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550. British Comedy: Alan Partridge (Part 3)

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Here’s the final part of this trilogy of British Comedy episodes about Alan Partridge. This time we’re analysing some of the quieter and darker moments in Alan’s life as he rambles about flasks, cars, seat belts, badges and having an air bag go off in your face, and avoids the problems in his life. Expect analysis of both the comedy and the language. Vocabulary lists and transcript available. 


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Transcript

So here we are with part 3 of this British Comedy episode, hot on the heels of part 2. This series is all about this famous British comedy character called Alan Partridge.

If you haven’t heard parts 1 and 2 yet I recommend that you go and listen to those first.

The plan again is to listen to some clips on YouTube and then analyse them for language. Hopefully you’ll get the jokes and will pick up some nice vocabulary on the way.

3 episodes is quite a lot to devote to one thing like this, but I really like Alan Partridge and introducing this comedy to you successfully (so that you enjoy it) is a sort of personal challenge for me and also there’s so much Partridge content that I feel just one episode or maybe just two would only really scratch the surface. To give this a proper chance we need to spend a bit of time on it.

Listener Emails

Hopefully you’re enjoying these episodes. Actually, I don’t really know what most of you think. I’ve had a few messages from people saying they are looking forward to part 3 of this – emails mostly.

For example, here’s part of a message from a listener called Hanna in Germany.

Dear Luke, I just wanted to get in touch to tell you how much i like your podcast. I’ve listened to the newest Partridge episode today and loved it. I think you’ve done a brilliant job in getting across what’s so funny and weirdly likeable about him. I’m really looking forward to a third episode about him. And in fact to all the upcoming episodes. In the meantime I scroll through your fantastic archive and pick out my favourite topics to enjoy in my everyday life.

Thank you Hannah.

But on the website I have had hardly any comments on these episodes, which is making me wonder what you’re all thinking. I have no idea really… So please let me know in the comment section. Are you like Hanna, who thinks I’ve managed to do a good job of getting across to you the ins and outs of Alan Partridge, or does it all seem hard to understand and totally unfunny? Let me know.

I did get an email from a teacher in Japan. I think he’s a native English speaker. I have to share it with you.

Message: Hello Luke,
I teach English in Japan. My students often listen to your podcast. In a recent episode you had a TV show host interviewing a child genius. My students are split on whether this really happened, or whether this was staged. I think it is pretty clear that a real TV show host would not actually physically abuse a child on TV, but my students are not convinced. They think this (smacking children upside the head in public and making them cry) is an example of British humour. (notice I spelt that with a ‘u’). I noted that you said it was ‘a spoof, a parody” at the beginning of the segment, but they are not convinced. Please clarify and explain the meaning of ‘spoof’. Love your show.

This is the sort of thing I’m talking about. There’s always someone who gets the completely wrong end of the stick and misunderstands something quite essential about the comedy, like for example what is the target of the joke and what are the underlying meanings or assumptions.

I actually can’t believe there’s anyone out there who would think that Alan is a real person and that he actually slapped a child, and that’s where the comedy comes from. Slapping a child is an absolutely terrible thing to do and it’s certainly not funny. No, the sketch in part 1 where Alan appears to slap a child, is obviously not real.

It seems I might need to clarify something. I thought it was obvious, but you should remember that Alan is not a real person. He’s a character made up by comedians. The scene in part 1 when he interviews a child genius, the child is not a real child. He’s played by an actress called Doon Mackichan who is changing her voice to sound like a child. And anyway, Alan doesn’t actually slap anyone. It’s just a sound effect for the radio. Nobody got slapped in real life.

And in the sketch, we’re not really laughing at a child being slapped. That’s not the joke. Just slapping a child is clearly not funny. It’s awful. So we’re not laughing at a child being slapped, we’re laughing at the fact that Alan is a fatally flawed character who is so pathetic that he will slap a child in order to come out on top or to save face. It’s ridiculous.

I understand that in Japan social conventions are so different in some cases that it might be hard to notice where the comedy is in slapping a child, but it’s really about the character of Alan and how he reacts to being wrong in a situation.

Anyway, slapping a child isn’t really British humour, but featuring a character who would slap a child is more typical of British comedy. We often feature characters in our sitcoms who will do terrible things in order to get what they want and they often fail. We laugh at these people, not with them. They are the target of the humour. Alan is not a hero who we support, quite the opposite, we observe him doing all sorts of terrible and pathetic things. Another example… Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers springs to mind. He does lots of terrible things to make sure his hotel business doesn’t get closed down. We cringe at the things he does, but also are amused by what happens to this person who is essentially not very nice when he is put under tremendous pressure that he’s probably responsible for in the first place.

Anyway, for most of you I probably didn’t need to give that clarification but for the students at school (however old you are, I’m not sure) let me assure you – Alan Partridge is not real and none of it is real. He is a character played by an actor called Steve Coogan. Alan Partridge is a parody or a spoof.

Parody, Spoof & Satire

A parody is a humorous piece of writing, drama, or music which imitates the style of a well-known person or represents a familiar situation in an exaggerated way.

When someone parodies a particular work, thing, or person, they imitate it in an amusing or exaggerated way.

So a parody is an imitation of something, in order to make fun of it. Alan is a parody of TV presenters.

A Spoof is a show or piece of writing that appears to be serious but is actually a joke. It’s also like a “fake” show. The Day Today is a spoof of the news.

We often use spoof and parody in the same or similar ways.

A satire is a piece of comedy designed to criticise something by making fun of it. Satire is like spoof or parody but doesn’t always involve imitations and often has serious targets like politics.

Animal Farm by George Orwell is a satire of communism. It criticises and makes fun of communism with this fictional story about pigs running a farm.

So Alan Partridge is certainly a spoof or parody of television and radio presenters. Perhaps at it’s best it’s some kind of satire about television and culture in general. In fact he’s become more of a parody of a kind of small-minded English man.

Alan Clips

Let’s listen to some more clips. This is going to be good listening practice and there will be loads of vocab, but also let’s see this as a kind of little adventure where I take you into something new and you have to try and work out what’s going on.

I’ve chosen two more clips, and I’ve chosen these ones because they are slightly quieter moments for Alan, not the big moments with all the catchphrases, but moments when Alan is perhaps at a weak point, which reveal how restless he is and how flawed he is on a basic social level.

We get a bit deeper into his psyche in this episode.

So in these clips I’m asking you not to look out for jokes like in the Edinburgh episode. Alan doesn’t really do jokes although there are very funny lines. So, don’t look for jokes. Instead look for the way this character expresses himself, how he chooses his words, how he can’t really connect with people around him, how he’s isolated, how he’s actually not a very good person.

There’s a bit of tragedy to Alan. It’s just there, under the surface. You have to read between the lines.

8. Alan calls his son and then Curry’s to ask about getting a surround sound speaker system

This is a glimpse into Alan’s family life and his relationship with his son. You could say it is strained. Imagine having Partridge as your father. It would be awful.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and Alan decides to call his son Fernando, who is 22 years old – around the same age I was when I first watched this. Fernando is named after the Abba song of the same name.

Alan calls Fernando to see if he wants to go for a pint. He catches Fernando in bed with his girlfriend and ends up lecturing him about how he’s wasting his time when the weather is so good outside. The key line is “It’s a Saturday afternoon and you’re in bed with a girl, you’re wasting your life!” Alan couldn’t be more wrong of course.

Instead, Alan suggests that Fernando take her out to a local tourist spot, like a local fort or a Victorian folly. These are like the bog-standard local tourist attractions in the UK. You find things like this everywhere and they’re mostly boring. The fort is probably some local old remains of a castle. A Victorian folly is basically a fake medieval building made during the Victorian era to resemble something from the medieval times. In both cases they are very boring and no doubt populated by other such middle-English middle-Educated weekenders with their anoraks and cameras. For Alan this is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Of course, staying in bed with a girl is a far better way to spend your time.

Alan can’t relate to Fernando and patronises him (talks down to him and lectures him), while also rambling on like a broadcaster.

His rambling goes too far and he ends up talking about how he used to make love to Fernando’s mother Carol in various places, even telling the story of how Fernando was conceived, making it sound like Fernando might have been a mistake, or that perhaps Alan wasn’t happy when Fernando was born.

We never hear Fernando’s voice. It’s just Alan’s half of the conversation, leaving us to work out the other side for ourselves, which is a good comedy technique.

We can see there are serious issues in their relationship. It sounds like Alan was probably a terrible father, making his son feel unloved and unvalued, and just lecturing him rather than relating to him on a normal level. Alan tries to be friends with Fernando, but he’s completely unaware of how much he mistreats Fernando.

Alan then calls Curry’s the electronics store to find out about buying some speakers and typically ends up either arguing with the sales assistant, lecturing him, or letting him into close personal details. Alan also talks about the speaker system in a weird, formal way, perhaps using the technical language you might read in the product manual, and even using some latin words. For some reason he feels this technical and formal register is appropriate when asking about buying some speakers from a hardware shop. You can imagine that there is a generation of people who are old-fashioned enough to do that too. At the end he even attempts to invite the guy from Curry’s to go for a pint with him, because he’s bored. The guy says no.

In the end Alan decides to walk up the motorway to visit the local garage to buy some windscreen washer fluid. It’s funny to see these utterly mundane moments in Alan’s life. He’s a bit lost and is living in isolation and obscurity. Nobody else in the Travel Tavern is there, so he just leaves, shouting slightly desperately in case anyone wants to join him.

What to watch out for

  • How Alan makes his son feel unloved
  • How Alan describes how Fernando was conceived and it sounds like he wasn’t happy when
  • Fernando was born
  • How Alan starts going on about flasks and Fernando just hangs up
  • How Alan talks to the sales assistant at Curry’s and expects him to know latin
  • How he fails to invite the guy for a pint of beer

Language

  • You both sound exhausted, have you been running?
  • We did it everywhere. Behind a large boulder on Helvellyn for my birthday.
  • Actually, that is where you were conceived.
  • We just didn’t take precautions (so Fernando wasn’t planned, maybe an accident)
  • No we were delighted! Well, at first I was mortified but then you were born and we grew to like you.
  • I left a tartan flask up there. One of those very fragile ones with a screw on cup/cap.
  • These days they’re much more resilient. They took the technology from NASA. Modern flasks today are directly linked to the Apollo space mission. Hello?
  • I’d like to make an enquiry about two supplementary auxiliary speakers to go with my MIDI hi-fi system apropos (with reference to) achieving surround sound.
  • What time do you knock off? Do you fancy going for a drink?
  • Breath of fresh air?

9. Extended Car Sequence (no laughter track)

It’s interesting how a laughter track totally changes the tone of what you’re listening to.

Friends with no laughter track makes Ross sound like a psycho.

In this case having no laughter track makes Alan better and it sounds a lot more authentic.

Alan & Lynn in the car

I’ve chosen this because I want to play a clip with no laughter and in which Steve Coogan and Felicity Montagu (Lynn) are clearly improvising a lot of the dialogue. There are no big laughs in there, but instead this is just Alan at a bored moment. It’s also perhaps one of my favourite Alan moments because of the improvisation. The characters are totally believable. It’s like we’re just observing them in a quiet moment during the day. As we listen to their naturalistic dialogue it’s possible to notice that Alan is slowly becoming a bit unhinged – I mean, the doors are starting to fall off. He’s bored. He’s isolated. He’s probably quite sad and perhaps desperate underneath it.

Alan is “at a loose end” and so he’s requested that Lynn come and meet him so he can ask her something that’s been bothering him. It’s a small thing really, but Alan makes Lynn travel quite a long and complicated journey to come out and see him.

They just sit in the car and Alan rambles about nothing in particular. The main thing bothering him is that his car is making a weird beeping noise and he doesn’t know why. But it seems he just needs Lynn to be there so he can lecture her, patronise her, belittle her etc as a way of escaping the dark feelings that are probably gnawing away at him. Lynn is very faithful to Alan, and has strong Baptist religious beliefs, but Alan is very mean to Lynn, making her take a taxi and to walk a long way just so Alan can have someone to talk to.

Alan doesn’t even believe Lynn when she gives her excuse for being late, which shows that she’s clearly had a long journey to get there. He’s very ungrateful towards her.

Lynn knows that Alan might be at a very vulnerable point here – he’s been thrown out by his wife, living in a travel tavern and he punched the BBC director general in the face with a piece of cheese, and it’s not having a good effect on his mental state. So she’s supportive.

Lynn is clearly concerned about Alan and offers to talk to him about his problems.

Instead of talking about his problems, Alan just goes on in great detail about the features of the car, clearly in denial about his situation and his depressed state.

By the way I think Lynn was the one who actually bought the car for Alan. Him criticising parts of it is also a way for him to criticise her. He’s subtly telling her that he’s not happy with the car she bought.

Obviously Alan is unhappy about more than the car, but he never talks about that. The only thing he can do is comment on minor details in the car. The more specific he gets about these trivial details, like the design of the badge on the steering wheel, the more he is essentially trying to escape the reality of his situation, which is that his life and career are a mess.

Alan’s weird broadcasting sensibility comes in as he starts reviewing the car, commenting on the way seat belts work and generally patronising Lynn.

The tension is palpable.

It’s hilarious comedy and is improvised.

But it’s 100% not obvious.

So I would say, don’t imagine this is comedy. Imagine you’re just listening in on someone’s conversation. Let’s imagine we’re spying on them, just overhearing two people chatting aimlessly.

Coogan’s ability to stay in character is incredible.
The absence of laughter track makes it 100x better.

I wonder what you will think but this is one of my favourite Alan moments. It’s so natural and the character’s avoidance of talking about his problems while focusing on meaningless details of the car, is very interesting from a character point of view, and shows there is real depth and pathos to the character.

What to look out for

  • How difficult it was for Lynn to come and meet him, and how Alan suspects this is a lie
  • The reason Alan asked Lynn to come out
  • Lynn’s suggestion about why the car is making a noise (the clock is wrong)
  • Alan’s reaction to Lynn’s suggestion that it’s because the clock is wrong
  • What Alan thinks of the car, particularly his disappointment about the badge on the steering wheel.
  • Listen to how Alan loves the sound of the electric sun roof
  • What Alan says about the seat belts

Language

  • I got caught in a taxi that broke down
  • Do you know what that noise is?
  • It wouldn’t be “engine faulty” would it?
  • It’s been irritating me all morning
  • Is it the handbrake?
  • Don’t touch the handbrake. We’ll roll back.
  • Just make sure it’s in neutral there.
  • If you ever learn to drive Lynn, when you stop the car, just give it a bit of a wiggle. Make sure it’s in neutral.
  • My mum always puts it in first (gear)
  • Some people do that to stop it rolling back when you park on a hill but it’s unorthodox. It’s a stop gap for a faulty handbrake, but I personally frown on it.
  • I’ve locked the doors there. That’s a design fault. Design flaw. Just pop your elbow on there, you’ve locked the doors. Sometimes you don’t want to.
  • I thought you’d like this.
  • It’s wood laminate.
  • Pop your seatbelt on.
  • These are inertia real seatbelts.
  • Suddenly a lorry rears in front of you. Impact! LOCK!
  • I’d rather have a few superficial bruises than a massively lacerated face. Ooh, awful.
  • I’d love to feel an airbag go off in my face.
  • What I like about this material is, just to get a little bit of extra purchase, it’s pricked vinyl.
  • Pricked vinyl will allow a certain amount of drainage of hand sweat.
  • The Rover badge on the old car was a lovely enamel beautiful crested thing on the steering wheel boss, whereas this one is just moulded into the vinyl.
  • All I do is sit here looking at this moulded badge where once there was an enamel one and I can’t pretend that doesn’t hurt.
  • The sun roof is a wonderful feat of engineering. Just listen to all these servo motors.
  • Precision engineering.
  • Whirring away.
  • And of course you’ve got the manual flap.
  • You go through a bad patch and you can smile at the end of it, probably.
  • I didn’t say I was going through a bad patch, I said I was at a loose end.
  • [Lynn suggests that Alan takes the car for a drive, but Alan beeps the horn while she’s talking, interrupting her. She tries to continue, talking about how there’s an arcade – games centre – up the road where there’s a fun camel race]
  • Do you want to know the quickest way to drain a battery?
  • [Alan tries to open the glove compartment and accidentally touches Lynn’s leg – plenty of apologising and it’s awkward. There’s no affection in the relationship, from Alan anyway]
  • Alan says the best way to drain a car battery is to leave the glove compartment open.
  • Lynn says you shouldn’t leave your sweeties in there on long journeys because it might pop open and you wouldn’t notice and the battery would get drained. [Alan has no idea what she’s talking about.]
  • You’ve lost me. Boiled sweets, you sound like a lunatic.
  • It isn’t the inticator is it?
  • Inticator? Indicator.
  • Actually, I am low on windscreen washer fluid.
  • They wouldn’t set off an alarm if you’re low on windscreen washer fluid. It’s far too alarmist.
  • Just a light would come on to say, you know, you’re a bit low. But not a big alarm like that, it’s just a panic measure, you know like someone going “Oh my god you’re low on windscreen washer fluid!” You don’t need to say that. Just say, you need a nudge. The car needs to effectively say, “excuse me, I don’t want to distract you from your driving, but you might like to know the windscreen washer fluid is getting low” and they do that with a little light, which has come on – you can see it there.
  • Well the clock’s not right is it. That’s a possible.
  • I’m sorry Lynn. I’m normally patient but the idea that an alarm would be triggered because the clock isn’t right is cloud cuckoo land. Alice in Wonderland.
  • Could you cool me down with the hand fan.
  • [Lynn holds the hand fan too close and Alan turns and hurts his lip on it]
  • Come on I’ll drop you at a cab rank.

Ending

There is a massive amount more of Partridge and almost all if it is excellent – great performance, great writing, great characters. Perhaps I’ll revisit Alan one day on the podcast.

I wonder how you feel about this. My aim has been just to introduce you to some stuff you didn’t know about before, and teach you some English in the process. If you’ve enjoyed it and want to check out more Alan stuff, great. If you didn’t really get it, well – so be it. At least I tried.

Some Alan recommendations.

TV series: I’m Alan Partridge Series 1 & 2
TV specials: Welcome to the places of my life, Scissored Isle.
Web-series: Mid-Morning Matters with Alan Partridge
Audiobooks: I, Partridge, Nomad
Film: Alpha Papa (not exactly the same as normal Partridge, but still good)

Do let me know everything you think in the comment section. It’s impossible for me to predict how episodes like this will be received by my audience – I really do scratch my head and wonder what the hell people in China, Russia, Japan or closer to home in France or any other place will think about some of the content I share with you. The only way I can know is if you write to me and tell me what you think. I’m certain some of you completely won’t get it, but some of you might get it and for me it’s worth doing these episodes even if only some of you get it.

At the least, if you didn’t get into the comedy, I think we can agree that there’s been a lot of language to be learned in these episodes. Check the page for this episode to see all the notes and transcripts. I should do a premium episode covering it all, just to make sure it really goes into your head properly! For example, what’s the phrase Alan uses to describe how he’s bored and has nothing to do?

He’s at a loose end, right?

That’s the sort of stuff I do in the Premium episodes. To sign up for the price of 1 coffee per month, go to www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium

BONUS CONTENT: Talking to Raph about Partridge (Part 1)

More videos

Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle (one of the most recent TV specials)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8rPBlzCIsc

Alan Partridge: Nomad (Audiobook)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh1DAKuiRAc

 

543. Britain’s First Insect Restaurant Opens

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Talking about the creepy subject of eating insects, which might be the solution to many of the problems that humans face as a species. This episode includes discussion of eating habits, environmental issues and some insect-related idioms and expressions. Transcripts and vocabulary lists available. Bon appetit!


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Transcript

Hello Lepsters! Here’s a new episode of this podcast which is dedicated to providing you with listening materials which are engaging, entertaining, educational and rich with language.

This episode is all about the creepy, yet potentially vital subject of eating insects.

It’s based on a couple of news stories, and also will contain some nice, chewy and nutritious bits of vocabulary and common expressions with words relating to insects and creepy crawlies, the environment, food and more.

Britain’s first insect restaurant opens

And you thought English food was bad enough already – now this.

Grub Kitchen – the UK’s first insect restaurant has opened in Haverfordwest in Wales.

Dishes include: bug burgers, mealworms, grasshoppers and cheesy locust croquettes.

Some vocab “straight off the bat”

  • Grub = two meanings: 1. food (informal) 2. a larva of an insect (the kind of young version of an insect or beetle that looks like a maggot or worm) – hence the joke “Grub Kitchen”
  • Bugs = any insects
  • Mealworms / worms = things that live in the ground and that you use when fishing, they’re long and skinny and they burrow in the ground
  • Grasshoppers = insects that live in the grass and jump quite far when you try to catch them. They’re green and have their ears on their knees.
  • Locusts = like big grasshoppers that can fly and they’re in the bible as a plague. They swarm all over crops and eat everything.
  • Croquettes are normally little potato patties, fried.

So an insect restaurant has opened in Wales, UK.

Bug burgers, anyone? Why we’re opening the UK’s first insect restaurant

http://theconversation.com/bug-burgers-anyone-why-were-opening-the-uks-first-insect-restaurant-49078

Read the first 3 paragraphs, and the last paragraph.

Some vocab from the article

  • it has huge potential for feeding growing numbers of people (and the livestock they eat)
  • on the street people are daring to try novel and exotic foods
  • We want to champion insects as a sustainable source of protein in modern diets
  • a research and education centre and 100-acre working farm
  • Andy is an award-winning chef, who has become more and more disillusioned with the unsustainability of conventional restaurants.
  • you don’t think that you want to veer into the world of entomophagy

This brings new meaning to the expression “Waiter, there’s a fly in my burger”.

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my …” is a typical joke in the UK. It’s like a cliched restaurant complaint and usually has a funny response from the waiter. “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup”.

Waiter, what’s this fly doing in my soup?
Backstroke, sir.

My brother once found a fly in his cake in a restaurant in our home town. He complained and the waiter said “that’ll be extra sir”.

More http://www.indianchild.com/waiter_jokes.htm

Imagine if you didn’t realise it was an insect restaurant.
“Waiter, excuse me, there appears to be an insect in my salad.”
“Yes, that’s right, it’s the grasshopper salad. Would you like some salt and pepper, or should I say, wasp eyes and ant heads?”

Thoughts & Questions

What do you think?

  • Would you eat there?
  • Have you ever eaten an insect?
  • Could you eat insects for dinner every day? What if they didn’t look like insects?
  • Are you squeamish?

How to cook a locust

What’s his recipe? (answer below)

Recipe

Pan fry the locusts. Enhance the flavour with honey, a little bit of chilli, fry it in a little bit of butter.

Flavour of locusts: almost meaty, like a prawn. Effectively, they’re are basically a land prawn.

Pull the legs off. They tend to get stuck in the throat sort of.

Zingy, earthy…

Eating insects may be the answer in the future. Why?

Video – The Economist “Why Eating Insects Makes Sense”

Listen to this video from The Economist and try to identify some reasons why insects might be the answer to our problems. We’ll go through the language afterwards.

Economist Video + Transcipt

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

Transcript + Some Vocabulary Items (explained below)

The world’s population is projected to reach 11 billion by the end of the century. Feeding that many people will be a challenge, and it is further complicated by the impact of climate change on agriculture. That is why some people advocate an unusual way to boost the food supply and feed people sustainably: by eating less meat, and more insects.

About 2 billion people already eat bugs. Mexicans enjoy chili-toasted grasshoppers. Thais tuck into cricket stir-fries and Ghanians snack on termites. Insects are slowly creeping onto Western menus as novelty items, but most people remain squeamish. Yet there are three reasons why eating insects makes sense.

First, they are healthier than meat. There are nearly 2,000 kinds of edible insects, many of them packed with protein, calcium, fibre, iron and zinc. A small serving of grasshoppers can contain about the same amount of protein as a similar sized serving of beef, but has far less fat and far fewer calories.

Second, raising insects is cheap, or free. Little technology or investment is needed to produce them. Harvesting insects could provide livelihoods to some of the world’s poorest people. (what a great job!)

Finally, insects are a far more sustainable source of food than livestock. Livestock production accounts for nearly a fifth of all greenhouse-gas emissions – that’s more than transport. By contrast, insects produce relatively few greenhouse gases, and raising them requires much less land and water. And they’ll eat almost anything.

Despite all this, most Westerners find insects hard to swallow. One solution is to use protein extracted from bugs in other products, such as ready meals and pasta sauces. Not having to look at the bugs, and emphasising the environmental benefits, might make the idea of eating insects a bit more palatable.

For more video content from The Economist visit our website: http://econ.st/1ytKwbp

Why Eating Insects Makes Sense – Summary

Here are the reasons, based on a YouTube video from The Economist (video and transcript on my website, above). This bit has been paraphrased by me from the video.

  • World population is expected to be 11 billion by the end of the century. It’s going to be hard to feed everyone. I don’t know if you’ve ever had guests. 11 guests is a lot of people to feed, but 11 billion, that takes the biscuit – and the biscuit is made out of bees.
  • Climate change is going to make it hard to grow all the food and keep animals, and there will need to be more animals too. Unless we start to eat each other, or become zombies, or become zombies and eat each other we will have to find another solution.
  • We’re running out of space and farmed animals (with all their gas and farting and all that) are making the situation much much worse. Apparently they actually produce more greenhouse gasses than transport does. That’s a lot of methane. Is it methane? Farts, basically. They eat grass and fart, a lot, all day.
  • So we’re running out of space and if we keep farming and eating these fart machines, sorry I mean animals like we do now we won’t be able to feed everyone and we’ll completely ruin the climate. Animals take up quite a lot of space and also we use lots of space to grow their food.
  • Apparently, insects are a solution. Just when you thought insects were a problem that you just want to get rid of, because every single run-in you have with an insect is a bad one. They’re either trying to bite you, sting you, steal your food or shit on your wall. They’re in your car, in your ear at night and sometimes in the bathroom, in the bath. We generally don’t get along with insects very well. Ever had a close up look at an insect? They’re quite frightening in a way. Imagine a massive one. Also, there’s something naturally in us which is disgusted by them – little crawly, creepy things with legs and wings. It makes you feel itchy, doesn’t it. Makes you want to scratch, just at the name of them. Insects, ooh scratch scratch scratch itchy itchy itch. So, we’ve always thought of them as a problem, but now they might just be the solution to our problems.
  • About 2 million people already eat insects. Mexicans eat chilli toasted grasshoppers. Thais eat stir fries with crickets. Ghanians eat termites. In other places people eat grubs, scorpions and spiders. Yum!? So, it’s already happening. If it’s ok for them – why not everyone else?
  • What are the arguments against eating insects? They’re bad for you? They’re no basis for a healthy diet? It eventually turns you into an insect like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly?
  • Well, eating insects is not bad for you. In fact it’s healthier than red meat. There are over 2,000 edible insects and they are all flying towards your face, sorry, I mean there are over 2,000 edible insects and they contain calcium, protein, zinc, fibre, iron. A serving of grasshopper and a similar serving of beef have about the same amount of protein, but the grasshoppers contain fewer calories. I bet it doesn’t taste as good as a good burger though, does it?
  • It’s really cheap to raise insects. You hardly need any technology or anything. I guess you don’t need to move them around much, you keep them in a contained space, provide food and bob’s your uncle. Loads of insects. It might be like going to work in a horror film, but you certainly don’t need to worry about the mountains of shit that cows produce on a daily basis, or all the complications relating to how you breed them. Getting big animals to have sex with each other already feels weird, like, why are we here watching them and in fact making them have sex and then watching, it’s also quite difficult logistically. On the other hand, or should I say leg, insects are really low-maintenance and quite randy. You don’t really have to do anything to make them have sex with each other, they’re at it all the time. They shag like rabbits, if rabbits were insects or somehow made of insects. They shag each other a lot basically, and they have really no standards at all. They’ll do any other insect.
  • Joking aside though, this could really help producers who don’t have much money for equipment or facilities, and generally can save space, time and resources.
  • Insects are generally better at growing and surviving than mammals, like cows and sheep – which you have to look after pretty carefully. Mammals are prone to disease and are far more sensitive than insects. They don’t take criticism very well, for example. If you say to a cow, “you’re really bad at being a cow. The way you eat grass is pathetic” they can be very affected. They’re rubbish, basically, whereas insects are hardcore. Someone once said that if there was a nuclear holocaust, the only survivors would be bugs, and maybe Keith Richards.
  • Insects are also way better for the environment. Livestock (that’s cows, sheep, pigs etc) account for over 1/5 of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. It’s more than transport. More than cars! Apparently, cows fart a lot. That’s a massive amount of fart gas clogging up our atmosphere! But insects don’t produce many emissions. They are very discrete, and you need less food and water to raise them. Insects will eat pretty much anything. They’re so easy to farm. Even if, like I said before, it’s a bit like working with Aliens from the movie Aliens, but much smaller, every day, and eating them.
  • But the downside is – nobody in the Western world, or developed world (or whatever you want to call it) wants to eat them. We’re just not predisposed to finding them appealing. We are naturally turned off by them. We think they’re flipping disgusting, basically. Errrr, insects – that’s disgusting!
  • But maybe there are other ways of using insects. You don’t necessarily need to eat a fly sandwich. If we took the protein from insects and just added it to our food in other ways – like adding it to pasta sauce or veggie burgers, that would make them easier to swallow (literally and metaphorically).
  • If we want to survive in the future – we need to tolerate certain changes. Eating insects, might be something we’ll just have to accept. It might just be “eat some insects or breathe nothing but fart gas”. Just deal with it! Time to man up and chow down on some bug-meat or it’s bye bye planet earth!

I’d love it if the world embraced this idea and didn’t just go – “No, I don’t want it! Screw the planet! I’m not eating a worm!” It would be amazing if the whole human race just went with it and said “yep, this is fine. Bring on the insects, let’s get crazy! It’s dinner time!”

Because the thing is, you probably wouldn’t be eating insects the way they normally look. We’d harvest the insects and then basically turn them into a kind of protein powder which could be turned into all sorts of other things. Generic matter which could be made into a burger, mince meat, chicken nuggets or anything.

I can’t wait for McDonald’s to launch its first bug burger.

Vocabulary Items from the Economist video

  • is projected to reach 11 billion by the end of the century (when you make a prediction about numbers we talk about doing projections and things being projected. For example you might talk about projected sales turnover for year 1, year 2, year 3 when pitching a new company to investors.)
  • some people advocate an unusual way to boost the food supply (to advocate = to argue something, defend something, stand up for something, support something. E.g. to advocate for the legalisation of cannabis.)
  • feed people sustainably: by eating less meat, and more insects. (these days, with the environment being such an important factor affecting everything, we talk more about sustainability, things being sustainable and doing things sustainably and to do something sustainably means that you do it so that it can continue going in the future. For example, sustainable agriculture means farming in a way that protects the land that you’re farming on, so that you don’t use up all the resources and ensure that the land continues to produce food in the future. Similarly, sustainable development is a key type of civil engineering in today’s world. It’s all about making sure that the environment, the economy and society are maintained at certain levels into the future. Insects could be a way to feed people sustainably – give people food in a way that means the environment isn’t damaged.)
  • Thais tuck into cricket stir-fries (to eat)
  • and Ghanians snack on termites (to eat)
  • Insects are slowly creeping onto Western menus as novelty items (creeping onto = moving slowly onto. Also, insects creep – it’s the way they move. Creepy crawlies. So insects can creep onto menus, or other things can creep onto menus, like kale for example. Novelty items are usually quite interesting, original and popular because they are new. It’s also a word for a little toy, like an interesting and enjoyable, original little thing , and something that’s new. Digital watches used to be a novelty, the game boy, fidget spinners)
  • most people remain squeamish (sensitive to disgusting things – you can’t handle the sight of an insect, or blood)
  • There are nearly 2,000 kinds of edible insects (possible to eat. Edible and drinkable)
  • many of them are packed with protein, calcium, fibre, iron and zinc (full of)
  • A small serving of grasshoppers (food is given to you in servings or helpings. If it’s a serving it means someone else served it to you. If it’s a helping it means you helped yourself to it.
  • raising insects is cheap, or free (to raise means to bring up, or help something grow)
  • Harvesting insects could provide livelihoods to some of the world’s poorest people. (harvesting = growing or cultivating things like crops but also insects and then collecting them all for money or food – happens at the end of summer)
  • insects are a far more sustainable source of food than livestock (there’s that word sustainable again) (livestock = live animals kept in farms in fairly large numbers.)
  • most Westerners find insects hard to swallow

Listen to the video again and notice the vocabulary.

You could check the transcript (above) and repeat what you hear.

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

Insect Idioms and Expressions – http://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium

540. What’s Up? Post World Cup / News / LEP Meetup London / Super Mario Earworms

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Giving some news, summing up the World Cup, England out, France win, and some chat about music that gets stuck in your head. Get some English stuck in your head with this episode. Transcript available!
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Episode Transcript

Here it is, your regular dose of English listening practice.

The theory, the science, the method:
Listen regularly
Listen longer
Listen long term
Don’t stop! (e.g. when it gets difficult)
In time the results will be obvious to you.
Compound effect.
Time + practice + positivity = genuine progress in English
In a natural way.
All you need is the right resource to listen to.
Something personal.
Something designed for you as a learner of English not native to an English speaking country.
Something made by someone who *might* know what they’re doing!
Someone with the teaching qualifications, but also the experience of just talking to groups of people for the pure fun of it.
Something which has many episodes which you can use to get that English into your head.
Your mission is to get as much English into your head as you can – through your ears in this case, until you get to a point that you’ve heard so much that you start to get a feel for the language.
It’s like the force. You have to trust your feelings and do what you feel is right. The Jedi way – do or do not, there is no “try”.
When you do a grammar or vocabulary exercise you know the answer, by instinct, just because you feel that it’s the right answer. This feels right, that doesn’t. How can you possibly get that instinct without getting exposed to enough of the language in context?
Listen a lot, read a lot, regularly, for longer periods, long term, don’t stop and just enjoy the process.
These are the right conditions in which you can really learn English, and that’s what this podcast is all about.
Yep, this could be the resource for you.
Maybe I’m preaching to the converted, but if there are any new listeners listening to this – jump on board and get involved. Listen to the episodes, get the app, look through the archive list, star the episodes you think look interesting, listen to a bunch of them over the summer. Leave your comments in the comment section and introduce yourself to the friendly and funny people there.
This could be the thing that’s going to help you get the English that you want.
Check out my episode archive – I’ve got episodes about grammar, vocabulary, topics, conversations with guests, funny stuff, serious stuff.
And, I’ve got a premium subscription service where we take things further and really dig deep into the language, examining, uncovering, analysing, explaining, repeating the language which comes up naturally in episodes of this show made by me for you.
All the info you need is on the website of course – the episode archive, notes, transcriptions and the premium service. Teacherluke.co.uk

So, here’s your new dose of English.

What’s going on? What’s up?

LEP MEETUP LONDON
FRI 3 AUG from 2pm
Fitzroy Tavern,
16 Charlotte St,
Fitzrovia, London W1T 2LY
Email teacherzdenek@gmail.com

First thing – I need to tell you about a LEPster meetup happening in London. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to make it myself although I would love to join in if I can. But there is a meetup happening with confirmed guests already.

So, attention LEPsters in London or nearby during the summer of 2018. There’s an LEP meetup happening on Friday 3 August from 2pm in the Fitzroy Tavern, 16 Charlotte St, Fitzrovia, London W1T 2LY. Fitzrovia is a cool place, just north of Soho near Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. I used to go drinking there when I lived in London with my old mates from college. So that’s our old stomping ground.

The meetup is being organised by Zdenek Lukas, the guy behind Zdenek’s English Podcast. Zdenek is a long term fan of LEP, and a well-qualified English teacher from the Czech Republic. Every summer he goes to London and teaches intensive courses in schools there.

Zdenek is a big fan of board games, especially for learning English – which is kind of a special area of interest for some people. There is a movement in English teaching which is all about using board games. It’s a brilliant idea. Board games are interactive, they create communicative situations, they’re fun, they involve communicative objectives and all sorts of cool things which are ideal for learning English. Plus they’re a really great way for people to get together, socialise and practice. These are board games for adults of course, not kids stuff.

So, Zdenek will be in the Fitzroy Tavern from 2, joined by an English teaching friend of his from the UK (I think she’s called Claire) and some other LEPsters who I think are already confirmed. You really should join them. You won’t regret it. You’ll make instant friends and you will have an afternoon in London that you won’t forget – if you do it right, and by “do it right” I mean – be sociable, have a couple of beers, relax, let go, enjoy meeting some like minded people and have some fun and play some board games in English!

Now, Zdenek needs to know how many people are coming so he can book some tables in the pub. So, shoot him an email at teacherzdenek@gmail.com.
Wondering what to write? Just write this – Hi Zdenek, I’d like to come to the LEP meetup on 3 August. Please count me in! My name’s _____. See you there!
If you can’t be there at 2, you could probably join them later. You could ask Zdenek how long he’ll be there.
Got it?
Friday 3 Aug, from 2pm, Fitzroy Tavern, 16 Charlotte St, Fitzrovia, London W1T 2LY. Email teacherzdenek@gmail.com to let him know you’re coming.

The World Cup

So I should probably wrap up the world cup commentary that I started in June. The WC is old news now isn’t it? It’s so last week!

Anyway, let me talk about:
England vs Croatia
France’s campaign (because I live here and it got crazy)

England vs Croatia

Perhaps England underestimated Croatia.
Maybe Croatia wanted it more.
Maybe England weren’t that good in the first place, and got lucky in the tournament.
England were outclassed.
Croatia were impressive. Incredibly determined and hard working.
We expected them to be tired. We expected to be able to beat them. But they’re made of tough stuff.
Croatia’s other games went to extra time and penalties. Denmark and Russia. They must have been knackered! But they soldiered on and ultimately overcame England.
Immediately the excitement and all the renditions of “It’s coming home” stopped and it was back to normal in England, and when I say “normal” I mean the general madness of the time – with the chaos of Brexit, our government imploding on itself, Trump visiting and being greeted by 250,000 people in the street protesting against his entire existence, he visited The Queen and arrived late, making her wait over 10 minutes.
What about France and the World Cup?

France vs Belgium (I somehow forgot to say all of this in the episode!)
1 – 0
Showed France could play a different type of football. Defensive, containing the danger of Belgium’s key players.
I saw a documentary about the French team. It was great.
Amazing team spirit. Pep talks in the dressing room. A positive atmosphere from the team in general. So much better than when the French team all threw their toys out of the pram and actually went on strike against the management team. This young team are really cool and get on well.
The crowds outside our flat went mad with a lot of noise.

France vs Croatia final

Don’t underestimate Croatia. Surely they must be tired by now, but they keep fighting. So much spirit in this team.
Some say France got lucky with an own goal and a debatable penalty.
The own goal was actually a great free kick by Griezmann. It did come off the Croatian defender, but it was right in the danger zone and if it had come off anyone’s head it would have gone in. A great free kick, a little bit lucky.
But Croatia came back, controlling the game in the first half an hour.
Then France won a debatable penalty. Griezmann crossed the ball in and the defender was coming down after jumping and appeared to move his hand to the ball in the penalty area. The ref couldn’t see it properly from that angle, so he went to VAR, and then called it a penalty.
Some people are saying the ref was biased but I can completely see how they gave the penalty, but I can also see why you’d be pissed off because it is really borderline. Is it intentional or not? The hand goes to the ball. It’s really hard to tell but the more you watch it on replay the more you think the ref can’t not give it.
France score.
2 – 1
I think at this point Croatia start to get tired.
It happened, eventually. This Terminator of a team, that wouldn’t stop coming no matter how hard you hit them. The comeback kings themselves, got a bit tired. Pogba started linking up with Mbappe and causing trouble for the Croatian goalkeeper. An amazing pass from Pogba to Mbappe led to an attack where the ball bounced around just outside the box and Pogba “got hold of it” and shot, the ball rebounded off the legs of a line of Croatian players and they didn’t know where the ball had gone and you see them looking around for a moment, but which time Pogba has stepped up and with the inside of his left foot has netted it from about 20 yards out.
3 – 1
At this point France show some class and generally have some great runs. Mbappe scores one of the goals of the tournament from further away than the Pogba goal hitting it hard with a bit of finesse, low into the bottom left corner leaving the keeper miles away. Amazing.
4 – 1
Croatia at this point must be feeling pretty crushed, having given it whatever they could for the last few weeks.
Then for some reason the French goalkeeper, Lloris makes a real sandwich of a backpass and cocks it right up by basically handing it on a plate to Mandžukić who was, as ever, pressing the goalkeeper and putting him under pressure. Mandžukić just knocked it in and then it was
4-2
And maybe there was a flicker of hope at that point for Croatia but it wasn’t to be and this French team really proved themselves, time and time again.
They had the more difficult route in the tournament, compared to England. Coming up against Argentina, Uruguay, Belgium and then Croatia, compared to England’s route of Colombia (where they were basically matched – just one pen between them) and then Sweden (who didn’t seem to put up much of a fight). Only when we met a real team like Croatia or Belgium, we didn’t quite cut the mustard.

But France, were brilliant and deserved to win. The thing is about France is that they can be a bit unpredictable and sometimes loose, they can win a game in 15 minutes, by just putting together 15 minutes of play they can handle most of the pitch, especially in that attacking midfield area. They showed that they had some depth and class and could really turn it on when necessary. And a fun, positive bunch of players who have a good future ahead of them.

England too might have a good future because the team is young.

Some people are saying this world cup represents the end of the Messi/Ronaldo era and the beginning of a new generation with guys like Mbappe.

I reckon this world cup has been one of the best in ages. It looks like Russia did a great job of hosting and this will be very good for Russia’s image I expect, with more people visiting and getting an idea of what it’s really like.

But generally the world cup was ace, with some amazing goals and some surprises with big teams getting knocked out early and some new talent coming through.

Next it’s the Euros in 2020 and apparently they’re being hosted all across Europe with the final in Wembley stadium which is brilliant.

By the way, that song “It’s coming home” was written when England were hosting the Euros in 1996 and so in a sense football was coming home in that we were hosting the tournament and it was 30 years since 1966 when England won the world cup. The song is actually about always being disappointed by England but still having hope that they can play well. It’s actually a really well written song with good chord changes and lyrics.

Earworm

I have a serious ear worm going around my head.
What’s an earworm?
It’s when you have music stuck in your head. Sometimes you just wake up in the morning with a song running vividly around your head. Different songs each time usually. Throughout the world cup it was “It’s coming home” for me.
But this week I’ve had a serious earworm going on and I can’t shift it. Sometimes this is annoying, but I’m actually enjoying it.
I’ve had this all week and I’m not sure where it came from.
It’s the Super Mario Kart soundtrack from the old SNES version of the game. The original and best. Pretty much the entire thing!
In the 80s and 90s Nintendo released a series of absolutely classic games. They were quality from top to bottom. Something about Nintendo in that period just oozed quality. There was also Sega and it’s character Sonic the Hedgehog, and he was popular. A very fast hedgehog, kind of a joke. He was popular – but he couldn’t hold a candle to Mario and all the Mario games.
They breathed quality and class. Zelda too.
Visually, in terms of gameplay and also the sounds and music.
Turning on your gameboy, NES or SNES you’d instantly be greeted by an unmistakable sound – a bleep or a ding, and the Nintendo logo. Something about that dinging sound. It was just right. It was cute, it was quick, it was satisfying somehow, it was even reassuring.
Then, all the Mario games – Super Mario Brothers, and Super Mario Kart, and The Legend of Zelda were blessed with really good music and I’m being serious.
I just googled this and it turns out that was all the work of pretty much one guy, who did the music for a stunning number of classic Nintendo titles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koji_Kondo
I’m probably being influenced heavily by nostalgia here, but I love these tunes and despite the limitations of the technology and software of the time, they were very catchy indeed, and also very melodic and jazzy with touches of bossa nova.

I spent a lot of time playing Super Mario, Mario Kart, Zelda and now a lot of that music is permanently embedded in my brain, and it just comes back at times.

This week it’s been all about Super Mario Kart.

I’ve been teaching 6 hours a day all week, working very intensively, without a moment’s rest on most days, just teaching teaching teaching. The pace and rhythm has been high and I’ve had to be very upbeat for days. Somehow this just completely suits that Mario music.
Let’s hear some.

I actually searched Spotify for the music and found an album by a band called the One Ups. It’s a whole album of Mario Kart music, performed by this band.
Let’s hear some.
This might be a trip down memory lane for some of you.
For others, you might not know these games.
But these are pretty nice tunes anyway. Probably very cheesy and I’m certain it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but let’s just take a sort of trip down memory lane.
Perhaps we can hear some of the originals too.
I actually put this music on when I’m working sometimes.

So I’ve been busy working intensively and looking after my daughter. This is why I haven’t uploaded for a while. Nearly 2 weeks without a normal episode of the podcast.

It’s July and nearly August in Paris and this is when it becomes difficult to record and upload podcasts. I’m not complaining or anything. I’m very happy. But I do want to explain that the uploading of episodes might be a little bit inconsistent over the next couple of months.
There should be premium episodes – I have to provide you with regular premium content because you’re paying for that (well, just the price of a coffee or beer per month).

But anyway, things are hectic. I’m working intensive courses all day every day in July at the BC and then August is holiday season and we’re going away to a few destinations in France.

Usually we go abroad to some far away place but this year we’re staying in France, which I’m very happy about. I want to explore more of this country, which is beautiful by the way. There are plenty of beautiful places here and I want to get to know those places, sample the local food, enjoy the weather, relax by the pool and all that. So, French holidays, mostly in the south. Probably no big adventures this time, but who knows. If there are stories, I will tell them on the podcast.

So that’s it.

3 things

If you’re in London then hang out with Zdenek and other lepsters at the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street near Tottenham Court Road station. Let Zdenek know in advance that you’re coming with an email at teacherzdenek@gmail.com Board games, beer, pub food and good times to be had by all.
Get the LEP app for all the episodes on your phone and a whole bunch of bonus bits and pieces including grammar lessons, stories, vocabulary, jingles, phrasal verbs, videos and more.
If you want to take it to the next level and help me out with a contribution each month in return for a premium subscription you’ll get access to regular language-based episodes focusing on the things you’ve heard in conversations on this podcast. Sign up to LEP premium at www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium

This has been Luke’s English Podcast. Have yourselves a great night, regardless of what time of day it is now. I just hope you have a good night – either in the sense that the next night you have is a good one, or the more gothic sense that even during the daytime it’s night time and so you can have a good night at any time if you’re a goth.

But if you’re not a goth then have a good day either today or tomorrow.

For now,

Bye…

537. How Olly Richards Learns a Language (Part 2) Intermediate Plateau / The Magic of Story / Pronunciation & Personality / Classroom vs Self-Guided Learning

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The rest of my conversation with polyglot Olly Richards, talking about how to overcome the intermediate plateau, the magic of story, pronunciation and identity issues, and self-guided learning.

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Intro Transcript

Welcome back to this double episode in which I’m talking to language learner and polyglot Olly Richards all about how to learn languages as an adult.

Olly speaks 8 languages and spends a lot of time working on language courses, and giving advice on his podcast and blog, which are called “I will teach you a language”.

2 years after our last conversation it was interesting to catch up with Olly and see if his approach to language learning has developed.

In this episode I talk to Olly about how to overcome the intermediate plateau, we go into details about the magic of story and how important it is in language learning, we discuss the connection between pronunciation and personality and wonder if the main problem people have with pronunciation is actually an identity issue. There are also comments on learning in the classroom vs self-guided learning.

There’s loads of great advice in here. For premium subscribers I’m doing a video which will sum up the main points and clarify them a bit. That will be available shortly in the app and online for premium members.

But now let’s continue listening to Olly as we have the rest of our conversation about language.

—–

That’s it – I don’t need to say much more!

www.Iwillteachyoualanguage.com

Premium subscribers you’ll get a video summary from me soon.

Sign up for premium at teacherluke.co.uk/premium if you know what’s good for you!

Speak to you soon.

Bye.

536. How Olly Richards Learns a Language (Part 1) Compelling Material / Input-based Learning

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Talking to polyglot Olly Richards about the benefits of listening, reading and using stories to learn English. Full of insights and strategies for effective language learning. Transcripts and notes available.


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Introduction Transcript

This episode is packed full of language learning experience and wisdom, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Today I’m talking to Olly Richards, who has been on this podcast before, twice. Long term listeners will remember him. Some of you may also listen to his podcast, which is called I Will Teach You a Language. This is his third appearance on LEP, and I’m very happy to share this two-part episode with you here, today. I must say that I think this episode is full of really valuable insights about language learning and should be essential listening for anyone who is serious about learning a language to fluency.

The basics that you need to know about Olly.
He’s from England.
He speaks 8 languages. English is the only one he learned while growing up as a child. The rest of his languages were learned in adulthood.
I would say that he’s obsessed with language learning. He’s on a mission, basically, to learn languages but also to explore exactly how we learn languages, to find out the best methods, the most effective techniques, to discover the holy grail of language learning.

Olly spends so much time and effort learning languages, practising, reading academic studies, speaking to people about language in various languages, blogging about it, doing his podcast about it, producing books and courses all dedicated to the pursuit of language learning. He’s made language learning his career in fact.

Check out his website www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com to find out about all his projects, to read his blog articles and listen to his podcast.

As you’d expect, Olly really knows a thing or two about language learning. He’s got all the qualifications and has done all the academic work, but what I’m interested in is his own subjective experience of being a language learner himself, equipped with all the metacognitive strategies and accepted wisdom about the subject. This is where I think we can really get to the bottom of this topic. This is how we can get to the real truth about learning a language.

The first time Olly was on this podcast, we got to know the basics about how he applies himself to his language learning, but that was about 2 and a half years ago.

That episode was very revealing and still has so much to offer. I highly recommend you go into the archive and listen to that too. It’s episode 332, over 200 episodes ago! His second appearance on LEP was in episode 357.

So, in this conversation today we’re catching up with Olly after about 2 years of him working away on his language learning and teaching projects. So, what new insights does he have to share with us? Has his approach to learning languages changed? What does he now think is the most valuable way to spend your time in order to improve your acquisition of another language?

I think the results are really revealing.

I talked to Olly for nearly two hours – it was very easy and we could have gone on for longer. After having had this conversation I personally feel validated and reassured – why? Because Olly’s conclusions confirm what I’ve also discovered about language learning, and his conclusions confirm many of the principles behind my approach to doing Luke’s English Podcast. It’s a nice reminder that, in fact – yes, there is method to the madness.

Spending time talking to Olly and listening to him talk about learning languages is extremely motivating and I feel like this conversation, which will be presented to you in two parts, I feel like it’s a real shot in the arm for me personally, for the podcast generally, and for you too I hope. This should be a very healthy listening experience for all of you, in terms of your English.

Really – if you’re serious about learning English you will really pay attention. Absorb all of this, think about your own language learning experiences, apply Olly’s approaches to your situation, and see how you can continue to improve your learning of English to an advanced level.

There’s no need to say any more now in the introduction, let’s just hear what Olly Richards has to say about learning a language.

Ending Transcript

That’s where this part ends, but you’ll be able to continue listening in part 2. Well, I think this is a good one – absolutely chock a block with insights and advice for learning a language.

If you’re a premium subscriber you’ll soon be able to see a video of me reflecting on some of the things Olly said in this episode, summarising the main points and turning them into some bits of advice for those of you out there who are learning English with this podcast.

But for this audio episode, that’s it for part 1.

You’ll be able to hear the rest in part 2 as we discuss how to break the intermediate plateau and the connection between pronunciation and personality issues.

To get the full LEP experience and to get the full benefit of LEP on your English you should become a premium subscriber. For just the price of a coffee or beer per month you can access an ever growing library of lessons from me to you – covering language in more detail – usually explaining, clarifying and demonstrating real English – either because it has come up in specific episodes, or because it’s just stuff you should know and be able to do. I’ve been teaching for about 17 years and you can get the benefit of my particular set of skills by becoming a premium member – the perfect balance between getting loads of input and getting some advice, help, clarification and practice from me. All content in the app and online, .pdfs, full episodes, bonus episodes, videos, phrasal verbs, story lessons and more. teacherluke.co.uk/premium to get started. The app is the best way to get the premium content I expect.

OK that’s it for this episode. I’ll speak to you again in part 2. Thanks for listening.

Bye.

523. Tips for Learning English with Films & TV Shows (with Cara Leopold)

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Talking to a fellow English teacher about advice for using TV shows and films to learn English, both with and without subtitles.

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Intro Transcript

Today on the podcast I’m talking to Cara Leopold who is an English teacher from the UK, living in France – like me.

Cara is an online teacher, who has her own podcast and other resources for learners of English on her website leo-listening.com.

One of the main things she focuses on is learning English through listening – especially using TV and films as a resource.

She’s got some tips to share on that subject – many of which come from her personal experiences of learning French, and so I’d like to talk to her about that,

But first I’d like to just get to know Cara a bit because we’ve never actually spoken before. So listeners, instead of hearing me talking to someone I already know (which is the way it normally goes on this podcast) you can now hear me having a conversation with someone I haven’t met before – so you can hear how that might happen in English.

Cara’s Website

www.leo-listening.com

Films and TV shows mentioned

Red Dwarf
BBC TV Comedy

The Orville
Seth MacFarlane
Based on Star Trek

Thor: Ragnarok
Directed by Taika Waititi, who also directed Flight of the Conchords.

Learning English with Films & TV – Summary of Advice Given

Here’s a summary of the main points made about using TV and films for learning English, with and without subtitles.

  • There are no hard and fast rules about using subtitles.
  • Using subtitles can help you understand what you’re hearing, especially when you realise that spoken English and written English can be very different. Subtitles can help bridge the gap between how words and sentences sound, and how they are written.
  • But be aware that only watching with subtitles might not help you develop real listening skills, because you’re basically just reading while you watch. Experiment with switching the subtitles on and off.
  • You can watch a film several times, especially if you enjoy it or already know it. Some films improve with multiple viewings. So, try watching certain films several times, perhaps first with subtitles in your language, then in English and then with no subtitles at all.
  • You can alternate between watching episodes of your TV show with and without subtitles.
  • Using TV and films for learning English is not just a simple or easy way to learn. In your first language you might just switch on a film or show and then kind of veg out while watching it – without really concentrating. This won’t work in English. Be prepared to focus and perhaps be more active while watching.
  • Watch certain scenes several times, with and without the subtitles.
  • Test yourself on what you heard and check with the subtitles.
  • Search for certain new bits of vocabulary when they come up.
  • Don’t worry too much about certain specific cultural details.
  • Try transcribing certain scenes – especially if you thought it contained really cool dialogue.
  • Then watch again with the subtitles to check your transcription.
  • Before you watch a film or TV show, check online reviews or summaries to help prepare yourself.
  • Be a little selective in your choice – pick stuff that you’d normally enjoy, and remember that films and TV shows can contain very “mumbly” dialogue, and even just “grunting” during long fight scenes. Try to pick films that are pretty simple and perhaps comedies that focus on the dialogue.
  • Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand 100%. Even in our first languages we don’t always understand what’s going on in films. So, don’t beat yourself up if you’re not able to understand it all.

463. News, Comments & Questions (A Rambling Episode)

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Giving some news, responding to comments & questions, rambling about new shoes and getting lost in the jungle.


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JILMANI’S 15 DAY CHALLENGE

LEP MEETUP GROUPS

ALEXANDER GREK’S DETECTIVE NOVEL

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457. Conclusions about Language Learning from the David Crystal Interview (Part 2)

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A follow-up to episode 455 consolidating the insights of Professor David Crystal including various pearls of wisdom about language learning.

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Notes & Transcriptions

Hamid
If English keeps taking on words from other languages, will it stop being English?
This is the story of English.
English is a vacuum cleaner of a language.
Something like 300-600 languages have influenced English with words. If you look at English today. Where are the germanic words? They’re only about 20%. The other 80% is from French, Spanish, latin and others.
There is no single dominating influence on English today.
How many Urdu words have gone into English? Maybe 100. But English has over 1,000,000 words. No new cluster of words coming in is going to come in all at once (tidal wave) they come in drip drip drip.
New words are assimilated to reflect a need – e.g. for new types of food.
This is no threat to English.
In fact it’s evidence of the power of English, that it absorbs so many other influences from other languages and cultures. It’s like the blob!

Jilmani
What’s the future of English?
Unpredictable! Absolutely an unanswerable question. You should never try to predict the future of a language. It’s all about events which just happen, e.g. the Norman invasion, Trump or Brexit.
Will Brexit reduce the influence of English in EU?
Not much. But it will change its character because it won’t be used by so many native speakers, so there will be more developments “Euro English” (I think it has emerged a bit).
But English will continue to change and diversify.

Jairo – wants help managing the workload of studies.
Learning about language is a huge burden.
Learning about a language you have to learn about the history, society and events of the time to understand why people were using language in those particular ways.
What was it like to be an old norse speaker?
But most philologists don’t have a psycholinguistic background to their studies.
Philology can be a bit dry.
David prefers the socially aware approach to the history of language which doesn’t just ask “what happened and when” but “why?” – let’s explore the nature of the people who made it happen. This should ease the process.

Cat
English syntax – can you explain it?
Come on you’re asking for a book here!
English has a simple morphology compared with German (or French).
How many possible word endings are there for a verb in English?
The difference between English and German is morphological but also syntactic.
English and German are quite close. They only diverged 2000 years ago.
Word order is a bit different.
Everyone understood David when he went to Germany and spoke German with the wrong word order.
There aren’t that many differences, although the few differences are noticeable.
Cat, why are you worried about local areas of syntactic difference between English and German. Why has this become an issue?
It usually comes down to identity. German English (used by people who have learned it really well) still is distinctively German English.
The point is, don’t be too concerned about micro differences in syntax between your language and English. As long as we understand you that’s the main thing, although obviously style is important so I imagine you want to write in the style of a native speaker (but which one though!) You might have to accept that it’s important to find your own voice in English, which might be influenced a bit by who you are (it is your own voice after all) – which is someone who lives in Germany. That’s not to say your English can be totally different and like German with English words – that would probably be unintelligible and a bit ridiculous. But micro differences aren’t such a big deal.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, it’s just small stuff.

Wesley
Do people who speak different languages think differently?
It’s difficult to translate words sometimes because there are some words which don’t directly translate because there isn’t an equivalent word. 10-15% of the words might be untranslateable. But in Chinese it’s a lot more.
But when you do psycholinguistic experiments we discover that people can see the different concepts, but having those specific words makes it easier to talk about those things. You can see the colours but you might not have the language for describing it.
Different languages might not have the same word for something but it doesn’t mean they think about them any differently.
E.g. in English we don’t have a word for a certain thing in Japanese – natsukashii for example. But we find other ways of describing it. Ah, it takes me back or “good old” or “it feels nostalgic” or “it’s good to be back”.
So it doesn’t seem to be the case that languages affect or reflect different perception of the world.
*But I reckon there might be something to it Wesley. E.g. sense of humour, patterns of understatement, all contribute towards expressing a sardonic outlook on life (UK) rather than a direct attitude in the mediterranean for example.
The fallacy is that it’s words that translate, but it’s not it’s sentences. A group of words together are what hold meaning. So even if there’s no single word equivalent, you put some words together and make a sentence and that’s how the language transcribes.
“Snow that you use to build an igloo with” – he can still express that thing with a sentence and you can see that kind of snow.

Learn the vocabulary of a new language and you’ll see the cultural things that it reflects. It shows that to learn the language properly you should learn about the culture too – the mindset, the reference points and so on. You can see all those things too, but having certain words and expressions makes it easier to talk about them.
The result is that in languages it’s easier to talk about commonly occurring cultural phenomena because the language has the tools to do it, but people are all still basically the same, we might just take a bit longer to talk about a concept that in your language is very normal.

Mayumi
Why do Brits use indirect language?
It’s just a cultural difference. It’s the British temperament. The reason for that is hard to say. Maybe it’s because the UK is an island and the psychogeographic factors might affect that kind of language use.
Pragmatics – the study of why people are using specific bits of language.
Language norms reflect the cultural context – that’s the identity argument.
But why does the UK use this polite language? We don’t really know! You have to ask why British people want to be polite. (obviously it’s because we’re such nice people)
You just have to accept the cultural differences. Learn about them and accept them. “That’s who we are.” should be a good enough answer.
As ever, you must accept cultural differences. They’re not weird, they’re just different. It’s a good bit of advice for anyone coming into contact with another culture. You can speculate about why people behave the way they do, but ultimately you’ve just got to accept it and move on, like the way you often have to accept in English that “this is just what people say in this language” and that’s it.

Synchronic not diachronic method.

Wikipedia:
Synchrony and diachrony are two different and complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A synchronic approach (from Greek συν- “together” and χρόνος “time”) considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic linguistics aims at describing a language at a specific point of time, usually the present. By contrast, a diachronic approach (from δια- “through” and χρόνος “time”) considers the development and evolution of a language through history. Historical linguistics is typically a diachronic study.

DC says we should use a synchronic approach to understanding these things – why is this particular person choosing to say it in this way, right now?
Some more modern dictionaries now contain essays about usage and pragmatics, which help us to identify how culture affects language. It’s worth reading the extra comments and information pages you find in many dictionaries.
Also, consider reading cultural guides as well as purely linguistic ones.

Antonio
Will AI replace the need for language learning?
Babel fish (Hitchhiker’s Guide)
In 100 years it’ll probably be perfect.
(I’ve seen auto subs have improved recently).
Imagine a situation where the babelfish is operating perfectly. It would solve lots of problems, but identity hasn’t been addressed. I still want to “be French” and the AI might not include those differences. People will still hold onto their languages in order to express their identity. It won’t affect language diversity.
But it might mean that AI might make the need for a global language redundant. Maybe AI will replace English. Why bother learning an international language?
But there are various answers to that – tech might let you down so people might not choose to constantly rely on it – some conditions in which there is no electricity.
Will AI manage to be perfect like a human, with the ability to translate with a view to expressing the culture?
Human translators choose between different competing nuances. I could say it this way, or this other way. We make those decisions based on complex social and psychological factors. A computer might not have that cultural sensitivity, maybe only in the long term.
The number of people learning languages might be reduced, but it’s also ignoring another factor in learning another language – the want to become aware of the culture, history and literature of the other language. There’s a personal satisfaction in learning another language and enjoy the pleasant things about it. People learn languages because they want to not because they need to. It’s a pleasure.
There are many reasons to want to continue to learn, it’s not just about intelligibility.
For the forseeable future he can’t see that it would be economically viable to create that technological solution for language when the traditional methods are the best way to foster relationships.

Jack – I don’t know where you come from.
First of all, David doesn’t mind being addressed in the Ali G dialect.
“Me” instead of “I”.
“Me wants to know…”
“I is well impressed…”
Subject verb agreement. “I is…”
“Booyakasha”
“It is a well big honour”
It’s quite a skill to be able to switch between registers. Sometimes we break the rules as a stylistic choice, like with the expression “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
It’s important to be able to switch between different styles and registers but you also have to know when it is appropriate to do it.
I’m not bothered by it in the comment section of my site, but you should be aware that some other people might find it weird or inappropriate, like for example if you write that in forums on other websites, in the comment section of Amber’s new podcast about Paris history, or in some business meeting. It’s going to seem really weird. So, you need to seriously think about the appropriacy of the things you’re doing and that means the style of English you’re using, or the decision to post dodgy pictures of cakes on my website.
Should the listeners learn the rules of grammar, or should they just focus on meaning, and let the rules look after themselves?
Both but in a structured sort of way.
In communicative teaching the structured side was a bit lost.
Just listening and working things out by being dropped in at the deep end is a bit of a big step – it takes a while.
It’s also important to do some structure work, but also to expose the learners to things that illustrate the language point being used in a functional way.
So it’s not just about form, but also about function and trying to balance the two.
So, as we’ve said before – do both. Some structured language work, combined with exposure in which you are really focused on following the meaning of what’s being communicated. Then probably some more reflection on the way it was done. Moving between grammar and pure meaning all the time. Juggling.

Back to the conversation with friends recently.

People get upset by failing standards in English.

Again, David doesn’t mind – as long as the language is intelligible then it’s a sign of changing identities – a sigh of the times.

Are we better at communicating than we used to be?

It is possible to measure, but not possible to give a simple answer. It depends on the situation.
Book: “The Gift of the Gab” How eloquence works.

Eloquence standards do vary from generation to generation, circumstances, individual to individual. E.g. Obama and Trump – differences in eloquence. Is Trump incoherent? Is Obama a better communicator? Some people say Trump is incoherent and inarticulate. But it’s not necessarily true considering Trump’s ability to communicate with his core voters.
People cite various things as examples of falling eloquence standards, e.g. using “like” but often these aren’t really examples of falling standards, it’s just a question of style.

How do we use “like”?
As long as it doesn’t get in the way, it’s just a question of style.
Again, people see language changes and they equate it with decline. It’s not.
Usually, people are giving examples of things that are just a different type of eloquence (again, change not death).

Trump’s English has a style with its own values. He avoids the rhetorical style of Obama with balanced, complex sentences. Trump uses everyday conversational strategies. “Look, believe me folks..” Every day conversational strategies. He doesn’t use carefully crafted sentences, he changes direction even mid sentence. These are all features of informal American speech.
Semantically it can be extremely difficult to understand what he really means. But adopting that style allows him to appeal to certain people.

These days he might have become a bit more formal, but during the campaign he was noticeably less formal and more colloquial than Clinton and the other candidates. As a result he clearly stood out from the crowd, during a climate of dissatisfaction with the traditional political class. People were fed up with the type of boring politician speaking in that boring old way. They thought they were out of touch with ordinary people, and part of a crooked system. Trump got in by presenting himself as an alternative to this established political system and the way he used English was a big part of that.

Thanks for listening! I hope that helps!

450. Comments & Questions

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In this episode I’m going to go through some questions from the comment section and give a bit of news. There will be some grammar, some vocab, some reactions to recent episodes and some bits relating to how you can continue to push your English with this podcast.

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Episode notes

The comment section is buzzing with chat. Photos are being shared of people’s running routes and shots of gorgeous spring flowers and blossoms in full bloom. A listener called Sylvia is doing an illustration for every single episode and posting it in the comment section. Regular commenters are having some long and funny conversations – they’re very friendly and like a laugh so get stuck into the comment section and see what all the fuss is about.

The usual commenters are: Cat, Nick, Jack, Agnes, Marta, Antonio, Eri, Hiro, Euoamo, Sylvia, Jilmani, Mayumi, Ethan, Syntropy and more people I have probably forgotten about!

Cat is the top commenter with a total of 2795 COMMENTS
Nick is in 2nd place with 1851 COMMENTS
Jack is in 3rd place with 963 COMMENTS

David Crystal

Bit of news: I’ll be interviewing Prof. David Crystal on the podcast soon.

David Crystal is the foremost writer and lecturer on the English language, with a worldwide reputation and over 100 books to his name. He is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor, and in 1995 was awarded the OBE for services to the English language.

I met him in 2012 when he gave me an award (with Andy Johnson). He’s really nice and I’ve always wanted to have him on the podcast.

And I am interviewing him soon, which is a serious treat.

This is the guy who knows everything there is to know about language and I’m going to interview him.

Honestly, I have millions of questions I could ask him, and I could easily fill up several episodes with him just asking all the questions in my head.

But I’d also like to give you a chance to ask a few questions. So leave your questions for David Crystal in the comment section. I can’t guarantee I’ll ask him all of them, but if there are some particularly good ones I’ll ask them.

Otherwise, I might be able to answer some of the questions myself.

Recent Comments on the Website

Here are some comments which arrived recently.

Cat – in reply to the British Humour episode
Hi Luke and Amber, thanks for your lovely chat! It was a most enjoyable and also educational episode.
I’ve got two questions:
1. You mentioned “NHS” (?) as something that each Brit is proud of. What is it exactly?
2. During the dissection of the Hugh Grant’s quote you said that he was “public school”. What does it mean?
Thanks for explanations!

IMG_4148Oil painting by Sasha Sokolova

Thanks for the oil painting! – www.sashasokolova.com

 

JAPANESE LEPSTER GIFT VIDEO ~ I need to do this!

Paul
Congratulations, teacher Luke, for the podium! Great job and another great podcast, thanks!
“It’s time for me to leave Audioboom.com” = LUKEXIT!!!!!

Amber’s podcast – Paname – it’s not available yet, but soon!

Orion Transcription Team

Just a reminder about the Orion transcription team – they continue to produce transcripts, mainly under the management of Antonio from Spain, and they are always on the lookout for new recruits. Antonio regularly posts messages in the comment section saying “Episode blah blah is now available for transcription” and with a google link. E.g. the latest one is episode 444. The Rick Thompson Report.

Remember, it can be really good for your English so check it out! Transcribe just 3 or 5 minutes. It doesn’t have to be a massive commitment. If you do it regularly you’ll see that it allows you to focus your attention on what you’re hearing and you’ll be surprised at how much that focus allows you to examine the language up close. You could also try repeating out loud some of the things you’re hearing as you transcribe, that could be a good way to convert the process into a speaking exercise.

Turning Input into Intake

Here’s some vaguely academic stuff about Turning input into intake to increase your language acquisition. There’s language input, and there’s language acquisition. Between those two things, there’s intake. Intake is the stuff we really learn from.

This from the University of Austin Texas
The term “input” referred to all the exposure to a foreign language that is around us. However, as years went on, researchers realized that input was not enough. If the learners were not noticing or concentrating on the incoming flow of language, comprehension would be limited. So today, researchers in second language acquisition commonly make a distinction between input and intake. Simply put, input is all the written and spoken target language that a learner encounters, whether it is fully comprehended or not. Intake is limited to the comprehended input that impacts the learner’s developing linguistic system. For our purposes, we suggest that technology provides ways to increase the foreign language input that learners are exposed to and enhances the process of how input is converted into intake.

Without getting too fancy, let’s say that to really learn from the things you hear you need to convert what you’re hearing from input into intake.

This means listening to content which is comprehensible – i.e. basically understandable even though there may be some things you don’t get. A mix of things you already know (this is your foundation that allows you to work out the bits you don’t know) and some things you don’t know or don’t understand.

It also means sometimes really focusing and giving all your attention to certain bits of what you’re hearing. Some things might kind of pass you by a bit, but it’s important while you listen to be sort of emotionally involved in it and to interact with it while listening – to really think and feel in response to what you’re hearing. Apparently this helps turn input into intake.

Transcribing pushes this to the max. It forces you to turn everything from mere input into intake – which is the good stuff. I think it’s backed up by not just academic research but by the experiences of transcribers. It helps push your English, and remember you can just do a short chunk, you don’t have to do a whole episode, that’s crazy!

In summary – focusing all your attention on 3-5 minutes of an episode can really help turn input into intake and can maximise your learning potential with this podcast, or any audio resource.

Yuko – language question “shall”
Dear Luke, my name is Yuko. I have been a ninja listener of your pod cast for a long time, and I am originally from Japan, which makes my ninja status more authentic, doesn’t it? I am living in New York, but really fond of British English.
I have a question. When it comes to the usage of ‘shall’, it is rarely used here except for those two occasions: to suggest something, for example, “shall I do this for you?”, and to use following “Let’s”‘ for example, “let’s go, shall we”. Back in Japan, I learned that shall is also used interchangeably with will for describing the things or action in the future, but, here, all American friends said that shall is never used in daily life except for the examples above, and that if I used shall instead will, it would sound quite archaic.
However, I have a sense that sometimes I catch “shall” as description of future in bbc or British dramas even in modern setting. Would you mind telling the use of “shall” in today’s British English? Thank you very much. I always enjoy and admire your witty, and sophisticated subjects, not to mention it was quite honoring that you chose my country as the destination of your latest trip. I hope all is well and both of you and your wife have enjoyed it.

Yuko, all the right info is in your question.
You’re just not sure about it and you need confirmation.
OK then!
Shall – for suggestions (shall I? Shall we?) – after Let’s…
Shall for future (like ‘will’ – yes, old-fashioned and a bit posh, but some people still do it, like my Mum “I shan’t be coming to the cinema.” or “I expect I shall be exhausted by the end of the day!”
Also in contracts for obligations
That’s it!

Agnes – Sport
I’m just curious whether Luke is taking some exercise or not, he looks sporty and I suppose that he does some sport activities:-)) I usually jog before going work, early morning – the best time for burning calories.

Anna Mrozek
I had an English class today and my classmate asked me “how the hell do you know all these words?!”, so…
Thank you Luke, because you deserve the credit for that. :)

Leonid
Hi there everyone! Does someone know the accurate meaning of the phrase “to be on E”? Thanks in advance!

Great comment from Cat
Just keep listening to Luke’s English Podcast. And try to listen to episodes more than once. It is on the second listen that we start to notice the language consciously and start learning. After some time, you can listen to the episode for the third time. And there you will see how much you have learned in the meanwhile. Do it with your favourite episodes. And try to listen to OPPs as well. And use the same technique. It’s very effective. Also listening during a physical exercise speeds up the learning process. Because your brain is working at 5x of it’s performance capability. So use such shortcuts, especially if you are a bit lazy like I am! ;))

I would add that you can also do some transcribing, or check out previously written transcriptions – either the unproofread ones in google docs, or episodes with published scripts. That can help you notice language too.

Film Club: Touching the Void

Hope you enjoyed the “Touching the Void” episodes. I have had a few comments indicating that it moved a few people. but my stats show the episode hasn’t been listened to as much as normal episodes.

I often worry about uploading too much, but there’s always someone who says “we want more!”
I recorded an episode about Alien Covenant the other day. It’s about an hour of rambling about the Alien franchise. I’m a bit wary of uploading it straight away because it would be 3 film club episodes in a row and this isn’t strictly a film podcast. I probably shouldn’t think about it all that much.

But I’ve been quite productive lately and I have some episodes in the pipeline – Alien, 2 Amber & Paul episodes, one about music and culture with James.

Anyway, going back to Touching the Void, I’m glad to see those of you who have listened to it seemed to enjoy it.

Agnes
Have been listening to this story based on facts for the second time today I felt an incredible chill down my back and my hair stood up on both of my hands.
Luke, telling us this story, you made me be there, with them, I saw this horribly broken leg, I saw as Joe dropped down, I saw everything, even though I haven’t watched the documentary yet.
just thank you

Ethanwlee
One step at a time – this is my biggest takeaway from this episode. At the end of the day, that’s the mantra that keeps us going, staying focused. This story leaves me lots of food for thought. Thanks Luke!

Jilmani
Thank you so much Luke! It’s an amazing episode I can’t express how amazing it is. I want to tell you my personal story about climbing. My parents are both climbers and they had a club for climbers. They worked there a lot to train and coach also they took a lot of people in trips for camping. And I always went with them when I was a child. I liked climbing and adventurous trips more than anything else. I had always climbed and camped before I had an accident in 2014 in Lebanon. I was terribly injured and they expected that I’d die. Luckily I managed to survive. I needed a lot of eye surgeries because my cornea was damaged. Now I can’t climb at all not because I’m afraid of it, but my doctor prevented me. I got rid of all my pictures and anything that might remind me of climbing or my adventures. I haven’t climbed since that day, but I skydived a lot. Climbing always helped me to relax and forget about the troubles that we have in the Middle East. Also I’m a religious person it always made me feel happy and close to God. My doctor told me that I will be able to climb again when he removes the stitches. Thanks again Luke. I’ll watch the episode tonight luckily I have a Netflix subscription and I love documentaries a lot. Waiting for the next episode!

Luke: Be careful if you climb again! Be like me, just stay at home and watch other people do it on YouTube, it’s safer (except maybe I should do more exercise)

daav
Wow! Thank you, Luke! I really appreciate the topic you’ve chosen for a new episode. The film is pretty good and the book as well. I’ve got one in my bookcase. I have just little experience with high mountains because after my wedding I decided to bury my climbing gear to the very bottom of my wardrobe and since that day I’ve been “only” a hiker. But anyone, who has ever spent some time in the mountains without any support, just with a climbing mate on the other end of the rope, an ice axe in hands and a pair of crampons knows, that the fact Joe Simpson survived the Siula Grande ordeal is a …. real miracle, nothing else than a real miracle…
If someone wants to buy a book I recommend Bookdepository instead of Amazon. They offer free worldwide delivery which is a real bargain in my opinion. I buy books from them regularly (from The Czech Rep.) and it works well.

Cat
Daav, but why did you put away your climbing gear?! It’s like giving up on a part of your true self. Can you be happy with that for long?

daav
Hi Cat. At first I must admit I was never a climbing machine. I used to climb few times a year. Let’s say just few weekends and one or two trips to the Tatra Mountains or to the Alps. So it wasn’t so difficult to give up. In the Czech Rep. climbing is very popular and there are many people who spend every possible moment climbing a piece of rock in their surrounding area. So I can’t say I was a climber. I usually say that I have done some climbing :c) One day I considered that my wife meant a lot more to me than climbing. She had never asked me to stop climbing. She had even climbed with me once. But any time I had packed my climbing gear I had seen the same wish in her eyes – please, stay alive. During my last climbing trip I had a minor accident I have never told my wife about. Fortunately nothing comparable to Joe and Simon :c) But I realized that I was being very selfish. I enjoyed it, I liked it, but my parents and other people who truly love me were frightened to death every time I left them with a rope in my bag. Now I know that it wasn’t the climbing that I liked. It was mainly a peaceful and calm space around me. It was the fact I can leave all my daily routine behind me. Now i know it’s not adrenalin that I need. It’s just some kind of feeling I am alone, just on my own in some remote area. So today, long distance hiking is an activity that gives me everything I need. I just pack my rucksack, a tent, a fuel stove, some food, maps and a compass and I just walk. It’s different to climbing. It’s definitely not so dangerous. However it provides me the same pleasure. Unfortunately the Alps are full of people and there are so many huts. But some parts of the Pyrenees are amazing, the western part of Ukraine as well and the Andes are a dream for any hiker. I have many dreams, CDT in USA is one of them as well as many others around the world. The only disadvantage of long distance walking is that it’s very time-consuming compared to climbing. Are you a climber Cat?

Cat
Daav, if I were Luke, I would read your comment out in the next episode. It is deeply felt and full of love. :)

daav
Thank you Cat. But I’ve noticed that some people don’t like long episodes. And my comment is so long that Luke would have to record an extra episode just to read it out :c)

Success story from Erick in Brazil
Hello Luke,
This is Erick from Brazil.
Today when I was listening to your #429 podcast while running, I felt encouraged to share my listening experience with you.
I have been listening to you for about 1,5 years usually when I go running, so you have been my partner twice or three times a week. Strange, but I feel as if I have known you for a long time…
I actually think your podcast is more than just a teaching one, but it is more like a variety show with news, entertainment, fun stuff, etc. I really enjoy your ‘long talks’ which can be just some information, funny talk or more deep issues which are very good for getting immersed into the English language.
It is gratifying to hear other points of view of the various subjects on the media agenda especially when you bring guests to your show, like your Father, Amber and Paul, etc.
Sometimes it can be very hard for me to understand, but I took your advice, I keep going, listening to some episodes more than once, trying to get as much as I can.
Now I can say that I broke through the language barrier and I can really understand and talk in English because of you! So, I just have to thank you for all the material that you provide for free and especially for your success in making your podcast so popular and genuine!
Cheers from Brazil,
Erick Takada

I didn’t share that just to remind you of how wonderful I am, but also to just remind you that if you find it difficult to follow everything you hear on this podcast that you should keep going and battle through the moments of difficulty and you’ll find that bit by bit you build your understanding.
I can’t understand how anyone could expect to learn English properly without listening to a lot of it. I think it’s vital.

Do me a favour!

If you know someone who might like this podcast, share it with them! Recommend it to that person. It’s a good way to spread the word.

Another thing you could do is to write a nice review on iTunes – that’s really good for the podcast because it helps things like algorithms and getting my podcast featured in the ‘recommended’ section on iTunes. Also it looks good when new people check it on iTunes, and it would just make me feel good and put a smile on my face, which ultimately will feed back into the podcast.

Subscribe to the mailing list.

Watch this space for news of a potential LEP app for your phone or tablet which could include some bonus app-only content!

445. British Podcast Award / Hello to New Listeners / 17 Vocabulary Expressions

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In this episode I’m going to talk a little bit about the results of the British Podcast Awards and also do a sort of introduction to the podcast for new people who might be listening for the first time. I’m going to bring you up to speed on what this podcast is all about and also recommend a few episodes from the archive that you could listen to. Also – for the dedicated language learners, at the end of the episode I’m going to explain 17 expressions which you’ll hear as I’m talking. Which expressions will they be? You’ll have to wait and see.

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As ever, I encourage you to listen out for words, phrases, bits of grammar and so on, so that you can notice them and add them to your vocabulary. It’s notoriously difficult to notice new language when listening because unlike when you’re reading, if you don’t know a new word when you hear it, it’s hard to even notice that it’s there. You tend to just follow the bits you understand and the new language can pass you by if you’re not careful, so I always encourage you to just pay a little bit more attention when you’re listening and try to notice new any interesting phrases as the podcast goes along. I’ll be picking out 17 of them and explaining them at the end. You can try to guess which ones I’ll be explaining.

The British Podcast Awards – LEP WON BRONZE IN THE LISTENERS’ CHOICE AWARD!

For the last couple of months I’ve been asking you to vote for LEP in the BPA, saying things like “I need all your votes if I’m going to stand a chance of winning this!”
I honestly didn’t believe I could win. I thought, “it’s a long shot but it might just happen!”
The awards event was this weekend in London but I didn’t get tickets because I didn’t think my podcast was going to win anything. I was up against some pretty stiff competition. But damn it, I should have got tickets! I shouldn’t have underestimated the awesome power of my audience!
I have to thank you, my listeners soooo much, because I actually won the bronze medal in the Listeners’ Choice Award.

This means I came third, and I beat some other really great podcasts in that category and I’m blown away.

This means so much to me.

The winner was Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo’s Film Review – my favourite podcast of all time. I’ve been listening to Mark and Simon forever. Hello to Jason Isaacs. The silver award went to The Anfield Wrap Podcast, which is the #1 podcast for Liverpool Football Club and then I am in 3rd place, and I beat so many of these giant podcasts that I love to listen to all the time, like Athletico Mince, Distraction Pieces with Scroobius Pip, My Dad Wrote a Porno, The Adam Buxton Podcast (although Adam did win an award in another category), The Empire Film Podcast, Unexplained, Monkey Tennis The Alan Partridge Podcast, Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (or RHLSTP as the cool kids call it) and more.

This is mind-blowing and immensely satisfying.

Here are some phrases to explain how I feel

  • I’m blown away
  • I’m over the moon
  • I’m buzzing today
  • I’m feeling pretty good about myself
  • I’m feeling on top of the world
  • I’m absolutely delighted
  • I’m very flattered
  • I’m immensely proud
  • I am feeling quite smug, self-satisfied and a bit pleased with myself

My podcast is featured on the front page of the iTunes store today right next to Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo, and other podcasts that I am a fan of. I’ve been tweeted by the British Podcast Awards and there’s my podcast in the winners list with these other big names, for the whole world to see.

I feel like I’ve just won a Bronze medal at the Olympics of podcasting.

Actually, I’m still yet to find out if I get anything at all. Obviously the winners (Mark & Simon) got a nice glass award. I don’t think I’ll get anything, but I hope they send me some sort of badge that I can display on my website because that would help a lot to give a good impression when people visit my site for the first time.

But I might get a bit more exposure from this. I’m not sure how much, but I expect a few people might be checking out my podcast at the moment, which is nice. Hello!

Now the things is, I owe this to you my listeners because without your support I wouldn’t have got this boost.

So, really – thank you thank you thank you if you voted for the podcast. I really appreciate it.
I especially want to thank all those ninja listeners out there who normally just hide in the shadows listening but never coming out and revealing yourselves.

If I can just activate you lot more often I could be in a position to actually take over the world, in the best possible way of course.

It’s brilliant, isn’t it, this? Podcasting. I still find it incredible that I can produce these episodes in my home and have people around the world listen to them.

I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again, never before have we had language learning resources available to us so conveniently. In the past, previous generations found it very difficult to get access to sources of English to help them learn. They had to use books mainly, or records, tapes, CDs and they were hard to come by and costly. Now it’s all here for you online and I’m sure this is going to have an impact on the world as this generation takes advantage of these resources and uses them to become genuinely much better at speaking English and communicating.

Some people are out in the world right now arguing that globalisation is a bad thing, but let’s not forget the positives – that the fact we’re all more connected today means we can learn to understand each other a bit more, communicate better and hopefully make things work well for everyone, rather than retreating into closed off worlds where we don’t trust people from other places and we harbour resentments and rivalries. Basically, I’m saying that podcasting will save the world, and this podcast specifically is going to save the world, or at the very least people will know more phrasal verbs than they did before, but it’s something isn’t it!?

Hello to new listeners

I expect that various new people will now be having a look at the podcast. If you are new then hello! Welcome to my podcast. I guess you’ve worked out that it’s a podcast for learners of English, but everyone’s welcome to listen.

I’m an English language teacher – a TEFL teacher. That’s been my full-time job for about 16 years now and I’ve been doing the podcast for about 8 years. I’m also a stand-up comedian and what I try to do on the podcast is just create content which is enjoyable as well as being educational. I do teach English on the podcast but over the years I’ve worked out that my audience responds best to content which is quite genuine, personal or entertaining, so that’s what I try to do. I just try to make it easier for my audience to listen to lots of English on a regular basis. I’m not sure I’m always successful but I do try to make the content engaging and funny as well as of some educational value.

Most of the time it’s just me talking about different subjects relating to British culture, the English language and just life in general, but I try to get lots of guests on the show too including members of my family, friends who are comedians and anyone interesting. Hopefully this gives my listeners a bit of variety in terms of the types of English they can listen to and also a few different types of interaction.

Generally, the plan is to create diverse personalised content covering a range of different topics, to make sure I am always presenting real English in context and to help my listeners to get as much English into their lives as possible. Basically, I’m trying to inject English directly into the brains of my listeners as much as I can, in any way I can.

It’s backed up by a few principles of language learning including the idea that people learn more effectively when they are personally engaged with what they’re hearing and that they’re motivated by more than just the desire to learn the language. Also, it’s important to listen regularly, and for as much time as possible. The longer the better.

I’m from Hammersmith in London but these days I spend most of my time living in Paris where I work at the British Council and also do stand-up comedy in English. I often travel back to the UK and record episodes there in London where I used to live or in the midlands where I grew up.
I have a brilliant, lovely audience from all around the world who regularly contact me with comments, questions and general encouragement and I’m really flattered that so many of them chose to vote for me in this award. I’m blown away by it really.

My audience

My biggest countries are China, Russia, Japan, the UK, Spain, Poland, South Korea, Ukraine, Germany, Italy and the USA.

They are really the ones who really make the podcast great because I don’t really do any marketing and so I think most of my publicity is done by word of mouth, which is the best form of publicity I think.

Some listeners are really active in the comment section of my website and they have some funny conversations there.

I meet my listeners sometimes at comedy gigs, or in classrooms by coincidence. I went to Japan recently and did a show there and I was treated like a celebrity with a big queue of people waiting to take my autograph. It was amazing.

Transcriptions

For learners of English, having transcriptions for episodes is very useful because it allows them to check the words they’re hearing and also practise sound scripting where you write notes on the script to indicate where the stresses, pauses and intonation patterns are. This helps to identify speech patterns and then practise copying them. It’s really useful.

I don’t usually script my episodes. Some of them are scripted but most of the time I try to talk off-the-cuff. I think it’s a better indication of how people actually speak when they’re thinking on their feet and therefore is better practice.

So a lot of my episodes don’t have scripts, BUT there is a team of LEPsters called the Orion Transcription Team that work together to transcribe portions of my episodes and then proofread and correct each other’s work. The result is that they end up transcribing many of my episodes and those scripts are available for everyone to see on Google docs. It’s a cool way for my audience to generate scripts for my website and work on their English in a very effective way at the same time.

Some recommended episodes

You can get all the episodes in my archive on my website at teacherluke.co.uk and so just check it all out there.

Click here to visit the episode archive

It’s really hard to know which episodes I would recommend if you’re new to this podcast. You could just look in the archive on my website and just listen to whatever takes your fancy.

You could choose (and this is based on what my listeners tend to enjoy)

  • Ones where I teach language or learning strategies. These ones are designed to help my listeners learn the language more effectively – either by exploring methods for motivation and self-study or by teaching specific language like grammar, vocab or pronunciation. I like to do episodes about regional accents in the UK.
    174. How to Learn English with LEP
    385. Breaking the Intermediate Plateau
    405. Accents in The Lord of the Rings movies
    40. Health and Feeling Ill – vocabulary
    176: Grammar – Verb Tenses
    29: Mystery Story: Narrative Tenses
  • Episodes about British culture. My listeners tend to be interested in the UK’s culture and I think it helps to learn the language if you learn some things about the mindset and lifestyle of that language. I’ve done episodes about British humour, tea drinking, holidays and festivals, British comedy, communication style and more.
    432. British TV: Gordon Ramsay
    427. British Comedy: Limmy’s Show
    411. British Holidays & Festivals
    420. Let’s Have A Nice Cup of Tea
    261. What is Britishness?
    83. How to Swear in British English
  • Ones where I have my friends Amber & Paul. These ones tend to be a little more difficult for my listeners but they are so popular with my listeners just because we have a good dynamic between the three of us, Amber has the loveliest voice in the world and Paul’s laugh is very infectious. We usually play games or respond to comments from the website. Amber and Paul are both stand-up comedians. Paul is now quite a famous because he has his own TV show on Canal+ and YouTube (Amber and I help him write it) – it’s called What The Fuck France? You might have seen it. An angry English guy going on about French culture and swearing a lot? Yes, that’s him. He gets away with it because he speaks French like a native and really the show is quite an affectionate piss-take of French culture from a British point of view.
    435. Catching Up With Amber & Paul #5
    436. The Lying Game Returns
    410. Teaching Idioms in the Street / On the set of WTF France.
    272. Bad Haircut
  • Ones where I have my Dad on the podcast. My Dad used to be a BBC journalist and he generally keeps a close eye on current affairs, particularly in Europe, so he’s the ideal person to talk to about politics. Every now and then I ask him for his thoughts on Brexit and other issues. He is very good at breaking down these complex issues clearly and concisely.
    444. The Rick Thompson Report: Snap General Election
    390. The Rick Thompson Report: Hard Brexit / US Election
  • I also have other members of my family on the podcast quite a lot, particularly my brother who is known for being quite sardonic and a bit grumpy. Generally though, my listeners seem to enjoy hearing the 4 of us rambling on about various things.
    415. With the Family (Part 3) More Encounters with Famous People
  • Silly comedy stories. As a comedian I like to do some episodes just for the sake of fun and laughs. Every now and then I like to improvise stories with lots of tangents and different characters. They’re basically long shaggy dog stories. The most well-known one is The Pink Gorilla Story – and there’s part 1 and the sequel, part 2.
    125. The Pink Gorilla Story
    400. The Pink Gorilla Story 2
    173. The Curse of the Lambton Worm
  • Travelling stories. Whenever I go away on holiday somewhere I usually do an episode about the experience and they often involve some story telling, bits of history and general reflections on the different culture. I’ve done ones about Japan, Thailand, California, Indonesia and France.
    443. The Trip to Japan (Part 2)
    377. Holiday in Thailand Parts 1 & 2
    209. Travelling in Indonesia Part 2

So, that’s a selection of recommended episodes, but really – I hope you just have a look at the episode archive and pick whatever seems interesting to you and have a listen.
Remember, this podcast is primarily for people who don’t have English as a first language, although I try to make it as entertaining as any other podcast out there.

If you like it – great! If it’s not your cup of tea, no worries!

But if you do enjoy it then I hope you listen regularly and really get into it. Join my community of listeners – you’re all welcome, whoever you are, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.
I do have native speakers listening to this as well, which I’m very happy about!
Anyway, thanks for listening.

Technical stuff – moving to a new audio host

It’s time for me to leave Audioboom.com They’ve been great hosts. I like their service a lot. Their embedded players look fantastic and I have had hardly any problems with them over the years.
But for one reason or another it’s time for me to move on. I want to be able to offer more things for my listeners, so I’m moving to a new podcast host.

This is going to be a bit more expensive for me, but I think it’ll be worth it.

I’m moving to Libsyn which is probably the biggest podcast host online. The cool thing with them is that I get a lot more control over the things I can do. This might not mean a lot to you, but essentially I can start controlling my catalogue and I can also launch an LEP app for Android and IOS, which could include bonus content only available in the App, as well as premium content and more. So, hopefully things will develop in a good way over the coming months.
This podcast has gone from strength to strength every year, and I want that to continue. In 2016 I got about 9 million downloads. This year I already look set to smash that number. My listening figures are more than double what they were this time last year. It’s brilliant.
So, watch this space!

Moving to a new host might cause a few technical problems, so if you experience anything, just hold in – it should all be fixed soon.

Those 17 Expressions

Remember at the beginning I said I’d pick out 17 expressions and explain them?
Why 17? No reason.

Did you notice any language that you think I would be explaining?

Here’s my list – and the only criteria for me picking these expressions is because I think you might not know them, or they’re just idioms or fixed expressions which I think are useful and you could add them to your vocabulary if you want.

If you know them already – excellent, but that’s only about 30% of the battle won – you also have to be able to pronounce them properly and use them correctly in a variety of ways (e.g. in different tenses and so on).

  • to bring you up to speed (on something) = give someone all the updated information about something, so they know the same as everyone else. If you come to something late, you’ll be behind everyone else, you need to catch up with everyone. If I tell you all the info that you’re missing, I’ll bring you up to speed. “Let me just bring you up to speed on what we’ve done so far.” “Could you bring me up to speed on this?”
  • to stand a chance of + ing = to have a hope/likelihood of winning or being successful. “I wouldn’t stand a chance if I had a fight with Anthony Joshua or Wladimir Klitschko.”, “They didn’t stand a chance, the attack came without warning.”
  • it’s a long shot (but it might just work!) = something that’s unlikely to succeed but it’s worth trying anyway
  • to be up against some pretty stiff competition = up against competition (competing with people), stiff competition (difficult competition)
  • to be/feel blown away = impressed, shocked (positive)
  • to be/feel over the moon = delighted
  • to be buzzing = feeling happy and excited, with a really good feeling inside.
  • to feel pretty good about yourself = it’s quite clear, but the construction is worth noting – feel good about yourself
  • to be/feel on top of the world = delighted
  • to be/feel flattered = pleased about something because it makes you feel important or special. It’s also a slightly embarrassing feeling. It’s how you feel when people say very nice things about you. “Don’t flatter me” “You’re flattering me.” “I feel very flattered” “That’s very flattering, thank you.”
  • to be/feel immensely proud = you know the word proud, but how about immensely?
  • to be/feel smug = (negative) feeling pleased with yourself to the point it becomes unattractive
  • to be/feel self-satisfied = smug
  • to be/feel pleased with myself = smug, sometimes not negative
  • to be backed up by (evidence, research) = supported
  • off-the-cuff = unprepared (apparently it comes from the idea that if you did a speech which wasn’t fully prepared you had to write notes on the cuff of your shirt)
  • to think on your feet = think without any preparation – to react to things in the moment