Rambling about being back after the summer break, with regular moments of grammar analysis. Includes a lot of tangents, funny moments and analysis of English tenses and complex sentence structures. PDF with transcript and notes available.

Talking to bilingual journalist Charles Pellegrin (France 24) about how the conventions of broadcast journalism influence the way the English is used in news reports, how Charles started as a journalist, the challenge of making TV news reports, our time at university, the Olympics in Paris, and Charles’ experiences of living and working in China.
My guest today is Charles Pellegrin, a bilingual (English & French) journalist working for the TV channel France 24. Charles currently works as the presenter of a morning business program, but used to be based in China, where he lived in Beijing for 3 years. Charles also does stand-up comedy in English, which is how I know him, and we are doing a 2-man show together this Friday, 19 July 2024 (details below).
In this conversation we talk about why reporters speak in a certain way when they read the news, how the conventions of broadcast journalism influence the way the English is used, how Charles started as a journalist, the challenge of making TV news reports, our experiences at university, the Olympics in Paris and whether it will be beneficial for France, and Charles’ experiences of living and working in China.
Luke & Charles’ stand-up comedy show in Paris on 19 July
Charles on Instagram & X
https://www.instagram.com/chpilgrim/
https://www.x.com/chpilgrim/ https://www.instagram.com/charles_pellegrinf24/
My dad returns to talk about the current political situation in the UK. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called a general election to take place on 4 July. Why did Sunak call an election at this moment? What do people think of the Consvervative Party, who have been in power for 14 years? Will we have a new government and a new Prime Minister in the UK in a couple of weeks? Also, what about England’s performances in the Euro 2024 football championship?
A spontaneous monologue about being taken by surprise by public holidays in May (in France), a podcast recommendation, and seeing a hard-rocking and hilarious band perform live in a big arena last week. Includes a song at the end as a tribute.
Barbara Serra is an award-winning Italian journalist who has spent much of her career reading the news in the UK on various high-profile well-established English language news networks including the BBC, Channel 5, Al Jazeera English and Sky News. Barbara has quite a specific relationship with the English language. We talk about learning English, challenges in her career, and the relationship between accent and identity.
Hello listeners, today on the podcast I am talking to Barbara Serra, the Italian journalist who reads the news on television in the UK. She’s a very interesting guest and has lots of interesting things to say about the way her identity and career have been shaped by her relationship to the English language.
We’re going to talk about reading the news in the UK when you sound like a foreigner, lots of questions around identity and accent, and all sorts of other things that Barbara has experienced in her time as a broadcast journalist. I think you will find it very interesting as a learner of English looking to improve your English as much as possible in different contexts, both personal and professional.
LEPster meet-up in Da Nang Vietnam
Gordon’s Pizza (in An Thuong area) on Friday 17th May from 9pm.
Send Zdenek an email if you’re interested – teacherzdenek@gmail.com
Barbara Serra is an award-winning Italian journalist who has spent much of her career reading the news in the UK on various high-profile well-established English language news networks including the BBC, Channel 5, Al Jazeera English and Sky News.
Barbara has quite a specific relationship with English. It’s her dominant language but not her native language. She has a certain accent, which does place her outside the UK somehow. So how has this affected her career as a news reader and reporter?
Broadcast journalism is associated with a certain model of spoken English – in the UK that would be what is often called BBC English, and traditionally the role of newsreader has been synonymous with that kind of high-level, high-status form of spoken English.
So what has Barbara’s experience been?
What is the story of her English?
How did she get the point where she was ready to do this job? What kind of challenges has she faced while reading the news in the UK?
And what does this all tell us about learning English, what it means to improve your accent, the relationship between accent and identity, the definition of “native” and “non-native speaker”, the status of different English accents in the English speaking world?
Let’s get into it.
👉 Barbara’s email newsletter “News with a foreign accent” https://barbaraserra.substack.com/
👉 Barbara’s website with course info https://www.barbaraserra.info/
I read an article about Paris’ preparations for the 2024 Olympic Games 🏊, discuss the issues, summarise the article and explain plenty of vocabulary. Is Paris ready for the games? What are the attitudes, complaints, expectations and fears ahead of this potentially controversial event.
880. Is Paris ready for the Olympic Games 2024? 🏊 (Article + Vocabulary)
Intro
I’m in Paris and it’s less than 100 days until the Olympic Games begin here.
Is the city ready?
Let’s read an article on the subject.
I found this article on www.TheWeek.com
I’ll read the article to you, then explain and discuss what is written.
I’ll also go through vocabulary from the article – and there is plenty.
Topic → Reading/Listening → Vocabulary → Discussion
Before we read the article, here are some questions to get you thinking.
Article link 👇 https://theweek.com/sports/olympics-2024-is-paris-ready-to-party
Vocabulary
Estanguet acknowledged last week that “before this kind of big event, there are always many questions, many concerns“. But the Paris edition would make his nation “proud”, he said.
Here is an episode in which I walk through the streets of Paris, rambling about a particular subject. This time the subject is Paris itself. This summer Paris is hosting the Olympic Games. The city will be filled with visitors. I am very curious to see how the city will handle this moment. Will it be a huge success? What will visitors think of the city? Will anyone suffer from the mysterious “Paris Syndrome”? Join me on my walk, follow my words, look out for vocab and consider using my questions for your own speaking practice.
Feel free to use these questions for your own speaking practice.
There will be a premium episode dealing with vocabulary, coming soon. https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo
OK, this is not actually the end of the episode, as you can probably see from the running time. There’s a lot more left in this episode.
I am now back in my podcastle, where I am much more comfortable recording and being on video.
Having reviewed the footage which you have just heard and seen I wanted to just reflect on it and give my thoughts on this experimental episode and how I might do more of these Walk & Talk episodes, and whether I will do more of them at all.
So here are my thoughts on this.