Special Guest Mark Steel joins me to discuss cultural and linguistic differences between the UK and France, plus accents in the UK and a little tour of some places in the UK that you don’t know about. Also includes a discussion of swearing and rude language in Britain. What is the R word which you should never say in a specific part of the UK? Listen on to find out. Video version available.
Amber and Paul join me in my pod room again for a rambling discussion about everything! Includes a language point about adjective + preposition collocations. Notice the phrases and try to find examples of them in context. Video version available.
Sign up to LEP Premium to get the 3-part series of episodes (audio, video, PDFs) about the language point in this episode.
Here are a few words and phrases that you will hear us saying at the start of the episode.
An unedited ramble in which I talk without a specific plan, includes a recording of my daughter speaking English, and a few songs on the guitar. Video version available.
Talking Heads – Heaven https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/talking-heads/heaven-chords-1761334
The Beatles – The Fool on the Hill https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-beatles/the-fool-on-the-hill-chords-169399
Beck – Sing It Again https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/beck/sing-it-again-chords-1212027
The Police – De Do Do Do De Da Da Da https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-police/de-do-do-do-de-da-da-da-chords-640646
Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense (full movie)
The Beatles – The Fool on the Hill (from Magical Mystery Tour)
This is a free sample of LEP Premium, available for everyone. In this episode I’ll tell you about my technique for learning English with stories and transcripts, with full details about how to improve your English with my stories. Then I’ll tell you a story about a time I had an encounter with a bear, and then I’ll give you some language practice exercises for your grammar and vocabulary, and some pronunciation drills to let you repeat after me. Full PDF transcript available + video version available too.
🏆 LEP Premium is a series of bonus episodes from Luke’s English Podcast in which I teach you vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. LEP Premium is now available on Acast+ Episodes are usually in audio format (with some bonus videos), and you can listen to them in any normal podcast app.
👉 Sign up to LEP Premium on Acast+ https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium
👉 Click here for more information about LEP Premium on Acast+ https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo
👉 Already subscribed to LEP Premium on Libsyn/LEP App? Click here for important information about moving your subscription https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium/moving
👇 Get the full PDF transcript/worksheet for this episode
📄 PDF in normal size https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-1_1-StoryTime_-Learn-English-with-Stories-free-LEP-Premium-Sample-THE-BEAR-STORY-COMPUTER-VERSION.pdf
📄 PDF with large text for your phone https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-1_1-StoryTime_-Learn-English-with-Stories-free-LEP-Premium-Sample-THE-BEAR-STORY-PHONE-VERSION.pdf
📄 PDF Bear Story Transcript https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-The-Bear-Story-Transcript-COMPUTER-VERSION.pdf
📄 PDF Bear Story Transcript for your phone https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-The-Bear-Story-Transcript-PHONE-VERSION.pdf
Have you noticed that LEP episodes have disappeared from podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play etc? They will return soon! This is part of an update. I am moving the show to a new podcast host. Everything will return asap, with a few changes to LEP. Good news for the podcast. Listen to the episode to find out all the information.
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I am recording this because I have some news about LEP and LEP Premium. The key details are written in bold below.
It’s good news, on balance. Nothing drastic. No huge changes, but some changes nonetheless. I’ll spell it all out in this ‘short’ episode.
So there you go, that’s all I wanted to say. There will be some ads in my episodes, but you can go ad-free if you want, and you can sign up to LEP Premium more conveniently too – and if you do either of those things you will be supporting LEP.
You know, I want this to go on and on. Beyond 1000 episodes. To infinity and beyond. But to do that I need to find ways to monetise this show without it affecting you too much.
This way I can keep the archive free, but also reward people who support me by giving them my premium content which I always work hard to produce.
For LEP Premium subscribers – keep an eye on your LEP subscription because I will be uploading an announcement about that too, and also some new premium content is in the pipeline. I mentioned before that I’d been sort of holding back on LEP premium recently because I didn’t know what was happening. It’s much clearer now and so I will be able to focus on the premium content more directly again. StoryTime episodes are coming to LEP Premium.
This is an unedited monologue in which I talk about some things which are on my mind at the moment, including how my hair is stopping me from learning French (and vice versa), virtuous and vicious circles, how English is like a shark (or a river – or maybe a shark in a river), some comments about recent episodes and a visit from a friendly bat at my podcastle.
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I have been deliberating about which microphone to choose
Geeky microphone chat
I have a plethora of microphones
People who have just stumbled across this and are wondering what this is all about
Perhaps you’re in transit somewhere, maybe you’re doing some housework, maybe you’re listening to this in a classroom while your teacher takes a well-earned break, or maybe you are lying in a floatation tank or in zero gravity in the international space station
Stick with me, and enjoy being a LEPster
Here’s a run-down of some of the things I’d like to talk about.
I’ve been just sweeping it (my hair) back over my head
Maybe I’m being a bit precious about this but I can’t help feeling self-conscious
Taking initiative is very important but it can be hard.
It can just be taking the initiative to speak, to make an effort to communicate with someone, to risk looking a bit stupid, going out of your comfort zone.
But if you take that tiny little risk, it can pay off in various ways.
You need to keep the English moving through you like a river or the water of your English will become stagnant. We all know this.
But without that little impetus to speak, you won’t do it.
If you don’t take initiative, you don’t put yourself into situations in which your confidence can develop.
Starting a virtuous circle is a matter of taking small steps in the right direction.
Micro-decisions or micro-steps.
Now I have to go out of my way to walk to the hairdresser.
Some people commented that the crowd were quiet. Well-behaved maybe.
I should have:
Hyped the crowd up more
Done more stand up at the start
Warmed them up by getting them to make noise.
“French people make some noise!” Etc
I should have done more crowd work.
Spinal Tap – maybe not everyone’s cup of tea, but at the end of the day I am the one who decides what happens in these episodes.
I find that with my learners it’s not just listening skills or vocabulary, but just “being on the same wavelength” and that includes things like little references to culture, or just having a certain sense of humour.
It’s also important that I do stuff that I am personally invested in, or this whole thing just won’t happen. So there.
I love teaching but sometimes I get a bit frustrated because it can be a bit like banging your head against a wall.
You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Talking to Stephen from the Simple English News Daily podcast about learning English with the news and whether BBC reporters actually speak like normal humans.
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Hello folks, a very quick introduction from me.
In this episode you are going to listen to a conversation I had with English teacher and podcaster Stephen Devincenzi who does a podcast about learning English with the news.
We recorded a video for this but we had technical problems so only one part of that is available on YouTube. If you go to my YT channel you’ll see it. It’s the part where we discuss the pros and cons of using the news to improve your English. That’s the only video part on YouTube but the audio is fine and you’re listening to it now and this audio will be available everywhere including youTube as usual, and you can check to see if the automatic subtitles are available.
We were plagued by technical difficulties while attempting to do this episode and in fact this is the 3rd time we tried to record. We did this 3 times.
About 3 weeks before this we did another full recording of over an hour which turned out to be unusable because of issues with lag and distorted sound and horrible internet based problems, and then we set up another meeting but had to cancel that due to Stephen’s poor internet connection.
Then Stephen had fibre optic internet set up in his room.
And so did I!
And then I got electricity installed.
But then my fibre optic internet went down (and still is down) but despite the gremlins in the system we managed to record this 3rd version on Zoom with my iphone working as an internet hotspot.
This episode is all about learning English with the news, the pros, the cons, the hows the whys. But is listening to the news a good idea for learners of English? How can you do it? Let’s discuss.
I’ll chat with you again briefly at the end, but now let’s get started.
THanks for listening. Thanks to Stephen from the SEND7 podcast.
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section as usual. It’s always interesting to read what you have to say.
Have you used the news to learn English?
Did you find it useful?
How do you do it? Do you have a particular method?
Talks in English – British Council Paris – 19 May (Storytelling – Culture Shock & Live Podcast Recording)
Martin joins Luke to talk about moving back to the UK, his fundraiser for Ukrainian refugees and some funny stories about travelling experiences.
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Hello listeners,
In this episode I am talking to Martin Johnston from the Rock n Roll English Podcast. Do you know the Rock N Roll English Podcast? This is where Martin and his Rock N Roll friends and family do podcasts for learners of English that are unfiltered and frequently involve discussions of taboo subjects, but also plenty of other stuff as well. It’s very funny and bound to be good for your English and general cultural knowledge. Martin featured me in episode 250 of RnR English and we talked about what it’s really like being an English teacher with a podcast. That was a funny chat with lots of memories and funny moments. Episode 250.
In this episode though, we’re going to have a rambling chat about moving to different countries, Martin’s fundraiser for Ukrainian refugees and then some stories of travelling and getting stuck in tricky situations while abroad.
Martin has recently moved back to England after living in Italy for a number of years, so I thought I would ask him about his experiences of feeling like a foreigner in his own country, and some of his culture shock experiences both abroad and at home. Because this is a thing – reverse culture shock. When you feel like a foreigner in your own country after living abroad for a long time.
Martin has also recently launched a fundraiser for Ukrainian refugees. Basically it is a learning pack with 25 stories, and transcripts and exercises. All the proceeds go to help Ukrainian refugees. You can find out more at www.rocknrollenglish.com/stories
So this is a very good cause. We know that several millions of people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of this war, invasion, operation – whatever you want to call it. This violence and aggression has separated families and made civilians homeless as well as killing thousands. This is a horrendous thing to be happening on our doorstep and so the least we can do is try to provide support in some way, so I call upon all of you to go ahead and get that PDF with those 25 stories and all the money will go towards helping these refugees. Martin talks about it during the episode if you want more details. But let’s help out some fellow citizens of LEPland here. Plus, of course, you get tons of stories with audio versions and everything. It sounds like a win win to me.
So we chat about the project a bit, which is all about learning English with stories and this then leads us to have a story-off. This is a sort of battle of stories where Martin and I trade different anecdotes and we see who comes out on top. So there are 4 or 5 funny stories of travelling experiences we’ve had, in the second half of this episode. I hope you enjoy them.
That’s it for the introduction. There is a video version on YouTube. Don’t forget to smash that like button.
I should say there is some fairly explicit content in this episode, which means fairly graphic descriptions of things like nudity, sex and bodily functions, which is completely normal for an episode of Rock n Roll English to be honest.
I’ll speak to you again briefly at the end, but now, let’s get started.
So there you are, that was Martin Johnston. I hope you enjoyed our stories.
Don’t forget, if you want to get that pack of 25 stories by the RNR English family, go to www.rocknrollenglish.com/stories It costs just 10dollars or pounds, and all the proceeds go to help Ukrainian refugees.
This is obviously a very good cause as so many people have been displaced, made homeless and so on and these people need our help.
If you enjoyed our stories in this episode, you could check out some of the episodes with those stories told in full.
Check out 118 Sick in Japan (although I should be doing a live version of that next month) and also Holiday in Thailand
or A Rambling Chat with Moz for more of the spa story
This is a chance for me to just let loose and have a ramble while inviting you to this kind of housewarming party (or perhaps just the first part of the party) in my new pod-room. In this one I am going to welcome you into the new room and do a ramble challenge in which I am restricted to only talking about things inside the room, plus reading from some random books on my shelves. Grammar rules, adverbial collocations and a game show story.
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Private Lessons with British Council English Score Tutors https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/english Episode page
LEP Premium https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo
LEP T-Shirts & Merch https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/merch
Discussing meditation, meditation techniques, how it can help in our lives and improve us as language learners. Antony Rotunno is my guest and listen out for stories, advice, tangents and maybe one or two revelations.
[DOWNLOAD]
Hello listeners and welcome back to the podcast.
This episode is called Meditation & Learning English, and as the title suggests, this is about the topic of meditation and how it can help us in our lives in various ways, including with our learning of languages.
My guest this time is podcaster and English teacher Antony Rotunno. Antony is back on the podcast after being on the podcast a few times last year when we did a series of episodes about John Lennon.
Antony has a few podcasts of his own and you might remember that recently I said that I’d listened to a couple of Antony’s episodes which were all about meditation.
They were called “The Joys and Wonders of Meditation”
I listened to them late last year, during quite a stressful period when we were having work done on our new flat, and I really felt like they helped me to find ways to keep my stress under control and get a bit of mental clarity during all of that chaos.
I definitely recommend those episodes to everyone.
That’s Episodes 4 & 5 of “Life & Life Only”. You will find links on the page for this episode.
https://lifeandlifeonly.podbean.com/e/episode-4-the-joys-and-wonders-of-meditation-part-1-of-2/
https://lifeandlifeonly.podbean.com/e/episode-5-the-joys-and-wonders-of-meditation-part-2-of-2/
While listening to those two episodes I immediately thought I should invite Antony back onto my podcast for an interview, this time about meditation.
I think there’s a lot of stuff to learn from them, a lot of benefits to gain from it all and some interesting ideas to consider about learning English.
As I said just a moment ago, Antony was on my podcast a few times last year talking about John Lennon and he’s always an insightful, articulate and thoughtful guest so it’s nice to have him back.
Just a reminder – Antony is an English teacher like me, he’s from England, he is a musician and also a podcaster. He has three podcasts in fact. You might want to check them out if you’re looking for more stuff to listen to.
“Life & Life Only” in which he explores themes of self-development, philosophy and the search for inner and outer truth. This is the one with the episodes about meditation.
“Glass Onion: On John Lennon” in which Antony goes into fascinating depth about many aspects of John Lennon’s life and related topics.
“Film Gold”, which is basically a chance for Antony to discuss some of his favourite films with different guests. I was a guest in a recent episode of Film Gold in fact. We talked about one of our favourite British comedy films of all time – Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If you want to listen to Antony and me chatting about that film, then check out Film Gold episode 15.
Those are Antony’s podcasts and they are available wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll also find links in the description and on the page for this episode on my website.
There you go, lots of other things for you to listen to there! But you might be thinking “Hold on Luke, I’m already listening to this episode about mediation!”
Ok, well, when you’ve finished this, if you’re still hungry for more, you could listen to Antony and me talking about Monty Python in episode 15 of Film Gold or Antony’s original meditation episodes from Life & Life Only, or anything else that takes your fancy.
But now let’s get back to this episode that you are listening to right now and the topic of meditation.
Those are the talking points. There are some tangents of course as we end up talking about some other bits and pieces along the way and there are also a few quick meditation exercises, or spot meditations, which you can do while you listen, if you like.
In fact, to give you an idea of what that means – what a spot meditation is – let’s do a very quick spot meditation exercise right now just before the interview starts, to help you focus.
I’m making this one up myself of course and I’m not a meditation instructor but I’m willing to give it a shot.
Just follow my instructions for a moment and it might put you in the right frame of mind to really concentrate on our conversation.
First – consider your body position while you are listening to this.
Just take a moment to be aware of your body and any feelings of tension that you might have.
Are your shoulders tense? Are you sitting upright or are you perhaps slumped in some way? Are you tied up in a knot? Are you standing unevenly on one leg or leaning to one side? Is your jaw clenched?
Take a moment to find those tensions in your body and release them. Just let them relax.
Take a few deep breaths from your diaphragm and feel the sensation of the air going in and coming out, and your stomach going up and down.
Now focus on my voice.
Focus on the shape of the words, the different kinds of sounds that are included in each syllable of each word.
Notice the rhythm of the sentences I’m saying – where the stresses are, where the pauses are, and any times my voice goes up or down.
Just try to follow it very carefully without letting your mind get distracted by other things.
If you feel your mind wandering off, if you get distracted or if you feel like saying “Come on Luke stop rambling, we don’t want another 15 minute introduction, just get on with it please” or something – if you feel your mind wandering at all, then just guide it back and as you listen to this conversation between Antony and me, keep going with that approach.
So that was just a very brief spot meditation to help you focus your attention a bit.
OK, so now let’s start the episode properly and here we go.
Luke & Antony Discuss Monty Python & The Holy Grail