving on to the next thing. Your engagement becomes much deeper and you’re more likely to learn and remember the new words, as well as improve your listening skills. I also really like the fact that it’s collaborative and that the transcription improves over time as more people listen to it – a community effort!

3 Songs by Neil Innes

Click the links for lyrics and chords.

I Must Be In Love https://neilinnes.media/wp-content/themes/neil-innes/chords/oooolalala.html

I Love You https://neilinnes.media/wp-content/themes/neil-innes/chords/loveyou.html

Let’s Be Natural https://neilinnes.media/wp-content/themes/neil-innes/chords/natural.html