Category Archives: Pronunciation

908. Bits & Bobs 2 / Questions of English (Part 2) Listener Comments

Responding to comments from listeners on various episodes in the LEP archives, including how to get a TEFL certificate, linking /r/ sounds, being a fly on the wall, singular “they”, antique vs vintage, and when the verb “see” doesn’t mean “see”. PDF available.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix7xKBk4WQ4&ab_channel=Luke%27sEnglishPodcast

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881. Reading the news with a foreign accent (with Barbara Serra)

Barbara Serra is an award-winning Italian journalist who has spent much of her career reading the news in the UK on various high-profile well-established English language news networks including the BBC, Channel 5, Al Jazeera English and Sky News. Barbara has quite a specific relationship with the English language. We talk about learning English, challenges in her career, and the relationship between accent and identity.

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Intro Transcript

Hello listeners, today on the podcast I am talking to Barbara Serra, the Italian journalist who reads the news on television in the UK. She’s a very interesting guest and has lots of interesting things to say about the way her identity and career have been shaped by her relationship to the English language. 

We’re going to talk about reading the news in the UK when you sound like a foreigner, lots of questions around identity and accent, and all sorts of other things that Barbara has experienced in her time as a broadcast journalist. I think you will find it very interesting as a learner of English looking to improve your English as much as possible in different contexts, both personal and professional. 

LEPster meet-up in Da Nang Vietnam

Gordon’s Pizza (in An Thuong area) on Friday 17th May from 9pm.

Send Zdenek an email if you’re interested – teacherzdenek@gmail.com

Barbara Serra is an award-winning Italian journalist who has spent much of her career reading the news in the UK on various high-profile well-established English language news networks including the BBC, Channel 5, Al Jazeera English and Sky News. 

Barbara has quite a specific relationship with English. It’s her dominant language but not her native language. She has a certain accent, which does place her outside the UK somehow. So how has this affected her career as a news reader and reporter? 

Broadcast journalism is associated with a certain model of spoken English – in the UK that would be what is often called BBC English, and traditionally the role of newsreader has been synonymous with that kind of high-level, high-status form of spoken English. 

So what has Barbara’s experience been? 

What is the story of her English? 

How did she get the point where she was ready to do this job? What kind of challenges has she faced while reading the news in the UK? 

And what does this all tell us about learning English, what it means to improve your accent, the relationship between accent and identity, the definition of “native” and “non-native speaker”, the status of different English accents in the English speaking world?

Let’s get into it.


LINKS

👉 Barbara’s email newsletter “News with a foreign accent” https://barbaraserra.substack.com/

👉 Barbara’s website with course info https://www.barbaraserra.info/

Luke on a couple of other shows recently

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850. Any Language You Want 📖 with Fabio Cerpelloni

Fabio has written a book about language learning, based on his own personal experiences of learning English. Each chapter ends with the same sentence: “This is how to learn a language”. But each chapter disagrees with the next. There are many ways to learn a language, and none of them is the only right way to do it. In this episode, we talk all about this and Fabio shares some of his stories. Fabio is the host of “Stolariod Stories” a self-development podcast which includes lots of lessons about learning English, and learning about life in general.

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☝️ The audio version has 20+ extra minutes of rambling from Luke ☝️

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK3zmdowd_A&ab_channel=Luke%27sEnglishPodcast

👉 Get Fabio’s book “Any Language You Want” https://fabiocerpelloni.com/any-language-you-want/

👉 Listen to Fabio interview Luke about stand-up comedy on Stolaroid Stories https://pod.link/1588409467/episode/5a1f614be55bdffa8513091565ef4985

👇 Video version of “The Art of Making People Laugh” on Stolaroid Stories


Also, listen to Luke’s funny story on Bree Aesie’s podcast recently 👇

844. Improve Your Pronunciation with Luke Nicholson – Accent Coach

A conversation with accent coach Luke Nicholson, including lots of insights, advice and conclusions about improving your pronunciation in English.

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☝️The audio version contains 20+ extra minutes

Questions to consider before listening

  1. In your language learning, how important is pronunciation for you?
  2. How much time do you put into practising it or researching it, compared to other things like grammar or vocabulary?
  3. How much do you know about the physical ways that we make sounds, and also the ways that we express pronunciation in writing – the phonetic alphabet?
  4. Think about your mouth, throat, tongue, teeth, nose or other parts. Do you know which parts are responsible for making different sounds in English?
  5. Try saying different vowel and consonant sounds, and see which parts are involved. Perhaps try counting to 20 and just notice the different parts of your mouth and areas near your mouth that you use, the shape of your lips and so on.
  6. Does English use sounds that you don’t use in your language? Which ones?
  7. Are there certain words which always seem to cause you trouble when you speak English? Which specific parts of those words cause the problem?
  8. How many different accents can you identify in English? Which one do you want to sound like? Why?
  9. Which accent would you like to have in English? What is that accent called? Why do you want that accent?
  10. Does it matter if, when you speak, people can tell which part of the world you are from, or that they can tell English isn’t your first language? To what extent does that matter to you, and why?
  11. What do you think is more important in pronunciation – intelligibility (being clear), or identity (expressing a certain identity with the way you speak).
  12. How can you actually go about improving your pronunciation? What steps can you take, and what resources can you use?
  13. What does it mean to have “good pronunciation” or a “good accent”?
  14. If you are an English teacher, how do you teach pronunciation? What place does it have in your lessons? What are your experiences of teaching it?

Summary of the main conclusions in the conversation

  • Improving your pronunciation. According to Luke, it all boils down to these things.
  • English is diverse in its pronunciation and accents, and the written word doesn’t always match how it sounds.
  • You just have to accept things that seem inconsistent, irregular or complex in English pronunciation, and move forward. Those ‘irregularities’ will seem relatively normal when you get familiar with the language.
  • Study pronunciation, but don’t look for “one rule to explain it all”. Instead find little patterns and other ways to help you remember English pronunciation bit by bit.
  • Determine your pronunciation priorities and choose a target accent which you can aim for.
  • Balance intelligibility (being clear) with expressing your identity through your accent.
  • Familiarise yourself with the vocal tract and the sounds of English.
  • Learn the phonemic chart and explore stress and intonation patterns.
  • Don’t be put off by the phonemic chart. You probably have most of those sounds in your language. Look out for the ones which you don’t have.
  • Identify which sounds in English you find difficult, or which cause people to misunderstand you, and focus on them.
  • Practice making different sounds and think outside the box to find approaches that work for you.

Luke Nicholson’s Websites

www.improveyouraccent.co.uk

www.funetics.com

831. Learning How to Learn with Hadar Shemesh

A conversation with Hadar Shemesh, a non-native speaker who has improved her English to a very high level, and who now shares her knowledge and experience with the world through her podcast and YouTube channel. Hadar describes her own experiences of learning English and mastering pronunciation. This episode is all about the voyage of discovery that is learning a language.

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👉 Hadar’s website https://hadarshemesh.com/

👉 Hadar’s podcast (InFluency Podcast) https://hadarshemesh.com/influency-podcast/

👉 Hadar’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClPyOwXLnSMejFdLvJXjA5A

👉 Hadar’s episode with Luke 👇

Audio & podcast links 👉 https://hadarshemesh.com/magazine/interview-with-luke-from-lukes-english-podcast/ 

Video version 👇

823. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 3

In this final part of the series I’m going to evaluate ChatGPT’s ability to work as a dictionary with definitions, example sentences, synonyms, phonetic transcriptions, etc. I test its ability to convert texts into British English or other varieties, see if it can help with sentence stress and word stress, and check its ability to create grammar and vocabulary quizzes and other useful exercises.

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Episode Transcript

Hello listeners,

This is the 3rd and final part of this little series of episodes I’ve done about using ChatGPT to learn English.

I’m experimenting with lots of different prompts to see if it can do things like:

  • Create study plans for you
  • Simulate natural conversations
  • Correct your errors
  • Provide role play practice for specific situations like job interviews
  • Help you with Cambridge exam tasks and practice

In this part I’m going to try to answer these questions:

  • Can you use ChatGPT like a dictionary?
  • Can it give us correct definitions, information about parts of speech, pronunciation, example sentences, synonyms, antonyms, collocations?
  • Can it provide information about the etymology of words and phrase?
  • Can it transcribe things into phonemic script? 
  • Does it accurately transcribe things into British English pronunciation?
  • Can it convert between different dialects of English, e.g. will it convert American English into British English, or into specific dialects of British English?
  • Is it able to help us to practise reading texts or presentation scripts with the right sentence stress, word stress, pausing and intonation?
  • Can it help us practise grammar by creating quizzes or tests? Are those tests reliable?
  • Can it help you to remember vocabulary with tests?
  • Can it help you remember words and spelling with mnemonic memory devices?
  • Can it create text adventure games?
  • Can it adapt its English to different levels?
  • What are my overall thoughts and conclusions about ChatGPT?

You can get a PDF of the script for this episode which includes all the prompts I am using to get ChatGPT to do specific things.

Check the episode description and you will find a link to my website page where you can get the PDF scripts for parts 1,2 and 3 of this series.

If you are watching on YouTube I recommend using full screen mode so you can read the on-screen text more easily.

OK, so without further ado, let’s play around with ChatGPT a bit more and see how it can help you learn English.

Ask it to define words
What does “rambling” mean?

It gave pretty good definitions I have to say.

Arguably it’s not as good as a proper dictionary. 

Just type the words into a dictionary and you’ll get way more info, including parts of speech, pronunciation, example sentences, related phrasal verbs etc.

But having said that you can ask ChatGPT for more specific details about words, including:

  • Can you give me some example sentences with the verb “ramble” in different tenses?
  • What are common collocations with the word ramble?
  • What are some synonyms of the word “ramble”? (I had to specify for ways of talking)
  • Can you transcribe the word “ramble” in phonemic script?

Etymology

What is the origin of the expression “break a leg?”

Create mnemonics to help you remember vocabulary

Can you create some mnemonics to help me remember these words and phrases?

ramble, waffle, meander, go off on a tangent, get sidetracked

It did it, and I must say this is pretty impressive. 

You still need to use your imagination a bit, but these mnemonics are certainly a good starting point. 

Ask it to transcribe things into phonemic script

But only in standard American?

Is it good at transcribing things in British English?

Can you transcribe this sentence into phonemic script?
I’d like a hot dog with lots of tomato sauce.

Different versions of the language

Can you convert this story into (insert dialect here)?

This is a paragraph I came up with which contains loads of words that are different between US and UK English. 

Let’s see if it can convert this UK version into US English. 

First I’ll read it out. See if you can identify the words which will probably be different between US and UK English.

I just popped out of my flat to get some post from the postman when I realised I had locked myself out. 
I was stuck outside with only a pair of slippers on and it was the middle of autumn. To make matters worse I really needed the toilet. 
My car was there but of course I’d left the car keys in the house as well, although I couldn’t see where they were because my curtains were closed. 
Then I noticed that some bloody yob had put a big scratch across the bonnet of my car. That made me really angry I can tell you. “You’ll be hearing from my solicitor” I said to myself. 
Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse the TV aerial on the roof of my house fell off and crashed into the windscreen of my car, smashing it to pieces. 
I thought “I’ll need to make a trip to the chemist for some medicine to help me recover from this!” I walked along the main road and on the way I stopped to get some chips from the fish & chip shop at the main crossroads near my house. 
When I had finished, I put the paper bag in the rubbish bin and walked under the flyover to the chemist’s. 
I got my medicine and headed home. 
Of course, I was still locked out so in the end I had to jump over the fence into my back garden and climbed into a window which I had left open. 
Luckily I lived on the ground floor so I didn’t actually need to climb up the wall or anything, but unfortunately I broke a mug which was on the window sill. I used my hoover to clean up the broken pieces. 
Suddenly I heard a siren and someone knocked at the door. 
“Oh no, it’s the old bill!” I thought. “They think I’m burgling my own house!” 
I went to answer the door, but I didn’t realise that I’d ripped my trousers climbing in the window. I opened the door and stood there with my trousers hanging open. They could see my pants and everything! How embarrassing!

Make a funny dialogue between two friends in a pub in London speaking British English. Include a joke at the end of the dialogue.

Generate the same response but the two friends are from Belfast, in Northern Ireland.

Sentence stress, pausing and intonation

Ask it to help you read out a text with the right pausing, stress and intonation.

Can you help me to read out this paragraph, showing where the pauses, stress and intonation should be?

Chat GPT or chat-based generative pre-trained transformer models, is a type of artificial intelligence that allows users to interact with a virtual assistant using natural language. This technology is based on the principles of GPT-3, the third generation of the popular generative pre-trained transformer model.

One of the key features of chat GPT is its ability to generate responses in real-time, based on the user’s input.

That is from an article about ChatGPT which I found on medium.com 👇

All you need to know about ChatGPT & Why its a threat to Google | by Deladem Kumordzie | Medium

It’s good at showing where the pauses should be, 

but it’s bad at showing word stress or sentence stress.

☝️bad bad bad bad bad! ☝️

Grammar or vocab quizzes or tests

Let’s ask it to create a grammar review test for upper-intermediate level. 

Create a 10-question grammar test to help me practise English at an upper-intermediate level.

10 questions isn’t really enough to cover all areas of grammar but you would expect it to cover at least 10 different grammar points. Did it?

What happens if I ask it to make a 20-question grammar test for B2 level? Does it use a wide variety of forms? Does it require the test taker do demonstrate control over the language or is it just multiple choice?

The results are not as rigorous, complete, reliable or detailed as similar tests in published materials such as the diagnostic test at the back of English Grammar in Use by Murphy. 

It’s also not focused on language that you have been studying in your course.

It always uses multiple choice.

Basically – it doesn’t produce a very reliable test.

Vocabulary review tests, to help you remember words and phrases

Create a vocabulary test to help me remember and use these words and phrases.

ramble, waffle, meander, go off on a tangent, crack on, Get away with, get by, get on with, get off on, get through to, get around to

The test it created was multiple choice and only contained definitions. 

Definitions are good but not the best way to help you remember vocabulary. You need example sentences and it’s best if you have to use the words in a meaningful and contextualised way. At least give us example sentences with the words and phrases removed and ask us to put the correct words in the correct place, perhaps in the correct form.

But it’s better than nothing, and I think this could be useful if you have a list of words or phrases that you’re trying to remember. 

Text adventure games to practise grammar

I’ve always wanted to create one of these but have never got round to it. One of the reasons is because it’s quite a time consuming task and requires a lot of patience to make sure I’m using plenty of good grammar questions and combining that with an interesting story with engaging choices. Maybe ChatGPT can cut out a lot of the work. 

Create a 5 minute text adventure game to help me practise English grammar 

Nice idea but it did a bad job. It ended up creating a game with virtually no grammar questions and then it played the game itself.

I’m sure there are other language practice exercises or activities which ChatGPT could do. 

If you can think of some other things, put them in the comment section.

Ask it to adapt its English level to yours 

You can write things like “please adapt your English to B1 level” or something similar. 

Actually I just tested this with this prompt:

Give me some advice on how to set up a podcast studio. Please use A2 level English

Also, this:

Can you adapt this passage from Hamlet by Shakespeare into elementary level (A2) English?

So you can ask it to use simple English at your level.

You can also prompt it in your first language of course, but you have to request that it responds in English.

Overview / Comments / Conclusions

It’s definitely way better than any chatbots I’ve ever seen before. 

There’s no denying how impressive it is in many ways. I only scratched the surface here. It can do lots of other things including creating legal contracts, writing song lyrics, writing short stories, movie plots, essay plans, essays etc. 

But I think we still need to be a bit sceptical or critical about it at this stage. It’s impressive at first, but working closely with it shows us its limitations.

Don’t assume that it is answering your questions correctly or reliably. It seems to miss things, and contradict itself sometime and also it lacks the overall vision and emotional intelligence that a good teacher can have. 

There are also questions about things like how it could encourage cheating, and also other criticisms (I’ll explore some more in a few minutes). 

They’ve done wonders with the marketing – allowing us all to use it freely, which has caused us all to talk about it and as a result it’s gone viral with everyone talking about it. This is helping them to make money now (by selling it as a service which people can incorporate into their websites etc, and charging people for the PRO version of it) and also it’s allowed them to get a lot more data (as millions of people have been using it) which is allowing them to develop it further. In fact it is improving and changing all the time, becoming more and more accurate and sophisticated. 

For learning English, there are definitely ways it can help, including taking out some of the time-consuming things like creating little memory tests, creating sample texts and dialogues which you can use, having some limited conversation practise. 

One of its main strengths is error correction. It can quickly correct errors in your writing and even explain the reasons, although the explaining is a bit limited.

It can correct your English, but don’t rely on it too much. Try to use this as a tool to help you improve your English, not just something that you rely on at the expense of making progress on your own. Learn from it, but don’t let it do all the work. 

You need to have a pretty good level of English to prompt ChatGPT properly. Sometimes you need to find “clever” ways to get it to do exactly what you want and I think this requires a lot of control over your language.

As I mentioned before you often need to find different ways to ask your question or to give your prompt before you get what you’re looking for. 

Remember you can tell it *exactly* what to do. So keep getting specific. 

It’s still a bit early for us to completely rely on it as a personal language teacher or a conversation partner, but it can be a convenient tool for certain basic tasks that can be time consuming.

Chat GPT has no emotional intelligence. It isn’t great at working out what you really want it to do, which is something I have to do as a teacher all the time. I’m always interpreting my students intentions and what they want to say, and then helping them find the right words or sentences to do that, and then helping them produce that again and again, adapting and reacting all the time and also managing the students feelings and emotional responses. It’s a special kind of dance that you have to do with the student and this is extremely complicated and requires a lot of sensitivity and also plenty of teaching experience to allow you to pinpoint exactly what is needed of you as a teacher.

ChatGPT has a long way to go before it can do that. 

For the time being it is no replacement for the interaction you can have with a real human and this is still one of the best ways to practise and develop proper communication skills in English. It is definitely better to practise interacting in English with a real human, preferably one who is able to help you with your English learning because they have skills and experience in this area.

Also, don’t underestimate the importance of those emotional aspects of communication with people. ChatGPT is no replacement for that, at the moment. 

Maybe one day it will be so good that talking to it will be indistinguishable from talking to a real person, which is quite an unnerving prospect somehow.

But anyway, it’s important to continue practising your English by interacting with real people in social scenarios.

Talking to people can be a bit intimidating if you are shy or introverted, but it is essential to practise doing it because interpersonal skills are vital in communication.

ChatGPT doesn’t speak or listen yet, so no listening or speaking practice is possible, but no doubt that’ll come eventually.

What does ChatGPT say about its limitations as a language learning tool?

What are some possible problems with using ChatGPT for learning English?

Other issues

I wonder if it will be free forever. They’ve made it free now to get our attention but eventually we’ll probably have to pay to use it fully. In fact, already the free version is quite limited. It’s slow and stops performing after about 1 hour of interaction. 

I wonder if later this year ChatGPT will still be as accessible as it is now. I expect they let us all use it for a while in order to get our attention and now they’re monetising the product and limiting free access to it. 

I wonder how ChatGPT will develop. It will certainly get better and better.

Perhaps one day (soon) it will flawlessly do all the things we want it to do. 

There are also some frightening aspects to this when we imagine the impact this might have on the world. 

Despite what I said about it being no replacement for human interaction, it is remarkably advanced and sophisticated and that is only the current version of the software. 

I expect this current iteration of ChatGPT is just the tip of the iceberg and eventually it will be almost impossible to differentiate between the chatbot and a real human. 

And when this is combined with life-like speech generation and real life visuals (deepfakes) as well – a video version talking and responding naturally with a lifelike face and voice, in fact so lifelike that we won’t be able to work out if we’re dealing with a human or not, that will be quite frightening because suddenly then we’re living in the film Bladerunner, ExMachina or A.I. with all the ethical and social ramifications explored by those films. 

By the way, those films seem to explore questions of whether it is ethical for us to create highly intellilgent AI capable of human-like emotions, and whether it is ethical for us to treat them like slaves or as sub-human. They are like us, even better than us in many ways, but they don’t have the same rights as us. 

Other films have explored the threat to humankind of artificial intelligence. This includes things like The Terminator series and The Matrix which show a world in which AI becomes self-aware and decides to fight against humans or to enslave us.

A more immediate and realistic problem with something like ChatGPT is how it can affect the job market and whether it will make lots of people redundant.

What will we do when so much of our work can be done by AI that doesn’t need to eat, sleep, or take breaks? What will happen to us? Will people still be employable? What happens when the human population continues to rise, but the number of jobs we can do in order to earn money, decreases?

I have no idea. 

And will AI eventually make it completely unnecessary to even learn another language? Will we simply have simultaneous automatic translations? Will AI augment our reality completely? Will we somehow be connected in the most intimate and integral way with technology, which will mean we won’t need to learn languages any more?

I’m not sure to be honest. What people usually say in response to that question is that we will always want to learn languages because there can be no replacement for the experience of communicating with people naturally using language and no technology can replace or replicate this experience sufficiently. 

Let’s ask ChatGPT some more questions about itself, relating to things like people’s fears about it and if it will cause more cheating

What are people’s fears about how ChatGPT will change the world for the worse?

How might AI become a threat to humans?

Will ChatGPT help people to cheat?

Yes, probably. I can’t see how this won’t be a problem. I mean, this will almost certainly be a problem. Surely, students will just take the easy route and get ChatGPT to write essays for them, or other assignments. That’s obviously bad, because these students will not actually learn the skills and knowledge they’re supposed to learn during their studies and also it could compromise the effectiveness of education in general.

I don’t know how this problem is going to be solved. I don’t know how OpenAI have responded to this. 

Let’s see what ChatGPT says about people using it to cheat in their homework. 

Will ChatGPT help people to cheat in homework and academic essay tasks?

Will there be more cheating as a result of ChatGPT?

So it encourages people to cheat and it doesn’t know how people will use its services, but let’s be honest – it’s definitely going to result in more cheating. 

It will be very interesting to see how ChatGPT and other software  (because it’s not just OpenAI – there are loads of other competing companies also developing similar systems all over the world) It’ll be very interesting to see how this changes the world and of course we all hope that it changes things for the better and that it ultimately improves the human experience, making our lives better, allowing us to thrive.

That’s it – thanks for listening!

Leave your comments in the comment section.

I’m probably going to do another episode about ChatGPT just because it is fun to mess around with it and really see what it can do, including asking it to plan a podcast episode for me, write an introduction to an episode, have funny conversations, write jokes and short stories and lots of other things. 

🙏

819. What does it really mean to be “good at English”?

How do we know when someone’s English is good? Is it just about having the right accent, or speaking with no errors? In fact, there is a lot more to it than that. IELTS can show us how someone’s level of English is properly assessed by looking at a wide range of skills and sub-skills and there is a lot more to it than making no errors while speaking with a “British accent”. This episode should help you consider your own level of English level, get some perspective on what language competence really means, and hopefully cause people to think twice when making snap judgements about other people’s English.

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Transcript

What does it really mean to be “good at English”? 

  • How do we assess someone’s English level? 
  • How can IELTS help us to understand what “good English” is?
  • Why is all of this important anyway?

Here’s an episode which I hope will be really useful as a way of helping you to understand what it really means to be good at English. 

We’re going to consider some things about

  • how English is assessed (how your English level is judged), 
  • the different skills which are involved in using English, 
  • and what aspects of English are the most important.

I hope this episode gives you a bit more perspective on what it means to have a good level of English.

Also there will be a lot of vocabulary for describing English skills and English levels or assessment in English, and that includes a lot of metalanguage – the language we use for talking about language. So try to notice all that vocabulary too.

Hopefully this episode will help you think about 

  • your level of English, 
  • how to assess a person’s level of English 
  • and also how to talk about both of those things.

It’s important for any language learner to get a sense of what they should be aiming for in their learning, so that they don’t spend their time on the wrong things, and that they have the right things prioritised in their learning.


Do you remember the episode I published at the beginning of the year (2023) with Santi from Spain, working in a top job at Oxford University Press? 

806. PERSEVERANCE, POSITIVITY & PRACTICE with Santiago Ruiz de Velasco from Oxford University Press

806. PERSEVERANCE, POSITIVITY & PRACTICE with Santiago Ruiz de Velasco from Oxford University Press

You will find it in the episode archive and if you haven’t heard it, go back and check it out.

This episode follows on from that one. I was inspired to do it after seeing some responses from my audience.

Just as a reminder, Santi learned English mostly as an adult when he moved to London after studying at university in Spain. 

He had some very challenging experiences being immersed in the English language and eventually found his way to a top job in the English teaching industry itself – not as a teacher, but in publishing. He ended up as the Managing Director of English Language Teaching at OUP, and he got to that position despite the fact that his English is not “perfect”. 

I was pleased with that episode because it allows us to use Santi’s personal experience as a way to consider the importance of motivation and attitude in dealing with challenges in learning English (or any language) and also it raised questions about what “good English” really means.

With Santi, “the proof is in the pudding”, which means that we know his English is good because he uses it successfully every day.

Every single day at work he uses English to successfully perform a number of different communication tasks. I expect he writes emails and reports in English, conducts interviews in English, does presentations, has meetings, probably does negotiations, sells products and services in English, and builds relationships with people in English – no doubt both professional relationships but also meaningful personal relationships too. 

I’m assuming a lot of that because I don’t know every single thing he does in his job every day – but I’m pretty sure that he does all of those things. They’re just totally normal communication tasks at work. And it’s not just at work for Santi. I’m sure he also socialises in English. 

So, I think the fact that he does all those things, seemingly successfully, this is proof of his competence in English, right?

I think it would be very hard to be the Managing Director of the ELT Dept of Oxford University Press without those kinds of communication skills in English. 

But, as I mentioned, his English is certainly not “perfect” by any means (and he says this himself too), and a number of listeners in the comment section on YouTube pointed this out, saying things like “He clearly has a Spanish accent” or “He made mistakes which made me surprised that he is in that position” and “I expected someone with RP English.” etc. I am paraphrasing there, but that’s the gist of it. 

What does it actually mean to have a “bad accent”?

Maybe he could use some different fillers, just to avoid repeating the same thing. But why did this person focus only on that when there were so many other positive things to take away from the episode?

What is wrong with saying “you know” ?

  • It doesn’t stop us understanding him. It doesn’t stop him expressing himself.
  • It’s just an aesthetic issue, not a functional issue.
  • It’s just annoying for some people, but it doesn’t actually change the message or cause anyone misunderstandings. 

Perspective here – it’s not such a big deal, unless you’re really focused on it. Sure, Santi could work on this, but we all have things to work on. 

Fair enough, that one is quite funny.

I shouldn’t focus on the negative comments. The vast majority were positive, I must say. But I notice that whenever I feature someone on this podcast who is not a native speaker, and even some guests who are native speakers but have accents that are not RP, some listeners have to comment or criticise what they are hearing. I don’t think this is really the right attitude to have.

It’s not a competition, is it?

But, the fact that Santi has that job, has achieved that and continues to do that in English is something that can’t be taken away from him. I mean, people can point out errors in his English, but ultimately, the fact remains that he uses English very successfully on a daily basis. That’s important – the fact that he uses English “successully”.

Because this is the point of language. It is functional and it should be judged first and foremost on that – whether it works as a communication tool.

Sure, aesthetics are important too. The absolute best communicators also have English which is a pleasure to listen to, which is easy on the ears and is rich, pleasant and entertaining. But that stuff is also a matter of opinion and taste, and is really just the cherry on the top of the cake most of the time. Why focus on the cherry? You need to have a cake first, before you can have the cherry. You need something for the cherry to go on, right? 

Priorities – focus in the really important things first – the cake – and then work on the aesthetics – the cherry on the top.

I’m getting a bit lost in this metaphor now, but I hope you get what I mean. 

Common attitudes and assumptions about “good English” 

The point is that these comments are indicative of certain attitudes about English proficiency. They show us what a lot of people think makes someone “good at English”, namely:

  • Accuracy (using English without making errors) especially grammatical accuracy is the most important thing and speaking with zero errors is what makes you good at English. No mistakes.
  • All learners of English should have RP as their target in terms of pronunciation, and if you speak with a different accent or with obvious traces of your first language then this is a problem. And hearing someone use English with an accent is somehow “shocking” or even “unpleasant”.
  • You’re good at English if you use complex English, meaning longer words, formal words, idioms and convoluted sentence structure.

So, basically, you need to make no “pronunciation errors” or “grammar mistakes” and use complex “impressive” language.

That short list of assumptions is based on the things I’ve heard and read from learners of English during my teaching career. I’ve met thousands of learners of English and also read thousands of online comments from learners of English too and I often notice those attitudes. 

I suppose it is understandable really, that some people think like that. 

Not everyone has thought about this subject a lot because they don’t work in language teaching, people have been taught that English is all about correct grammar and correct pronunciation, and these things are obvious “low hanging fruit” in terms of English assessment.

It’s not everyone’s job to think about how to assess someone’s language level, and to be honest I only learned about this from doing professional training, reading academic books, teaching IELTS courses and working out the assessment criteria for Cambridge Exams and stuff. 

And we’re going to look at that official assessment criteria for judging someone’s language level later in this episode in order to find out that it’s not just about grammar and pronunciation errors and that there are other important factors. Obviously, being “correct” in pronunciation and grammar are important things, but only to a certain extent.

Like with the example of Santi. I feel like some of those comments are trying to take away Santi’s achievements, but you can’t, can you? 

The fact remains that although he makes a few mistakes in grammar, and clearly has a Spanish accent when he speaks English – despite those things, he is a very successful user of the English language and you can’t take that away from him. So how does he manage it, without being “perfect”?

What makes someone good at English then? What else is important? 

What I’d like to do now is to talk about actually what makes someone good at English and to show that there is a lot more involved than just accuracy (making no errors) and also complexity (using big impressive, rare words that nobody else knows).

Defining what makes someone good at English should be an important thing for us all to consider and remember. 

For you, if you are a learner of English, this is all about how you can get a sense of what you should be focusing on and what you should be trying to achieve. Also it can help you get out of a negative frame of mind when learning English. If you’re afraid that your pronunciation is not perfect or that you know you make errors, it might help to know that those things are not the be-all and end-all in this English speaking game.

Also, if you are a teacher of English, like me, thinking about this can help us to guide our students and provide the right kind of teaching to help them to achieve things in English. 

How do you assess someone’s English level?

Let’s use IELTS as a way of helping us to answer this question. By looking at how IELTS measures someone’s English level, we can work out what “good English” actually means.

What is IELTS?

The International English Language Testing System, is an international standardized test of English language proficiency for non-native English language speakers. It is jointly managed by the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and Cambridge Assessment English, and was established in 1989. (Wikipedia)

Basically it is probably the standard international test for assessing someone’s level of English as a foreign or other language. 

Working out someone’s level of English accuractely and reliably is not easy. Sure, I could speak with a learner of English for 10 minutes and get a good idea of their level, but to get a fully detailed assessment including different reading, writing, listening and speaking skills, a longer and more rigorous test is needed.

This is why the IELTS test is quite long and quite complex. It takes a few hours to do the test and it’s divided into lots of different parts. It’s all done in a serious and thorough way.

IELTS is a test that has been developed over a very long time, by experts in English language teaching and testing, based on a lot of academic research and professional experience into how people learn and use the English language. 

IELTS was developed by academics, teachers and examiners from Cambridge University and The British Council. These people know what they’re doing when it comes to finding out someone’s level of English. They want to do it properly, because this is important. 

Universities and employers want to get a reliable sense of the level of English of potential students or employees so they can be sure that those people will be able to use English to study or work successfully. A reliable test is vital for this, and that’s what IELTS is for. 

It might not be a perfect test. There’s probably room for improvement. In fact, it probably could be even longer and even more thorough, but that might just be impractical.

Anyway, let’s look at the way IELTS works, and we’ll see if we can draw from it some conclusions about the whole question of what it means to be good at English.

IELTS is in 4 sections – Speaking, Listening, Reading, Writing.

Already this shows that there are 4 skills involved in someone’s English ability, and of course this reflects the type of things that you might need to do in English.

You have to speak to people, listen to people speaking in various situations, you have to read English in different forms, and you have to be able to write in English. OK. 

So it’s not just speaking skills. That’s just one part of the picture. 

Speaking

Of course speaking is often considered as the most important skill. It’s the obvious skill. This is what we notice in people. As well as being vital for functional social communication, speaking is very closely connected to our identity and the way we express who we are to the world. 

Naturally, it is often the way your English is judged. Because people meet you, talk to you and then immediately get a sense your English level from that conversation. Fair enough. Speaking is important, but in IELTS it is only 25% of the test. It represents 25% of your final IELTS score. And as we will see, speaking can be divided into different sections too – and pronunciation is only one of those sections.

Listening

This is underestimated in terms of its importance. I’ve talked before about how, perhaps surprisingly, we spend more time listening than doing any of the other skills. 

Episode 586. The Importance of Listening | Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast

This YouTube video from a couple of years ago 👇

Also, it is absolutely vital that we understand the people we are talking to. If not, everything breaks down. 

One way that I judge someone’s language level when I’m talking to them, is the amount of effort I have to make for me to be understood by that person. This is a way for me to judge their listening skills in conversation. 

If I just talk normally, without having to adapt my English or pay close attention to make sure the other person is following me, if I can just talk normally and be myself, it means their English is great. 

I have met people who have had good English on paper and who were capable of producing sophisticated spoken English, but they were simply bad at having a conversation because their listening skills were not so great. They didn’t seem to be listening or just did not pick up on a lot of the things I was saying. 

For example, while listening to me talk, they didn’t seem to realise how I felt about certain things we were talking about, they didn’t notice little jokes I was making, they didn’t react to certain points I made and did not respond to my efforts to talk about certain things, and it wasn’t because they were just bad communicators even in their own language. It’s because their listening just wasn’t good enough and they were not able to follow what I was saying, and in fact didn’t even realise it. 

Listening also relates to being able to deal with different accents. English is a diverse language and people speak it slightly differently all over the world, and this is a good thing and a beautiful thing, so being good at English means being able to understand English in all its diversity. 

Only a very small percentage of people speak English like me, with my accent (let’s call it standard modern English RP). If you hear someone from, well, anywhere, and they have an accent which is in any way different from my standard British English, or whatever accent you consider to be neutral, and you don’t understand it then I’m afraid that is not the fault of the accent or the person speaking it. 

It’s because your listening skills are still not good enough. You are still not familiar with spoken English. Don’t feel bad about it though, that’s not the point. 

The point is, listening skills are a huge part of the puzzle. Think of Santi. He described struggling so much every day when working in London as a waiter. He did not understand what people were saying to him. 

People were asking for a coke and he was bring them their coat. His first arrived in London and actually heard real English being spoken and he freaked out. It wasn’t like in the text books at school. 

In London I expect he met various English people from different parts of the country. The English he heard was unrecognisable to him at the beginning, because he simply had never heard it before. 

His English listening skills improved dramatically while living in the UK. When I spoke to him I felt he was completely on my wavelength and I didn’t have to struggle or make a lot of effort to kind of adapt my English or myself during the conversation. I could relax and I felt like he would be able to follow my train of thought. 

A lot of listening is connected to pronunciation. Good listening skills also relate to an ability to understand the way people produce the oral version of English, and this means being familiar with things like connected speech, elision, sentence stress, word stress, weak forms and all of those things. It’s about knowing the oral version of the language, which is often very very different to the written version. This doesn’t just mean knowing it academically (understanding the phonology), but knowing it through familiarity – having heard a lot of English from diverse sources so that you have kind of trained your ears to it, so it’s not a huge shock or surprise when you actually hear it being used in the normal way.

Reading

I don’t have so much to say about this except that reading is not just about knowing the words that you are seeing, and knowing which grammatical forms are being used. It involves being able to identify the bigger picture – what those words and that grammar are really communicating to you. 

  • Can you identify the opinion or attitude of the person who wrote the text? (What they think, or whether they are being serious or humorous in their writing)
  • Can you identify their mood, their intentions, the overall purpose of the writing? 
  • Can you identify what kind of text it is – an article in a newspaper, a business report, an advertisement, a formal email, a personal email, an internal email, an external email, a piece of fiction, a humorous true story, a religious text, an old fashioned piece of writing, something modern? 
  • Are you aware of the different stylistic and linguistic conventions of different types of text? 
  • Are you able to read between the lines? 
  • Can you identify specific information as well as more general things? 

It’s more than just knowing individual words and grammar forms. It’s also about overall text structure, organisation, and tone.

Again, it’s not just about speaking. In the real world, all of these things come into play, all the time. It’s all a mix of dealing with input, understanding it, and responding to it, while managing the pragmatics of communication – what impact language has on other people.

Writing

This relates to reading in the way that’s it’s not just about knowing lots of words or grammar points, but knowing how to put those words and structures together to make a piece of writing that is coherent (easy to understand), cohesive (logical and organised) and which does what it is supposed to do (persuade, inform, request information, entertain, etc). 

With writing, sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a bit like cooking a good meal. It’s not just the ingredients and the cooking utensils, it’s about having the overall vision for making a delicious meal and then using those ingredients and utensils to produce the intended result, and deliver it at the right time and have your guests say “Mmm, this is delicious” at the end of the process. Writing is a bit like that. 

In terms of words that you might use in writing (or speaking) it’s not about knowing a lot of words. That helps of course but some people might judge their English by the number of words they know – like, the higher the number, the better they are at English. 

And it’s not about how fancy or obscure those words are. Some people might judge their English by the rarity of the words they know – e.g. knowing some words that even a lot of native English speakers don’t know. That’s not necessarily an indication of being good at English. What’s the use of writing something that most people just can’t understand because you’re using very old or very obscure words? 

It’s not about the number or the value of each word on its own, it is about using the right words, in the right combinations, at the right moments, to achieve the right result. 

It’s no good writing an email to someone and filling it with loads of complex and literary words than nobody really uses on a daily basis. The effect on the reader will be just to confuse them. That’s failing to communicate.

Watch out for those teaching materials, videos, whatever that say things  like “Use these 5 words to get a high score in IELTS”. It’s not just about using certain fancy words. It’s all about whether you are able to achieve certain results in English communication. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

English is not just about what you know, it’s about what you can do.

It’s about your ability to complete tasks in English effectively. To understand other people and then have other people understand you. It’s about knowing when to use simple English and when it is appropriate or necessary to use something more complex, or something more specific. Right words, right form, right order, right time.

So I just talked about the 4 skills in English – speaking & listening,  writing & reading. 

Speaking & listening are together because they deal with the oral version of the language. The language in the air.

Reading & writing go together because they deal with the written version of English – the language written down.

Now, because I’m referring to my interview with Santi, which was an oral interview, let’s focus our attention for the rest of this episode on the spoken word, on speaking skills. 

I did say that speaking is only a quarter of the whole picture, but I think for many of you out there, speaking is what you want to focus on, right? 

So let’s consider what makes someone a good speaker of English? 

What I’m going to do now is look at IELTS assessment criteria. 

Assessment criteria means the specific ways in which English is judged. The specific standards by which English is assessed.

How do IELTS examiners judge someone’s level of English?

When you take an IELTS speaking test you will receive a score. 

This score is calculated by the examiner after they have listened to you and then marked you in a few sub-categories. Speaking is broken down into a few sub-categories and you’re given a score for each category, and then those scores are added together and then an average score is worked out. 

What are those categories?

  • Fluency & coherence
  • Lexical resource
  • Grammatical range & accuracy
  • Pronunciation

Each category is defined further and certain criteria or standards are defined which help the examiners decide what score to give in each category. 

In other Cambridge Exams, like FCE and CAE, speaking scores are assessed with similar criteria to IELTS, but there’s also a score for Global Achievement. This is like a score for overall task achievement. 

When you do a speaking test, you’re given a few tasks to do (short interview, having a discussion, doing a short monologue or presentation) and global achievement basically means “did the person manage to complete the task effectively”.

Quote from the CambridgeEnglish website explaining how speaking scores are measured for FCE. https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/images/210434-converting-practice-test-scores-to-cambridge-english-scale-scores.pdf 

Candidate speaking performances are assessed using scales which are linked to the CEFR. The assessor gives 0–5 marks for each of the following criteria: 

Grammar and Vocabulary; 

Discourse Management; 

Pronunciation; 

and Interactive Communication. 

Marks for each of these criteria are doubled. 

The interlocutor gives a mark of 0–5 for Global Achievement. 

This mark is then multiplied by four. 

Basically, this means that “global achievement” is more important than any other single criteria.

What is “global achievement”? For me, this is how well the person succeeded in the communication task. 

Your ability to complete a communication task effectively is more important than just your correct pronunciation or grammar. Having a few errors in your English is not the end of the world and what’s more important is task achievement. And that includes all that stuff about getting things done in English and getting the right result from a bit of speaking. 

For example, did you work well with your speaking partner in order to achieve the task you were doing – maybe to discuss some travel options before deciding together which one was the best, or having to make another joint decision.

Actually, let’s have a look at a sample part 3 section from a CAE speaking test.

Here you will see extracts from a sample speaking test from this page https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/advanced/exam-format/

By the way, CAE is another English test, designed by Cambridge English. If you pass the test, you get a certificate which proves that you have advanced level English at C1 level. 

CAE is similar to IELTS, is based on the same research and conclusions that have been used in creating IELTS, so it can also help us to understand how English is assessed. 

Let’s look at the extracts to see an example of a speaking task that people have to do when taking CAE. In part 3 the examiner is interested in seeing how people use English to achieve something in collaboration with someone else. It’s about interaction and working together for a common goal. Important communication skills, right?

You should see how Global Achievement or Task Achievement is important here. This is about how you were able to use English to complete a communication task and I think that is a really important thing to be included in the exam and for people taking the exam to consider. Remember what language is for – it is for achieving things and completing tasks effectively. 

If you can do that, you’ll get a good score for Global Achievement.

So this means that having good English is not only about the individual words being used, the accuracy of the grammar or the accuracy of the pronunciation. It is about those things, but it is also about whether you organised your ideas correctly and clearly, whether you listened carefully to the other person, understood their intentions and responded with relevance to what they said, and that you were both able to complete the task.  

It’s not about any one single thing, any one single aspect of English. It’s about all of them, in combination. 

Ultimately, communication is a means to an end (a tool for a job). The means (the tool) is the language, but the end result is to actually make an agreement, make someone feel something, make someone understand something, organise something with someone, and successfully complete a specific task.

So, Santi didn’t pronounce some words and sentences “correctly” or in the same way that I would, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. 

He might have conjugated some verbs wrongly (like getting a few ED endings wrong, or forgetting 3rd person S or even just using present tenses when he should have used past tenses, sometimes) but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. 

Now, those things are still important to get right – don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that you don’t need to be correct in grammar or pronunciation or that it doesn’t matter which words you’re using. Santi would get more points in an exam if he improved some of those little errors.

Of course those things are important. The point I’m making is that it’s about the bigger picture and there are plenty of other factors involved.

Specific IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors

I’m going to get really specific now. Let’s look at the specific IELTS speaking band descriptors.

What the hell does that mean Luke?

IELTS scores are given in bands. 

Band 0, Band 1, Band 2, Band 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 

9 is high, 0 is low.

Cambridge English (IELTS.org) publishes a list of “descriptors” for each band score. These describe what the different bands mean in terms of specific speaking skills. This should reveal the ways in which speaking is assessed in IELTS.

You can consider your English as we talk about these “descriptors”.

We’re going to look at them all in a moment, on a PDF from the IELTS website.

First, let’s picture the IELTS speaking test.

Image: https://ielts.com.au/australia/prepare/ielts-preparation-material/speaking 

How do IELTS examiners assess someone’s spoken English?

I’ve done IELTS training before and I’ve done mock IELTS tests quite a lot of times. I’ve also done the same with FCE, CAE, BEC Vantage, BEC Higher etc. They’re similar. 

If I was doing a mock IELTS test with my students and I was the examiner, I would interview the candidate, give them speaking tasks to do and at the same time I would have to work out their score.

On the desk in front of me I would have a script for me to follow, different tasks and questions for the test and some paper and a pen for writing the person’s score.

But it’s not just a single score for speaking. 

I wouldn’t just have a single category on that paper called “Speaking” with a space for a number.

Instead, I would have a piece of paper in front of me with at least 4 sub-categories on it.

✅ 

      Overall score / average: _________

I’d give a score in each category and then work out an average across the 4 categories. 

I’m not an official IELTS examiner, I’m a teacher who is trained to prepare students for IELTS, so that’s just the way I do it. 

But I know for certain that the examiners use at least 4 sub-categories when assessing a candidate’s speaking.

Here are those categories. 

  • Fluency & coherence
  • Lexical resource
  • Grammatical range & accuracy
  • Pronunciation

Note that accuracy is only half of one of those categories.

What do the categories mean?

Let me talk about what those categories actually mean, and then we will look at the descriptions of different scores for each category. What’s the difference between an IELTS 6 and IELTS 7 for example.

This information is from IELTS.org again 👇

Speaking test: How are bandscores awarded for Speaking?.

What is “Fluency & Coherence”?

Fluency and coherence refers to the ability to talk with normal levels of continuity, rate and effort and to link ideas and language together to form coherent, connected speech.

The key indicators of fluency are speech rate and speech continuity.

The key indicators of coherence are logical sequencing of sentences; clear marking of stages in a discussion, narration or argument; and the use of cohesive devices (e.g. connectors, pronouns and conjunctions) within and between sentences.

What is “Lexical Resource”?

Lexical resource refers to the range of vocabulary the test taker can use and the precision with which meanings and attitudes can be expressed.

They key indicators are the variety of words used, the adequacy and appropriacy of the words used and the ability to circumlocute (get around a vocabulary gap by using other words) with or without noticeable hestitation.

What are “Grammatical range and accuracy”?

Grammatical range and accuracy refers to the range and the accurate and appropriate use of the test taker’s grammatical resource.

The key indicators of grammatical range are the length and complexity of the spoken sentences, the appropriate use of subordinate clauses, and the range of sentence structures, especially to move elements around for information focus.

The key indicators of grammatical accuracy are the number of grammatical errors in a given amount of speech and communicative effect of error.

What is “pronunciation”?

Pronunciation refers to the ability to produce comprehensible speech to fulfill the Speaking test requirements.

The key indicators will be the amount of strain caused to the listener, the amount of the speech which is unintelligible and the noticeability of influence from the test taker’s first language.

Now let’s have a look at some of those descriptions from IELTS.org

https://www.ielts.org/-/media/pdfs/speaking-band-descriptors.ashx

Perhaps use my level of French as an example, also Santi’s English.

We could compare the different levels (maybe the difference between 5 and 7) across each sub-category.

Which categories are the most important?

The 4 categories are of equal importance in the exam, I expect, but if I had to choose, I would say that they go in order of importance from left to right, but of course if any one of those categories is significantly weak, they will drag down the overall level. For example, if you are unintelligible in pronunciation, it sort of doesn’t matter how many words you know or if you don’t pause to think.

Grammatical accuracy is mainly significant if errors cause misunderstandings, but I guess errors can give the wrong impression. 

Interestingly, I feel like pronunciation, grammar and lexis all help us to achieve fluency. Fluency is where those three systems combine. Without a wide range of words which we can recall and use instantly, we can’t express ideas quickly, specifically and coherently.

Without grammatical structures, we can’t link ideas together clearly and express complex things without our speech breaking down and falling apart.

Without pronunciation we can’t get our words out fluidly and clearly, with words linked, and yet stressed to give emphasis and impact. 

Assessing Santi’s English (I hope you don’t mind Santi!)

I wonder what score Santi would get if he took an IELTS speaking test. 

I shouldn’t really speculate about that, but I can say that his weak spot is probably pronunciation, (although this is still at a good level because I was able to understand him and after all he is Spanish and so it’s normal that he has a Spanish accent)

and then perhaps grammatical accuracy (he made a few grammar mistakes which probably stuck out because we were looking for them – I bet a lot of people listening were focusing intently on his English and judging him a lot – and he handled that very well), 

but he really makes up for his weak spots by having:

  • Good grammatical range. He was able to employ a range of structures which allowed him to have control over what he was saying and to express some complex ideas.
  • Strong Lexical resource. He was able to find just the right words, he used words which were appropriate for the conversation (switching from bits of slang when it was appropriate, to more formal language to describe his work etc) and generally used some very nice, descriptive, idiomatic and frequently used expressions, phrases and words.
  • Excellent fluency and coherence. He organised his ideas with clarity, he didn’t seem to struggle any more than someone might in their first language, he didn’t pause excessively, he was able to keep going and going, linking one idea to the next.

So there you have it. Some things to think about.

Conclusions

Being good at English is not all about having “a British accent” or never making a grammar mistake. There are plenty of other things involved in being “good at English”.

Of course, it is up to you. If your goal is to have a British accent (which one?) then I’m not going to stop you, but I do want you to put that in perspective and to realise all the many other things which you can focus on.

And finally, at the end here, I just want to give you a message of encouragement, because one of the main lessons learned from my conversation with Santi was that perseverance, positivity and practice are 3 of the most important factors in this game that we call learning English.

So keep your chin up! Keep practising! 

Don’t stop, even if it seems difficult! 

Don’t let your weaknesses stop you! There are other areas where you can be strong.

Don’t worry about achieving perfection! 

Just keep going and do your best and you might find that is enough or more than enough! 

And enjoy it! You only get one life and it’s happening right now, so what are you waiting for – go ahead and use English and make some connections with people. 

Be curious about others, be keen to connect with them and be kind. Be kind and generous with your time and your attention, to other people you meet and talk to, and be kind to yourself as well. 

Don’t judge other people’s English too harshly. It’s not a competition.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.

If you did, and you found it useful – give me a like or a comment or a review.

Have a nice morning, afternoon, evening or night and I will speak to you soon.

806. PERSEVERANCE, POSITIVITY & PRACTICE with Santiago Ruiz de Velasco from Oxford University Press

Santiago has a top job in the English teaching industry. He is the managing director of English teaching at Oxford University Press. But English is not his first language. He learned it as an adult when he moved to London in his twenties. This conversation explores how he progressed in his English learning and in his career, while dealing with daily challenges and failures in English.

The conclusions are that motivation and positivity are vital, you have to keep going through the difficult times, and you can achieve great things in your career in English even if you’re not perfect. This episode should be a boost for the confidence of all English learners! Keep an open mind, keep your eyes on the prize, keep going and your English WILL improve!

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The audio version contains extra content, including my thoughts and conclusions after speaking to Santi

Some thoughts about language learning 👇

  • (To borrow a catchphrase from All Ears English Podcast) “It’s about connection not perfection“. 
  • Use English today – what are you waiting for?
  • Learning a language can be painful, but we have to persevere. Keep going through the bad times. Good times are just around the corner.
  • Keep your chin up! 
  • Keep calm and carry on!
  • Perseverance, positivity, practice.
  • Exposure is so important for learning English – reading a lot, listening a lot, socialising a lot in English.
  • Lean into failure, don’t hide from it.
  • But if you do hide from it, that’s ok – you’re only human.
  • English is a broad church – there’s a lot of diversity in it. 
  • Your version of English is part of it too, so don’t worry about your accent too much. Work on it, practice being clear, listen & repeat, but at the same time, keep it real – don’t worry if you don’t sound exactly like me. It hasn’t stopped Santi – he’s a success in English and you can do it too.

That’s it! Thanks for listening!

796. Language & Local British Identity with MARK STEEL

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.

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Video Version (shorter, with automatic subtitles)

795. DOPPELGANGER (Learn English with a Short Story)

Learn English with another short story. In fact, this episode contains two stories. Listen until the end for the 2nd one. Repeat after me to practise your pronunciation. Learn some vocabulary & grammar in the second half of the episode, with an explanation of modal verbs of deduction in the past and present. Video version available.

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Video Version (with on-screen text)

Sign up to LEP Premium for a premium series with another story (P41)

Download the episode transcript here

Episode Transcript

Hello everyone, 

Welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing out there in podcast land? Surviving?

Here’s a new episode. It’s time to do some more English learning with a story. 

In this episode, I’m going to read another short story to you, and use it to teach you some English. 

I recommend that as well as listening to me read the story out loud to you today, that you read this story out loud too, and I will give you a chance to do that by repeating after me. 

We’ll also look at some vocabulary and grammar from the story during the episode. And if you listen until the end, I will tell you another story too. 

That’s all going to come later in the episode. If you’re watching the video version – hello. Don’t forget to like & subscribe.  

If you are listening to the audio version. Click the link in the description to visit the page for this episode where you will be able to read a transcript for the whole things. You’re welcome.

100-Word Stories

Recently I have been looking for short stories to help me teach English, the shorter the better, and I found lots of 100-word stories on several websites. A 100-word story is a story with no more than 100 words.

There are a couple of sites where you can find a lot of these. One site is called https://100wordstory.org/ and the other is https://www.fridayflashfiction.com/ 

Anyone can submit a story to these sites. The stories are then checked by the website editors and then published for everyone to read.

The only rule for the writers, is that the stories have a 100-word limit. I think the minimum is 75 words, but the maximum is 100. So, a story with no more than 100 words.

That’s quite a challenge.

The writers need to be very disciplined. They have to choose their words carefully, and as a result these stories are very minimal and manage to convey descriptions and emotions using only a few words. 

As a teacher of English, I think these stories are great because it gives us compelling and concise samples of English to work with. 

Get the book 

I want to just point out that there is a book full of these very short stories, which you could buy. 

It’s called Nothing Short of 100: Selected tales from 100 Word Story

It is a collection of stories from the https://100wordstory.org/ website. 

There’s a Kindle version or a print version. 

It is published by OUTPOST 19 and it was put together by the team behind the website, including Grant Faulkner, Lynn Mundell and Joshua Michael Stewart. 

It is available for you to purchase and I recommend it if you are looking for bite size stories to use for learning or teaching English. 

I also recommend visiting https://100wordstory.org/ and www.fridayflashfiction.com where you can find absolutely loads of stories like this with new ones arriving each week.

Today’s story

OK so let’s start with a story which I’ve selected from the Nothing Short of 100 book.

This story is called DOPPELGÄNGER 

By the way, we don’t usually use an umlaut in English →  ä  

What is a doppleganger?

A doppelganger is someone who looks exactly like someone else, but it’s creepy and scary, like a ghostly copy of someone.

I think the word has its origins in German (hence the umlaut in the title), and translates directly as “double goer”. So your doppelganger is your double, a copy of you, who looks exactly like you and who goes around, walking the earth.

In my case, that would be Luka Modric, the Croatian footballer. That’s what people say anyway, that Luka Modric is my doppelganger. 

Yes, he is my doppelganger. I’m not his doppelganger, ok? He’s my doppelganger. I was here first!

We do use the word in conversational English.

We say things like “Oh, I saw your doppelganger in the street today!” (meaning, “I saw someone who looked just like you”)
or “It’s amazing, he’s your complete doppelganger!” etc. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that. Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever seen someone who looks exactly like someone you know? Have you ever done a double take and been confused for a split second? Has anyone told you that they’d seen your doppelganger?

OK, I’m now going to read the story

Just one question 👇

  • How did the person feel at the end of the story? Why? 

Answer: She felt shocked, upset, sad, surprised and possibly heartbroken. Maybe she couldn’t believe her eyes, because she saw her lover with another woman, or she saw someone who looked exactly like her lover with another woman.

Listen to the episode to hear me summarise and explain the story.

Let me give my comments and explanations, line by line (listen to get my comments)

DOPPELGÄNGER
I almost didn’t see the you who wasn’t you.
I was walking past the outdoor tables of the French café, and just at the last second, I caught a familiar hand gesture, and looked again. 
It couldn’t have been you though, my love, because your other hand was clasping the hand of the woman opposite.
Your heads were too close.
She was laughing, that abandoned laughing you do when you’re totally in the moment, totally in love.
I walked on, heels tapping out a staccato rhythm, as I no longer wanted to look at the you who wasn’t you.

Possible interpretations

  • It was her husband/boyfriend, cheating on her, having an affair with another woman.
  • It wasn’t her husband/boyfriend. It was just someone who looked like him, but it still disturbed her because she’s terrified that he could cheat on her.
  • It was her ex, someone she is still in love with. They’re not together any more. He’s moved on, but she hasn’t.
  • It was a guy who she loves but they’re not together and she can’t bear the fact that he’s with someone else.
  • Perhaps she lost her husband (he died) and she just saw someone who reminded her of him.
  • Something else?

Language Analysis

Vocabulary & Grammar

  • The you who wasn’t you
    (Although you normally takes are/were, it is not plural, and so the relative pronoun who is singular)
  • Just at the last second
    • on time
    • in time
  • Familiar
  • A gesture
  • To catch (a look at) something (to get a glimpse of something)
  • …though
  • Clasping her hand
  • Abandoned laughing
  • To be totally in the moment
  • To walk on
  • Heels
  • Tapping
  • A staccato rhythm
  • It couldn’t have been you, my love 👇

Modal Verbs of Deduction

Present

Who is that?

I’m sure/certain it’s DaveIt must be Dave
It’s possible (that) it’s Dave-not sureIt could be DaveIt might be DaveIt may be Dave
It’s impossible (that) it’s DaveIt can’t be DaveIt couldn’t be Dave

Past

Who was that?

I’m sure/certain it was DaveIt must have been Dave
It’s possible (that) it was Dave-not sureIt could have been DaveIt might have been DaveIt may have been Dave
It’s impossible (that) it was DaveIt can’t have been DaveIt couldn’t have been Dave

Pronunciation

  • Repeat the story after me, line by line.
  • Try to say each line with no pauses between words.
  • Notice which word has the main emphasis (stress) in each line.
  • Don’t sound like a robot! 🤖

DOPPELGÄNGER

I almost didn’t see the you who wasn’t you.

I was walking past the outdoor tables of the French café,

and just at the last second,

I caught a familiar hand gesture,

and looked again.

It couldn’t have been you though, my love,

because your other hand
was clasping the hand of the woman opposite.

Your heads were too close.

She was laughing,

that abandoned laughing you do when you’re totally in the moment,

totally in love.

I walked on,

heels
tapping out a staccato rhythm,

as I no longer wanted to look
at the you 

who wasn’t you.


Do you want more of this kind of thing?

Sign up to LEP Premium www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium 

I do language analysis, vocab & grammar explanations and pronunciation practice.

There are stories and language reviews for conversations which have appeared in episodes of LEP. 

If you sign up you can add all the premium episodes to your podcast app of choice, and also get links for video versions and PDF worksheets.

www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium 

🔗 Link in the description 🔗 

How about another story?

We’re not finished yet. 

I’m going to read you another story. This one is also about a doppelganger.

I’ll just read the story to you, and then I’m going to do language work in a premium episode which is coming soon to the premium subscription. 

OK, I am trying to persuade you to sign up to my premium subscription, but I think it’s worth it, and if you do you’ll be supporting the podcast. No pressure though. 

If you don’t want to sign up or you can’t, no worries.

I’m still going to read the story to you in this free episode, now. 

I hope you enjoy it. 

I’ll quickly summarise it at the end (in case you don’t understand), but I’ll do the detailed language teaching in premium series, coming soon.

Story 2

Doppelganger, by Sue Clayton 

From → www.FridayFlashFiction.com and adapted slightly by me. 

“This book says everyone has a doppelganger, a mirror image, and if you meet yours face to face, you’ll die.”

Janice, my flatmate, closed the book, finished her tea and toast, and slammed out of the door for her A&E shift at St. Margaret’s hospital just down the road. She loved any kind of fantasy literature, always immersed in some supernatural genre book. Not my cup of tea at all. Give me a good Nordic Noir mystery anytime.

After taking a shower I went to brush my teeth. If you meet your doppelganger face to face you’ll die, my reflection in the bathroom mirror laughed as I recited the words, but they’d begun to worm their subliminal way into my subconscious, waiting to claw their way to the surface and pounce.

One day, a couple of weeks later, I headed for the front door ready to set off into town where I worked at a music store. Doppelganger, I froze as my mind hissed the insidious word. What if I saw me on the train? Or stood behind me in the line at the coffee place? What if I came into the shop to buy a record and had to serve myself? The words shot through my mind. I let go of the door handle as if I had been electrocuted, and phoned in sick.

“Do you fancy a night out at that new wine bar down the street?”
Janice bounced through the front door one afternoon, chirpy as a blue bird, her shift trauma-free for once.

“Not tonight, Janice, I’m still not feeling very good.” The image of my other self perched on a stool at the far end of the bar, possibly raising a toast, was too hard to stomach.

‘You haven’t been outside for ages, Natalie, not even for work…you’ll end up getting fired. What’s going on with you?” Janice pressed.

“I’ll meet my doppelganger and die if I go outside,” I burst into tears, knowing how ridiculous I sounded.

“You know there’s no such thing. You need to get help, Natalie. I’ve got a therapist friend who works at the hospital. I’ll fix you up an appointment.” She wrapped me in a comfort hug.

“You’re booked in for ten o’clock this morning.” Two days later Janice grabbed my arm and pulled me through the front door; I didn’t stand a chance.

“You won’t meet yourself between here and St. Margaret’s.” She smiled reassuringly and we set off down the street.

“Excuse me,” a hand tapped my shoulder as we waited to cross the busy main road. I turned around and my shriek froze the blood of everyone close by, before I stepped backwards off the footpath into the path of an articulated lorry.

“I didn’t mean to frighten her,” tears ran down the anguished face of one of the two men who’d been standing behind me. He was holding a large six-feet square mirror which they were carrying across to the framing workshop across the road. “I just wanted to ask her to step to one side.”

Summary of Story 2

The narrator, let’s call her Sue (although I realised after recording this that she’s actually called Nathalie in the story!) lives with her flatmate Janice. 

One day Janice reads a line from a scary book she’s reading. It says that if you ever meet your doppelganger, you’ll die.

Sue doesn’t usually believe that kind of thing, but the idea gets into her head and as she is leaving the house one day, she suddenly gets scared that she might meet her doppelganger, and die.

So she decides to stay at home.

In fact she keeps staying at home, every day. The idea of meeting her doppelganger has made her too terrified to leave the house.

Janice gets worried about Sue and arranges for her to meet a therapist, and assures Sue that nothing can happen to her on the way.

Sue agrees to leave the house, but at the main road someone taps her on the shoulder.

Sue turns around and sees her own reflection.

The man who tapped her on the shoulder was trying to carry a mirror across the road.

He wanted to ask her to step to one side, to make space.

But Sue turned around and saw her doppelganger – her reflection in the mirror and screamed!

Then she stepped back, into the road, and was hit by a large lorry.


That’s the end of the episode, but check out LEP Premium.

I’m going to do a premium episode all about this second doppelganger story. 

All the vocabulary (with a memory test), some grammar, some pronunciation practice.

I’ll go through the vocabulary and some grammar and I’ll do some pronunciation practice with it too, just like I did with the 100-word story.