Category Archives: Personal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Any questions? Feel free to leave a comment below.

149. Backing Up Into The Cloud

146. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 2)

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

Right-click here to download this episode.

A transcript/notes are available for this episode below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope you have enjoyed listening to this episode.

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

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

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

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

Luke

145. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 1)

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

Right-click here to download.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, here are some experiences:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

143. A Cup of Tea with… Robert Hoehn

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Some ironic conversation with Robert Hoehn. Some of this episode is transcribed below. Some listeners may find Robert’s views a little controversial, but I assure you, he is just being ironic and none of this conversation should be taken too seriously, except the linguistic content which is all authentic and spontaneous, and presented here for your listening practice.

Right-click here to download this episode.

In this episode I was invited to the apartment of my friend Robert for a cup of very specially brewed tea and some conversation, which you can actually listen to here, right now, with your ears (and some kind of headphones/speaker system).

Robert is 110% American, and was born in Minnesota, which is in the heart of the American mid-west. This makes him a kind of red-neck cowboy in my opinion. He is also a direct descendent of William Wallace (yes, Braveheart) and now lives in Paris where he works as a voice-over artist, comedian and clown. He also looks a bit like Heath Ledger, the Joker from the Batman movie The Dark Knight.

Click here to visit Robert’s website http://www.frenchfriedtv.com

In our conversation, which you can listen to whenever you want, I interview Robert using the usual questions: What made you move to Europe? Did you experience culture shock when you moved to France? What are the differences between France and the USA? Have you been to London? How did you manage to learn French to a good standard? But we talk about all kinds of ridiculous stuff along the way!

Thanks for listening, leave comments below as always, and please consider making a donation by clicking the button on top-right of this page. Your donations help to keep this podcast alive and kicking.

All the best,
Luke

TRANSCRIPT
Part of this episode has been transcribed by a listener called Artiz. Thanks Artiz! You can read it below:

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another episode of Luke’s English Podcast. In this one I´m joined by a friend of mine who is at the moment in the kitchen making a cup of tea, well, making two cups of tea. We’ve been discussing the techniques of doing it. We’ve decided to go, maybe for the first time for me, we’ve decided to go for the cocktail, and that means we’re gonna mix two different brands, and different flavours, types of tea in the same pot, ok? I’ve never done this before, and I drink a lot of tea, but Robert is American, as you’ve just heard and he’s a maverick, he doesn’t play by the rules. He’s like the character Maverick in Top Gun. You never know what he’s gonna do next. You think: “ok, let’s just have a cup of tea with Robert”, and Robert’s all kind of like “let’s mix the tea bags!” And then, you know, next thing you know you’re on some wild adventure into the land of cocktailed tea. We’ll be letting you know the standard of this new tea recipe which Robert has come up with. The two teas which we’re mixing, and it’s gonna be a very complicated mix, because I just bought from the supermarket a box of Twinning’s green tea with mint and spices. Now that´s got at least three spices. I don´t know the name of them because they’re written in French, but I think it´s cinnamon and several other things. So that’s already, quite a complicated mix: Green tea, mint and three types of spices. That’s pretty much five things. And that´s just one of the types of tea. And ok, and Robert has got already in the flat a box from “Monoprix”, which is a local supermarket, so we’re mixing brands as well as different types of tea. And this is black tea, so we’re mixing green tea and black together? You can’t do that. Can you? (Background Robert’s voice: Madness, is pure madness!!). It is, isn’t it? It´s got to be crazy. I don’t think anyone’s ever done this before: mixed green tea and black tea. It´s a revolution. But we’ll tell you how it is while we’re drinking it. And so this black tea has got a caramel flavour to it (Background Robert´s voice: it is the longest introduction I’ve ever had in my live). This is not the longest introduction. Maybe the longest introduction you’ve ever had, but sometimes, episodes of Luke’s English Podcast are, sort of, seventy five per cent introduction and twenty five per cent actual content. Ok? Often the way it works. So, I’m still in the process of introducing Robert here. He kindly invited me over to his place where he’s making tea and we’re going to record a ground breaking podcast for you to listen to. It’s pure madness, apparently. You’re gonna hear from Robert properly in due course, when I finally get round to actually talking to him. But let me just give you a little bit of background, a little bit of information about Robert. His name is Robert Hoehn, and you got to pronounce the name correctly. Otherwise you’ll be in a world of pain…or champagne!…maybe, I don´t know, maybe if you are a lady and you pronounce the name wrong, then that’s just quite a nice introduction to the world of Robert Hoehn. So anyway, his name is Robert Hoehn, he’s been living here in Paris for a number of years. “How many years now?” Robert: “eleven”. Eleven years is he’s been living here. He is originally from the United States of America. He’s from Minnessota I believe. We´ll be talking about that properly in a few moments. He is also the guy behind the amazing online video channel “French fried TV” which you can find if you visit my web site, you just can find a link to it there. Otherwise just go on to google and type in “French fried TV” and you’ll see all his videos there. They’re very entertaining, and he’s also the guy behind the French Fried comedy night, which is a comedy show, a stand up comedy show, in English, in Paris at the moment, which takes place every Tuesday evening at a Place called the Café Paname, near Republique metro station. So, I think it´s pretty much my introduction. He’s a full time American but now living in Paris. Hundred and ten per cent American. Ok, so Robert, I’m gonna now talk to you and ask you various questions. Robert is currently creeping across his apartment in order to check his mobile phone cause he just receive, quite possibly, a very important message. So I’m just padding now. I’m just padding, just sort of…continuing to talk. The intro is still going on even though Robert is otherwise engaged. Ok, you’re back now. Ok, right, let´s go. Let’s go and speak to Robert Hoehn, “shall we”? Let’s move over to the counter area here in the kitchen, and we’re going to…we’re going to talk to Robert and ask him a few questions. I don’t know why I’m speaking like this. Suddenly I’m the presenter of a children’s TV show from the nineteen eighties. Anyway, I’m here with Robert. He’s an actual American. It´s quite exciting!

LUKE: So, Robert, how are you?

ROBERT: Awesome.

L: Awesome?

R: Yeah! Pretty good.

L: What you’ve been doing today?

R: Wow, I’ve…I did a quite a bit of work on the internet: speaking with people like my agent…

L: You have an agent!

R: I have a voice over because I do voice over jobs speaking in English.

L: That’s brilliant!

R: The American English, not the Queen’s, and…

L: Wait wait a minute, you’ve got to tell us about the voice over work. What kind of voice overs

do you do?

R: I do stuff everything you can imagine, that has to do with commercials, I did pure power for Loreal, expert…

L: How did it go?

R: Yesterday…It´s the best job in the world, you go in you say, a couple of lines of text. They say: “Can you say that with a little bit more of energy, or slower?” and you do it, and then they give you later on, a couple months later they give you a cheque for that, so it´s a pretty good work.

L: Can you tell us exactly what do you said, and repeat it for us?

R: I don’t know, it’s technically …yes! As long as you promise not to tell anyone! It´s something

along the lines of a: “are you sick of black heads, oily spots, zits, bad skin? Well, we have the cure!” And then it goes on to name the product which I’m not going to mention so you don’t get sued.

L: But actually there’s a good vocab in that. Are you tired of black heads? What’s a black head?

R: Black heads it’s a kind of…in French it´s a “bouton”, like on your forehead, like you know it’s a…

L: Like a spot on your face. Specifically, those little spots which have black heads…they’re very ugly. It´s disgusting. Black heads, spots of course are just like red spots on your face. No your face, Robert, your skin is beatifully clean.

R: Thank you!

L: And zits as well, a zit is another word for spot. So you’re learning vocab about the face and when the face goes wrong.

R: “Pizza face” (Sarah Donnelly ) calls it

L: (Sarah Donnely ) our friend refers to it, rather unsympathetically, as “Pizza face” syndrome?

R: No, just “pizza face”. Oh, they kid has “total Pizza Face”

L: haha ok, “total Pizza face” as well.

R: to be completely, grammatically incorrect.

L: But I think Sarah has licence to do that cause she mentioned that she’s still has…like…the skin of a teenager, doesn’t she?, so she’s able to, you know, criticize the skin of others, specially when they have the face of a Pizza. Right, so, ok that’s brilliant! Voice over work sounds amazing and I would love to do that myself.

R: Of course you would!

L: What a surprise! Can you help me? Can you put me in touch with…

R: Absolutely not! haha I’m the only guy in Paris right now so…no! Well you know, once I have too much money, Luke, then totally I’m gonna tell you how can you do it, but no…actually that’s not true at all because you and I have totally different voices so I’d love to help you. It’s pretty easy actually if you me want to tell you my formula for doing that…

L: Yes!

R: I can break it down. You do ten character voices of cartoon characters, your favourite cartoon voices, you write down two minutes of text for then, or thirty seconds of text for each character, then you do ten different kinds of commercials like publicity, like hard sell, soft sell, medical research sell, a crazy…we’ve got too many bubbles over here!, come, buy bubbles now from 9.99, you know? And we did things like that. Then you record them all and then you pay a sound engineer, a hundred euros, and he mixes them together and he adds like “ding ding” some bells and whistles, and I did that in 2004 and I’ve never auditioned for a job since that.

L: Seriously?

R: Yeah yeah…And you can make some really good money. Cause sometimes those little jobs I did yesterday for example they become big jobs.

L: Well, obviously, I don’t want to steal any of your work and I’ll probably just stick to British accents if that’s err…

R: Your American accents are very good! Especially Christopher Walken and then your Batman, is pretty good!

L: Batman is not that hard…just make your voice very low…”I’m Batman”…like that. It’s fun! Anyone can do that, really!

R: Yeah, I’m more of the Joker.

L: Yeah, can you do the Joker?

R: No! I just lick my lips.

L: That’s what a performance was, really, wasn’t it? It was Heath Ledger just licking his lips. Robert, am I the first person to say you look a little a bit like Heath Ledger?

R: Ehh, no, ladies ( ) all the time. They confuse me with him…until he died. That was the last day I actually spoke with the girl.

L: Well, ladies and gentleman, if you can imagine I’m here with Heath Ledger just the joker himself. He looks exactly like him, it’s amazing! Except all the makeup. But Heath Ledger on a day off. That’s what I’ve got in front of me right now. And…I think it’s time to ask you a few questions, Robert…

R: I’d like to ask you a question, first.

L: Yes, go ahead!

R: Who do you think you are?

L: I think I’m Luke, from Luke’s English Podcast.

R: Ok good enough, good answer!

L: It’s that…acceptable?

R: I believe it’s correct. I don’t know if it’s acceptable!

L: Ok… That question: “who do you think you are” has got several meanings to it, hasn’t it? Which one were you aiming for, when you asked…

R: I think it was open interpretation, so you did the best you could with the material you had I think

L: Yes, I hope so. I think I’m Luke Thompson from Luke’s English Podcast, and when it comes to the actual…the more existential question: “who am I really” well I think I can be anyone, I want to be as long as it complies with the law.

R: Have you ever read Nietzsche?

L: No, I didn’t but I know some of the things he said. Nietzsche was a philosopher, wasn’t it?

R: He was a philosopher, and apparently people, young people sometimes they go on a…they have periods where they chose not to speak, at all, like the…they choose to be silent. But I don’t know why, and I was hoping maybe…cause you seem pretty educated, and…so I was curious if you know why people who read Nietzsche decide that they don’t want to speak.

L: You mean these sort of nihilists, for example who become sort of existential or philosophers who…that actually make a context decision to stop talking.

R: Correct. And then there was “Driving Miss Daisy” …no…”Little miss Sunshine”

L: The movie, yes, that’s a character in it who stops talking.

R: Yeah, and then I met someone yesterday who told me they did the same thing because they saw Nietzsche, and I didn’t know if she was lying, or confusing herself with the character in Little Miss Sunshine, or if she actually had done the exact same thing as that guy.

L: I haven’t read a lot of Nietzsche so I don’t know exactly what he said but maybe it’s something to do with, you know, just “why bother” I think maybe that might be the philosophy. I don’t know!

R: Ok. Thank you for answering the question!

L: That’s fine. If you want to ask any questions at any point feel free, ok? Maybe we can ask bounce question of each other…or maybe not, maybe I can just interview you.

R: Ok, I appreciate your being open to my questions as well, and…I’ve… asked my question now…it’s your turn.

L: Ok, it’s my turn. So the question I’m sure you’ve been asked this loads of times. Why do you moved to Paris?

R: I originally came to Paris in 2002 to continue my theatre studies and went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts for a little while and I also went to Boston university to study acting and when I got to Paris the idea was that I would study Comedie del’Arte which is the origins of theatre…and…well, in the occidental world, anyway.

L: Occidental world, that’s the west, isn’t it?

R: Yeah…It’s all the occidenties, occidentaux.

L: You’re speaking French to me now.

R: Right! I thought I could fake it and sound latin

L: Western world! The occidental world

R: Right right, I mean that there was Greek theatre, and the Romans before that they did their drama…

L: Yes, Greek theatre is the origin of comedy, isn’t it?

R: Yeah?? I don’t remember any really laughing, and any Greek theatre study class that I took. I remember like Antigone. That was a pretty funny one.

L: What happens in Antigone?

R: Well…It’s…Oedipus is, you know? Her Dad’s Oedipus, you know.

L: Oedipus from the great myth about the guy who falls in love with his mother and wants to kill his father.

R: Well, he did kill his father and the he made love with his mum and he was felt so bad about the whole thing that he poked out his eyes . That is hilarious!! LOL

So the Greeks didn’t make comedy! LOL And then after that…anyway…so I came to Paris to study Comedy Del’Arte which I believe started in Italy and it’s six principal characters, you know what it is? So, you’ve got the young female, the young hero, the old guy, who can be the general, who can also be the old wise man, then you’ve got the father character, you’ve always got a clown character, so these six or seven characters could do every piece of theatre. Sometimes they are young troupes and they would go around. Anyway, that transformed into Marcel Marceau…

L: He was a mime artist, wasn’t he?

R: Pretty much yeah but his origins are from Comedy Del’Arte which uses a lot of masks, pantomimes to tell stories, and I wanted to go deeper into that, and there is a school here called the Jaques Le Coque school.

L: Yes, is a…famous clown.

R: Correct, like Marcel Marceau. So, I got here and then I found out that the school cost six thousand euros a year, that he was dead, Jack, Jack was dead, or he is dead, all of his students have left there in other schools become kind of the sausage factory for pumping out clowns, I was working as a dishwasher without papers at the time, illegally, under the table, in black, as they say… and I was making forty nine francs an hour, but this is back in the day when they had francs.

L: Forty nine francs is about five pounds an hour, isn’t it?

R: Seven euros.

L: Yes, about five pounds. It’s not very much.

R: It’s not very much, but I was happy just to survive, and that’s how I got started, and so I didn’t go to school on my limited budget and I just…cause I’m already a kind of a clown! You know…whatever man!

L: Ok, so you started as an actor, and so you started really as an actor, you came to France in order to train as a sort of theatre performer.

R: A deeper actor.

140. Ghost Stories – True Tales of Really Creepy Experiences

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

Right-click here to download this episode.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Japanese running tap

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

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

The bouncing ball

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

Frozen in bed and the weird clock

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

The Lapworth Walk

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

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

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

Town, houses etc.

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

Baddesley Clinton House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

139. Hard Driving / Car Vocabulary

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One Man. One Car. One Destination. Lots of vocabulary.

Right-Click here to download this episode.
In this episode you join me in a BMW Mini as I attempt to drive across Paris, through some of Europe’s busiest streets, on a very hot July afternoon. My mission is to deliver the car to a car-park while avoiding angry Parisian drivers, pedestrians with prams, and busses full of Japanese tourists. The ultimate goal – a glass of cold beer on the terrace of a cafe, and to save the world through another episode of Luke’s English Podcast, of course.

Do I manage to complete my mission? And what driving-related vocabulary can you learn during this episode?

Listen, and you will find out…

Vocabulary
Here are extracts of the transcript for this episode that contain all the driving-related vocabulary.

Hard Driving – driving vocabulary

[5:42]

The car is on. I’ve got my hand on the handbrake on my right. I’m in the first gear. And I’m going to get moving, so I just lift the handbrake up. I’ve got the clutch. My left foot is on the clutch. I’ve put myself on the first gear. Handbrake is down.

[6:00]

[16:05]

So, [the] vocab is, what I’m holding, what I’ve got in front of me, the wheel. The thing that I’m turning in order to control the direction of the car, that’s the steering wheel, folks. The steering wheel. Turning the steering wheel to go left and right.

[16:27]

[16:45]

The gear stick to control the gears.

[16:51]

[17:32]

Gear stick. First gear, second gear, third gear, fourth gear, fifth gear, sixth gear sometimes and reverse gear, of course. Handbrake, I’ve already mentioned that. That’s the way you can sort of… how you stop the car when you’re on a hill, or you park, you pull the handbrake up. Sometimes, if you’re in a Hollywood movie and you need to like turn the car around very quickly, you might pull the handbrake and do the handbrake turn. It’s very dramatic and exciting. But I’m not going to be doing it today, folks, no! I’m going to try drive safely.

[18:08]

[19:35]

So, the pedals on the floor to…

[19:37]

[20:40]

So, the pedals on floor, the one on the furthest right is the accelerator pedal or the throttle, which is the accelerator.

The accelerator pedal, the brake pedal on the middle and the clutch on the left. OK. I’ve got some switches behind the steering wheel. You can hear the indicator switch, which sounds like this: “Indicator sound” Yeah. This is the indicators, they indicate left and right. And I’ve also got things like headlights, and stuff like that. I’ve got the speedometer in front of me, I’ve got a fuel gauge, rev counter which tells me how I’m revving the engine.

[21:40]

[24:07]

We also have the glove compartment on the right in front of the passenger seat, which never contains gloves. They call it the glove compartment, you know, it’s like a little box that little storage cupboard thing in front of the passenger seat. I don’t know why they… I know why they call it the glove compartment. It’s because traditionally that’s where you keep gloves. I’ve never ever seen a pair of glove in the glove compartment. Usually, it’s just like an old map or some boiled sweets or something like that. Never, never any gloves in the glove compartment.

[24:50]

[25:16]

There’s the horn, which makes the car go “Beep beep beep” this is the horn. The seatbelt, which can obviously save your life if you have a crash. Hopefully, that’ll never happen. You also have mirrors, don’t you? Mirrors, what you can, which allow you to see behind you. You’ve got the wing mirrors on the left and the right. And then you have the rear view mirror.

[25:41]

[37:02]

So, the windows, the window in front of me, we call it the windscreen, in front of me, it’s the big window at the front of the car. The windscreen. In America, they call it the windshield, but we call it the windscreen. Then the other one, it’s just this the window in the back window. It’s just pragmatic. The front part of the car that you open if you want to look at the engine, it’s called the bonnet. But in America, they call it the, what do they call it, the hood, hood, but we call it the bonnet. The front of the car is the bumper. That’s the part which is used to sort of bump other cars.

[37:43]

[53:46]

Summary

I’m just going to run through the vocab of the car that I attempted to teach you during the journey just as a summary.

You got in the car. You’ve got the steering wheel, which you use to turn left or right or to steer the car. You have accelerator pedal, the brake pedal and the clutch pedal. You use the clutch to change the gear. And also you have a stick on the right if you’re in Europe and that’s the gear stick.

You have the seat-belt to keep you safe. If you have a crash, then the airbag will come out and protect you so that you don’t get badly injured in the event of an accident. You have mirrors, the rear view mirror in the middle, the wing mirrors on the left and right. You have the indicator to show which direction you’re going to turn, left or right. Tick, tick, tick, tick, like that. The indicator. You’ve also got things like the windscreen wipers, which are those things that clean the water of your windows or the dead insects after a long journey, you use the windscreen wipers to wipe them off. You also have like jets of water which spray onto the windscreen. And if you angle the jets correctly, you can spray pedestrians as you drive past them, which is quite good fun, isn’t it?

You’ve got the… the back window with a windscreen wiper on it, you’ve got the brake lights, you have bumper at the back, bumper at the front. You’ve got the boot of the car or in Ameri… that’s the back, that’s the storage area at the back of the car. We call it the boot. In American English, they call it the trunk. The front of the car, you’ve got the bonnet, which covers the engine. And in America, they call that the, what do they call it, the hood. That’s right. You’ve got also the petrol cap, which you remove in order to fill a car up with fuel.

Let’s see, what else? So, the number plate on the back and the number plate on the front, they have the registration number of the car. Also the wheels, of course, they’re very important. If you want to actually travel anywhere. You got the wheels… the wheels have, what are do they called it?, alloy covers, often if you’ve got like you know very nice cool car, you might have alloys on the wheels, which look cool. Then you’ve got the rubber bits that go around and they’re filled with air. Those are called tyres [tires in US English], of course. The tyres that go around the wheel. Just the same as a bicycle, in fact. Headlights on the front help to illuminate the road as you’re driving.

[57:23]

[57:27]

There are some verbs we associate with driving, as I mentioned before you. You accelerate. You brake, brake means to stop [or slow down]. You turn left, you turn right, you steer the car. You reverse, I mean, you go backwards. Mirror signal manoeuvre. Mirror, obviously, check the mirror before you move. Signal, that’s to indicate which direction you’re going to go. And manoeuvre, that means to turn or to make some sort of specific movement in the car. A manoeuvre. A manoeuvre might be, for example, a 3-point turn or a U turn or a… if you reverse into a parking space, to parallel park, which is one of the most difficult things that you can do when you’re driving is parallel park. When you’re learning to drive, that’s very difficult. If you have a space in the road and you have to try and park the car in that space. So, that’s nicely positioned, close to the curb, without too much space between the car and the curb and you don’t actually touch either the car in front or the car behind. That’s… if you can master that art, then you should be able to pass your driving test, how to parallel park.

[58:36]

Other vocab:

traffic
traffic lights
zebra crossing
satnav
petrol

A listener has written a finished transcript of this episode. Click here to read it. Be aware that it hasn’t been fully corrected yet, but is about 90% accurate.

134. The Story of Salvo

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The story of a hardcore punk band from London, told by the band members themselves. A transcript for the introduction to this episode is available below.

Right-click here to download this episode.

This episode is all about the story of a hardcore punk rock band from London. Listen, and you’ll hear an interview with the band members as they talk about how the band started, their influences, and what caused the band to end.

The band is called Salvo. They started in London in 2002 and played gigs in London, Oxford and Manchester before breaking up 4 years later. This interview was done recently. For the first time in years, most of the members of the group were all in the same room at the same time, so I had to take the opportunity to interview them for Luke’s English Podcast.

The members of this band are all my friends. I know most of them from my days at Sixth Form College when I was a teenager. One of them is my brother James. I was also a member of the band for a year or two. The style of music is a little bit hard to categorise. It’s hard, fast guitar rock. It’s pretty hardcore, but quite catchy too. You can make up your own mind about the music as you’ll hear some of it during the interview. If you want to hear more of the music, you can check out the Soundcloud page for Salvo here. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SONGS BY SALVO

This is an authentic recording. No-one is really grading their English. They’re speaking in the same way that they speak to their friends. The recording took place after a music session in a studio, and a short beer drinking session in the pub. What you’ll hear is natural British English as it really is spoken, in this case by a group of friends, who used to be in a band together, sharing some memories over a few beers.

Just before we start I’d like to just say a few things about learning English.

What’s the best way to learn English? Well, people always say that you learn most when you socialise with native speakers. It’s really hard to do it because you don’t understand everything and sometimes you get lost and feel confused and frustrated. But that confusing feeling is a normal part of the learning process. It means your brain is processing a lot of information. In this case, it’s struggling to deal with words, accents, phrases or pronunciation that you’re not familiar with. It’s a challenge to understand native speakers talking naturally in a social situation, especially if they are good friends who know each other well. But, challenges are an important part of learning English. What is challenging now becomes less challenging in time as you gradually learn more and work out what people are saying. Remember, it is in those challenging situations, like when you’re listening to native speakers, that you really learn the most. It feels difficult, but that is the feeling of your brain trying to work it out, and as a result, learning and improving. So, listen to native speakers talking naturally. It’s one of the best ways to improve.

You can do it with Luke’s English Podcast. I present things to you, like interviews or recordings because I personally believe in them, find them extraordinary or touching, and hope that you will too. Hopefully this personal connection makes the podcast more engaging and as a result, a more effective way to improve your English. Basically, I just want to keep you locked in to listening to natural English, even though it is difficult, because I know that ultimately, it’s beneficial for your English.

So what am I going to present to you this time? Well, how about the story of a real rock band from London? It’s also a genuine story of rock and roll and friendship, told by the people who actually experienced it. That’s what you can hear in this episode. The interview was recorded at a friend’s house on a Saturday evening in South London. Please be aware there are some rude swear words used, but that’s normal, after all, it is rock and roll isn’t it.

So just a few weeks ago when I realised that the members of Salvo were going to reunite in the studio for the first time in over 6 years well needless to say I jumped at the chance to record a podcast episode about it. In this documentary or, if you will, rockumentary that you’re about to hear, I wanted to capture the, the songs, the sounds, the smells, of a hard-working rock band sitting in a room together, talking crap. And I got that. But I got more, a lot more. But hey — enough of my yakkin’. Whaddaya say, let’s boogie!

I expect some of you won’t listen to all of it, but then again for some of you this is exactly what you want. Some of my listeners really like the opportunity to listen to real English like this. Maybe you’re one of those people. In fact recently I recently got an email from a listener called Rei Lung, saying how much he liked listening to recordings like this. This is what Rei said.

Hello Luke!I just wanted to thank you for all you’re doing. The podcast is absolutely brilliant. I particularly enjoy episodes in which you interview your friends or just people on the street (like in those videos on YouTube that you have) because I think that this is when you can hear ‘authentic’ English. Also, the noisier it is and the more people that take part in the discussion or whatever, the harder it is to understand and the more authentic the language used is. I’d love it if you could do more like these, perhaps in a pub or something where people don’t really bother speaking slowly and clearly. Also, I really enjoy it when you talk about British life and culture, very interesting and eye-opening so I’d like to see more of that as well.Cheers

Well Rei, that is exactly what you’re going to get in this episode.

Transcript – A transcript is open on the Transcripts Collaboration page, and I’m slowly checking and correcting it, before adding it to this webpage. Here are the first few minutes of the transcript, which I’ve checked. This script starts at about 4mins into the episode after my introduction.

Jim -You’re listening to Luke’s English podcast. Live on luke.podteacher.luke.podteacher.com
Chris – Have you got a jingle? If you haven’t you’ve got one now.
Matt – Just a way I walk. (?)
Luke – Okay. Sh! Sh!
Chris – Nice jingle.
Luke – That amazing piece of music which you’ve just heard was a demo of an incredible band called Salvo and I’m here with some of not all of the members but some of the principal members of that band. And I’m now going to interview them and find out the details and the history of this really earth shattering, epoch making moment in culture.
I’ve got the members of the band with me. I’m going basically to introduce you them at first.
We’re going to find out who they are. We’re going to find out about the history of this group and I’m sure you’re going to find it fascinating and rewarding to listen to.
So I’ve got four people in front of me. On my left I have Aaron. Then I’ve got…
Aaron – Hi.
Luke – Hello Aaron.
Aaron – Hi. Hello.
Luke – Chris.
Chris – Hi.
Luke – Matt.
Matt – Hello.
Luke – Jim.
Jim – Hello.
Luke – And me who you know already after…
Aaron – And who was also in the band.
Luke – I was in the band too, yeah. So, let’s start with Aaron on my left. Alright?
Aaron – Hello. Hi. My name is Aaron.
Luke – How are you?
Aaron – Very well, thank you. Doing very well.
Luke – Good.
Aaron – Good.
Luke – So … Let’s see. What did you do in the group?
Aaron – Uh… I played bass and sang, did vocals in the group.
Luke – Okay.
Aaron – Bass and sang.
Luke – Okay. And…
Aaron – I wouldn’t call it singing really. But, you know, the vocal bits, yeah.
Luke – Okay. Alright. So, were you one of the original members?
Aaron – Yes. Yeah. Back in, I believe, it was two thousand and…
Chris – Two.
Aaron – 2002… 2002 was when Salvo started, yeah.
Luke – Yeah. Okay. Right. So, you were the bass-player and one of the vocalists.
Aaron – That’s right, yeah.
Luke – That’s right, okay. So let’s… Shall we move on …
Aaron – You can call me a principal songwriter.
Luke – Yes.
Aaron – If you really want to go with a label.
Luke – How many songwriters were there in this band?
Aaron – There were two. There were two dedicated songwriters.
Luke – Okay. Uh… So, you were one of them?
Aaron – Yes. Yeah.
Luke – And who is the other one?
Aaron – Chris King, who is on my left.
Luke – Okay. So let’s … Shall we move over to Chris?
Aaron – Yeah!
Luke – Hi Chris.
Chris – Hi.
Luke – So Chris, what did you do in the group?
Chris – Uh… I … I … I um … I played guitar and I sang… And… uh…, as Aaron said, I wrote some of the songs as well, so.
Luke – Okay. Right.
Chris – Uh… I wasn’t there from the very beginning.
Luke – Really?
Chris – I was almost there from the beginning, very beginning.
Luke – When did you arrive?
Chris – Uh… About a month or so after the band began. Basically I started uh… working… I was working at the same place as Aaron. And uh… and he started… he started the band. And… uh… and after, I think, he had a couple of practices with an old friend of his Dave who was the drummer. And… uh… So… they had a couple of practices and then I came along to one and after that I was in the band. So… yeah…
Luke – How did you… How did you join? Because Aaron and Dave were already in this…
Chris – Yes, you know, you know, basically I think what happened is Aaron and… , Aaron… Actually we’d been talking about it for a while at work. Aaron had a practice with Dave and another guy who he what was…
Aaron – Well it was me, Dave and this guy called Olly who just getting back to that when Chris joined. Chris came down for a practice and Olly had been sort of, you know, taking his top off like when it’s still quite… not even like warm in the room, just taking his top off and playing with his top off. And he’s a little skinny tosser on his guitar. And we were playing really badly and then Chris came down and Olly actually uh… proposed himself, you know, he offered himself for to leave the band because once he heard, you know, Chris play and realised that it was a little bit act of his depth, and went off to read poetry in pubs and that’s where he ended it up.
Luke – So Olly decided… Wait a minute. Just going back to this fact you said that he used to play with no top on. So did you not like that? Did you … Didn’t you … You didn’t like the fact that he’d played without his top on.
Jim – Why such a homophobe Aaron?
Luke – I don’t. I’m just curious to find out about that.
Aaron – It wasn’t somewhat that, you know, playing with you taking top off…
Jim – Some mates are so…, isn’t it?
Aaron – …it’s not about it, it’s like if you just go into a practice room, and it’s not that hot. Why would be… Why would taking your T-shirt off be the first thing you do.
Luke – Chris?
Chris – I … I never … I have sort of never sold that but it doesn’t surprise me. But I’m …
Luke – Okay.
Chris – Yes. So then I came along and things, you know,
< ? > – It’s a recent thing.
Chris – …things went, you know,
James – …From bad to worse.
Chris – …no, no, not into, you know.
Matt – …From bad to punk.

130. A Cup of Tea with… Sebastian Marx

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Conversation with a real American person from New York! Complete transcript available.

[Download]
This episode is now fully transcribed, and you can read that transcript below.

Sebastian Marx was born in New York and went to Boston University. He is a stand-up comedian in Paris and regularly performs in English and in French. You can visit his website here and find out about his comedy shows!

In this episode I invited Sebastian to my flat where we had some tea and some chocolate brownies. Listen to the episode as I ask questions which were suggested by listeners from the Luke’s English Podcast Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lukes-English-Podcast/227129545507

We talk about topics such as:
-Growing up 30 minutes away from Manhattan
-Going to university in Boston
-His experiences of leaving America and moving to France
-How he learned a second language (French)
-Some advice on how to learn a second language
-Differences between America and Europe
-Accents from USA
-Time travel
-Spirituality and the meaning of life!
-Gun control
-American junk food and obesity
-The Boston bombings from last Monday
-America’s foreign military campaigns
-The amazing sport of ‘disc golf’!
I also help Sebastian learn to speak with my British accent.

I hope you enjoy the podcast. It’s another long one, but as I’ve said before – you can listen to it in stages, and if you’re using iTunes or other podcast players, your audio player should remember your position if you stop listening, although I can’t imagine why you would want to do that ;)

Please leave comments below and tell me your thoughts.

Thank you if you are kind enough, or are able to leave a small donation by clicking the button in the top-right corner of this page.

Best regards,

Luke

HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS FROM FACEBOOK!

Luke’s English Podcast · 2,532 like this.
22 hours ago ·
Hello listeners! Tomorrow I am going to interview my American friend Sebastian. Do you have questions for him? I will ask him the questions on the podcast. Please write your questions here. Thank you!
1Like · · Share

o Jairo Trujillo García: If you had the chance to go back in time, for 24 hours, where and when would you go?

o Christopher Soto Antilem: What accent does he prefer? british, american or other country?

o Hiroshi Maruyama: How does he think about ban the gun movement in America? I cant believe they are allowed to keep the gun. I strongly against it. Why they don’t ban the gun with a strong the strong decision like the decision they begin war.

o Atsushi Yoshida: I want him to talk about American regional accents ;D

o Camila Andrade: Would you rather go back in time and meet your ancestors or go way into the future and meet your great grandchildren ?

o Wassim Benny: Ask him about his spiritual beliefs. Does he believe in life after death? and if not, what does he think would happen after death…

o Hải Tuấn: As a American, which accent do you think is the most easy to understand? British, Australian, South American or Asian English?

o Stefano Pierini Hi Luke. Ask him about the bomb blast of Monday’s marathon in Boston and the fear of terrorist attack.
Also you could talk about the poor education of Americans when it comes to diet and food.
Cheers :)

o Kohei Okutani: Hiya,Luke!!
I’d like to know how popular JPN MANGA is in USA! :) I’ve got some American or French friends who really love that but i heard that it’s not true, actually.
They say that’s for limited maneas｡｡｡ Please,ask him on the topic as far as he knows!!
HX!!

o Khazan Anna: First, i would like him to accept my deep condolence in connection with the terrorist action in Boston. Second, my question is: Has he ever been to Russia and what is his view of my country?

o Pedro Barreto Gamboa: Tell him that, here in Peru, we’re all sorry about the recent incident in Boston.
My questions would be:
How hard is it really to understand certain non-native accents? And what makes a foreign accent pleasant or unpleasant in his opinion?

o Cuneyt Tiryaki: Please let him tell us the differences between Europe & THE US. His first time experiences and odd feelings as an American in Europe.

o Luke’s English Podcast: Wow, lots of questions! Thanks a lot. The interview is in 6 hours so there is still more time if you have other questions. :D

o Cristina Ricciardo: Hello Luke, and thanks for giving this opportunity! I’d like to know something about American junk food and obesity problems.

o Hanaé Georgette Berton: Once again, « Are you sure you’re the man on the flyer ?».See Translation

o Jarek Jarsson: Luke ask him if he knows any foreign languages :) And one more question – what he thinks about USA military mission in Iraq and Afghanistan :) Thanks a lot !

o Hiroshi Maruyama: Ask him his favorite sport. I like disc golf, rollerbladingand salsa dancing. Doesn’t he do any of them? Is discgolf popular among us people? I think it’s a excellent sport.

o Flavio Gasperini: I would like to hear him try to pronounce a few words in British English…like “water”, “territory”, “thought”, “advertisement”, “I can’t eat eggs”. That would be quite funny, :S.

o Vanessa von Aspern: What are the most stupid clichés about america?

o Luke’s English Podcast: Hi, the interview is finished and we answered your questions, but Vanessa you were a bit too late I’m afraid. We do talk a bit about America, but not all the stupid cliches. Next time!

o Vanessa von Aspern: Well, thats all right! :)

o Luke’s English Podcast: Podcast is now uploading and should be available online soon. Kohei Okutani, I just realised that we didn’t answer your question about Japanese manga, but I can tell you that I am a big fan of Dr Slump and Doraemon, as well as others ;)

TRANSCRIPT FOR EPISODE 130. A CUP OF TEA WITH SEBASTIAN MARX

[BEGINS FROM 00:00:00]
Welcome good people of the world to episode 130 of Luke’s English Podcast. This one is called “A Cup of Tea With Sebastian Marx” and in this one I invited my American friend Sebastian into the apartment to share a cup of tea and some lovely chocolate brownies while we discuss various things.
Sebastian was born in New York and he went to Boston University. He’s a stand-up comedian in Paris and he regularly performs both in English and in French. You can visit his website by going to my website or just directly to his website which is www.sebmarx.com. You can visit my website in order to find that website. It’s just too confusing. It’s like “Inception” for websites. I don’t know.
In this episode as I said I invited Sebastian. We talk about lots of things and we answer various questions which were suggested by listeners to this podcast on the Facebook page.
We talk about, em, diverse things such as:
– His experiences of growing up in New York
– Going to university in Boston
– Leaving America
– How he learned a second language to a very high level, French in this case
– His answers to questions about accents from the USA
– The differences between America and Europe
– And also, more serious things like gun control, American military policy, and the amazing sport of disc golf which is something I’d never heard of before.
All of it is contained in this rather long episode of Luke’s English Podcast. So, I hope you enjoy listening to it and it’s about to start now now now.
Luke – So hello ladies and gentlemen. I’m very pleased to announce that for the first time on Luke’s English Podcast, I have an actual American man, an American person in front of me. I kidnapped him. I didn’t really, but I kidnapped him and I’ve held him hostage and I’m giving him cakes and tea. The cakes probably are okay, but is tea normal for you Sebastian?
Sebastian – Yes, yes, we are aware of that. We like drinking tea in the States.
Luke – You do, because, I mean, people say that tea is very, you know, very English thing, don’t they? But… and coffee is like associated with America. But…
Sebastian – Is it really?
Luke – Well, yeah!
Sebastian – I thought, coffee was associated with Italy and France and…
Luke – Oh, yeah? It is too. …you know, definitely, but certainly…
Sebastian – StarBucks I guess gives that reputation all over the world that Americans drink watered-down coffee.
Luke – Yeah, Americano…
Sebastian – Yeah. Exactly.
Luke – …is what they call it. Do you call it Americano? You don’t call it…
Sebastian – No, we call it Coffee.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – If you order a coffee in the States, you get a big mug of coffee.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Is that maybe in a diner?
Sebastian – Yeah. it could be in a diner.
Luke – Served by a sort of… a slightly bored, overworked middle-aged waitress?
Sebastian – Yes, can be either jewish or Greek often,
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – Often. Yeah.
Luke – And you have to tip, don’t you?
Sebastian – You have to tip a lot.
Luke – Do you tip?
Sebastian – Tip? Do I tip when I’m in the States? I have to!
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Because, if you don’t tip the manager comes running at you.
Luke – Really?
Sebastian – Well, if you don’t tip at all, the manager can come out and ask you – “Well, was there a problem with the service?” and you have to justify why you didn’t give any tip, because the waiters or waitresses over there, they uh… make their living off of tips.
Luke – Alright, okay. So, it’s essential.
Sebastian – It’s essential.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – Which, at the end of the day really helps the managers, because they just get away with not having to pay or pay very little their wait staff and so… the salary of the wait staff falls on the customer.
Luke – Right, so if there are any listeners out there who are going to America or maybe living in America right now… and if you don’t tip, you should be ashamed of yourself, because these waitresses and waiters,
Sebastian – Waiters, there are waiters as well in the United States
Luke – They… they need your tips. So, just remember that! Is that rule number one if you go to America?
Sebastian – Yes, rule… I think, yeah – rule number one, yeah!
Luke – Obviously it’s rule… maybe “rule number one” is like, you know, like get your passport
Sebastian – Yeah. Well, get your passport. You get a visa! I think that the United States requires visas for pretty much every country.
Luke – it’s difficult to get in.
Sebastian – They’re a pain in the butt. They are real, uh… when it comes to entering into that country, I don’t know.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – It’s not easy.
Luke – Alright. But you actually managed… How are they about leaving the country because when it gets…
Sebastian – Oh, they love when people leave the country.
Luke – Really?
Sebastian – They’re thrilled about that so uh…. It’s only about getting in.
Luke – Okay. So, ladies and gentlemen. Here I am with Sebastian Marx who is, as I’ve… as you’ve obviously already worked out, is American.
Sebastian – Yes, I am.
Luke – So it’s, you know… it’s great because you’re the first American person I’ve had on the podcast.
Sebastian – I feel honoured.
Luke – You are, you should be honoured. I think I might give you some sort of award for this.
Sebastian – Well, I’m already, I think brownies is a very good reward already… and tea.
Luke – Tea and…
Sebastian – I’m more of a tea person by the way. I’m more of a tea person.
Luke – Okay, so, you know, if there’s a cliche about Americans
drinking coffee all the time, it’s not necessarily true
Sebastian – No, they do in detective movies.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – It’s obligatory.
Luke – If you’re a cop or a cop (American pronunciation)
Sebastian – Yeah, a cop (American pronunciation)
Luke – Then, then you have to drink some.
Sebastian – donuts and coffee
Luke – donuts and coffee.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Does that help, do you think, does that help detectives to solve crimes?
Sebastian – to solve crimes? Yeah. It helps them to solve crimes and not to be able to run after the victim as he’s running away or the suspect.
Luke – That’s why they have guns though.
Sebastian – Yeah. that’s why, that’s exactly why they have guns.
Luke – They don’t need to run.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – They can just shoot.
Sebastian – Yeah, they can just shoot.
Luke – They can eat as many doughnuts as they like.
Sebastian – Exactly.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – It’s a free country.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – It’s to defend the freedom to eat donuts.
Luke – Okay, this is the beauty of… Well, we’ll come back to the gun question later on, I think, Sebastian.
So, as I have, I expect, already said in the introduction, what we’re gonna do is just to find out some stuff from Sebastian about America and differences between America and Europe and Britain, some things about accents as well, other questions which I have received via Facebook. So some of you, listening to this, you sent your questions to me on Facebook today. So, I’m gonna be asking Sebastian some of those questions later on, but first of all, let’s just get to know you a little bit then, Sebastian.
Luke – So, you’re American, we’ve established that.
Sebastian – Yes.
Luke – You’re definitely American
Sebastian – Definitely.
Luke – Where exactly in the United States do you come from?
Sebastian – I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, about half an hour North of Manhattan.
Luke – Half an hour North of Manhattan?
Sebastian – Yes, in a place, in the county, called Westchester.
Luke – Westchester?
Sebastian – Yes.
Luke – Okay. I’ve heard about Westchester.
Sebastian – Yeah. What did you hear about it?
Luke – Well, what I’ve heard about, all I know about it is that there’s a song called “Westchester Lady”, which you probably don’t know.
Sebastian – No.
Luke – and it’s by a Jazz pianist called Bob James.
Sebastian – I don’t know either.
Luke – Bob James did the music to the TV show “Taxi”
Sebastian – I know “Taxi”!
Luke – Yeah, and “Westchester Lady” is a sort of a piece of jazz-funk music.
Sebastian – It’s weird that I don’t know him, because I do listen to jazz and I do listen to jazz funk, but I don’t know uh… Bob James, you said?
Luke – Bob James.
Sebastian – I don’t know Bob James.
Luke – You gotta check him out. It’s quite, it’s a little bit cheesy, but it’s good, because especially the rhythm section…
Sebastian – made in the 70s?
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – It’s all proper New York, I guess, New York early 1970s all mid-1970s, genuine article jazz-funk. It’s classic.
Sebastian – kind of fusion.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – I love that stuff.
Sebastian – Yeah. Me too. Unfortunately, my girlfriend doesn’t like it at all. So, there’s only, I’ve been very limited on how long, you know, like there are certain hours of the day when I’m allowed to play that music.
Luke – Headphones?
Sebastian – Headphones is the way to go.
Luke – Yeah. Me too. I’m was always rocking the headphones.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Okay. So, you’re from Westchester.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – What is… that’s very close to Manhattan, half an hour away.
Sebastian – Yeah. Well, it’s uh… North of Manhattan you have the
Bronx
Luke – Mmm-hmm
Sebastian – Which is part of New York City, and then, you have Westchester, which is the suburbs. So, it’s, you know, it’s a pretty cliche American suburb with lots of nice houses and a garden and…
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Cliche, white picket fence and stuff like that. So, it is pretty close to that cliche. So, it’s great uh… a place to grow up if you’re kid. When you become a teenager you wanna kill yourself.
Luke – Really?
Sebastian – Yeah! Oh, it’s boring, it’s very boring.
Luke – Yeah, but you’re so close to New York.
Sebastian – that’s the thing, yeah. I mean everything… why it’s borings is because everything is centered in New York.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – You know, so… you kind of have to go into the city for most, well no! Not movies of course. Movies you’ve got everywhere, but… yeah I mean most cultural things… so, I mean, I’m not gonna complain. It was great. Yeah. because I would, you know, every weekend with my parents growing up we would go to wonderful museums in New York and so I feel very lucky.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Besides, wanting to kill myself for five year period. No, no, no, It was a very… I feel very lucky to have grown up in the
greater New York area.
Luke – Yeah. It would be amazing. I think, probably as you said “wanting to kill yourself” is a kind of a teenage thing perhaps.
Sebastian – I think anywhere, I think it’s a universal teenage thing even if you live in the heart of New York or the heart of many places.
[ENDS AT 00:10:00]
[BEGINS FROM 00:10:00]
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – or the head of many… the left foot of many places.
Luke – because, New York is not the capital, as you say it’s like the left foot, so Washington is the right foot?
Sebastian – No, no, no. New York is definitely the heart. New York is …no what I was saying was like… like someone who might wanna kill themselves if they were in Nebraska which would be the equivalent to the left foot.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – But, no. New York is not the capital Of the United States, Washington DC is the capital of the United States but New York feels like the capital of something. I don’t know what, but
Luke – It maybe the one of the cultural capitals perhaps.
Sebastian – Yeah. Well. It’s definitely the cultural and economic capital.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …of the States.
Luke – …with Wall Street and so on
Sebastian – Exactly.
Luke – Yeah. Okay. So you grew up in… in New York, but I understand that you have lived in Boston.
Sebastian – Yes, I went to school in Boston. I went to college, what they college in the States, which is university.
Luke – You went to Harvard?
Sebastian – Oh ,no. Unfortunately, not. Unfortunately, not. I went to Boston University which is actually right across the river, of the Charles River.
Luke- Yeah.
Sebastian – from MIT and Harvard, which is actually Harvard and MIT are technically in the city of Cambridge,
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – …which is, there’s a Cambridge in Massachusetts as well.
Luke – That’s confusing…
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – because, okay. Because Cambridge – obviously, Cambridge in England isa very famous place for its University there
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – but there’s also another Cambridge in America…
Sebastian – which is famous for its universities
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – But, there isn’t… there isn’t a university called Cambridge University in the United States
Luke – Thank goodness for that. That’d be really confusing.
Sebastian – really confusing.
Luke – Alright.
Sebastian – So the city of Boston has pretty much, I mean, there are two kind of halves. One is Boston proper, the other is Cambridge which is right across the river, which is pretty much the same city. Technically it’s another city, but in Cambridge it’s a little bit more residential than Boston is. There is Harvard and there is MIT, is over there as well.
Luke – Okay. Sorry. I’m just eating a strawberry. Again, my girlfriend, because she’s really nice and lovely, she provided us with not only home-made
Sebastian – Home-made ?
Luke – …kinda brownies – brownie cakes
Sebastian – Delicious. What nut is in this?
Luke – There’s almonds.
Sebastian – Mmmmmmmm
Luke – So, these brownie cakes are obviously just like brownies but with almonds inside them. And also we have a plate of strawberries because it’s a nice warm day here. So, strawberries can be the perfect snack.
Sebastian – Wonderful snack.
Luke – nice fresh strawberries.
Sebastian – To counterbalance this brownie.
Luke – Yeah. The unhealthiness of a brownie is balanced by the healthiness and sweetness and lightness of a strawberry, and we also of course, have cups of tea.
Sebastian – Green tea!
Luke – Yeah and as I’ve said before on the podcast, it’s obviously very rude to speak with your mouth full, but we like to break the rules here at Luke’s English Podcast.
Sebastian – Thankfully!
Luke – Thankfully! Yeah. So, that includes speaking with your
mouth full and it also includes slurping your tea. Do you slurp your tea?
Sebastian – I do, I do.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – I’m a fan of slurping, can I slurp?
Luke – yeah, go ahead.
Sebastian – Should we…?
Luke – Yeah, cheers
Sebastian – Cheers.
Luke – Mmmmmmm.
Sebastian – Mmmmmmm.
Luke – Obviously, it’s very rude to slurp your tea and we’re only doing it…
Sebastian – …even in the United States!
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – Hahahaha.
Luke -Pierre yest(erday)… last time we started talking about slurping tea and he mentioned Iran for some reason. I don’t know why. He seemed to think that in Iran people didn’t…people did slurp their tea and it was polite.
Sebastian – It was polite, okay.
Luke – He’s wrong. I got an email. So, no. In Iran it’s very rude if you slurp your tea so… there we go. Anyway, we talked enough about slurping tea. So, grow up in New York. University in Boston, but not Harvard.
Sebastian – not Harvard. It’s a university called Boston University,
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – which is actually very big. It’s a very big University.
Luke – what did you study?
Sebastian – I studied Film.
Luke – Oh, really?
Sebastian – Well, I went to the college of communications then I majored in film and then minored in history.
Luke – Film and a bit of history as well?
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Okay. So did you do like a dissertation or…
Sebastian – I did a final film. Yeah.
Luke – Oh I’m sorry, you majored in making films or studying films?
Sebastian – Both,
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …but making films as well and now my final dissertation, well project, let’s say, was a final film and so right after I left university I had lots of knowledge of how to be a waiter. It was…it helped a lot.
Luke – Because it doesn’t necessarily prepare you for…
Sebastian – …for much else, and even, even the world of film-making it’s… Well, because it’s a creative, it’s an artistic field so…there’s only so much you can learn.
Luke – Yeah. It sounds a lot like my degree,
Sebastian – which is?
Luke – …except, that I didn’t learn actually how to do anything. I just learned how to read about things and crit…, you know, I did a critical-theoretical, cultural-theoretical degree. It sounds much more complicated than it actually is.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – I did Media and Cultural studies
Sebastian – Aha.
Luke – in Liverpool
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – in the the north of England, famous of course for the Beatles and football and that’s it.
Sebastian – that’s it.
Luke – No, it’s a fantastic place, of course. But yeah, I did Media and Cultural studies. We studied lots of movies. I wrote long essays about Clint Eastwood.
Sebastian – Aha.
Luke – and Batman
Sebastian – Yeah
Luke – and…
Sebastian – The modern hero or what?
Luke – Yeah. The sort of postmodern detective
Sebastian – Ah… kinda Dirty Harry?
Luke – Dirty Harry. I’m a big fan of Clint Eastwood films
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Anyway, anyway. So, you studied film. I see. So, are you a film-maker now?
Sebastian – I am working on a web series right now, but I don’t consider myself so much a filmmaker, because I’m not really doing that right now I’m focusing much more on stage stuff, performances and stuff like that.
Luke – Okay. In fact that brings us quite neatly to the fact that’s, well.. now, here in France, in Paris, Sebastian is a stand-up comedy performer and you in fact, you’re kind of one of the main comedy performers in English, here in Paris.
Sebastian – Yeah. I started a night, a night of English stand-up comedy. When there wasn’t anything, pretty much, going on in English stand-up comedy in France.
Luke – Was it difficult?
Sebastian – It was very difficult. For uh… both sides of the stage, if I can say… meaning – finding the audience and finding the comics.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – So, the first couple of times when I did the show which was… the idea was to have what they call a “Showcase”, meaning – several different comedians, because I didn’t have anybody that I knew who was able to be funny in English. I was pretty much doing my one-man show. I mean, that’s pretty much what happened.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …and then slowly, started to have… I started with the French comics who were interested in performing in English.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – and then, slowly, but surely, I got some English, native english-speaking comics like you.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …performing more and more. So, it took a while because yeah, as I said it’s been oh almost three years now.
Luke – The scene is developing?
Sebastian – It’s developing and it’s been developing mostly within the last year.
Luke – Okay. It’s good. It’s very promising. So, briefly let’s just talk about the shows that you do.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Sebastian is responsible for three shows here, in Paris
Sebastian – mhm.
Luke – I think, you have your one-man show.
Sebastian – Yeah, called “A New Yorker in Paris”.
Luke – “A New Yorker in Paris” – it’s very funny and it’s full of interesting cultural points and… it’s fantastic. Also, you do that show in French.
Sebastian – Yeah. I actually did it up until last Tuesday. I decided to take a little break on my French show and to put it aside, to kind of… because I’ve had many projects, so I kind of said – “Okay, I need to take a break on some things to focus more creatively on other ones”.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – But, yeah. I was performing in French my full one-man show as well.
Luke – Wow! You must speak very good French?
Sebastian – Decent enough. I speak French well enough to be funny… in it.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – But I’m not sure if it’s… they’re laughing where they’re
supposed to laugh or where the joke is or they’re laughing at my accent.
Luke – You’re not sure if they’re laughing with you or if they’re laughing at you.
Sebastian – At me, exactly. Well, most of time they’re laughing with me.
Luke- Yeah.
Sebastian – But it’s true that being funny in a foreign language is hard. It’s very hard.
Luke – Yeah, because I imagine that being funny is like… what you achieve at the very end.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – like it’s the last thing you’re able to do.
Sebastian – Exactly.
Luke – First of all, you’re just able to, like, order a coffee and then it gets a bit more complicated you can do a presentation or get involved in a meeting and then, at the absolute peak, you are able to do a one-man show for an hour in front of an audience of French people in French.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – In this case it’s French but it could equally be in English, if English is not your first language.
Sebastian – Yeah, but it’s the… one of last things because not only you need to speak the language very well and you need to be comfortable in the language that you can kinda improvise a little bit, also you need to have the cultural references – the slang words. You know, there’s a lot in humor.
Luke – Yeah
Sebastian – So if you don’t have all that it’s hard and so… it’s still hard, you know, even though I’ve had some success with it and, you know I’ve done my French bits on French television.
Luke – Yeah.
[00:20:00]
Sebastian – it’s still… I definitely feel, I’m not where I would like to be, because of the language barrier.
Luke – I think it’s very difficult to get to the sort of bilingual stage if you didn’t start when you were a kid.
Sebastian – Yeah. if you didn’t grow up with it, I think it’s very difficult.
Luke – but do you have any tips for learning a second language?
Sebastian – I think, immersing yourself,
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …kind of in the language. I mean, of course, if you can live in the country where they speak the language, of course, that’s ideal!
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – That’s really, that’s the best way, because more or less unless you’re, kind of, in a relationship with someone who speaks your native tongue, you’re forced to speak the language.
Luke – That’s interesting.
Sebastian – If you’re working, if you’re working, for example, you know, you have to understand what the person is saying, you have to respond. So, immersing yourself is the best way.
Luke – Essentially, I think what this means is that we have to push ourselves, we have to throw ourselves into situations where we will struggle to survive, as it were, and then in that struggling that’s where the learning takes place. So, we need to be challenged, don’t we?
Sebastian – Forced almost, I mean, I don’t know if this is a personal thing because I know that like if I have the escape route where I know that the person speaks English and I’m frustrated, I’m gonna go back to speaking English, but if I know that the person in front of me doesn’t understand English which was the case, I was forced to express myself in French whether it’d be… even if it was awkward,
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …but after a while, by the end of the day there was eight hours of the day where I was only communicating in this other language, so unfortunately, I had to force myself and, you know, kinda put myself in a corner where I could only survive by speaking that language
Luke – I think it’s… a lot of it is about comfort zone.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – So, if you’re in your comfort zone, if you’re comfortable, you know… the learning isn’t really going to happen. You’ll be comfortable, it’ll be very nice but you’re not necessarily going to really learn. So, we need to try and push ourselves out of our comfort zones in order to give ourselves a chance to really let learning happen. So, when it comes to like… learning English people listening to this – just keep that in mind I suppose, like when you’re watching a DVD in English, comfort zone, have you got your subtitles on? Maybe turn them off!
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Because…
Sebastian – …or watch with Amer… uh…English subtitles.
Luke – Yeah. Well, people say that. Yeah, I think that’s definitely a good idea – watching english-language film with English language subtitles, but then when you get so used to that, the next step is switch off the subtitles.
Sebastian – Yeah, and see how much…, but it’s amazing how much more your ears start to open once you don’t have that crutch…
Luke – Yeah, yeah.
Sebastian – …of the subtitles.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – and I realized that in French when uh…when you put yourself in a situation whether it be, yeah, It could be a passive situation when you’re watching a film but you’re forced to follow the story. It’s amazing how much you’ll be surprised that you cou…you understand.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – You’ll surprise yourself, I think.
Luke – Yeah. Okay.
Sebastian – …once your ears adapt.
Luke – Yeah. Well, I have to take on that advice as well, because now I’m learning a second language, you know, it’s difficult… early days.
Sebastian – but it’s a very difficult language.
Luke – French?
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Yeah. Tell me about.
Sebastian – I mean, you know, it’s been nine years now that I’m here and…
Luke – nine years now?
Sebastian – Nine years and I still make mistakes all the time.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – I still have a very strong… and it’s very frustrating because I can say two words and a French person knows already that I’m not French. “Bonjour!” and they’re like “Ah, hi!”, you know.
Luke – Yeah. I find that when I start speaking French to people they just start speaking English to me because they’re like – “clearly, he doesn’t speak our language! I’ll speak English to you.”, and maybe they want to practise their English with me. They’re like – “Ah, an English person? Let me speak English to him!”
Sebastian – but I can’t help but sometimes get offended. Well I didn’t at first, but now after nine years Im (like) “uh, you know, I do speak French.”
Luke – Yeah. So you’re like – “Just, speak French to me, for god’s sake”
Sebastian – Especially, also because their English is not necessarily spectacular either you know but they want to speak English so…
Luke – Yeah, yeah. Maybe they would like a little mini English lesson. Okay, so… you’ve been living in Paris for nine years. So, you’re an American, you’re a New Yorker in Paris and that’s the name of your show.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – So, what brought you here to Paris then? What brought you here?
Sebastian – Well, actually, I wasn’t in Paris, I didn’t live in Paris at first. I was in the south of France for a while.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – And uh…now, it’s been four years that I’ve been to Paris and so when I came up to Paris I was in Toulouse for a while
Luke – It’s down south
Sebastian – Yeah, down south-west. The south-west of France. I came up to Paris to, kind of… Well, France is very centered in Paris.
Luke – Everything is based in…Paris
Sebastian – Yeah, lots of the jobs are here, lots of, kind of the entertainment industry is here. It’s very centered. So, being someone who majored in film, and all that stuff, I realised that Paris is kind of the future and I wanted to start performing again because I did perform uh comedy when I was in New York and Boston and I kind of missed the stage.
Luke – Yeah. So…but uh.. Why did you leave America? Why did you leave your home country?
Sebastian – My home country? Well, because I was with a French girl.
Luke – Ah, well, love
Sebastian – Well love, there you go. And so uh.. but you know, that was a part of it, but I also, you know, I had recently graduated from college and I wanted to see, I wanted to travel as well, so there were different reasons… love being one of them, also adventure, wanting to… you know. I had no idea how long I would stay, you know, I didn’t know. And so… you know, here I am, nine years later, went by pretty quickly.
Luke – Yeah. Time flies when you’re having fun.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Okay, so… so what’s it like being an American in France? How is it being an American in France, generally?
Sebastian – Generally, it’s fine. I mean, the French and Americans have a love-hate relationship.
Luke – What’s a… you love them and they hate you?
Sebastian – Both, mutually, we both love and hate.
Luke – Yes.
Sebastian – …both, each other, for different reasons. We get very pissed off about each other you know, and get annoyed by each other.
Luke – Yeah? Can you tell us some of those things, like what do the Americans get annoyed with the French about?
Sebastian – The fact, that they are… well it’s funny because both have the impression that the other is arrogant.
Luke – Right.
Sebastian – So, the Americans have the impression that the French are arrogant…. that the French are pretentious and rude. So, these are the big cliches. And that’s uh…that the French kind of try to counteract the Americans often, to criticise.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – And uh…Which on the other hand, lots of Americans are here because of that, because also lots of American citizens are very critical of the American government as well. And so coming to France there’s this kind of haven of people who are not necessarily gung-ho for everything that America stands for and can put the American way of life and the government into question. You know, not necessarily being against but just, asking more questions.
Luke – So, I tend to find that Americans who have come here to France to live tend to be more open-minded perhaps or they have more perspective on America than…
Sebastian – Well, I think, I don’t know if it’s specifically to France. I think just leaving the United States automatically gives you more perspective, you know. It’s very easy, living in the United States, to feel that the United States is the world.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Because, it is a microcosm of the world. There are people from all over the world in the United States more than in any other country in the world. And it’s a very big country and you kind of have everything represented there.
Luke – You’ve got like two sides.
Sebastian – You’ve got two sides,
Luke – There’s ocean on both sides.
Sebastian – Yeah. And… and you’ve got all different landscapes and as I said, all different countries are represented there, and so… you know… And there’s the television that’s very, you know uh… American television is very identifiable and so it’s very easy to forget that there’s a world outside.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – And so, you know, whether you come to France or any other country, I think right away you get another perspective and it helps you give a perspective on the United States. So I think naturally, someone who lives abroad has that perspective that someone living in the United States who never traveled will probably not have.
Luke – That’s one of the big criticisms that people have of America is that they don’t know anything about the rest the world.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – but I guess when you leave, you know, you get a lot more perspective on things.
Sebastian – The thing about the States is – it’s everything! It’s a country of extremes. You have the most ignorant people as you can have the most culturdl people, you know, and New York is totally different from Kansas, you know it’s…it’s… you’ve got everything.
Luke – Yeah. Before you came to Europe what did you expect Europe as a whole to be like? Sorry, have you visited many other countries in Europe?
[00:30:00]
S: I had been, before coming to France, I’d been to Spain, England and Portugal
L: Ok and since, have you travelled around?
S: Yeah, since now I’ve been nine years I’ve been in France, now I’ve been to Italy, Germany, aahh, papapa well, Belgium, The Netherlands, still mostly western Europe
L: Been to the UK?
S: Not since I’ve been to France
L: You haven’t been to the UK?!
S: Not since I, I went to London, oh, no, no, so that’s not true, I have been to the UK, I went actually two summers ago, we actually drove across the UK to go to Ireland
L: Oh right, so you were just passing through
S: Just passing through, I saw Stonehenge, for ten minutes
L: It’s not very…
S: Disapointed
L: You mean you stopped and you looked at it …
S: I looked at it
L: … on foot
S: Yeah, there is a gate, there’s like kinda fence around, so I didn’t go cause I think I had to pay
L: Yeah, yeah, you have to pay to get in
S: I didn’t pay I saw it from the outside and that was fine
L: To be honest, Stonehenge is, is a bit disappointing but it’s not because of the, the, the site, it’s not because of the monument itself, it’s not a monument, it’s not because of the …
S: the structure?
L: the thing itself, I mean we don’t really know what it is, in fact. It’s not the stones that are disappointing, it’s just the way that the location is presented, in fact, because it’s a deeply significant sight in terms of ancient history of the area and what you have now is a motorway
S: the road, the road
L: it runs right past it, so that doesn’t help. Back in the …
S: I didn’t expect it there, just been to a gas station but no, it was Stonehenge
L: yeah, yeah. It should … I think originally Stonehenge was at the end of a long path and it was kind of at the top of a small hill and so to get to Stonehenge would you have to walk quite a long way across a lot of open land with the rising kind of gradient so you would be walking uphill and you would see Stonehenge in the distance and then when you get to Stonehenge, this is five thousands years ago, when you got to Stonehenge it was much much more impressive because of the surrounding area and the context. Now it is not the same because there’s this big motorway that goes right past it, so unfortunately it spoils
S: It’s true that if I had to get to Stonehenge by walking a little bit it would definitely would have had a different effect
L: I don’t know that’s because you would be relieved
S: You finally got there
L: Oh god, I’m finally here, not that it’s that impressive but because you don’t have to walk anymore
S: walk anymore, yeah
L: Ok, I would love to hear what you think about other countries, I mean, cause we can’t just talk about France, I have listeners from all over the world and, in fact, on Facebook, some of them have sent me questions. So the first question I have it’s from Jairo, I’m not sure where Jairo is from actually, but what he said is: “If you have the chance to go back in time for twenty four hours, so just for one day, where and when would you go?” So you’ve got a time machine, you can use it for twenty four hours, where’re you going to go, when are you going to go to?
S: I think I … ancient Grece
L: Yes?
S: Yeah
L: Why is that?
S: Because I think they really had another way of thinking, I think it would be really interested to know what humans were like before the dawn of our modern religions I think that would be … they must have thought very differently and I think it would be very interesting to spend twenty four hours, and would I think really open up my mind to see how humans were, because I think we chose a different path instead and I think it would be interesting to see really how they thought and ..
L: Yeah, when I imagine ancient Greece I imagine sort of guys sort of lounging around with tablets
S: Yes
L: But it’s not like tablet computers like we have now
S: No
L: They had the original tablets
S: The original, yeah
L: The stone tablets. Can you imagine that any time you wanted to write something down you had to engrave it
S: Chisel, yeah and especially later with the numbers, well, yeah ancient Greece or ancient Rome, but yeah what the numbers, the roman numerals, if you wanted to represent 1943 you had to have, like, many characters
L: Ok, you have to learn a new alphabet
S: Yeah, pretty much a new alphabet, yeah
L: Ok, ancient Greece, awesome, brilliant. So ok, the next question is from Christopher and Christopher says: “What accent do you prefer Sebastian?, do you prefer the British accent, an American accent or an accent from another country? So what’s your favourite accent?
S: oh, ahm, I don’t have a ‘favourite’ accent, I mean there’re accents I find funny that for comedic potential as a comedian work very well, a German speaking English for some reason is very funny. I don’t know if it’s thanks to Mel Brooks films or what but there’s something funny I think about german speaking English
L: Really? Cause I have a lot of germans who are listening to this
S: Oh-oh!
L: and they are thinking l like “Oh is my English funny?” They might be
S: Offended
[ENDS AT 00:35:00]
[BEGINS FROM 00:35:00]
Sebastian – Offended? I just offended them all.
Luke – You’ve just offended the whole nation of Germany
Sebastian – …of Germany. No, I like the Indian accent. When Indians speak English, I find it I don’t know, there’s a ring to it that I appreciate
Luke – Going going back to the German thing again
Sebastian – Yeah. I have to make up for it now.
Luke – Yeah. You do. But I think, there is, I think, the thing about German accent that makes it funny is as you said like some movies
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …and stuff and some comedy movies have presented some germans as comedy characters with the voice and so on, but Okay. You find Indian accent to be pleasant.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Charming?
Sebastian – I mean, I love the British accent as well.
Luke – Of course!
Sebastian – Irish accent. I feel the Irish can see anything and it’s adorable. They can curse, they can see terrible news, but it’s charming.
Luke – Hiroshi from Japan is a regular contributor to the Facebook page. Hiroshi says, he has rather a serious question for you, Sebastian. He said:
– “How do you, what do you think about the ban and the gun movement in America” (Hiroshi)
and he adds:
– “I can’t believe they’re allowed to keep the gun. I’m strongly against it” (Hiroshi).
Luke – That’s what he says:
– ” Why don’t they ban guns with the strong decision like the decision to begin the war” (Hiroshi)
Luke – Wow, it’s a controversial question from Hiroshi.
Sebastian – Yes. Well, I mean, I agree with him, generally speaking that there should definitely, definitely be more gun control in the United States. Why I don’t know. This is a very complicated question. I don’t know if we really know why Americans love guns, but, you know, we do love guns! I mean, we, speaking very generally of the American people, I think, it will…, Well, it’s written in the constitution that it’s a right. It’s one of the first bills of the constitution, I don’t know which number.
Luke – I don’t know either. [It’s the 2nd amendment to the constitution! – Luke]
Sebastian – I should know this, but I didn’t memorise the whole constitution. So I think, because it’s like top 5 they think that it’s necessary to hold onto, which of course, is a big mistake in the sense that guns when the Constitution was written were, was a very different beast, you know, a gun and you shoot one bullet and it took you 5 minutes to clean out your…
Luke – They didn’t have AK-47s or M-16s, back in those days.
Sebastian – So, definitely a different kind of thing that we’re dealing with 230 years ago. Why? I think, it’s fear. I really think, it’s fear. I think that…, there’s a big fear that’s…, it’s a vicious circle in the sense…, it’s a vicious circle of a fear in a sense that you know that someone on the street might have a gun, so in order to defend yourself the only way is to have a gun. So, you have a gun and then that person of course is afraid that you might have a gun and so everyone winds up having a gun. Lots of people have guns in the house because they’re worried that someone will rob their house at gunpoint.
Luke – It’s terrible. That means the guns just multiply
Sebastian – Exactly.
Luke – Because all it take is for like a certain number of people to have guns for everyone else to feel that they should have guns.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – But it seems to me that it goes a little deeper than that as well, and when you start talking about gun-control, people feel it’s like anti-American to to ban the gun. So maybe that is the constitution but…,
Sebastian – That’s linked with the constitution because we have this association that…, because the constitution defines America, this is kind of the idea, so that if you kinda get rid of one of the fundamental aspects of the American constitution it is unamerican.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – But in my opinion it is also very much American and necessarily American to put these things in question.
Luke – Yeah.
[00:40:00]
Sebastian – the American way of life, in my opinion, the positive aspect is to put constantly be putting yourself in question which i think the American people and government don’t do enough.
Luke – Yeah. Well, I hope that there is more gun control, just as a final point, I think as you said about it being American, it seems that its central, somehow it is connected to some core American values.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – One of those being freedom or liberty.
Sebastian – Definitely.
Luke – I think that to an extent some people in the States value the right or…, yeah, the right to have a gun as somehow connected to the ability to be free.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – and, having the right to bear arms is more valuable than the fact that some people will die from from shootings.
Sebastian – We’re very much afraid of the government in the United States.
Luke – You don’t like the idea that the government control over you…
Sebastian – Yeah, control and telling somebody an individual what to do. So this is a general, you know, I’m talking very general. As I said the United States is a very big place for 300 million people. It, you know, it’s very hard to categorise a whole country, but I’m talking about the people who as you said hold on to their rights, and yes, it’s that they consider it a right and if the government would say no you can’t carry a gun they would take it as an infringement on their freedom and, because there was established a long time ago and, the United States was, it’s a big country that had pioneers coming in and they needed to explore the land and they needed their gun and so they needed to hold on to it. It’s changed a lot as I said so…
Luke – I think, maybe…, to be honest, maybe the British, I think, it’s our fault. Sorry. I think, it’s our fault, because obviously in America there was a war of independence and they had to fight against the colonials, the Brits, they had a war against the British. So, maybe, adding into the constitution that all Americans were are allowed to have guns and that they should be allowed to have guns was a protection against the British. Because we had guns and we were fighting against you. So, you said: – “Right, American people, you can have guns. In fact, you should, because you need to protect ourselves against the British. So it is our fault.
Sebastian – Yeah. it’s become…, It’s always the British’s fault. Let’s get that clear. It’s always the British’s fault.
Luke – We’re responsible.
Sebastian – but now, it’s been replaced with, you know, but it’s the same ideas, it’s the same concept. Now, it’s been replaced by criminals, you know, the people, the criminals out there who’re gonna attack me and I need to defend… and it also comes back to this idea of fear that I need to defend myself and that no one will do for me.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – So, there’s this mistrust that the government or police won’t do it and it’s also another thing, the citizens say: “- Well, if the cops have guns that’s not fair, I should have a gun as well” and so the cops have guns because the criminals have guns and so, everyone winds up having a gun.
Luke – Yeah. Well, Hiroshi, I hope that answers your question. I think it is clear, you know, that’s not…, it’s a very complex issue. We know that much and you can see how it’s all related to national identity. That actually is very important, you know, in how people define their lives. It’s very complicated, but yeah:
“- Why don’t they ban guns with the so strong decision?” (Hiroshi)
Luke – He says:
– “That’s Americans took a very strong decision to go to war” (Hiroshi)
Luke – So that’s a very, sort of, decisive thing that America sometimes decides to go to war, for example, in Iraq or in Afghanistan that leads us onto another question here. sorry to put this to you sebastian. Today, you have to justify everything that your country has done.
Sebastian – for the last 50 years.
Luke – Yeah, as an American you have to explain why America does these things.
Sebastian – Well, I want to say one thing that, unfortunately with all these gun massacres recently in schools and all of that, I feel and, I’m, you know, hopefully that there’s a tendency that the United States will wake up and really start to put a restriction on guns when you see how rampant the guns are all over the place.
Luke – This is very dangerous. Again, very complicated thing. We could talk about that for ages
Sebastian – Sorry… that’s war
Luke – but the next one is like war, isn’t it. We’ve done guns. Let’s move on to war. So – “What do you think about the American military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan”. That’s a question from Yarek. He asks:
– “What do you think about US military missions in Afghanistan and Iraq” (YAREK)
Sebastian – Well, I’m not very well-informed, enough, I think, to talk about this. I mean, you know, I’m very much against war in general. I’m not for Americans getting involved in such places. Especially, where’s so much irony, in the fact, that the countries that the Americans are invading into the same countries that they supplied guns thirty years ago.
Luke – Well, Bill Hicks who is, you know, a great stand-up comedian, he is unfortunately not with us anymore. He made loads of very funny jokes about it like, one of them was, like, When American politicians appear on the news and they say: – “The Iraqi army”, this is from the original gulf war, 1991 part 1.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – (telling a joke)
– “The Iraqi army, they got terrible weapons”
– “How do you know that?”
– “well, we’ve checked the receipts”
So, you know, so these weapons that America actually, originally sold to the Iraqi army…,
Sebastian – Yeah, exactly.
Luke – …and then they fight against the Iraqi army, with even better weapons than them. So, they know exactly what they’ve got because they sold it to them.
Sebastian – Sold it, yeah.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – So, you know, afterwards as far as specific interactions with Iraq and and Afghanistan, I don’t know enough details. I think that it’s very hard to know what’s going on, really. I mistrust the American news and so, in what aspect am I against it, it’s really hard to know, but I mean, I have to say also that there’s this tendency that I agree in some regards that there needs to be a democratic system that’s put in place in some way. I don’t necessarily agree with the methods that the American government is doing, but, you know, there is, it’s true that there should be some democracy in these countries.
Luke – Yeah.It’s very complicated. Thank you for your questions about this. We’re not necessarily the people (the most informed) to finally answer these very complicated ones, but still it’s interesting to see the opinion of an American person. Yarek also asks:
– “Do you know any foreign languages?”
Luke – I suppose, this is because we assume that Americans don’t know foreign languages, but you’re slightly different because you’ve been in France for a while.
Sebastian – Yeah. I am a weird case even though I am a real American because I was born and raised there. My parents are from Argentina. So I speak a bit of Spanish. I grew up with Spanish in the household and now of course I speak French, because it’s been a while that I’m here and well, yeah. It’s atypical. It’s not necessarily, not many Americans speak foreign languages, but more and more I would say. Especially, because there are such a heavy immigration and a very very big Latino population now in most major cities in the United States. More and more Spanish is being heard on the street everywhere, especially in major cities. So more and more people are, you know, opening up to foreign languages.
Luke – Can I ask you quickly about Argentina?
Sebastian – Yep.
Luke – Do both your parents come from Argentina?
Sebastian – Yes.
Luke – Did they move …
Sebastian – …
Luke – Go on
Sebastian – They were born and raised there both of them. They met there, they married there. My brother was born there and then, they moved to the united states and I was born in the United States. Did I answer your question?
Luke – Yeah. You did. Yeah. I see. Have you been to Argentina yourself?
Sebastian – Yes, several times. Yeah. Well, I know my parents are from Buenos Aires. I know Buenos Aires quite well. I don’t really know that much else of the country unfortunately. I’ve been around a bit. I’ve been to Iguazu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguazu_Falls) which is the waterfalls in between Argentina and Brazil – gorgeous! Gorgeous place, but I haven’t been to, many places I still need to visit in Argentina. It is a very big country.
Luke – Yeah. Can you just tell us one thing that you remember about your time in Argentina? Did you eat a lot of steak?
Sebastian – Lots of steak. Very good steak. Very good beef.
Luke – Apparently, it’s the best beef steak you can get, in the world?
Sebastian – Yeaaaaaaah, it’s great I don’t know ‘best’, I mean France is very good the States as well. I mean, it’s hard to say, because it also depends a lot how it’s prepared. Yeah. The quality of the beef is true, it’s very good. It’s very much a part of their diet, everywhere. It’s like normal. Every day you can eat beef and don’t think twice about it. It’s also very nice city. Buenos Aires is actually, very nice city. it’s very European influenced city.
Luke – Yeah?
[ENDS AT 00:50:00]
[BEGINS FROM 00:50:00]
Sebastian – lots of French architecture that you can find, like aspects that kinda remind you of Paris or…, but an older Paris.
Luke – Really nice people as well. The people I’ve met from Argentina have always been like really friendly, interesting and warm
Sebastian – …warm.
Luke – Yeah. I’d love to go one day. Maybe, when I finally do my round-the-world adventure – “Luke’s round-the-world adventure” and I’ll make a podcast.
Sebastian – …and do a podcast from each country.
Luke – It would be brilliant. I’d love to do that. Okay. Let’s see – Atsushi Yoshida who is from Japan would like to know… He says:
– “I want him to talk about American regional accents” [Atsushi Yoshida]
Sebastian – Okay.
Luke – I talk about British regional accents quite a lot. I love accidents. I’m really into it. Sometimes, I talk about American accents, but I don’t know which part of the country my American accent comes from.
Sebastian – Okay.
Luke – If I can, you know, sort of like, start speaking with generic American voice. I don’t know where it comes from. I mean, okay, so…
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – The first question: How many different regional accents are there in the USA.
Sebastian – You can’t number them like that. I mean, it gets very very specific. You know, even in New York there several accents. So there’s Italian-American New York accent.
Luke – “Hey, how are you doing? Come on! What is the matter with you?”
Sebastian – Exactly.
Luke -Do you get some cannoli?
Sebastian – Exactly, very good. So, which would be different from a typical New York accent, which is kind of like the Woody Allen?, would “New York”. They kinda put an emphasis on the “K”, like – “New York”.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – “Water”. Some people say that I have slight New York Jew-accent. I am Jewish, so… I don’t hear it, but sometimes people do say that
there is like, it’s kind of, you might hear it with the “T”. We kind of replace “T” with “D”, like a clear example with “Water”.
Luke – “Water”.
Sebastian – “Water”.
Luke – That’s interesting, because whenever I do, I always use “Water” as an example, I’d say: – “water”.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Now, you say “Water”
Sebastian – Water, water, water.
Luke – Water, water, water, because I emphasise the “R” sound a bit too much.
Sebastian – When you’re doing in American accent?
Luke – Yeah. Can you say
Sebastian – But that’s a New York accent. That’s also my accent, meaning yours, I think, is more of a Middle America accent .
Luke – Yeah. So, Can you say: “can I get a glass of water please?”
Sebastian – Can I get a glass a water please?
Luke – “Can I get a glass of water please?”. So, I think mines is more exaggerated or something.
Sebastian – Yeah, but not that much. Yours is pretty straight on, I mean, there are definitely Americans who speak like that. So…
Luke – Does it have any particular regional…
Sebastian – Nah, I mean, you have to speak more for me to try to place it.
Luke – I guess – “I’m sitting here with the Sebastian Marx and he’s a comic. He’s very funny. We’ve just been drinking some…”, now, that’s kind of “We’ve just been drinking”… it’s kind of really middle American.
Sebastian – Yeah. It’s hard to place. I mean, I’d say, it’s a middle America, but it could be someone from New York as well or any. I think, also I think, it’s starting to blend more and more. I mean, I think, with mass communications all Americans are watching the same television shows, being influenced by the same news broadcasters which, you know, apparently, this is what I’ve heard, I don’t know if it’s true, no matter in which country or language, apparently the newscasters are supposed to have the most neutral accent, which I think is not the case in the BBC, because they speak weird as your sketch so clearly says, but it seems like an American newscaster kinda has to have a relatively neutral accent.
Luke – Okay. Yeah, listeners to the podcast know that part of my comedy routine involves speaking like a newsreader who for some reason speaks like this. That’s a bit exaggerated.
Sebastian – but, is it true?
Luke – Yeah. It is. It is. I was watching the Margaret Thatcher’s funeral today and they were doing it – “The coffin there being lifted by members of the SAS the Royal Marines and the Gurkah rifle infantry”. You know, it’s just like- “Why are they speaking like that?”. Anyway, that’s a different question about the way newsreader speak. Okay.
Sebastian – other American regions you want?
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Okay. There’s a southern accent which is
Luke – “Hey y’ain’t from round here are ya? We don’t take too kindly to strangers round here”
Sebastian – Yeah, it can be very, you know, what we call redneck-y kinda like that the cliche you did, but it could also be very sweet. Can be…, I have to say that there’s something very seductive of a southern girl. When a southern girl has a southern accent it can be very charming as well: – “what has a girl gotta do to get a nice cold drink around here? ” and it can be also very nice.
Luke – “I gots to get myself back home now. Well it sure is getting late”
Sebastian – Exactly.
Luke – I don’t know, I don’t know what this accent is.
Sebastian – No, it was great. It was like a scene from a 1950s movie with James Dean or something.
Luke – Yeah? Brilliant! A lot of people talk about the Texan accent.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – So, what is that, because I have this kind of cowboy voice that I like to play around with which is like, sort of…
Sebastian – John Wayne-y
Luke – No it is more kind of gritty sort of 1970s character from like “The Outlaw Josey Wales” It’s like – “Well I’m prouder than a game rooster to have rid (ridden) with you”, you know, that’s kind of thing, like – “I’m hungry and tired as a Missouri heelhound”, you know, like what is that?
Sebastian – I can’t take responsibility for this, because I don’t know what it is. I mean, I don’t know, sometimes for me as a New Yorker, it’s hard to tell the difference in the southern accent the Texan accent.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – You know that they’re both from the south, but like as, you know, I’m sure that there’s a difference between someone from Georgia and someone from Texas.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – but I wouldn’t be able to necessarily…, yeah, perhaps if I heard I’d be oh that’s this accent but I wouldn’t be able to reproduce it. But you sounded like you’re doing pretty good.
Luke – Yeah. I think, I’m doing a character rather than an accent.
Sebastian – Well, it’s definitely a character of the cliche of that accent.
Luke – He’s a is a gold prospector basically.
Sebastian – Okay. Well, that can be more West, like that can be even more, you know, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, kind of, it’s also a question of what century we’re talking about.
Luke – Yeah. It is. Yeah.
Sebastian – Another accent which, I don’t know if you want to continue with accents, but that’s pretty clear as a Boston accent, being someone who lived in Boston, which is the accent that you can really hear with John F Kennedy.
Luke – Yeah. – “People….”, I can’t do it.
Sebastian – They don’t pronounce, the main thing is the “R”. They don’t pronounce the “R”. The cliche, the key phrase that we always say to make fun of the Boston accent is – “Park the car in Harvard Yard”.
Luke – “Park the car in Harvard Yard”
Sebastian – “Park the car in Harvard Yard”
Luke – That’s P-A-R-K T-H-E C A-R I-N H-A-R-V-A-R-D Y-A-R-D
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – “Park the car in Harvard Yard”
Sebastian – Yeah. – “A wicked kisser” So, that’s the cliche, that’s a typical Boston accent. so: – “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” and that’s kinda like rhythm to it.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – That’s very typical.
Luke – If you wanna, listeners if you wanna hear what the Boston accent really sounds like, then you could probably watch “The Departed” or – “The Departed”.
Sebastian – …which I haven’t seen, but yeah.
Luke – It’s great! It’s really good film. It’s set in Boston,
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …all the characters like gritty Boston, you know, locals and they speak with a strong Boston accent. It’s sort of Irish influence.
Sebastian – Yeah. very very heavy …have a huge huge Irish immigration to Boston. Also if you wanna hear a typical Boston accent which is kinda making fun which is a character based on the Kennedy is in “The Simpsons” – Mayor Quimby.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – If you hear the American version of “The Simpsons”, Mayor Quimby has a typical Boston accent.
Luke – Mayor Quimby?
Sebastian – Mayor Quimby, he’s of course a corrupt mayor, you knows, all the cliches of a politician.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …and he has the cliche of a Boston accent.
Luke – because, he is basically John F Kennedy isn’t he?
Sebastian – Yeah, pretty much or Ted Kennedy, you know, or who was a governor of Massachusetts. There’s a huge Kennedy family in…
Luke – Yeah. It’s interesting the way you say the word “mayor”, because I say “mayor” which is “A-A-A-A-A”, “MA-A-A-A”, that’s it. You say?
Sebastian – mayor.
Luke – mayor
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – kind of. Okay. “MA-A-A-A”.
Sebastian – You say, like almost French do “MA -AH”
Luke – MA AH.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Except without the “H-H-H-H” in the end
Sebastian – Yeah. Yeah.
Luke – I think the way that the British or the way I say it, it sounds a bit ridiculous. I sound like a sheep.
Sebastian – MA-A-A-A-A AH
Luke – MA-A-A-A-A,
[SPK1] – “The MA-A-A-A-YOR of London.”,
[SPK2] -” What? Did you just become a sheep at the beginning of the sentence?”.
[SPK1]- “The MA-A-A-A-YOR of London”.
[SPK2]- “What?”
Luke – You know, “MO-O-O-O-O” is that a word as well? I don’t think so. Next question, Camila Andrade, and I know that she comes from Brazil.
[ 00:60:00]
Sebastian – u-huh
Luke – It’s another question about time. on the subject of time we’ve been going for about an hour.
Sebastian – u-huh
Sebastian – What the hell? It’s a podcast !
Sebastian – They can listen how ever much they want.
Luke – They can pause and come back later.
Sebastian – Can I have another brownie?
Luke – Please have another brownie. You need the energy, because it’s a long podcast.
Sebastian – I’m not gonna pass out
Camila from Brazil, who’s a previous winner of my competition. I launched a competition over a year ago.
Sebastian – Aha.
Luke – She won the competition
Sebastian – What did she have to do?
Luke – She had to record erm a couple of minutes of dialogue, a couple of minutes of talking
Sebastian – u-huh
Luke – In response to one of the episodes of Luke’s English Podcast and she won. People had voted for her and she won the prize which was a dictionary.
Sebastian – Oh, wow! What was the subject of conversation?
Luke – Oh, goodness me. It’s a long time ago now. I’d heard so many…,
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …that I can’t remember what they were about about. All I remember that she, you know, she just was very impressive, and charming, and so well done Camila. Alright?
Sebastian – u-huh.
Luke – So, anyway. She said to me:
– “Would you rather go back in time and meet your ancestors or go way into the future
and meet your great grandchildren”? (Camila Andrade)
Sebastian – ooh.
Luke – What would you rather do? Who’d you rather meet, your ancestors from the past or your grandchildren from the future?
Sebastian – Very interesting question.
Luke – time travel related.
Sebastian – Yeah. Yeah. there’s a theme here. I don’t know. I think, they’re both interesting.
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – I would say the future.
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – I’m very skeptical about the future. I’m very skeptical and very worried about the future. so….
Luke – You think it’s all going to be zombies…
Sebastian – Yeah. Zombies at best. The zombies at best.
Luke – Really?
Sebastian – If the world is still even exists. If the planet still exists.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Yeah. In the future, I think it’ll be very interesting to see
if anything I do has any influence on anything in the future.
Luke – Really?
Sebastian – But I’m also very curious, I would also be very curious, where I’m coming from, what…, because, you know, I was pretty close to all my grandparents and it’s fascinating, and to really see the lineage and, what, how much I inherit. So this hard, It’s really hard question, but I think, I would say the future.
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – Yeah. How about you?
Luke – I see… It’s a very good question too. If I went back into the past..,
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – I’d be worried that if I did something it would affect the future.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – For example, If I, sort of, you know like, do you know the movie “Back to the Future” ?
Sebastian – I know it very well.
Luke – If I went to the past and I met my ancestors, if I sort of said something wrong or, your know if I, you know, dropped a glass in the kitchen or If I sort of caused something to happen which somehow divided the family,
Sebastian – Yeah
Luke – …you know if I like tried to make a joke and no one understood and they all got offended and then there was a big argument and then my parents for some reason…
Sebastian – Split up.
Luke – …never met each other and I would just disappear, I wouldn’t exist anymore.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – So, I be worried about sort of breaking the space time continuum
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – You know…
Sebastian – but I think, even if you just said – “Hi I’m your great-great-grandchild” I think that there was already kind of influence, that would screw-up everything.
Luke – I think, that would it, wouldn’t it? I think, there’s a number of theories about what can happen if you go into the past.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – One is that you affect of the future which then affects who you are in that situation. If I, for example, I’ve made a mistake or said a bad joke of my parents never got together, then I would just disappear.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – But the other option, the other theory is that another version, another plane of existence would be created.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …and so, it would be alright.
Sebastian – Yeah, because it’s just another plane.
Luke – Yeah, exactly! So I don’t think I would go into the past, because I’m scared of what I would do.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – So I would like to go to the future.
Sebastian – Yeah, but that would screw things up as well.
Luke – Would it?
Sebastian – Wouldn’t it?
Luke – Would it?
Sebastian – Imagine now, if our grand-grandparents decided to come visit us, to see how we are doing, that would…
Luke – for example, if they came back and they look really ill and really poor.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – and they would like, look, you know, it’s really hard in the future, you know, we haven’t got any food, we haven’t good any money
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …you know, we’re homeless what are you doing then I’d feel really guilty and I’d just…
Sebastian – Yeah, or you would be like, how did you travel? It would open up your mind to a whole ‘nother realm.
Luke – Yeah. I’d just say, I would accept that in the future at some point we will be able to travel in time and obviously, we can’t do it now, but they could. So, I don’t know.
Sebastian – But if in the future we can travel in time we would know that now,wouldn’t we?
Luke – Yeah. We would. I think if we’d got the ability to travel through time then all the time would just become meaningless, and you know, the space time continuum would break down, it would just become chaos.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – But, you know, I’m not a physicist
Sebastian – Me neither.
Luke – I’m not a quantum physicist, I think we need ask people like, what is he name? Michio Kaku I think, he is a Japanese-American physicist. He’s a sort of guy who can answer these questions or Doc Brown Doc Emmett Brown
Sebastian – Yeah, of course. He’d be the most obvious.
Luke – But if you did he would probably just go “Marty” “Get to the Delorian” or something like that. that’s what I think. I’ll go to the future just so I could get, like, the next iPhone.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – and bring it back.
Sebastian – iPhone 25.
Luke – Yeah, and I would show people – “Look at this I’ve got the iPhone 25”, but I don’t know how it will be, what the iPhone 25 will be like.
Sebastian – I think, It won’t be a phone.
Luke – No?
Sebastian – I think, it’ll just be like a thing that you attach like helmet or I don’t know an ear piece
Luke – I don’t think, it will be as big as a helmet. I think I’ll be just…
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – it’ll probably just be like a little tablet that you swallow.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – and you just swallow it once and then…
Sebastian – a beam comes out your nose and you can touch the screen which could be like a projection coming out of nose.
Luke – Yeah, exactly. You can send laser beams out of your face which allow you like visit websites.
Sebastian – Yeah, like to have your agenda in front of you.
Luke – Yeah. You could just like things
Sebastian – Yeah, you could like things.
Luke – You’d be able to just like things more conveniently. Okay. So again, I hope that’s the answer your question Camila. Let’s move on, Wassim. Wassim – I know, he’s a clairvoyant. He lives in New Zealand. He is originally from Iran. Interesting gu,y and Wassim is interested in your spiritual beliefs.
Sebastian – Ohoommm
Luke – Do you have a spiritual belief? Do you believe in life after death? What is your spirituality Sebastian?
Sebastian – I don’t, I do not adhere to any religion. That’s true, but I do consider myself a spiritual person, but I’m not sure what exactly I believe and I think, I’m discovering that more and more every day. I do believe that there is a sort of intelligence, but I don’t necessarily think that intelligence is not us. In the sense that I think, we are utilising a very small percentage of our capacity and I do think that we are deities in our own way.
Luke – We are gods.
Sebastian – We are, and I think, we don’t realise it, as if we kinda spiritual, we have a creative power that were not aware of and we don’t utilise or that were afraid of. So I believe in human potential. I don’t know if that’s spiritual or not. I believe it is spiritual, and I do believe that we are linked as living beings on this earth.
Luke – Yeah. Facebook, you know.
Sebastian – Facebook that’s the clearest example of my spirituality.
Luke – I’m joking, I’m joking of course. I’m being facetious as usual. Yeah. I agree. I think that we do have hell of a lot of untapped potential. We’re probably learning more and more as time goes on. I don’t know, if I would, speaking for myself, I don’t know if I would call it spirituality, you see, like…, I think that our subconscious or the way how our minds work is kind of a mystery to us.
Sebastian – It’s a very big mystery. I mean, I believe in dreams. If I can say. I mean there’s nothing to believe in, we are there, but we have no idea what it is. We have so little information about it. That’s what I’m trying to say that we’re barely scratching the surface on what we are, and I think the miracle is – look at us, we’re incredibly complex beings. We’re inventing complicated computer just to mimic.
Luke – But also there are some things which people, there are things which people, let’s see understand or yeah people understand as a spiritual phenomena. Let’s say or supernatural things which may be explained by other things, you know, like the fact that, maybe sometimes, certain, close friends or brothers or sisters, when they’re separate from each other they feel a connection and one of them decides to call the other one on the telephone, and at that moment the other one picks up his telephone, and then that the call arrives,
Sebastian – …synchronicity kinda…
Luke – …synchronicity, and then they conclude that they have some spiritual link,
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …but it could just be explained by something else that we don’t really have the language or the we can’t really explain that right now, but it might not be that it’s sort of some supernatural force like some kind of extra sensory force. It could just be, you know, at since they are apart, naturally they are going to think about each other, sometimes when when they both think about each other at the same time, one of them calls the other one
Sebastian – Yeah.
[ENDS AT 00:70:00]
[STARTS AT 00:70:00]
Luke – It’s not that unbelievable, it’s quite reasonable actually that would happen.
Sebastian – I think, I think, that’s, that’s always, always seems like it’s the fine line between miracle and something very banal, you know, these kinds of phenomenon. I think, that’s, that’s, you know, I think, it depends a lot on how you want to take it.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – You can see life as, as series of miracles and, and, and a strange phenomenon and you wouldn’t wrong and you can see them as just the sequence of events, and you wouldn’t be wrong either. I think, lots has to do, lots has to do with your perspective and I think, that’s what I’m saying – we create are world, I think, that’s, you can see the magic in a moment, the magic in the moments or not.
Luke – Yeah. It depends on how you understand things that happen. … for example you might see that the birth of the child and you might say – “Oh, my God! It’s a miracle!” and another person would see the birth of a child and he’d say: -“Well it’s not really a miracle, it’s science”
Sebastian – It’s science.
Luke – Yeah. That’s what the body does we know how it does it. Yes.
Sebastian – …but there isn’t a miracle. I mean, science sometimes it’s just an explanation of the miracle.
Luke – Yeah. They don’t really explain why these things happen.
Sebastian – They explain how a child is born, but they can’t explain really how… the driving force behind it either.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – It’s, we can go on for hours…
Luke – keep talking about. Life after death? We don’t really know do we?
Sebastian – No, we don’t. Do I believe? I’ve, I actually have no idea. Of course I don’t have any idea.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Do I think, do I feel? I think there’s something but I don’t know much more really.
Luke – Yeah. Okay. Alright. So, Wassim, I hope you like that rather vague answer
Sebastian – very very vague
Luke – Okay, next question is from … I don’t know how to pronounce your name Hải Tuấn, Hải Tuấn I think and Hải Tuấn says as an American Hải Tuấn:
– “As a American, which accent do you think is the most easy to understand?(Hải Tuấn)
Luke – This is a difficult question>
Sebastian – within the United States or?
Luke – the question continues British, Australian, South American or Asian English? Do you find that there’s one accent that is easier to understand than others?
Sebastian – Well, it’s hard to say, because I’m not objective. An American accent is the easiest for me to understand, because I’m an American. Out of those that were listed…
Luke – Surely it’s just the accents you’re the most familiar with.
Sebastian – Yeah, Yeah. I think, but I would say between an Australian and British, but also like British there are several, you know, like a cockney accent, I wouldn’t understand.
Luke – Yeah, if you meet someone British, if you meet someone from Scotland, Glasgow, like a working-class guy from Glasgow, it might be very difficult to understand because they’re using a dialect.
Sebastian – I will need subtitles.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Scottish films I often need subtitles.
Luke – “Trainspotting”, for example
Sebastian – for example
Luke – Yeah. I personally, if I can answer this question I would say, it really depends on the kind of accent your most familiar with.
Sebastian – Yeah. Of course.
Luke – So if you’ve never ever heard an accident from Edinburgh then it might seem very strange and difficult to understand, but if you grew up in Edinburgh and that’s the accent the you’ve listened to since you’re a baby then that’s going to be the easiest one. So for learners of English maybe they, I would say, there is no one accent which is easier or less easy to understand it all depends on how familiar you are with those accents. So for learners of English what you need to do is to try and expose yourself to as many different accents in English as possible so that they are less foreign to you.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – I would say. Let’s move on. Stefano says: – “Hi Luke…” he would like to find out from you about the bomb blast which happened in Boston.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …on Monday. So, in fact, there’s another question about that from Khazan Anna who is from Russia and she said
– “First I would like him to accept my deep condolence in connection with the terrorist action in Boston, if it’s a terrorist action.” Khazan Anna
Sebastian – Yeah. Do we know anything more. Cuz I saw it, when, you know, I was watching the news that night, but I haven’t….
Luke – I don’t think we do know anymore except that some, I think, some politicians in America have described it as a terrorist action. CNN described it as a terror attack.
Sebastian – Okay.
Luke – We don’t really know who
Sebastian – How many dead finally?
Luke – I think, it’s three.
Sebastian – Okay.
Luke – But we don’t really know more about who did it, but what do you think about this Sebastian?
Sebastian – What do I think about…? I don’t think we know enough. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I don’t know…, I think, if it was an act of “terrorism”, quote unquote, I don’t understand, I don’t think it was very effective honestly.
Luke – They didn’t do a good job?
[ENDS AT 00:75:00]
[STARTS AT 00:75:00]
Sebastian – I mean in a sense…, that’s, I think if you wanted to kill the maximum amount of people like they didn’t really do their job. I don’t know.
Luke – Thank goodness
Sebastian – Thank goodness. So, well, I mean, I’ve spent five years in Boston. I love the city, and I think, it’s of course like any, you know, if it was an intentional act, I think, it’s, you know, of course a terrible act, I don’t, you know, I don’t understand the meaning or why someone would do that.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Besides that I don’t know what else to say about it.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – I’m sorry. It happened and definitely condolences to the people who were injured or lost their lives in…
Luke – Yeah. very sad.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – We, you know, we can’t say much more about it, because really we don’t know exactly who was responsible…,
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – or how it came about. All we can say is that’s very tragic of course.
Sebastian – …and very an unfortunate event.
Luke – Yeah. Absolutely. Just like any other attack in any situation…
Sebastian – …on civilians
Luke – Yeah. Exactly. It’s all very tragic. We’ll find out more as we know from the news. Let’s see. I’ve got more questions, Sebastian, is that right?
Sebastian – Yes, I’ve to go on about 10 minutes, but…
Luke – Oh, really?
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Okay. Cunyt T, I think that’s how I say his name. He said, he asked about differences between Europe and the US. I think, we’ve talked a little bit about that. Cristina Ricciardo would like to know about American junk food and obesity problems.
Sebastian – Yes. Woooooooooooa! Yes.
Luke – What do you think about that? People say that the Americans are really fat, because they eat hamburgers all the time.
Sebastian – Yes. That’s not only the hamburgers, that’s everything. It’s, okay! Let’s put it this way. First of all the United States once again is a very big place. You’ve got people really, who have really very different eating habits, whether you know, you find someone in a big city which big city, which states and even within one city of people who eat, you know, very differently. Once again, especially in major cities in the United States, you can really get anything you want. So you have the choice to eat healthy or not. We are constantly bombarded by food, in a sense, advertisement for food or the capacity to get it in the United States.
Luke – …very convenient.
Sebastian – …very convenient, and so there’s a big tendency to overeat. So it’s a mix of things. The American diet is not necessary that healthy, because, first of all there’s lots, first of all, the quantities are very big. If you go to a restaurant usually the platters are more than what is healthy to eat. That’s why there’s a whole culture of doggie bags which is the little package that you can ask for to bring home half of your meal.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …which is regularly practiced over there, because the portions are so big. So I think it’s also a question of quantity. I think, it’s also the quality of lots of the food is very processed.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …lots of heavily processed foods.
Luke – So is it, you know, a welcome change to be in France?
Sebastian – Yeah. Food wise, I mean, there are few countries, I think, where you eat as good as you do in France. I mean as far as freshness of food and variety, it’s a very, pretty varied cuisine.
Luke – Except for Britain. Obviously English food, I think, no one can argue that English food is not the best. What I’m saying is of course British food is number one. Then French food, then, you know, other countries. We all know, I mean, everyone denies it, but we all know that English food is clearly the best food in the world. I think no one can argue against that.
Sebastian – There was an interview with John Cleese from Monty Python, and he had a great come back
Luke – John Cleese
Sebastian – John Cleese, you know, and he was on The Daily Show, it was like ten years ago, and the guy asked – “Why does British food suck?”, and he responded – “Well, because we had an empire to run”.
Luke – Yeah. We were too busy taking the world.
Sebastian – Too busy taking over the world than focus on cuisine.
Luke – …and then we just took everyone else’s food.
Sebastian – Yeah, well, one thing to say about American food is that American food is also very varied as well, in a sense that what is becoming more and more the definition of American food is international.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – You go to a city like New York where a typical newyorker will eat Thai for lunch and then Mexican for dinner and, you know, really go all over the world within a week, culinarily speaking. So of course there are American typical dishes, but…
[ENDS AT 00:80:00]
[STARTS AT 00:80:00]
Luke – It’s not simple, it’s not simple ladies and gentleman
Sebastian – No.
Luke – You can’t just say American food any more.
Sebastian – No, it’s complicated.
Luke – It’s complicated. I think, maybe
Sebastian – It’s complex, complex.
Luke – I’m gonna call this episode a cup of tea with Sebastian Marx, but it could easily be called it’s complicated
Sebastian – It’s complicated.
Luke – Right, I’m sorry, I’m just gonna ask you a couple of other questions.
Sebastian – Ohoom
Luke – Hanaé Georgette Berton
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …asks:
– “once again, are you sure you’re the man on the flyer?” (Hanaé Georgette Berton)
Luke – Does this make sense to you?
Sebastian – Yes. Yes. This is person has seen my show or..,
Luke – I think, this person has seen your show.
Sebastian – Yes. I am the person on the flyer. I usually wear glasses and on my flyer I do not have glasses, and on the flyer, it was, the person took the photo of me when I was in the middle of laughing. I was a pretty good hearty laugh…,
Luke – Yeah? “hahahahaha”, that’s a hearty laugh.
Sebastian – Yeah, and I was really cracking up and so you might not see that face often in real life …
Luke – So people ask you you: – “Is that you on the flyer?”
Sebastian – Yes, often.
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – Yeah
Luke – Hanaé there you go. I hope that’s the answer to your question. She is nice Hanaé, I’ve met her, she came to “French Fried Comedy Night”.
Sebastian – WOooooa. Okay.
Luke – She was shy. It was very sweet.
Sebastian – I don’t think, I don’t think she introduced herself to me, does she?
Luke – I don’t know.
Sebastian – I don’t know
Luke – She introduced herself to me, Sebastian. I’m Luke, from Luke’s English Podcast.
Sebastian – I see. So she’s shy, but up to a certain point.
Luke – Exactly, you know, she managed to overcome her shyness to ask.
Sebastian – Luke’s English Podcast.
Luke – Exactly.
Sebastian – …The host of Luke’s English Podcast a question
Luke – Hiroshi… I’ve just got two more things, if everyone has got the time, including the listeners. I might divide this podcast into two episodes.
Sebastian – You do, whatever you want.
Luke – We’ll see and Hiroshi Maruyama comes back with the second question, and he says:
– “Ask him his favorite sport. I like disc golf, rollerblading and salsa dancing.” I don’t think dancing is a sport, but it’s fine “Doesn’t he do any of them? Is disc golf popular among US people? I think it’s a excellent sport.” (Hiroshi Maruyama)
Luke – I know what you’re thinking, Sebastian. You’re thinking: – “What these disc golf?”
Sebastian – Yes.
Luke – I don’t know what disc golf is either.
Sebastian – Disc golf
Luke – Disc golf. Can you imagine? Have you ever heard of disc golf?
Sebastian – No. I imaginegolfing like with plates, but…,
Luke – Right, it’s here on the internet, on Wikipedia. Wikipedia says:
Sebastian – Are there some images?
Luke – Yeah. There you go. It looks like it is an American sport.
Sebastian – Aha.
Luke – It must be an American sport. It says..
Sebastian – Ok it’s been like throwing a frisbee into a basket.
Luke – It’s like basketball but with a frisbee
Sebastian – But, but it seems more like golf, in the sense that it’s not like… it’s not like basketball in the sense that there are teams, it seems like there are holes, you know, baskets that you have to throw the frisbee into I guess.
Luke – It’s like playing golf…,
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – but with a frisbee…,
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – …and you throw the frisbee into a basket
Sebastian – Instead of putting a ball in a hole, you put the frisbee in a basket. I guess.
Luke – …and I expect you can’t walk with the frisbee
Sebastian – Yeah, I guess. That would kind of defeat the purpose.
Luke – It sounds good.
Sebastian – Yeah. I’d like to play it. I have never seen a disc golf course, but…
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – So disc golf, I do enjoy dancing salsa, it’s not a sport. I don’t think that we can consider dancing a sport, unless it’s a competition, so you can do that but… Yeah, I do enjoy dancing I took classes, salsa classes, and lots of fun, lots of fun.
Luke – Mmmmm, okay.
Sebastian – I don’t play much sport right now. I played baseball when I was young.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Baseball, American football,
Luke – little league?
Sebastian – little league and all. I wasn’t too short for basketball
Luke – Okay. Good, good. Final point, Sebastian.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – This is the last question from Flavio who says:
– “I would like to hear him try to pronounce a few words in British English…” (Flavio Gasperini)
Sebastian – Oh, dear…
Luke – and he’s listed some words, alright?
Sebastian – Yes.
Luke – So the first word is “water”. So how would you say it normally, first of all?
Sebastian – Water. Well, like sorry because now, I’ve got the pressure and I know
I’m suppose to … “water”.
Luke – Let’s do like this. Say it in your normal accent and then say like a British person.
Sebastian – Water.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Water.
Luke – Alright. Water.
Sebastian – Water.
Luke – Pretty good.
Sebastian – Water.
Luke – Pretty good. Yeah. Can I…
Sebastian – Can I have a glass of water?
Luke – Yeah. Alright, not bad, the “T” sound. There’s another one, the next word is “territory”
Sebastian – Territory.
Luke – …or actually I would say “territory”
Sebastian – Hmmm. Territory.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – Territory.
Luke – T-e-r-r-i-tory.
Sebastian – Te-rr-i-tory. what am I missing.
Luke – What are doing there?
Sebastian – Territory.
Luke – So, not – “territory”, it’s not a question, but “territory”
Sebastian – Territory.
Luke – Yeah, okay.
Sebastian – Territory.
Luke – This is British territory.
Sebastian – This is British territory.
Luke – Alright.
Sebastian – Not bad?
Luke – Not bad, Sebastian. “Thought”.
Sebastian – Thought.
Luke – Yeah. “Thought”.
Sebastian – Thought. There I’d think just like Darth Vader
Luke – Really? That’s “the force” isn’t it?
Sebastian – the force!
Luke -Darth Vader would be like: – “I was thinking about your birthday”. Now, what’s the joke?
Sebastian – “I have a thought”
Luke – Yeah, and – “I have a thought”.
Sebastian – Thought.
Luke – “I know what you get for your birthday, Sebastian. I’ve felt your presents” So, okay – “thought”. “advertisement”
Sebastian – Advertisement.
Luke – Alright. now…,
Sebastian – Advertisement.
Luke – …in America you’d say what?
Sebastian – Advertisement.
Luke – Advertisement, but…
Sebastian – …or commercial.
Luke – Advertisement.
Sebastian – Advertisement.
Luke – Alright. Okay.
Sebastian – Advertisement.
Luke – Adver”T”isement.
Sebastian – Adver”T”isement. Adver”T”isement.
Luke – Pretty good. Now – “Look at that advertisment!”
Sebastian – Look at…
Luke – Look at that advertisement.
Sebastian – Look at that advertisement. I can’t do without going into cliche.
Luke – It’s fine, and finally – “I can’t eat eggs”.
Sebastian – I can’t
Luke – I can’t eat eggs.
Sebastian – I can’t eat eggs. I can’t eat eggs.
Luke – I can’t
Sebastian – I can’t
Luke – Yeah, that’s good.
Sebastian – I can’t
Luke – I just can’t
Sebastian – I just can’t eat eggs.
Luke – I hate eggs.
Sebastian – I hate eggs
Luke – Very good, and in American accent?
Sebastian – I hate eggs.
Luke – Yeah. Do you really?
Sebastian – I hat…. no, I love them.
Luke – Me too. I love eggs as well. Well, Sebastian, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you with me.
Sebastian – Pleasure is all mine, delicious, I ate two brownies.
Luke – Fine, it’s great.
Sebastian – I’m eating like an American now.
Luke – Go ahead. Do you want…
Sebastian – It’s been nine years trying to break the habits, and now here at Luke’s English Podcast, I fall back in
Luke – I to treat my guests well by providing them with snacks and beverages.
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – I’m glad that you enjoyed the brownies. You can have another one if you like.
Sebastian – Oh, no. I’ve already had two, and…
Luke – Okay.
Sebastian – I have a line I have to now dance 45 minutes of salsa.
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – …in order to make up for…
Luke – …to burn off the calories.
Sebastian – Yeah. Minimum.
Luke – Okay. Well, thank you, Sebastian. Ladies and gentlemen if you’re interested in finding out about Sebastian’s shows which, if you’re in the area you should be interested in, you can check out his website which will be printed on my website. sebastianmarx.com
Sebastian – sebmarx.com – “s”-“e”-“b”-“m”-“a”-“r”-“x” “DOT” “COM”
Luke – DOT COM
Sebastian – DOT COM
Luke – Alright.
Sebastian – Yes.
Luke – I hope to have you back at some point Sebastian
Sebastian – with pleasure.
Luke – Great. Sebastian also has a podcast in French
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – If you’re interested.
Sebastian – It’s called “Donc Voila Quoi”
Luke – “Donc Voila Quoi” which is like saying, “So, there you go”
Sebastian – Yeah. Pretty, pretty much means nothing.
Luke – Really?
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – It’s like -“So there you go”
Sebastian – So, there you go.
Luke – ”Donc Voila Quoi”
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Okay. How is my French?
Sebastian – Wonderful.
Luke – Is it really?
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – Non, c’est ne pas vrai
Sebastian – Well because I think you are accent conscious
Luke – Yeah.
Sebastian – I think within a year you’ll have a better French accent than I do.
Luke – Yeah?
Sebastian – Yeah, because I don’t pay any attention to and so that’s why.
Luke – C’est tres important pour moi
Sebastian – Yeah.
Luke – This is not Luke’s French Podcast, I just wanted to
Sebastian – not yet, not yet.
Luke – Not yet, maybe there will be another one, but I think, I’m gonna stick to the English one for the moment.
Thanks very much for listening to the podcast ladies and gentlemen. What I normally do at the end is that I go like “bye bye bye bye” like, sort of, echo?
Sebastian – Yeah, okay.
Luke – Do you want to join me with a “Bye bye bye bye”
Sebastian – Yeah.
Thank you very much again for listening to the podcast
Bye bye bye bye
[THE END OF THE EPISODE]

128. Luke’s Stand-Up Comedy Show

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In this episode you can listen to 30 minutes of my stand-up comedy performance from last Friday in Paris.

Right-click here to download the audio episode.

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Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast

Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Category Archives: Personal

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

149. Backing Up Into The Cloud

146. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 2)

145. Nightmare Teaching Experiences (Part 1)

143. A Cup of Tea with… Robert Hoehn

140. Ghost Stories – True Tales of Really Creepy Experiences

The Japanese running tap

The bouncing ball

Frozen in bed and the weird clock

The Lapworth Walk

139. Hard Driving / Car Vocabulary

130. A Cup of Tea with… Sebastian Marx

128. Luke’s Stand-Up Comedy Show

The Japanese running tap

The bouncing ball

Frozen in bed and the weird clock

The Lapworth Walk

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