Category Archives: Transcripts

168. Please Vote! (and “stuff” like that)

Please vote for me in the Macmillan Dictionary Awards. Voting closes at midnight GMT on 14 February – so you only have a couple of days! Click here to vote for me. Thanks! If you’ve already voted – thanks a lot! In this episode I shut up about the competition after 9 minutes, and then just improvise, while using the words ‘stuff’ and ‘thing’ as much as possible.

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I also talk about a few other things in this episode, including quite a lot of stuff about working for the secret service, drinking coffee and setting the world to rights over a few drinks. So, do listen to all of the stuff and things I say in this episode ;)

Here’s George Carlin talking about stuff (transcript below)

“Stuff” by George Carlin

I would’ve been out here a little bit sooner but they gave me the wrong dressing room and I couldn’t find any place to put my stuff. And I don’t know how you are but I need a place to put my stuff. So, that’s what I’ve been doing back there. Just trying to find a place for my stuff. You know how important it is. That’s the whole… that’s the whole meaning of life, isn’t it? Try and find a place for your stuff. That’s all your house is. Your house is just a place for your stuff. If you didn’t have so much goddamned stuff you wouldn’t need a house. You’d just walk around all the time. That’s all what your house is, that’s a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You see that when you’re taking off in an aeroplane. You look down and you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff. Everybody’s got their own pile of stuff and if you leave it you’ve got to lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They don’t bother with the crap you’re saving and nobody’s interested in your fourth grade arithmetic papers. They’re looking for the good stuff. That’s all your house is, it’s a place you keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. Now, sometimes, sometimes you’ve got to move. You’ve got to get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff! You’ve got to move all your stuff and maybe put some your stuff in storage. I mentioned that. There’s a whole industry based on keeping an eye on your stuff.

Enough about your stuff. Let’s talk about other people’s stuff. Did you ever notice that when you go to somebody else’s house you never quite feel 100% at home? You know why? No room for your stuff! Somebody else’s stuff is all over the place! And what awful stuff it is. Where did they get this stuff? And if you have to stay overnight at someone’s house, you know, unexpectedly, and they’ll give you a little room to sleep in that they didn’t use that often. Someone died in it eleven years ago and they haven’t moved any of his stuff! Or wherever they give you the sleep usually near the bed there’s a dresser and there’s never any room on a dresser for your stuff. Someone else’s shit is on a dresser. Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?! Get that out of there!

Now, sometimes you go on vacation you’ve got to bring some your stuff with you. You can’t bring all your stuff, just the stuff you really like. The stuff that fits you well that month. Let’s say you want to go to Honolulu. You want to go all the way to Honolulu and you’ve got to get two big bags with stuff plus your carry-on stuff plus the stuff in your pockets. You go all the way to Honolulu, you get to the hotel room and you start to put away your stuff. That’s the first thing you do in a hotel room is to put away your stuff. I’ll put some stuff in here. I’ll put some stuff down here. Here’s another place for stuff for you. I’ll put some stuff on here. You put your stuff over there and I’ll put my stuff over here. Here’s another place for the stuff. Hey, we’ve got more places than we’ve got stuff! We’re going to have to buy more stuff! And you put all your stuff away and you know that you’re thousand of miles from home and you don’t quite feel at ease but you know that you must be okay because you do have some your stuff with you. And you relax in Honolulu on that basis. That’s when your friend from Maui calls and says – Hey, why don’t you come over to Maui for the weekend, spend a couple of nights over here? – Aww, shit, no! Now, what stuff do you bring? Right, you’ve got to bring an even smaller version of your stuff. Just enough stuff for a weekend on Maui. And you get over… And you’re really spread out and now you’ve got your shit all over the world! You’ve got stuff at home, stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu, stuff in Maui, stuff in your pockets so, supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain. When you get over to your friend’s house in Maui and they give you a little place to sleep. There’s a little window ledge, some kind of small shelf and there’s not much room up there but it’s okay because you don’t have much stuff now. And you put what stuff you do have up there. You put your important French toenail clippers, your own readers with that 45-day guarantee, your cinnamon flavoured dental floss and your Afrin 12-hour decongestant nasal spray. And you know you ‘re a long way from home. You know that you must be OK because you do have your Afrin 12-hour decongestant nasal spray. And you relax in Maui on that basis. That’s when your friend says – Hey, I think tonight we’ll go over to another side of the island to stay at my friend’s house overnight – Oh, shit, no! NOW, what do you bring?! Now, you just bring the things you know you’re going to need. Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hanky, pen, cigarettes, contraceptives, vaseline, whips, chains, whistles, dildos and a book.

Memory, Mnemonics & Learning English (How to Remember Vocabulary)

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How to improve your memory and learn English more effectively with memory techniques & mnemonics.

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The following is a transcript of this episode of the podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Today, we are going to take a journey into the palace of the mind! We are going to venture into the deepest parts of your brain, and in the process we’re going to clean it up, brighten it up, sweep out the cobwebs and make it a much more effective place for learning and remembering English. Have a glass of water, take a deep breath and get ready for a brain upgrade because this episode of the podcast is all about memory, mnemonics and learning English!

Recently I’ve been doing a series of mini podcast episodes called “A Phrasal Verb a Day”. It’s quite a popular series, which is great. Lots of people have been listening to it, and I’m updating it every day. You can find a link to the episodes on my webpage https://audioboo.fm/LukeThompson. I’m hoping to do 365 phrasal verbs this year, that’s one a day, which may be a little ambitious but we’ll see. 365, that’s a large number of phrases for me to teach, but also a large number for you to remember. You might be thinking – this is great Luke. 365 phrasal verbs, all explained by you with examples and transcripts, but how am I going to remember them all? Well, you don’t have to remember all of them, but you definitely can. Your brain is an amazing thing. It’s capable of remembering massive amounts of information. It’s just a question of how you get the information in there.

English has one of the largest vocabularies of any language in the world, which is quite an overwhelming prospect for those of you who are trying to learn all of those words, even just a portion of them – like the commonly used ones. But it’s not just the words, it’s the phrases, the idioms, the spelling, the rules of grammar. It’s a challenge, but you can do it. The question is: How? Well, let’s look into it.

In this episode we’ll be looking at ways to improve your memory and some specific mnemonic devices for remembering English vocabulary and spelling. So strap in, this is going to be a useful one. With the methods in this episode, you’ll be able to remember massive amounts of vocabulary, and you’ll be able to remember the spelling for loads of difficult-to-write English words. There’s also a transcript for this which you can read at www.teacherluke.wordpress.com. You’re welcome.

The techniques I talk about here are well-known methods, used by lots of people including some of the most famous brains in the world. The illusionist Derren Brown is an example. He’s famous for being able to remember vast sequences of information, and uses this technique in his magic shows. Then, there’s the world famous detective Sherlock Holmes. I know he’s not a real person, but in the modern TV adaptation called “Sherlock” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, he uses a mnemonic device known as a mind palace in order to remember all kinds of information, which allows him to solve deeply complex criminal cases. You can create your own mind palace too, or just use memory techniques to help your remember names of people at a party, business contacts, telephone numbers, lists of phrasal verbs or the way English words and spelled and pronounced. We’ll be looking at all these things in this episode.

These are tried and tested techniques and I invite you to try them for yourself, even if you’ve never considered the idea of improving your memory. They’re a lot of fun and surprisingly useful, and you don’t need to try very hard to just play along. I don’t want to go on about it too much, but if you just listen – it’ll be quite entertaining, but you’ll get the most benefit from actually trying these things yourself, and if you do that – if you try to apply the memory techniques in this episode, it could transform your English learning in a really exciting way.

You might need a pen and paper, so you can join in with some activities. Don’t forget you can read everything I’m saying by visiting teacherluke.wordpress.com.

Let me give you a run-down of the systems I’m going to talk about here:

1. Firstly I’ll talk about some advice for learning English more effectively, based on mnemonic devices. I’ll give you a summary of what I’ve learned from reading about this subject.

2. Then I’ll outline some specific systems for remembering lists of things such as a shopping list, people’s names, the order of adjectives in English, or lists of vocabulary.

3. Then, we’ll go through some specific mnemonics for remembering English spelling, which can help you to improve your spelling massively.

Just to explain, a mnemonic is a method of remembering something. It’s a memorising technique. Mnemonic has slightly weird spelling. It’s spelled M-N-E-M-O-N-I-C but the first M is silent. So that’s pronounced “NEMONIC”. There is a mnemonic device for learning the spelling for the ‘mnemonics’. It goes like this Mnemonics Now Erase Man’s Oldest Nemesis, Insufficient Cerebral Storage. The first letters of the first words in that phrase all spell “mnemonics”. Say it again… Mnemonics Now Erase Man’s Oldest Nemesis, Insufficient Cerebral Storage. Again, you can read that on the webpage, and you can check out words like insufficient (not enough), cerebral (of the brain) and storage (where things are stored, or kept.

I’ve discovered while reading about this subject that the key aspect of mnemonics seems to be that you have to push the thing you’re trying to remember deep into your mind, and make links to things you already remember well. The more personal the the connection to that word, the more likely you are to remember it. How do we do it? This means creating an image in your head and making it as vivid and clear as possible, attaching some kind of narrative or story to it or connecting it to an already existing deep memory. I guess this is because in your brain there are electrical pathways – the brain is like an electrical system. Each electrical pathway is a connection to that word. It’s a way for your brain to access that particular bit of information. So, the more electrical pathways, or connections you have to something in your brain, the more likely are to be able to access that thing later, and remember it.

How does this relate to learning English? Let’s see if you this confirms that you are already learning in the right way, or if there are some new approaches that you can pick up.

First, you should really engage with the learning process. Don’t let information just go in one ear and come out the other. It has to go deeply into the brain. So, as a learner, you need to put yourself and your personality right into it, and become an active member of your class (if you’re studying in a class) with a sense of independent responsibility for your own learning. Remember that the stuff you’re studying (like vocab or grammar) is not just abstract information but something that involves you in a very personal and specific way.

So we’re talking about personalising new words. Think of examples or definitions of new vocabulary in a way that is meaningful specifically to you or your life. Put yourself into the examples of vocabulary you use. Imagine that you’re living these words and phrases somehow. Picture yourself acting it out. If I teach you a phrase like “to doze off”, meaning to go to sleep, just imagine a time when you’re really tired and can hardly keep your eyes open, even though you want to stay awake. Then imagine yourself reacting to that by saying “oh god I keep dozing off!”. Imagine people you know in your examples of new grammar or vocabulary. Vividly picture something familiar to you when you’re trying to remember the words. Bring the language to life in your own head. Create stories with the new language. Involve you, your friends or family in those stories, and make them really vivid, colourful and dramatic – like my Pink Gorilla story for example. Make your own pink gorilla story and aim to include lots of new language in it.

When you’re trying to practice using new grammar or vocabulary, don’t just make a random sentence. Make a sentence which you really feel or really mean. Obviously, this is not always possible – for example if you’re doing an exam practice exercise in a book or if you just have to play with the grammatical structure of a phrase quickly – in that case you might have to just dash off a quick sentence with the phrase in it, for structural purposes. But at some point you should aim to use the phrase to express something meaningful and personal to you.

This works for teachers as well. When explaining new words, try to give vivid examples. Bring the expression to life. The more vivid and colourful, the better. If you can, try to attach some personal element to it. Put yourself into the example perhaps. If you need to use the 3rd person, pick a real person, like a famous person or someone in the class, rather than just a name. I know it’s not always possible to think up these vivid examples, or you can’t always share personal details, but just remember – the more lively and vivid the example, the easier it is for the students to internalise. It also might encourage them to personalise the language enthusiastically too, when it’s their turn to use the language.

New words can be quite abstract, so try making them familiar by attaching them to things you already know. For example, maybe the English word looks like a word in your language, or perhaps it reminds you of somebody’s name. You can then associate the English word with that name, and it sticks in your mind more effectively. For example, the Japanese word for apple is ‘ringo’. I always remember this because Ringo is one of the Beatles and the Beatles’ record label is called Apple, so now I think of an apple, and I think of The Beatles, and Ringo. This method is common sense really, but we often just don’t apply these techniques to remembering things as much as we could. Instead we just try to cram information into our head, without doing it in a meaningful way, and as a result we just fail to remember things.

It works with names as well. I have to remember lots of names in my classes. At the moment at university I have over 200 names to remember. Sometimes the only way I can do it is to make an association to something. For example, I had a Saudi student once called Faisa. It can be difficult for me to remember Arabic names, because they’re quite foreign to me. We don’t have many Arabic names in English. So, Faisa was quite a difficult one to remember at first, and it’s important to remember names in class because referring to someone by their name helps get their attention, but it’s also a nice way to establish rapport with that person. So, Faisa – F-A-S-I-A. In English, we have a similar sounding word, which is ‘phaser’, spelled p-h-a-s-e-r. A phaser is a kind of laser-gun, like the guns they have in Star Trek. “Set phasers to stun!” for example. I imagine the old Star Trek TV series, in which they used these laser guns, with cheesy special effects and sounds. In the classic 1960s version of Star Trek which I used to watch on TV during the 80s and 90s there was always a scene in which Spock and James T Kirk went to an alien planet, and they took their phasers with them. So, I just imagined my student Faisa, in Star Trek, beaming down onto an alien planet (England?) with her phaser set to stun. It didn’t take long – just that image of Faisa in Star Trek, with a phaser, maybe shooting an alien. I didn’t tell her this. She had no idea she was in Star Trek, but it helped me to remember her name. This could work for anybody, at a party for example – when you’re introduced to someone, as soon as you get their name, make a point of connecting that name to something you know well. For example, if the person’s name is John – imagine him with John Lennon, or imagine him wearing John Lennon glasses, walking across Abbey Road. JOHN. Perhaps you have another friend called John. Imagine the new John and the other John together, perhaps having a fight – like Street Fighter 2. John vs John. “Round 1 – fight!!! Hello John, hello John! PERFECT… John, wins….” You won’t forget it. Do that with everyone at the party, or everyone at the business conference. You’ll remember their names, and you’ll have fun doing it. Just remember not to tell them. For example, if you get drunk a bit later, don’t go up to John and say “Hey John! How’s John Lennon?? How are all the other Beatles. When’s the new album coming out?? JOHN! I love you John… ” Don’t do that.

Sometimes it works against me though. I have a student called Charles, and to me he looks just like Roger Federer, the tennis player. Sometimes I call him Roger by mistake, and he has no idea why I keep calling him Roger. I haven’t explained that I think he looks like Roger Federer, and that’s because he doesn’t look enough like Federer for everyone else to agree with me. They’d probably just think I was weird, and I’m supposed to be a professor, y’know. Anyway, there’s just something Federer-ish about this student. So, I mistakenly call him Roger sometimes, even though his name is Charles. What I need to do is imagine Federer meeting Prince Charles, and perhaps being knighted by Prince Charles for being such a great tennis player. Roger Federer and Prince Charles. – that should help. You might think that remembering all these connections is more complex than remembering the individual words or names themselves, but it’s not true. We’re just making connections to things that already exist in our heads. The more connections there are, the more likely you are to remember the words. Words that exist with no connections at all, are just lost in space, in your brain. Disconnected and missing. Words like to hang out with other words. They’re all connected in some way. It’s worth remembering that, and people often draw mind-maps to create visual representations of the connections between words. This is a good vocabulary learning strategy.

Also, it can help people to learn new words when they find out the origin of those words. There are lots of TEDed videos which explain the origins of many words. You can find TEDed’s youtube channel online. Again, go to my page and I’ll give you a link. Here is the link to the TEDed YouTube channel: http://ed.ted.com/series/mysteries-of-vernacular

So, in all these mnemonic devices, the words that come up a lot seem to be these ones: vivid, personal, funny and weird. So, when you’re linking a word to an image – make it vivid, personal, funny and weird. That’s how you really lodge the word deep in your brain. You could probably create a mnemonic to remember that! Vivid – meaning bright and clear, personal – meaning related to yourself or something you know personally, funny – just something that makes you laugh, and weird – something bizarre, out of the ordinary and strange. I’m just imagining The Simpsons, like Homer Simpson, just glowing! They’re vivid because they’re bright yellow and have big bulging eyes. They’re funny, obviously. At its best The Simpsons is one of the funniest shows on TV (in English – I’m not convinced it’s as funny in other languages, but in English it is generally hilarious sometimes). They’re personal because it’s about a family, we know them well, we’ve grown up watching them on TV. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. They’re weird – because they’re yellow, that’s strange. They only have 4 fingers, and the sense of humour in the show is pretty bizarre. Also, they’ve been on TV for 20 years and yet they’ve always stayed the same age. Bart has never grown up. That’s pretty weird. So, vivid, funny, personal and weird. Those are the key qualities for mnemonic images.

So, I’ve just given you some quick memory techniques for learning English, as they occurred to me, but let’s have a closer look at some specific tried and tested memory techniques and mnemonic devices.

Some specific memory systems

These might seem like pretty weird techniques, but as I said earlier, if you just listen to this you won’t get the full benefit. You’ll just enjoy listening to it as entertainment. So I invite you to try them for yourself, because only then will you realise just how effective these things are. It can make a huge difference to your life.

Let’s listen to a short presentation from The University of Western Sydney. This video is available on YouTube and also on my website. This video is about 5 minutes long and it clearly explains some mnemonic systems. The guy in the video speaks with an Australian accent. It’s not a strong one, but you might be able to notice the way he says some words, like numbers 1 – 9 for example.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoYOb2sPnqA&w=500&h=281]

So, that’s Acronyms (a word – each letter represents something, eg. ROY GBIV), Acrostics (a sentence in which the first letter of each word spells out the thing you need to remember), The Peg System (words represent numbers, and you can then create an image using those words), Image Mnemonics (I’ve talked about this with the John Lennon example), Chunking – grouping individual bits of info together to make them easier to remember (This helps with vocab because words are often grouped together – so you should not just remember a word, but remember a whole group or chunk of words – for example if that word is followed by a particular preposition or verb form), Mind Maps (we talked about this – but you can make your mind maps as personal as you like – create any kind of connection between words that will help you remember them)

At my university course, I have to remember some details of the assessment procedure. Students often ask me. For some reason, they can’t remember it themselves so they’re always asking me. They should remember, and I definitely have to remember. Basically the grading system was continual assessment which included lots of different criteria, like their development through the course, their English in a presentation, their attendance, absences and the way they took part in class. To be honest, it was hard to remember those 5 items, but I managed to group it together as “the 5 Ps” – progress, presentation, presence, punctuality and participation. Knowing that there were 5 things, and that they all began with a P, allowed me to quickly recall and summarise the assessment type, in the middle of a lesson.

Let’s consider the linking system. This can help you to remember lists of apparently unrelated items. It could be a list of nouns, or it could be a shopping list. I’ve taken this explanation from a book actually. It’s a really great book called “Tricks of the Mind” by Derren Brown, who, in my opinion, is one of the world’s best illusionists, and a bit of an expert into mind control techniques, hypnotism and mentalism. If you’re interested in the subject, I suggest you get a copy of Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown. He deals with the subject in a very common-sense and scientific way, without all the mysticism that often accompanies this subject. So, let’s try an experiment.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZcHoU-QR8&w=500&h=375]

Mind Palace
This is what Sherlock Holmes uses in the TV show. It’s an amazing idea – apparently you can remember massive amounts of information if you create your own memory palace. That’s a massive space, in your own head, where you keep memories. It works by making connections to a place you know really well. It could be your house, for example, or the route you take to work (if you know it well) or a part of a city that you know well, or your school building or something. You imagine you’re walking around this place, and in key spots you plant a vivid image of each thing you’re trying to remember. Then, all you need to do is imagine walking around the place, and you’ll be able to remember everything. Also, when you’re doing it you can say “Hold on, let me go into my mind palace” which sounds pretty cool – especially if you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan.

Let’s hear Derren Brown explaining how he uses his mind palace.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPY3I8yTkY&w=500&h=281]

Spelling Mnemonics
I may have left the best until last here, because now we’re going to look at lots of common mnemonics for learning difficult spelling in English. Don’t forget you can read all this on my website, which is teacherluke.wordpress.com

Let’s get started. I’ve taken this list from Wikipedia, and added some of my own as well.

Characteristic sequence of letters

I always comes before E (but after C, E comes before I)

In most words like friend, field, piece,pierce, mischief, thief, tier, it is “i“ which comes before “e“. But on some words with c just before the pair of e and i, like receive, perceive, “e“ comes before “i“. This can be remembered by the following mnemonic,

I before E, except after C

But this is not always obeyed as in case of weird and weigh,weight,height,neighbor etc. and can be remembered by extending that mnemonic as given below

I before E, except after C

Or when sounded “A” as in neighbor, weigh and weight

Or when sounded like “eye” as in height

And “weird” is just weird

Another variant, which avoids confusion when the two letters represent different sounds instead of a single sound, as in atheist or being, runs

When it says ee

Put i before e

But not after c

Where ever there is a Q there is a U too

Most frequently u follows q. e.g.: Que, queen, question, quack, quark, quartz, quarry, quit, Pique, torque, macaque, exchequer. Hence the mnemonic:

Where ever there is a Q there is a U too (But this is violated by some words; see:List of English words containing Q not followed by U)

When two vowels go walking the first does the talking

For words like “oat” or “eat”, here the second letter a is silent and first letter o and e respectively are pronounced in the examples

Letters of specific syllables in a word

BELIEVE

Do not believe a lie.

SECRETARY

A secretary must keep a secret

PRINCIPAL

The principal is your pal.

TEACHER

There is an ache in every teacher.

MEASUREMENT

Be sure of your measurements before you start work.

FRIEND

A friend is always there when the end comes.

Fri the end of your friend

When Friday ends, you go out with your friends.

SPECIAL

The CIA have special agents

BEAUTIFUL

Big Elephants Are Ugly

SLAUGHTER

Slaughter is laughter with an S at the beginning.

PIECES

Pieces of a pie

ASSUME

When you assume, you make an ass of u and me.

SEPARATE

Always smell a rat when you spell separate

There was a farmer named Sep and one day his wife saw a rat. She yelled, “Sep! A rat – E!!!”

Distinguishing between similar words

Difference between Advice & Advise, Practice & Practise, Licence & License etc.

Advice, Practice, Licence etc. (those with c) are nouns and Advise, Practise, License etc. are verbs.

One way of remembering this is that the word ‘noun’ comes before the word ‘verb’ in the dictionary; likewise ‘c’ comes before ‘s’, so the nouns are ‘practice,licence,advice’ and the verbs are ‘practise,license,advise’.

Here or Hear

We hear with our ear.

Complement and Compliment

complement adds something to make it enough

compliment puts you in the limelight

Principle and Principal

Your principal is your pal

A rule can be called a principle

Sculpture and Sculptor

A sculpture is a kind of picture

Stationary and stationery

Stationery contains er and so does paper; stationary (not moving) contains ar and so does car

A for “at rest”, e for envelope

First letter mnemonics of spelling

DIARRHOEA

Dashing In A Rush, Running Harder Or Else Accident!

Dining In A Rough Restaurant: Hurry, Otherwise Expect Accidents!

Diarrhoea Is A Really Runny Heap Of Endless Amounts

ARITHMETIC

A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream

A Red Indian Thought He Might Eat Tulips In Class

NECESSARY

Not Every Cat Eats Sardines (Some Are Really Yummy)

Never Eat Crisps, Eat Salad Sandwiches, And Remain Young!

BECAUSE

Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants

Big Elephants Cause Accidents Under Small Elephants

Big Elephants Can’t Always Use Small Exits

Big Elephants Can’t Always Use Small Entrances

MNEMONICS

Mnemonics Now Erase Man’s Oldest Nemesis, Insufficient Cerebral Storage

GEOGRAPHY

George’s Elderly Old Grandfather Rode A Pig Home Yesterday.

TOMORROW

Trails Of My Old Red Rose Over Window

RHYTHM

Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move

So, there we are. The transcript ends here!
OH BY THE WAY – CAN YOU REMEMBER THE LIST OF WORDS IN THE MEMORY TEST? I BET YOU CAN!

Do you love this subject, and want more? Here’s a fascinating TED Talk about amazing feats of memory that anyone can do:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6PoUg7jXsA&w=500&h=281]
Oh, and here’s another one! This one is about mind mapping, which is particularly important in recording new vocabulary.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMZCghZ1hB4&w=500&h=281]

164. Transcript Collaboration

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Information about a transcript writing project which I’ve set up using Google docs. Transcript available below.

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Please take part in the LEP Transcript-writing collaboration!
Click here to see the list of google documents for the transcript collaboration.
Click here to see a list of episodes which already have complete transcripts.
If you like ukulele music, listen to the end of this episode!

Transcript for this episode

Hello, I’d like to tell you about transcripts, and to invite you to take part in a transcript writing collaboration which I have set up using Google documents.

I have many different types of listeners to the podcast, with different levels of English. Some like to just listen and pick up language that way. Others like to be able to read what I’m saying too. For them, being able to read a transcript is really useful. I know how important it is. You can read new words that you don’t understand. It helps to bridge the gap between spelling and pronunciation and so on.

The problem is, I don’t usually transcribe my episodes before I record them. This is because I prefer to keep my speaking natural and authentic. I’m trying to train your ear to hear real English as it is spoken. If I’m reading from a script (like now in fact), it’s not quite the same kind of English. It’s not as natural.

In some of my episodes I do write a script first, but that’s just because for those particular episodes I need to do more careful research, or I want to plan my words carefully. So, how can I get transcripts for my listeners?

Sometimes I write them myself. I sit there at the computer with headphones on and transcribe. But, it takes ages! Frankly I need that time for other things, like producing episodes of the podcast, and ultimately I truly believe it is a much more rewarding task for you, my listeners. It would be good for your English.

So, I invite you to get involved in a transcript writing collaboration in which you transcribe a few minutes of a podcast and help to build a set of fully transcribed episodes. It’s already happening in fact. Right now, listeners are working on transcripts on google documents. I can see the words being added, live, on the screen in front of me.

So, how does it work?
I’ve put google documents of episodes online. The documents are open. Anyone with the link can open them and write text there. It’s like an online shared document that we can all edit. You just need a gmail account to read/edit them. You can find the google doc links on my website. Go to the Transcripts Collaboration button in the transcripts menu. Mouse over the word TRANSCRIPTS and then Transcripts Collaboration (click here). You can’t miss it. You’ll find all the links to transcripts there. So far, 3 episodes have been done and 9 episodes are being done. If you want me to open a particular episode just let me know and I’ll do it.

So, click a google doc and you’ll see a message from me and the rules for the collaboration. It’s really simple. Here are the rules:

Don’t edit other people’s writing without permission.
When you start typing an extract, write the time-code for your extract (e.g. 2:14 – 6:20) – this will prevent people writing the same section.
When you choose an extract to transcribe, check that other people haven’t transcribed that extract already.
Let’s use Arial size 11, not bold.
I suggest that you download the episode you are working on. This makes it easier to control the audio, and the time codes will be more accurate.

I will make text green after I have checked and corrected it So any green text has been given the Luke Thompson seal of approval.

You don’t have to transcribe a whole episode – it takes ages. You can just do a few minutes. Check where the episode ends and just add 5 minutes.

Some episodes already have a full, unedited script that was generated by voice-to-text software. You can use that as a starting point. Just edit it. Some of that computer generated text is hilarious. Computers are not very good at listening. For example, it hears: “Thanks very much for listening to Luke’s English Podcast. Don’t forget you can visit teacherluke.podomatic.com for more information” (of course it’s not podomatic any more, it’s wordpress), and the software writes: “Thanks very much for listening to music which bodes. Don’t forget you can visit each loop dogmatic dot com for more information.” which is just total nonsense.

When you’ve finished transcribing, just exit the document. Don’t forget to add time codes. It saves automatically.

I suggest you download an episode and use Windows Media Player or Quicktime. It’s easier and time codes are more accurate. I’ll eventually correct and publish transcripts.

You might be thinking, “why?”
It’s very good for your English – it’s very intensive practice:

It forces you to focus on every single word.
You’ll be more aware of connected speech.
You’ll pick up new words you didn’t realise you were missing
You’ll improve your spelling.
When I’ve corrected your work you’ll see what you missed and then close gaps in your knowledge.
You’ll benefit from intensive practice.
Other listeners will benefit a lot from the transcripts, so you’ll be helping lots of people and saving the world ;)
It’ll help me because I’ll be able to improve my service, so it’ll be like a way of paying me back for hard work I’ve been doing for free.

Don’t feel obliged to do it. No pressure. You can just listen if that’s what you like. But if you’ve got a little bit of time and you’re up for getting involved, go to the website and contribute 5, 10, 15 minutes of transcription. It’ll be very very very very much appreciated!

Some episodes are already fully transcribed. See the list here.

Phrasal Verbs
Also, I’ve been doing a phrasal verb a day and adding them to my website, with transcripts. Go to the phrasal verb menu and you’ll find them all. There’s an RSS feed for them, so you can subscribe. There are 20 episodes already.

That’s it!

To play this episode out, I’m going to play you a tune on the ukulele that I got for my birthday last year. I hope you like it. Here’s a video of my playing it. Thanks for listening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGfTw3Z81xE

153. The Talking Dog Story

3 Replies

Another funny improvised story to entertain you while you do more English listening practice.

Right-click here to download this episode.

In this episode I decided to improvise another story for you. A lot of listeners really liked episode 125. The Pink Gorilla Story (full transcript available), which I improvised into a microphone earlier this year. I received some very nicely written messages from people saying they’d like more of that kind of story on Luke’s English Podcast, so here is another one in a similar style. You’re a fan of Lukes English Podcast which means you must be a bright minded person, so I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of The Talking Dog Story!

The story is based on an old joke about a talking dog. The joke is usually just a minute long, but I decided to extend the joke into a longer story. Most of the details in this episode are just improvised while I talk. I’m just making it up off the top of my head. As a learner of English, your challenge is to keep up with me. Can you follow what is going on? Do you get the self-referential elements and the surreal or ironic humour? Can you identify the punch-line to the joke? I’m sure you can if you listen! As you are a fan of Luke’s English Podcast you are probably the kind of person who understands and appreciates this kind of humourous story telling. So, get stuck in!

Keep listening to the end, because you’ll hear the short version of the story told by someone else. If you fancy it, why not have a go at transcribing some of this. It’s a really good way to develop your English in an intensive way.

Enjoy the story. You can listen to it by clicking “play” on the embedded player at the top of this page. You can download it by right clicking on the ‘download’ text, also at the top of this page.

All the best, and have a great day.

Luke

London Olympics 2012

6 Replies

More interviews with speakers of English. This time I went to the Olympic Park in East London and spoke to some people about the Olympic Games.

TRANSCRIPT:

London Olympics 2012

What do you think?

Girl 1: Hello

Girl 2: Hello

Luke: Hello, where are you from?

Girl 1: Australia

Luke: Really?

Girl 2: And the UK

Luke: Right, okay, fantastic. So, you are living in England are you?

Girl 1: I am living in England, at the moment yeah.

Luke: Okay, so which event are you going to see today?

Girl 1: Women’s basketball

Luke: Okay right, I see. So how was the Olympic ceremony in your opinion?

Girl 2: It was pretty amazing, yeah it was really good.

Luke: Okay, what do you think of the orbit over there?

Girl 1: I want to go up there

Luke: Yeah?

Girl 1: Can you go up there?

Luke: I don’t know actually

Girl 1: I think you can and I want to go up there, it looks cool

Luke: What do you think about the way it looks?

Girl 2: Yeah it looks really good everything’s done really nice and it’s, yeah really well done.

Luke: Okay, cool and so in general is the Olympics good for London or bad for London?

Girl 1: Good I think

Luke: Why’s that?

Girl 1: I don’t know, it brings more people here. I don’t know! I’m not even from London! To her…

Luke: What do you think? Do you think it’s improving London or is it just annoying or…?

Girl 2: A little bit annoying, but

Luke: How is it annoying a little bit?

Girl 2: It’s just I guess costs quite a lot and the traffic and everything’s quite a hassle but generally I think it’s pretty good event for us to have

Girl 1: The spirit!

Girl 2: Yeah, it brings everyone together. But it’s annoying when you have to try and get to work

Luke: Yeah the traffic is a bit of a problem

Girl 2: Yeah the traffic but no it’s good it’s good for us to have .

Luke: Well have a great time

Girl 1: Thank you

Girl 2: Thank you cheers bye!

Luke: Thank you, bye

Luke: Hi, how are you doing?

Man: Very well thank you

Luke: Where are you from?

Man: We’re from Devon

Luke: Devon, okay. So, hello

Daughter: Hello

Luke: Hi, what’s your name?

Daughter: Ellie

Luke: How’s the Olympics for you so far?

Daughter: It’s cool

Luke: Yeah, what do you like about it the best?

Daughter: I’m not really sure

Luke: You’re not really sure?

Daughter: No, it’s all good

Luke: Which event are you going to see?

Daughter: Erm, the swimming.

Luke: Swimming, okay, alright brilliant. So what did you think of the opening ceremony?

Man: I thought it was pretty awesome actually, I thought it was a good err, it was good for Britain, showed off Britain, a bit quirky, a bit funny, errrm, yeah not trying to be anything that we’re not.

Luke: Okay. And erm what do you think of the Orbit over there?

Daughter: I think it’s really cool.

Luke: You like it?

Daughter: Unusual yeah

Luke: Unusual you think yeah? And what do you think about that?

Man: I haven’t really thought about it to be honest but it’s an interesting structure

Luke:T is isn’t it yeah. Do you think that the Olympics is good for London or bad for London in general?

Man: Brilliant, absolutely amazing

Luke: Why?

Man: Err, it just puts Britain on the map, puts London right in the centre where it should be. I think it’s great for Britain.

Luke: So who are you going to cheer for today?

Daughter: Erm…

Luke: Britain I would say. Team GB right? Okay right well have a fantastic day

Man: Thank you very much

Luke: and err, bye

Man & Daughter: Bye!

Luke: Hi mate

American: How’s it going?

Luke: Fine thanks. So where are you from?

American: I’m from America

Luke: What a surprise! And which event are you going to see today?

American: We’re actually going to watch Phelps swim. We’re going to support him.

Luke: You’re going to see what?

American: Phelps, Michael Phelps

Luke: Oh yes

American: in the 400 IM

Luke: Okay brilliant. And so how’s the Olympics for you so far?

American: Oh well it’s our first day here so we’re excited about it. Hopefully we can get back out here and see some more events.

Luke: Have you been in London long now?

American: I’ve been in London for two weeks actually. Doing summer school here.

Luke: What do you think of the place?

American: I love it. It’s a lot of fun.

Luke: What exactly about it do you like?

American: What do I… pardon me?

Luke: What is it exactly that you like about London?

American: Oh it’s, I don’t know it’s different from everywhere else, you can’t, like, can’t find most things you find all in one place like you can in London.

Luke: How is it different to the States?

American: There’s a lot of different things. The culture, the language are slightly different. It just, I don’t know it’s the European melting pot I guess, from over here.

Luke: What do you think of The Orbit?

American: Erm, I don’t know. I guess it’s err, London’s attempt at the Eiffel Tower.

Luke: You think so?

American: I guess

Luke: What is it?

American: Err, it’s an observatory tower I believe. Maybe I’ll make my way up there.

Luke: Yeah, okay well have a fantastic evening

American: Thank you nice to meet you

Luke: And a great time in London

American: Bye

Luke: Bye

75. Not a Distraction!

3 Replies

Unlike many things on the internet, Luke’s English Podcast is not a distraction! In this episode I tell you some news, share some comments from listeners, share an amusing audio clip about a driving instructor and eat some chocolate!

Right-click here to download this episode.
Tapescripts available below
Here’s the email from Bettina:

Hello Luke,

Actually I realize every single day that I’m living a veritable dream
thanks to your podcast. Poor me, it took me finally more than two
years to wake up !

As you might know I’ve always listened to each of your shows several
times but, and that makes the difference, I rarely got back to listen
to them again. It’s incredible how much I forgot about the precious

advice of each episode.

I even completely forgot most of it. Yah, I’ve to re-listen
intensively to the previous shows as well.

You’re motivating and such a brilliant English teacher and trust me I
don’t say that to flatter you !

Thanks to the Internet I can download your podcast. But
not only that, I can listen to it all the time contrary to your
students who can listen to each of your course only once.

Since I’m writing some transcripts I remember much better vocabulary,
expressions and so much more. I’m overjoyed and maybe you’ll laugh
but I’m not ashamed. Aren’t we so much used to use the

Internet that we forget how amazing it is to have this opportunity?

Well, I think that you’re right, the most important is, to use what
we’ve learnt but we aren’t English native speakers, right? We have to
revise all of the stuff we’ve learnt frequently and that’s the reason
why

from now on, I’ll listen to each episode again and again instead of
only focusing on the new one. It’s great time to revise the whole
interesting stuff. It’s up to us to make the best of it. Yah, it’s all
in

our hands ! Plus, that will not be boring because each of your shows
is different and quite funny. Learning English with fun is the most
important thing.

I could never make the effort to pay for a private English teacher who
helps me to improve but I found you, the best, the most terrific
English teacher who teaches the language. You even proofread my

transcripts and hold on a minute, it’s all for free ! ! ! Can you
believe that? I’m on cloud nine.

English has become my great passion. I’m in my ‘fake’
English world every day. No, I haven’t a great level yet, but is it
really that important? Hmm, I’m not sure! I’m guess my English will

progress, now I finally understand how to learn more efficiently . So,
it’s time to practice the rich material of your podcasts ! I’ve still
so much to learn and I would definitively reach my goal!

Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart.

Bettina

Here’s the Script for the Driving Instructor by Bob Newhart
As I said, there was a thing in the paper tonight about documentaries and I have had an idea for a long time for what I think is a wonderful documentary, which has everything. For instance, you go to work, you come home at night and you never really think about it. It’s mechanical, it’s routine. But there are a group of men who every day when they go to work never know if that night they will return, because they face death in one hundred different ways. And I am talking about America’s driving instructors. I would like to present the first episode in the new tv series called, “The Driving Instructor”. Now I would like to have you picture if you would, I’m the driving instructor and seated next to me is a woman driver.

How do you do?…
Erm, you’re Mrs. Webb, is that right?…
Oh, I see you’ve had one lesson already, who was the instructor on that Mrs. Webb?…
Mr. Adams…
I’m sorry, here it is. Mr. Adams. Just let me read ahead and kind of familiarize myself with the case…
Erm, how fast were you going when Mr. Adams jumped from the car?…
Sev…, Seventy-five. And, and where was that?…
In your driveway…
How far had Mr. Adams gotten in the lesson?…
Backing out…
I see, you were backing out at seventy-five and that’s, that’s when he jumped….
Did he cover starting the car?…
And the other way of stopping?…
What’s the other way of stopping?…
Throwing it in reverse…
that’s, that would do it, you’re right, that would do it…
Erm, alright you want to start the car?…
Uh, Mrs. Webb you just turned on the lights, you want to start the car…
They all look alike, don’t they?…
No, I don’t know why they design them that way…
Erm, alright let’s pull out into traffic…
Now, what’s the first thing we’re going to do before we pull out into traffic?…
What did Mr. Adams do before he let you pull out into traffic?…
Well, I mean besides praying…
No, what I had in mind was checking the rear view mirror…
You see we always want to check the rear…
DON’T PULL OUT !!!…
Erm, please don’t cry…
I’m sorry… but there was this bus, Mrs. Webb…
Oh, alright, the lane is clear is now, you want to pull out?…
Oh, now that wasn’t bad at all, you might try it a little slower next time….
Alright, let’s get up a bit more speed and gradually ease it into second…
Well, I didn’t want to cover reverse this early but as long as you have shifted into it…
Of course you’re nervous…
I’m nervous!…
I’m not just saying that, I’m really, I’m really very nervous…
Well, just don’t pay any attention to their honking….
You’re doing fine…
You’re not blocking anyone’s lane…
No, as long as you are here on the safety island, you are not blocking anyone’s lane…
Oh, alright you want to start the car?…
Oh, while you are turning the lights off, why don’t you turn off the heater?…
Alright, there we are, let’s get up a bit of speed…
That’s the way…
Now let’s practice some turns. Um, the important thing on turns is not to make them too sharp, just kind of make a gradual…
Now that was fine…
That was a wonderful turn…
It’s hard for me to believe you only had two lessons after you make a turn like…
Are you sure you haven’t had more now?…
I find that very difficult to believe…
One little thing…
This is a one way street…
Well, no, no, actually it was partially my fault, you see, but, uh, you were in the left hand lane and you were signaling left, and I just more or less assumed you were going to turn left.
SAME TO YOU, FELLA!!!…
No, no, I don’t know what he said Mrs. Webb…
Um, alright let’s pull into the alley up there, uh, and practice a little alley driving…
This is uh, this is something a lot of the schools leave out and we think it is pretty…
YOU’RE GOING TOO FAST MRS. WEBB!!!…
You were up around sixty and that’s kind of a sharp turn there…
Alright, just drive down the alley, that’s the way…
Oh, Mrs. Webb, maybe we better stop here…
Well, I don’t think you are going to make it between the truck and the building…
Mrs. Webb?…
Mrs. Webb…
I…
Mrs. Webb, I, I …
I don’t think you are going…
MRS. WEBB?…..
I real…
I…
I really didn’t think you were going to MAKE IT….
That just shows we can be wrong too…
No, no, I’ll get out on your side, that’s alright.
Oh, Mrs. Webb, uh, maybe it might be a good idea if we went over to the driving area. They have a student driver area over a few blocks away and maybe traffic throws you, maybe that’s the problem…
Well, turn here on the street…
Right…
And it’s only about a block up…
Alright, turn right here…
Well, now that was my fault again…
You see, I meant the next street. Not this man’s lawn…
Oh, sir, sir… sir, would you mind turning off the sprinkler?…
For just a…
Newly seeded?…
Is that right?…
That’s always the way, isn’t it? Ha! ha!…
I don’t suppose it is so funny!…
Oh, alright Mrs. Webb, you want to back out and get off the man’s…
Creeping bent, is that right…
Yea, just back out, Mrs. Webb…
Thank you very much, sir for…
Oh, now we’ve hit someone Mrs. Webb…
Oh, remember you’re going to watch the rear view mirror, remember we covered that…
The red light blinded you?…
The flashing red light blinded you?…
The flashing red light on the car you hit blinded you?…
Yes, officer, she was just telling me about it…
Um, alright…
Alright, erm, Mrs. Webb…
I am going to have to go with the officer to the police station…
Erm, they don’t believe it and they’d like, they’d like me to describe it…
And now the other officer is going to get into the car and he is going to drive you back to the driving school and then you are to meet us at the police station.
Erm, my name is Frank Dexter, Mrs Webb…
Why do you ask?…
You want to be sure and get me next time???

Buy Bob Newhart’s CD on Amazon.co.uk

Stay tuned for more useful and entertaining episodes soon ;)

71. The Ice Cream Episode

11 Replies

Why is this one called The Ice Cream Episode? You’ll have to listen to the whole thing to find out.

Right-click here to download this episode.
FULL TRANSCRIPT NOW AVAILABLE BELOW!

Introduction
In this episode I decided I’d give myself a challenge: could I just talk non-stop for 45 minutes without planning anything in advance, and keep it interesting? You can decide for yourself if I was successful or not.

I don’t actually teach you anything in this episode, but if you’re a good learner of English you’ll just use this as a chance to listen to 45 minutes of natural authentic English from a native speaker. You might be able to just pick up some expressions, notice features of pronunciation or just enjoy listening to me ramble on about things like Blackberrys Vs iPhones or the way robots always turn evil in movies. I hope it’s useful and/or interesting for you!

Good learners of English try to notice blocks of language. These blocks of language can be certain grammatical structures, phrases, vocabulary or just sentences which contain new words or complex structures. When you notice these bits of language, you can analyse them yourself. What kind of grammar is being used? What does this tell you about your own understanding of how the language works? What exactly do the expressions mean? How can you use them yourself? How would you use the language to talk about your own life or experience?

Here’s a challenge: In this podcast I want you to try to notice some ‘blocks of language’. When you find one you like, just write it as a comment on the bottom of the episode. If lots of people write a block of language from the podcast as a comment it will help other people to pick up vocabulary and expressions. I’ve given you some from the first 10 minutes or so already. You can read them below. Please add some more by writing comments with the language blocks you have heard.

Also, you’ll have to listen to the whole thing to find out why it is called The Ice Cream Episode.

Cheers!

Luke

P.S. A VERY HELPFUL LISTENER HAS WRITTEN A FULL TRANSCRIPT FOR THIS EPISODE. IT MUST HAVE TAKEN A LONG TIME TO WRITE IT. NOW YOU CAN READ IT HERE:

THE ICE CREAM EPISODE – FULL TRANSCRIPT

You’re listening to Luke’s English Podcast. For more information visit teacherluke .podomatic.com

Hello, you’re listening to Luke’s English podcast. This is a podcast and it’s made by someone called Luke.
That’s me and you’re listening to it and it’s about English. So, that’s why I said that you’re listening to Luke’s English podcast. I expect you’re listening to it. That’s normally what you do with a podcast. You kind of listen to it, you maybe… you would download it as well, you might have uploaded it onto your iPhone or iPad or other mp3 device. There are plenty of other mp3 devices out there. It’s not just Apple products despite what you might have
led…been led to believe. There’s lots of them, you’ve got like ones made by Sony and Panasonic and other Japanese companies. Not to mention all of the other companies from different places on the world. Right now in this episode I’ve kind of set myself a stupid random challenge and that is, I’m going to see if I can just keep talking for about forty five minutes. I haven’t planned anything. I haven’t written anything down. I’ve got no preparation at all. I’m just going to see if I can just ramble on about not very much for at least forty five minutes. Now, if you are a regular listener of this podcast you’ll know that at the beginning of each episode there’s often about ten minutes of me just sort of talking and in a slightly self indulgent way, just talking about stuff for about ten minutes before you actually get to the real content. Now, if you don’t like that part of the podcast, if you think that’s boring and you kind of skip through it then you’re probably not going to enjoy this one because I haven’t written any vocabulary notes. I’ve got no phrasal verbs, I’ve got no idioms or anything. I’ve got no useful expressions written down which I’m going to teach you. I’m just going to keep talking. Why am I doing this? I don’t know, I’ve just actually just decided to do it this evening and maybe it’s because I just like the sound of my voice. That could be it. You know, yeah maybe that’s it! Because it would be sad if that’s the only reason I’m doing it because if I like, if I just like the sound of my own voice that means I’m a bit egotistical, but maybe that’s the reason. I don’t know.
Another reason is that I want to do a podcast tonight but I just can’t really be bothered to prepare something because when I do one of these usually, I kind of sit down. I have to think of lots of ideas and I choose a topic or choose an idea and I think, right, I wanna do a podcast about that. And then I have to plan it and prepare it. So, if I have chosen that subject let’s say for example ‘The human body’ right? The human body, that’s actually an idea I had on the bus today. So, I… the human body, that would be an interesting idea for an episode. So what I would then do is think… okay, the human body is the subject, so what am I going to do? Body parts? Parts of the body? I could do that. I could teach you all of the different body parts but actually that’s not really
very useful, not very easy when it’s just audio because really the best way of teaching you different parts of the body would be to kind of show you the different parts of the body on a picture or something like that. I can’t really do that with an audio podcast like this. So I thought, hey, I know, I could do a sort of maybe the verbs, different verbs that you use when describing what different parts of your body do. You know? That would be brilliant wouldn’t it? That would be a really good, really useful podcast.
Well sorry, no, that’s not what you’re going to get with this one. You just going to get lots of random nonsense that’s err, probably doesn’t really help you. Unless of course you think ‘Well just listening to someone who’s just talking constantly like this without really planning anything. Just really naturally, sort of, speaking.’ I don’t know, maybe that isn’t really natural when you have to just talk for forty five minutes. Not very often. But anyway, maybe just listening to someone, just trying to create some continuous, like, discourse, you know just producing a continuous flow of spoken discourse. That might be for some, somehow useful. Maybe if you’re one of those clever
learners of English, you will be able to just sort of pick up bits of vocabulary or pick up expressions that I use to kind of construct this continuous flow of speech and you know if you’re clever as a learner of English you’ll be able to notice little bits of language that I’m using to give structure to what I’m saying to link things and so on. That’s what good learners of English do, right? You kind of notice bits of language and pick them up and start using them yourselves. So really, I suppose in this episode I’m leaving it up to you. It’s up to you to do the kind of language work. I’m just presenting you with forty five minutes of kind of natural British English and it’s up to you to start noticing structures, noticing bits of language and picking them up, right?
So consider this to be a sample of forty five minutes sample of unbroken spoken English, which you can just analyze as much as you like. I’m not going to do any of that, analysis work tonight, just because you know, I don’t wanna sit there for two or three hours this evening, writing down expressions and writing down examples and definitions and then recording it and then uploading it. It could take me kind of four hours or something, to do it. You know, I’ve got stuff to do this evening you know. I’ve got to do my laundry, I’ve got to do. I’ve go to cook for myself and eat, you know. I have to eat, you know, like at least three times a day and I need to drink water, You know.
Those are basic things that I have to do just to survive. I don’t necessarily have lots of time to sit down and prepare and record a podcast. I imagine… I expect that some people who are listening to this will going to be really bored and frustrated with this podcast. Just because there is no real content. It’s just me talking in a very self indulgent way but who cares? Right?
If you’re that kind of person, just, you know stop listening really. But if on the other hand you’re one of these fabulous learners of English who’s able to just tune in mentally to some, you know spoken English you might be able to pick up some really useful things and just generally practice your listening. I mean, it’s probably… it could be a good idea.
Okay, right. So, what might I talk about?
Well, You know I’m just going to basically ramble stupid stuff, you know for forty five minutes like I’ve said just to see if I can do it. It’s just a challenge really. It’s just a personal challenge. Can I just keep talking without stopping for forty five minutes? And hopefully keep it interesting. It could be difficult, particularly the kind of ‘keeping it in interesting’ bit. I think that might be a bit of a challenge.
I think I could probably keep talking for ages but whether or not it would be interesting, that’s another question.
We will see. We will see at the end. You can decide whether it was interesting or not. I imagine, if you just decide to stop listening you’ll think: Oh no, that wasn’t interesting. That was just stupid and you know a waste of time, waste of effort but you know, maybe not.
I kind of… I’m kind of repeating myself here. I expect that would be a general theme of this episode. Me, just making the same points over and over and over again.
So yeah, I think that in almost every episode of Luke’s English podcast, almost every episode, I teach you something. There’s usually some vocabulary or something like that. So you know, you can just go back over those old ones. And there’s loads and loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of language you can get from that.
This one is not one of those episodes. It’s just a kind of rambling stream of consciousness let’s say. No preparation at all. So it’s just, you know, it’s just as it’s occurs to me, as it were.
Now what I might do is when I’ve finished doing all this talking, I might listen back to it again and just write down some expressions that I’ve used and then just put them on the podcast. And that way you can kind of read the expressions, look at them, think about how they’re used, listen to me using them and that will help you to kind of pick them up and so on.
Yeah, so let’s see. Sitting here on my desk, I recently bought a desk for my living room and it’s revolutionized this room because now finally I actually have a place where I can sit like a civilized person. I’m not just sitting on the sofa like some kind of coach potato. I’ve actually got a desk where I can sit up right and it’s good for my back you know, because sitting on a sofa recording a podcast or sitting on the sofa whenever I use the computer, I’m always like hunched over you know with my back bent, It’s like a very uncomfortable position and I get pains in my neck, you know I get like aches and pains in my spine from sitting in uncomfortable positions using the computer. So finally I thought, right, that’s enough! I’ve had enough of all this leaning over.
I’m going to get a desk. So I bought a tiny little desk from Argos.
Now Argos is one of those shops like a high street shop but it’s very clever really, Argos, because you go in there and instead of seeing all the stuff on the selves and having to walk around the shop.
Instead they’ve just got a massive catalog. Yeah right and it’s like the bible, really! I mean, if you’re in to shopping, then the Argos catalog is basically the bible for some, for a materialistic person and you can just flick through the bible and they’ve got everything in this catalogue. Just everything!
Well, you know within reason, not absolutely everything and I mean they haven’t got for example an eight legged pink flying elephant. You know I don’t think so.
I mean, I haven’t checked the index for an eight legged pink flying elephant recently. They might have started doing that. I don’t know. But they don’t have absolutely everything. They’ve just got pretty much everything you need for your life. So if you’re going to go camping, you’re going to get all your camping equipment, if you’re going to go to University, you can get all your dictionaries and your pens and paper and stuff like that. If you play computer games you can get PlayStation 3 and all the latest games and controllers and stuff. You get the idea, don’t you? I think you can get pretty much everything there including furniture. So I thought, right. I’ll just go to Argos. Let’s keep it simple. I don’t want some complicated drawn out shopping experience where I have to walk
around the, you know lots of floors on the department store somewhere trying to find the perfect desk. I don’t have time. I can’t be bothered to do that. So instead I have just realized actually that, when I’m recording this, there might be people outside because I live in a block of flats there might be people outside waiting for the lift who can hear me speaking because I do speak quite loud when I’m recording this. And they are probably listening to me thinking: ‘God, the guy who lives in this flat is a real weirdo, just talking to himself.
Maybe this is very strange behavior, I don’t know. Maybe this means I’m a bit crazy. Who cares? I don’t really care what other people think that much, to be honest. So screw them. I don’t care about them. Anyway ,where was I? I was talking about the Argos experience. So I thought , keep it simple. I’m just going to go to Argos and get like a really cheap desk. This desk here it cost me about thirty pounds. Thirty pounds is cheap. So I had to build it myself. You know, you have… Again one of the clever things about Argos is they’ve just kind of give you the furniture but it’s in a pack and you have to take it home and build it yourself. I guess that’s one of the reasons why it’s cheaper. If it was already made then it would be more expensive, right?
So you go in, you choose the thing you want from the catalog, you mark it down on a piece of paper, you take that to the cash register, and there is usually a person, you know there is a person on the cash register . Usually some sort of miserable person like sales assistant who all day, they just stand there at this counter, just taking money from people. And it must be so boring. I mean, I did work in a shop actually for a year doing just that, just after University. I didn’t know what to do. So I just worked in a shop for a year. I mean I just stood there and I became like a robot. It’s like ‘Hello, next customer please, hello Sir, did you find anything you’re looking for? Thank you, that’s £9.99, please. Thank you. Would you like the receipt in the bag? Thanks very much. Next customer please!’
You know this kind of thing just THAT for nine hours a day, everyday for a year starts to root your brain.
So, understandably that people who serve you… Oops, I just pulled the headphones out. Oh dear, it’s all going wrong. I have some technical difficulties. Okay dear okay, I’m be back in business.
So the people who work in these places they are not exactly the most sort of motivated, enthusiastic people in the world. So they take your money, they give you a piece of paper and they say something like, “please go to collection point 3B, it should be ready in about fifteen minutes! Thank you. Next costumer please.” And so you go to collection point 3B and it’s all a bit mysterious, like a bit of a mysterious process that you have to go through.. You kind of stand there with a code number and you go up to the counter and you say:’ “I’m 3B’ This is connection point 3B. I’m costumer 3N709. I think you have a package for me”. And hopefully then they will find the package in the store room and bring it out for you. There actually is a so strange pleasure, a strange joy in being given your purchase in a box over a counter. It feels
like a sort of secret transaction. Like you’re some kind of a secret agent. You kind of give them a code number and they give you a kind of brown box and you don’t even need to say anything to each other. You just take the box and disappear. I mean, it’s pretty cool, pretty fun. You know in its own unique way and that’s it.
So I got this desk, and that’s cool isn’t it? Yeah, that is brilliant, really.
On my desk here, I’ve got my phone. It’s a Blackberry. Now, recently I got this Blackberry. I used to be an iPhone user. Now, we all know how brilliant the iPhone is. It’s amazing. Oh God, have you checked my new iPhone ? Oh, it’s so good. I didn’t realize how great it was. You know, it’s absolutely fantastic ! That’s what people say. It’s like the iPhone conversation, which everyone has to have at some point. You’ve probably had the iPhone conversation yourself. That’s the one where you kind of see a friend of yours who has recently got an iPhone and they say: ‘Oh, it’s brilliant, oh, I absolutely love it, you know, it’s just intuitive. It really is, the design of it, it’s so intuitive!’
It IS brilliant and very intuitive and user friendly. It also happens to be extremely expensive, the iPhone. I mean, God, they… Apple are clever. They make brilliant technology and then they charge you an absolute fortune for the privilege to use it. So I thought: ‘Right, I’ve had enough of this!’ I can’t effort to use the iPhone anymore. I’m going to downgrade and I’m going to go for a Blackberry. So I got this Blackberry bold and it’s you know what? It’s absolutely fine. When I first started using it, to be honest, I was a bit shocked. I thought, hold on a minute. What are these buttons? These are actual, physical buttons that I have to press on the front of the phone. What’s that??? And you know, that was like going back, sort of, of five or six years. Actually having to press down buttons with my finger. That’s like wasting energy. Pressing buttons. I don’t wanna press buttons. I
wanna touch smooth glass and have it respond. I wanna feel like I’m living in the future when I’m using a telephone but then I thought, actually no, despite having to physically press down buttons, this Blackberry thing is not that bad? It’s alright. It does basically what an iPhone will do. And it’s fine. And I love it now. I’m… as much as you could love a phone. I mean it’s a pretty weird relationship that we have with our mobile phone. Isn’t it? I mean, say twenty years ago, fifteen years ago no one had mobile phones and now… nowadays there’s like these essential things that we have to have in our lives you know, and if you lose it, it’s like game over. Isn’t it?
It’s a total disaster, if you lose your mobile. Actually when I stopped using my iPhone, when I moved to the Blackberry, it took me about a week to get used to using the Blackberry. Right? And in that week like particularly the first day when I realized that the Blackberry wasn’t quite as perfect as the iPhone, then I kind of thought… you know, I was actually emotionally upset. You know losing the iPhone was a bit like you know losing a pet. You know like if you have a dog that you love and the dog dies. You actually feel upset, you feel like crying, you know because you have lost this thing that you loved so much. That’s a bit how I felt when I stopped using the iPhone. I felt like I had lost something important, deeply important to my soul. And I felt like
crying you know. I was upset, I was depressed, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was unhappy as a result of losing this iPhone which is crazy you know. It’s totally mad, it’s just a piece of technology that we… that provides just the basic function which is the ability to basically just message you friends. You can do it on any old phone. It doesn’t have to be an iPhone. I think it’s… I think we’re really kind of… we have really been really suckered by technology. Particularly the high end technology like the iPad. I mean the iPad is fantastic but it is a luxury. It really is. It is an absolute luxury. No one really needs an iPad. That’s just a luxury and the same goes for the Amazon Kindle which is that thing, that looks a bit like an iPad but it just lets you read books and you can store like a hundred books on it. The Kindle… now, no one really needs that do they? I
mean I’m not fair enough like, oh yeah, you can store hundred books in it but who ever needs to carry around a hundred books? Maybe if you’re a student and you need like to carry books around , so that you can study from those books but I don’t reckon any students who have got Amazon Kindles have got all of these study materials on my Kindle. No, of course they haven’t. What most Kindle users do, they fill the Kindle up with a bunch of books that they feel like they should read and probably loads of books they have already read. I bet half of people who have got Kindles, they get the Kindle and they think:’ Right, I would better put some books on it and then they just fill it up with books that they have already read. What’s the point of that? It’s stupid! You only need one book at a time and anyway, if;ve you got a Kindle, if you’ve got a book that you’re reading you can kind of do anything with it.
One of the fun things about having a book is that you can kind of bend it in your hands. I quite like it when I finish a book, the book is like really sort of soiled. It’s almost like it’s been… it’s go on… like an adventure with me, that book and it doesn’t look the same as when it was new. I mean, it’s an absolute pleasure getting a new book. It’s like perfect, it’s been untouched by human hand almost. It’s clean, it smells beautiful, there’s nothing like the smell of a new book. It’s just, it’s fantastic. Maybe I’m kind… maybe I’ve got like a wired fetish about the way new books smell but I know, I’m not the only one. I’m sure that there are hundreds of you out there who love that smell of a new book. You know, you open the book. Hm, the smell of the clean pages, the fresh print on those pages is a fantastic thing. Then you start reading it and you’re reading it in lots of different positions, on the bus, on the train. You kind of carry it. It maybe gets a bit wet in the rain or you might spill coffee on it. I’ve actually killed insects with books before. I’ve been like sitting there, reading and there is a fly or mosquito buzzing around me . And the book is the perfect way to kill it, you know and just bang, just get it with the book and then there’s that dead insect in the pages somewhere,too. I think I’ve actually bled onto books as well in the past, so I’d spilled blood all sorts of bodily fluid. I’ve sneezed on books before and it all contributes to the sort of character of that book when you’ve finished with it. I like the idea that when you’re half way through a book… the bits of the pages that you’ve read are a little bit stained with… you know, just the marks from your fingers.
You can see it on the side of the book.. It’s like slightly… the pages have a little stain on the ones that you’ve read and the ones you haven’t read are fresh. They haven’t been touched yet. I quite like that. The fact that the book gets slightly damaged and develops a character, a physical character as you read it and it gets creased and folded and so on. I like that about having a book is like a physical relationship you have with it. Yeah, physical relationship you have with the book. Not that kind of a physical relationship, no, but you know what I mean.
But with a Kindle it’s just like a plastic thing that you have to be really careful with because if you spend like a hundred fifty pounds on this thing, you can’t drop it, you can’t fold it. If you do, it’s going to break and then that’s it. Hundred and fifty pounds down the toilet. So, and I hate this idea of taking an Amazon Kindle to the beach or an iPad to the beach. That’s like the worst thing you can do with a bit of high technology is Introduce it to some sand or maybe some salty water. Forget about it! It’s a ridiculous idea but we all know that introducing sand to a book you know, when you got a book on a beach it’s just again just giving it that extra bit of physical character that it’s been in contact with sand or wind or something. It’s brilliant. There’s nothing like having a real good book with you on holiday and the book kind of changes as you read it on that holiday. Yeah, we all know that’s true. So the Kindle and the iPad for me they’re luxuries. I’m not saying, I don’t want an iPad. I would love an iPad. Don’t get me wrong. I would absolutely love one but I know that it’s a luxury. Something I don’t really need. I mean just give me a pad, just give me a normal pad. I’ve got a brain, I’ve got an imagination, I’ve got fingers, I can easily get a pen. There’s a pan here in fact. I’ve got a pen with me now. Just give me a normal pad with paper on it and a pen and my imagination. I’ll come up with some entertaining stuff for myself if I have to. I mean the human race survived for thousands of years without iPads. I think we’re probably alright without them in the future. It’s a luxury but you know, I would love one to be honest. I think they’re amazing.
I wonder what’s going to happen actually … what is going to happen with the future of technology. The iPad is just like the first step in a new direction, really. And that new direction is that we can just sort of have the Internet with us at all times. And now you can use the iPad to do things like … you see people walking through the streets of London with their iPad. You know we used to see tourists with maps. You know like folding maps, walking around with the map in front of them. And now they have just got this iPad and it’s like a SAT NAV. You know, Satellite navigation. They can just walk around the town with the iPad in their hands and it tells them where to go and what to do. And it won’t be long, I guarantee, it wont be long before Google map becomes super advanced because if you have played around with Google maps you know, that you also have Google street view and Google street view is amazing because you can go on to Google map and if you click on the right button you can actually be transported onto the street that you’re looking at. So you can go to New York you can go to Manhattan on Google maps and you can walk down the street. It’s incredible. And you can see pictures, you can zoom in and zoom out and you can walk down almost every street in like major cities like New York or London or Paris and Tokyo. It’s absolutely amazing. And as well as that interesting places like restaurants or Museums or Historical places of interest are actually highlighted on the screen, on the pictures. So you can kind of click on that picture and they’ll give you information about that place. Maybe it’s a
restaurant review, the menu from that restaurant, the telephone number you can use to actually call the restaurant in order to book a table there. You can kind of like do everything on the Internet. I reckon that eventually Google street view will be live. It will actually be live. So won’t just be one picture well it will be rolling video. I mean I wonder if that’s possible with Satellites even now that you can just have like everything. You can look at everything from satellites using video and just see real time live what’s happening. I reckon it’s going to happen soon that you would be able to use Google to just observe many parts of the world just as they are happening
live. That’s going to be amazing but the other thing… And I saw a TV program about this once is there eventually … I mean we already carry around very high quality like high technology computers with us. These are our iPhones and stuff. Eventually they’ll become so good and so fast at processing that we’ll just be able to all sorts of things, just without any time delay at all. And if you can imagine, right, combining a pair of sun glasses with the screen on your iPhone and this is like an amazing iPhone, like the iPhone 19 or something , you know. Combining your sun glasses with… or maybe even contact lenses with your iPhone. So you’ll be able to
put your sun glasses on and then across whatever you’re looking at in the real world you’ve also got the Internet version of that. So you can look around the street and you’ll get little arrows, that will pop up in you vision on your sun glasses whenever you look at something. Suddenly you get a window from Wikipedia or something that’ll tell you information about it and all you need to do is like maybe you might to have a little pad on your hand and you just click the buttons and it’ll allow you to make telephone calls to that place or whatever. Find information about it. People will be walking down the street past you. You’ll be able to look at a person and immediately get access like to their Facebook profile, just by looking at them and then you could click on that person and add them as a friend or just find out various bits of information about them. I mean you can almost do this already using Bluetooth technology. You know, if you’ve got something like a Nintendo DS… a Nintendo 3DS handheld computer device ,then you can actually use Bluetooth to find people like… let’s say on the same bus as you who also have a Nintendo DS. And you can challenge them to a game of like Street Fighter 2 on the bus. And it’s just a random person you know and you can just have a game with them. This…Eventually all of this stuff is going to come together. So we’ll be able to just walk around and look at things and the Internet would be like you know stretched over everything like a Net and like an Internet. And then
you’ll just be able to… like you know use the directions that you get on Google maps. Instead you’ll just have like an arrow in front of you that you’ll be able to see on the screen on your sun glasses. The arrow would just point you in the right direction you know. If you wanna get to the pub like, you just use the arrow and it will point you where you’re going. It’s going to be
amazing. It’s basically the matrix. Eventually we won’t be able to tell the difference between the Internet and the real world. They’re going to combine and who knows eventually they might be able to implant some technology inside your head, that will connect with the electrical systems and nervous system in your brain and actually connect the Internet to your brain so that you’ll be able to feel or make decisions just by thinking about them. That’s going to be amazing. I mean they’ve already got technology which allows you to use your TV with your thoughts. So there’s something has being developed somewhere and it’s like a headset that you put on and it has a little camera I think that looks at your eyes and as you’re looking at the TV you could just think about changing the channel and the channel would change. Don’t ask me how they do it. I read about it today on the Internet. So it must be true. So it’s just one example of the sort of crazy stuff that’s going to happen. It will be the matrix, that’s eventually what’s going to happen and we’ll probably be able to do everything you know. Just travel around the world, visit people, actually have genuine experiences while we just sitting down on the sofa connected to the Internet. It’s quite a frightening thought in some ways but also quite amazing really. The frightening aspect to that is that when all this technology allows so many possibilities there’s the poss… there’s the threat that it’s going to be used for the wrong things, that it could be used to exploit people and that’s already happening with things like identity theft and so on. The people put there all of their personal information on to Facebook and I believe that anything you put on Facebook becomes the propriety of Facebook , I think. I’m not sure about that. I need to check it. So you know you can’t quote me on that but I think that if you’ve uploaded a video, photo onto Facebook then Facebook actually owns that video or that photo. It’s not yours. And they also own all your personal information which if unless you’ve like you’ve chosen the correct security settings, I think they can use that information. They can actually send it to people, they can sell it to marketing companies and so on. So there’s always that threat that your personal information will be used in a way that’s not necessarily good for you. So we have to be very very careful about the Internet and about the way in which it’s used and the content we put on to it. I actually worry about that quite a lot of myself because really I publish a hell of a lot of information about myself on the Internet particularly through this podcast because I sit here and I kind of talk about myself. I describe details, intimate personal details of my life. You know some of them, some of that stuff may be true , may not be true. A lot of the things I say actually are just for the benefit of the language learning that you’re doing but I worry, I think is someone going to be able to use
this for the wrong reasons. Well if they try and do that I will chase them. It will be like that Liam Neeson movie, I think it’s called TAKEN and if they try and do something, I will hunt them down and I will catch them and I will make them pay.
Okay, so if there’s anyone out there, who is listening, if anyone in the world is thinking:’ Ha, I think I’m going to use Luke’s information and steal his identity and steal his money.’
Well, don’t ! Alright because I’ll come after you, I’ll find you and I’ll get you. Alright you know what I’ll do… what I’ll do, so I’ll make you stand up, right and I’ll grab your underpants from behind. I’ll grab hold of your underpants and I’ll pull them really hard all the way over your head and that will hurt your private parts a lot, okay? So don’t do it ! ! !
Don’t mess with my identity. To be honest, it’s not really any point steeling my identity because why would you wanna be ME first of all? There’s not really much that you can get from me. I don’t really have any money. I’m not famous. You can’t really… anyway… enough about that. I don’t only give you any ideas but basically it would be a waste of time stealing my identity, I can tell you.
Yeah so, yeah technology, it’s amazing but it’s also quite frightening. Don’t you think?
I wonder, when you look at sort of the way technology is represented in movies. We don’t trust technology, do we, really? If we see the way that we deal with it in movies, I recently watched that film with Will Smith, I, ROBOT. I don’t know if it’s got a different name in your country but basically in the movie my quick plot synopsis of I, ROBOT is, Will Smith is a cop in the future, right. But he is not like a cop like all the others. He’s a kind of like a… to be honest he’s like a normal guy from now, from the present day. But he just happens to be in the future. He’s kind of normal. He wears a leather jacket, he wears like a beanie hat. He probably listens to like Hip Hop
from the 90s or something. You know he probably has lots of Public Enemy , and A Tribe Called Quest [Hip Hop groups from the 1990s] quotes in his head. He loves Hip Hop and Soul music. He probably listens to Bob Marley. That’s the kind of guy that he is in this movie and surrounding him are all these people from the future. And of course the future world that he lives in, is a kind of cold emotionless place where it’s incredibly efficient because everything is done by robots. But somehow it’s less human. It’s colder and more evil quite frankly because most of the people that he meets are probably evil, particularly the ones who works for big corporations because we know, don’t we, that big corporations are just evil.
Naturally evil. Just by definition, if it’s big and it’s corporate and it’s shiny and it’s not very human and yeah that kind of thing.
Then it’s evil, isn’t it? And also if it’s a robot and it’s very high technology, That’s also going to be evil too. Don’t ask me why, but it will be. And of course what we find is the Will Smith being this normal guy cop investigator, is investigating a murder. But it was a suicide actually. It turns out to be a murder and that’s right. It’s a murder at a robot factory and guess what? The robot is in the factory, they’re evil, that’s right. Why they’re evil? We don’t know. Why are robots in movies evil? No one really knows, but they are, aren’t they? Yeah because we should be frightened and scared of technology because we don’t really understand it. I mean most people don’t really understand technology. As far as I can tell, most of the IT specialists I meet, they don’t understand it either. Think about it. The last time you had a serious problem with your computer, did the IT guy really know what the problem was? He didn’t, really he didn’t! He sort of said, well I think it might be something to do with the server. What did that even mean? Nobody knows what’s going on. Technology, we’re probably a few years away from like ‘The Terminator’ or ‘The Matrix’ that that’s point in time where computers become so intelligent that they actually develop their own sense of survival and they think, oh right, okay, I’m a robot and I’m actually more intelligent than people. Now so obviously, what I have to do is become evil and kill all the people, kill all humans. Is that what’s going to happen? I don’t know but it could be. Why isn’t it that robots become good? You know the more intelligent they are, the more nice they are. That’s… Why doesn’t that happen in movies? Why don’t we get like robots who become super intelligent and say:’ Good morning Luke, would you like a cup of tea Luke?’ You know, that would be good. Wouldn’t it? If they realized that with all their super intelligence that basically all we want, all that’s good for the world is just cups of tea and cake and stuff. That’s the movie I wanna see. I wanna see a movie where Will Smith is in the future and he likes Bob Marley and he’s surrounded by high technology robots and they all just sort of do nice things for him. They kind of take his dog for a walk and they make him cups of tea and they clean his car. They just do nice things to each other. That would be … That’s good and that’s just as likely that happen as all the robots becoming evil. Isn’t it? Hm, maybe it’s not… maybe it’s not though because… Maybe what’s going to happen is that all this technology’s just going to make people more open to exploitation because we know from , don’t we … that from like history of the world. We don’t have a very good record of being nice to each other, do we? We don’t. Let’s face it. Maybe in the last few years we’ve been alright. But for hundreds or thousands of years people have been horrible to each other. They really have. Think of like slavery and stuff. You know like back in… when was it? Probably a few hundred years ago really. It’s, when started to travel around by ship and say, probably around the 17th century. That
kind of time when the British Empire you know was growing, we were really bad. We did some really bad things around the world. The British Empire, I mean you know, we were very good at doing it but we did some horrible things to people. Can I just apologize actually? If you’re a listener to, for example, if you’re in… hum, I don’t know, in India or Africa or some part of the world where the British kind of colonized and basically sort of destroyed your culture or maybe even like just took people from your country and turn them into slaves. Can I just apologize for that? Because that’s terrible. Obviously, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t even like my
dad’s or my dad’s dad or my dad’s dad’s dad’s dad’s fault but somewhere down the line, people in this country did some pretty bad things to other people in other countries, just because we had more boats you know.. So sorry, sorry about that.
But just generally if you look at the past , you’ll see that people have done some pretty horrible things to each other and maybe that’s going to keep happening when technology allows people to take control over other people’s lives? Maybe we’ll just get another version of slavery again. I hope not !
I think it’s really really important that we have to be good to each other. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. We just have to be nice to each other. We have to try to understand each other and be compassionate and be nice Actually I’m quite pleased that we’ve reached, that I’ve reached this part of the podcast where the conclusion, I guess, to this rambling stream of consciousness is that please, please…
PLEASE can we be nice to each other? Can we try to understand each other a little bit more? Let’s avoid the conflict, let’s avoid the war and the fighting. Let’s try to make the world a better place for each other. Can we please can we just try understand each other? Don’t try and, don’t blow each other up. It’s stupid! Be nice to each other ! Fighting and blowing people up and trying to rule the world doesn’t work. The only way it’ll work is if you understand that we’re all in it together. We’re all on this earth together, we all share the space. Let’s just try and make it easy. Can we please? Good !
It’s… and I have to say these things because all over the world, all the time people are fighting and they’re fighting for ridiculous reasons. I’m not going to mention any specific cases but I think you know what I’m talking about. People are fighting over their beliefs. You know when people believe so strongly in like… I don’t know, like a specific God or something they believe in it so strongly that they’re willing to actually kill and kill people’s children as a result of how strongly they believe in their God. That’s wrong. There’s something deeply wrong about that. We know that all the real, like religions and things… They all preach PEACE ! So waging war in the name of religion is complete nonsense and ridiculous. So STOP doing that please ! ! ! That would be nice. Yeah okay.
Wow, I’ve ended up talking about war and politics and killing children again. God, this is not the first time, I’ve ended up talking about that either. Now, let’s talk about something else. maybe we could talk about Ice Cream. That would be a good idea. Wouldn’t it? Yeah, so, Ice Cream, right? God,I love Ice Cream ! Isn’t it great? Ice Cream is a good invention. I don’t know who invented it. Wasn’t it Italians? I think it might been Italians. I don’t know, if it was them, but they certainly do it well and Ice Cream is a good thing. Let’s have more Ice Cream in the world !
I know that it’s kind of bad for your health but come on. Come on, so what? You know everything is bad for your health isn’t it? I mean we all going to die in the end. We might as well enjoy a little bit of Ice Cream before we go. You know what I mean? And it has some many flavours. You get vanilla of course. That’s like the default flavour for Ice Cream. Isn’t it? I wonder if that was the first flavour. Was that the first flavour for Ice Cream? I don’t know but it’s certainly a good
flavour. It’s the most successful flavor, isn’t it? Vanilla! It’s like standard.. It’s like you know, in terms of… let’s say paper, white paper. It’s like the white paper of Ice Cream, isn’t it? Vanilla… And then of course you’ve got like chocolate and coffee and strawberry and raspberry and I mean the list goes on. I mean, I don’t know if you have ever been to Rome? In Italy but you should go because it’s beautiful. It’s a fantastic place. Go to Rome and check out some of the Ice Cream they’ve got there. It’s brilliant. They’ve got like all kinds of stuff. In some places you get Ice Cream for all sorts of crazy flavours like bubble gum flavored Ice Cream and stuff like that. So let’s stop killing each other, let’s just buy each other Ice Cream and make this world a much better place.
I’m happy that that’s the conclusion of this episode of Luke’s English podcast. It’s all about Ice Cream. So if you… I’m going to name this episode… I think, I’m going to call it ‘THE ICE CREAM
Episode and if you have listened all the way to the end then you’ll understand why it’s called the Ice Cream episode.
That’s it from Luke’s English podcast. Forty five minutes!
Thank you, bye,bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye….

SOME BLOCKS OF LANGUAGE FROM THIS EPISODE:

…despite what you might have been led to believe…
…not to mention all the other companies…
…I can’t really be bothered to prepare something…
…I’m leaving it up to you. It’s up to you to do the language work…
…I’m not sitting on a sofa like a couch potato…
…I’ve had enough of all this leaning over…
…let’s keep it simple…
…there’s a strange pleasure in being given your purchase in a box over the counter. It feels like a secret transaction…

Here’s the Argos website (so you know what I’m talking about!) http://www.argos.co.uk/

;)

67. Cockney / London Accent

23 Replies

Listen to an interview with Ray Winstone who is a genuine Londoner with a ‘cockney’ accent. Pick up some new expressions and learn how to recognise a London accent.

Right-click here to download.

Tapescript of the interview:
Alright, I remember going on a date once, years ago, with a girl, a really good girl and I knew her brother and everything, right. And, I picked her up. And as I went to pick her up, I walked into the… this is a disaster, this is how things go wrong, right? I walked into the passageway and they lived round the back of the Limehouse, really nice people. And someone [had] left the telephone on the floor. And there was a glass door into the front room, the lounge. As I walked in, I was going “hello” and I kicked the telephone on the, it was like on the volley, on the half volley. It went straight through the glass window, right? No, that’s the first, right? Smashed the thing to pieces, right? I’m in bits, I’m like, like that. Mum and Dad were cool, I said I’m really sorry, like that. “who left the phone on the floor?” they’re going on and all that. “I’m really really sorry”. Kerry was upstairs getting ready and all that.

And then I sat down on the settee waiting for her, and Mum’s panning the glass up and it’s like… I’m in bits. And I leant on the side of the sofa, like that, and the whole sofa ripped down and fell off. Now you’re going to think I’m joking here, right? It fell off, and I’m up. It’s like You’ve Been Framed or something, right? I’m in bits now, right? I’m fucking sorry, right. And they’re getting the hump now. I’m smashing the house up! I’ve only been in there 5 minutes.

Done that. We’ve got a bus, from Limehouse. On the bus. Some Russian type sailor started digging us out. you know saying “you come with me, with your girlfriend” and all that. I’ve had a fight on the bus, with the geezer, right, within half an hour now, right? I’ve mullered him on the bus, right? It’s all gone pear shaped, right? So we’re still going out, we’ve gone to a pub, then we’ve gone to a party and the party’s in Cloudesley Square, in Islington, right?

Go up there, nice house, very nice house, one of those 3, kind of, tier houses, town houses things, really lovely, and the same thing. You know what I was just saying about this, what reminded me about, you know, keeping one eye on her and she’s alright and I’m talking to a couple of friends here like, boom boom boom. And as she’s walked across the room, right, to come and talk to me, I’ve noticed, you do with your girls, it’s something you, kind of, you look after them without making them feel they’re being looked after if you know what I mean, but you watch them. And she’s tripped on the carpet. And as I’ve caught her, I caught her, right? There’s a table behind me with a glass chandelier, right, thing on, right, and I don’t know how much this was worth, right, and I’ve hit it, and it smashed on the floor, on the fireplace and it’s gone everywhere. There’s glass everywhere. You couldn’t glue this back together. Right? And the woman whose house it was screamed. Right? And I remember saying to her, “I’m really sorry love, whatever it cost, I’ll… I was trying to catch her, whatever it cost, I’ll pay for it and I’ll put it all right, you know” it was obviously someone’s Mum we knew and “I’ll pay for that” and she went on and then you go “well fuck you then” and then it all goes pear shaped.

And, that was the date, and I got her home and that was that. Really nice girl, could’ve, you know, might have been really nice. That was it. I had a nightmare. So, by watching someone and trying to be so nice, it all went the other way.

53. Discussing Grammar with My Brother

18 Replies

Can an ordinary native speaker of English (my brother) explain the rules of English grammar? That’s the question in this interview. I wanted to know how much my brother James knows about the rules of grammar which learners of English study every day. The results are quite revealing.Transcript available below.

Right-click here to download this episode.
At the end of the interview I explain the grammar rules which we discuss

Here are the lyrics to James’ rap at the beginning of the episode!
It’s Luke’s English Podcast
We’re sitting in his flat
We’re discussing English
and shit like that
We’re getting educated
because that’s the way we do
so listen up close
because his name is Luke

TRANSCRIPT
Here’s the first part of the transcript. The beginning of this transcript was sent in by Bettina from France. Thanks again Bettina ;)

You’re listening to Luke’s English Podcast. For more information visit teacherluke.podomatic.com

Uh… say what
Uh… what what what what

It’s Luke’s English Podcast
We’re sitting in his flat
We’re discussing English
and shit like that
We’re getting educated
because that’s the way we do
So listen up close
because his name is Luke

Yeah, we’re learning English
Luke’s English Podcast
Learning some English
Luke’s English podcast
with Luke’s English podcast, yeah

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen and especially you Ladies,
you’re in safe hands, it’s Luke’s English podcast.

This week Luke takes a long slow lingering linguistic look at the English language.
So lay back, run yourself a deep bath and relax to the smoothing sounds of Luke’s English podcast.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Luke’s English podcast. In this episode I talk to my brother James, err, about grammar. We have a little grammar discussion in which I ask James to try and answer some questions about English grammar. Now the idea of this episode is that I wanted to show people who are learning English, what most normal English native speakers really know about grammar.

Now my brother is a fairly ordinary Londoner. Um, he works as a graphic designer . Um, he is very good. He did the logo for my podcast, the Luke’s English Podcast logo. He designed that, so he is very good. He went to University, and so he is a normal educated professional Londoner. Umm, but as a native speaker, I wanted to ask him some questions about grammar because often learners of English are really surprised that native speakers don’t really know anything about the rules of grammar even though they speak the language perfectly. So here’s the conversation. I’ll explain some things at the end.

Erm, right, okay, so I’m with my brother Jim, and erm… would you say that you’re, like, an average man on the street?
James: Yeah
Luke: You are. Are you on a street now?
James: Erm, I’m very near one. I’m not on a street, no. But I quite often am on the street.
Luke: Okay, so you’re, sort of, typical person
James: I’m the average person, in the world
Luke: You are the most average person in the world
James: Yeah
Luke: Is that what your girlfriend says? …he hey… That’s just a joke. Wasn’t very funny. Umm, anyway, so my brother is basically, sort of, the average man on the street. Umm, right, so, how much, kind of, English grammar did you study at school?
James: Don’t really remember to be honest.
Luke: Don’t remember, okay.
James: Probably… a fair amount but I’d say more of it was just picked up in speech than learned, err, in a classroom
Luke: Ok, so you just, you didn’t really study any grammar. We don’t really study grammar at school.
James: Well, we did, but, yeah I’m sure we studied it. I remember that stuff happening. I just don’t know if I was paying any attention
Luke: Ok, so if I asked you for example, what’s the difference between a noun and adjective and a verb? Can you tell me?
James: An adjective is …erm…
Luke: Yeah, an adjective
James: An adjective is a doing word
Luke: A doing word. For example?
James: For example, erm, err, to run.
Luke: To run. So, you’re saying ‘to run’ is an adjective. Ok, I’ll come back to that.
James: Can we delete this?
Luke: No no! This is brilliant! No this is perfect because, the fact is that students don’t know that most English people don’t know…
James: Yeah, but I’m more stupid than most people
Luke: No you’re not more stupid than most people.
James: Most people know this
Luke: No, most people don’t know this. A lot of people don’t know this. I didn’t know this until I started learning to become a teacher.
James: No, an adjective would be, erm, ‘flying’
Luke: No, that’s not… well, ‘flying’ could be an adjective, but, that’s actually…
James: Fat
Luke: Fat is an adjective, yes.
James: Right, yeah
Luke: So, it’s a describing word. Right, what about a noun?
James: A noun is a… a descriptive word like ‘a plant’
Luke: Right, so it’s like the name of a thing, like ‘a plant’, okay. What’s a verb?
James: To run, to fly
Luke: To run, to fly, okay. That’s a doing word.
James: To drive
Luke: To drive. Okay, what’s, err, what’s an adverb?
James: Describing the person, a ‘driver’
Luke: No, that’s a noun.
James: Dunno (don’t know)
Luke: An adverb describes a verb, so ‘he drives well’, so ‘well’ is an adjective [adverb].
James: right
Luke: Err,
James: Oh, it’s all coming back to me now.
Luke: But the fact is that most
James: Thing is though I think I speak quite well
Luke: Yeah, well of course you do
James: I generally make myself understood, I just may not know the exact correct definition of everything.
Luke: That’s the thing for native speakers of English. It’s like “well I don’t need to know the rules, because obviously I know that, basically …
James: I’m confident enough that I know the language well enough to speak it well, and to make myself understood and to be clear
Luke: I think that’s…
James: and I speak, I think I speak quite well but I just don’t know the exact definitions of all the words
Luke: Okay, well that’s exactly what English native speakers. That’s their whole attitude, and that’s totally fine, because the fact is they know how to speak English of course, because they were born in an English speaking environment
James: You’d definitely notice if someone got it wrong though
Luke: Yeah, but if you got it wrong, you notice, that’s right, but you just instinctively know what’s right and what’s wrong
James: but it feels like it’s instinctive but I’m sure it was learned
Luke: No, it is instinctive because we don’t learn
James: No, but it’s picked up isn’t it, through practice
Luke: Yeah, it’s picked up through experience of just speaking and, for example, your parents correcting you and things like that. But learners of English have got to learn all these rules, and it’s like, it’s the language of the English language for them, because in order to take apart the language, they use all this other… all these other terms and I often think when I’m teaching that my students know English grammar, like, ten times better than how most native English speakers do, right?
James: yeah
Luke: So, I’ve got here a book, which is called English Grammar In Use by Raymond Murphy and it’s the most popular grammar book for learners of English. It’s sold millions of copies all around the world, it’s a famous book, it’s known as ‘the blue book’, ‘the blue grammar book’
James: and you’re saying it’s basically useless
Luke: No, I’m not saying it’s useless! I’m just saying it’s interesting that most native speakers have got no idea what any of this stuff means. You talk about present continuous tense and third conditionals and things like that
James: Wouldn’t have a clue
Luke: You’ve got no idea, right. What I’m quite curious to do is, another thing is, that in English language classes teachers are always asking students to explain what things mean, right, so they always say things like “what is present perfect and how do we use it?” or “what’s the difference between these two sentences?”, right, and it’s interesting to see what a native speaker, someone who’s already able to speak English perfectly and functionally would answer those questions, because sometimes
James: You’re probably going to get them wrong
Luke: Well, you, it’s, the point is that, a lot of the exercises you do in class are, kind of, unrealistic, and unnatural so even if you were a native speaker you wouldn’t be able to do it, you know?
James: Yeah
Luke: So, like, if I said to you what’s the difference between, ‘I painted the house’ and ‘I have painted the house’? What’s the difference in meaning?
James: ‘I painted the house’ implies that you’ve just done it
Luke: You’ve just done it
James: and ‘I have painted the house’ could be any time
Luke: Ok. Couldn’t you say ‘I painted the house last year’?
James: Yeah, you could say that
Luke: Right, so ‘I painted the house’ could be any time
James: But you couldn’t say ‘I have painted the house last year’
Luke: Ah, right. Why not?
James: Because it’s too… it’s, it’s… I don’t know. There’s two levels to it. Once you say ‘I have painted the house’, you’ve already established the fact that you’ve painted it.
Luke: Right
James: Err, I don’t know! It just sounds wrong!
Luke: It just sounds wrong, yeah, that’s exactly it. The fact is, ‘I have painted the house’ means, you were right originally, you don’t know when it happened, it’s just that it happened in the past some time, and it’s connected to now, because you’re relating it to your whole experience of your life up to now, so there’s a connection to now, ‘I have done it’, like, I’ve got that experience. ‘I have painted the house’. You can’t say ‘I have painted the house yesterday’, because we just don’t use that tense
James: But you’ve already said, ‘I have painted the house’
Luke: Which implies that there’s no time, or that it’s an unfinished period of time.
James: Or just… it just doesn’t work, I don’t know why
Luke: But you can say, “I have painted the house today”, but you can’t say “I have painted the house yesterday”
James: ‘I have painted the house today’, would you say that?
Luke: At the end of the day, ‘so what have you done today?’, oh well…
James: You’d say ‘I painted the house’
Luke: Ok at the end of the day
James: Or ‘I’ve been painting the house’
Luke: But at lunchtime, “what have you done?”
James: Oh, I’ve painted the house
Luke: yeah, exactly
James: What have you been doing this morning? – I painted the house. I don’t know if you’d say ‘I’ve’
Luke: Well if it was finished you would
James: “well, I’ve come in, I’ve picked up the paint brush”
Luke: NO, that’s, that’s
James: I’ve run in, I’ve grabbed the ladder, I’ve put it up against the wall and I’ve painted the house.
Luke: That’s what native speakers say as an error. That’s what footballers do. They say things like, “Well, yeah, I’ve got the ball”… what they should say is “I got the ball outside the penalty box, right, I passed it to Wayne Rooney, he passed it back to me, I beat the defender and I shot and I scored. But what they’d say is “Well, I’ve got the ball outside the penalty box, and I’ve passed it to Wayne Rooney and he’s passed it back to me, and I’ve looked up, and I’ve seen the open goal, and I’ve shot and I’ve scored”, so all this weird present perfect, but it’s kind of wrong isn’t it.
James: Yeah
Luke: They’re actually speaking completely incorrectly
James: Because he’s kind of talking about the present and the past at the same time. “I’ve picked up the ball, passed it to Rooney. You know, I’ve collected the ball and passed it to Rooney”
Luke: So he’s talking about, it’s like, it happened just now, it’s like, in the moment
James: But he’s using “I’ve”
Luke: “I’ve” to, sort of, create that link to ‘now’ somehow
James: It’s like he’s running through it in his head.
Luke: It’s kind of like…
James: This isn’t going to be any use to anyone
Luke: It is. No, it is it is, it’s exactly
James: No-one’s going to listen to this
Luke: No, it’s not true, it’s not true. People will be interested to hear this
James: If you’re listening to this, I’m very sorry
Luke: No, people will be interested to hear about how a native speaker understands,
James: or doesn’t
Luke: or doesn’t understand grammar. Just let me ask you two more things and then we’ll call it a day. Right, er, another one is, what’s the difference between ‘for’ and ‘since’. That’s a question that students ask all the time. What’s the difference between ‘for’ and ‘since’?
James: In what context?
Luke: So, ‘I have done something for…’ and ‘I have done something since…’
James: for?
Luke: For, yeah, f-o-r. “i’ve been doing something for…”
James: 10 years
Luke: Yeah, I’ve been doing something for 10 years. I’ve been doing something since…
James: 1990… 2000
Luke: Yeah, since 2000, so what’s the difference between ‘for’ and ‘since’?
James: …erm… well you say ‘for’ when you’re about to describe the length of time that you have spent doing something. ‘Since’ sets the date that you started.
Luke: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Perfect. Yeah, you’re quite good.
James: That blew your theory out of the water
Luke: No no, it’s just interesting. I don’t have a theory. Right, here’s another one, ok. This is a classic one. What’s the difference between saying, okay this is conditionals. What’s the difference between saying “If I…” now you’ll get this because this is easy… “If I had bought a lottery ticket, I would have won the lottery” and “If I bought a lottery ticket, I would win the lottery” What’s the difference.
James: One’s talking about the past and one’s talking about the future.
Luke: Right, okay, yes, spot on. Nailed it. Yeah. Okay, I need to give you a really difficult one. Erm, hmm, I’ll go to the back of the book. Ok, prepositions, right? Let’s go for, what do you want? Let’s have adjective + preposition, which is, prepositions are the thing that learners have the most difficulty with, and they’re little words like ‘of’ ‘to’ ‘at’ ‘in’, stuff like that
James: Ok, go on, first question
Luke: So, you’ve just got to complete the sentence, erm, hmm,

LUKE: Erm, hmm, wait a minute. Right, wait a second

JAMES: I think you should edit this down.

LUKE: Yeah, okay, right, here we go. I’ll give you a sentence. You’ve got to put the prepositions in the right place, in the gap, okay?
I was delighted ….. the present you gave me. I was delighted … the present you gave me.

JAMES: ‘ with ‘

LUKE: Yes, well done. Brilliant.

JAMES: I don’t know why ? But…

LUKE: I’ve just had an idea whenever you get anything right, I’m gonna do this (ping!), okay? Right, so here’s the next one.

JAMES: This is bad.

LUKE: It was very nice … you, to do my shopping for me. Thank you very much.

JAMES: ‘ of ‘ but I don’t know why it’s ‘ of ‘. I couldn’t tell you the rules behind that. I just know that’s what it is.

LUKE: Why are you always so rude … your parents? Can’t you be nice … them.

JAMES: ‘ to ‘

LUKE: ‘ to ‘ yes, well done !

JAMES: Can you not do that? (referring to the BING)

LUKE: Okay, hmm, but why is it nice to, be nice to the parents?

JAMES: Well, because they brought you up and I dunno, bought you stuff at christmas

LUKE: No, I’m meaning, why do you use the word ‘to’? Nice, be nice to your parents.

JAMES: Because, you’re sort of, I don’t know.

LUKE: Yeah

JAMES: You’re giving some kind to them. You’re kind of, just doing something for their benefit, I suppose or something towards them. Something towards them. A big nice towards them. Now, it’s that
your parents, I couldn’t tell you.

LUKE: You’ve to look up, to look toward them.

JAMES: I couldn’t tell you.

LUKE: The fact is, it’s just impossible to create a rule about it. In fact, you’ve just got to learn that some words go with other words. Just got know it’s ‘ be nice to someone ‘ . You’ve just to learn ‘nice to’. So,
you have to see words existing together in little partnerships.

JAMES: Well, learn how they work together.

LUKE: Yeah, that’s it. It’s just learning two words together. Not just one on its own. So, that’s it. That’s the end of the experiment. Have you learnt anything from this, from this experience?

JAMES: No, no.

LUKE: No?

JAMES: Hm, I just hope that you get something out of this. You know making me look stupid basically.

LUKE: No, I think you got quite a few questions right. Didn’t you?

JAMES: Hhhh yeah,

LUKE: Okay, well, congratulations anyway. I’m gonna give you a certificate now which just shows that you’ve, two certificates, want to show that you completed the course.

JAMES: So, I’ll keep the certificate. Can I have this bit of chewing gum?

LUKE: Yeah, you can have the chewing gum.

JAMES: Sorry, thanks.

LUKE: Hmm, and the second certificate is just something I like to give to all the guests that I have on a program. It’s a little certificate just proving that you’d appeared on, on an episode of Luke’s English
Podcast. So thanks very much for coming and I hope to see you soon.

JAMES: Thanks very much. Luke’s English Podcast is brought to you by Wrigley chewing gum and Castllero del Diablo wine.

Okay folks, what I would now like to do is just explain some of the grammar points that I spoke to my brother about during that conversation. I asked him some questions about a few areas of grammar to see if he could answer them and I think you can see there that the point is, I guess, that native speakers surprisingly don’t understand or don’t really know the rules of grammar. They don’t know terms like ‘present perfect’ or even words like ‘adjectives’ or ‘nouns’. They don’t really know what those terms mean. So when you’re studying all that stuff at school, you’re in a way more articulate than they are, because you know how to describe the language and native speakers don’t know how to do that. That’s quite interesting but native speakers know, umm, what’s right and what’s wrong by instinct. They just sort of, they learn it as children without thinking about it and then when they get older they know that something is wrong but they don’t know why it’s wrong, they just know it’s wrong. It’s the same for you when you’re learning your language as a child.

Umm, what does that tell us about learning English? Well you could say, that it, some people might say it means that learners of English shouldn’t worry about learning the rules of grammar. That instead they should just try to listen to a lot of English, to read a lot of English and by doing that ,erm, see and hear the language so much that they just learn what’s right and wrong, just by frequency. So they know for example that people will say things, just because they have heard it said so many times before and they know what’s right and wrong just because they have heard and read the language a lot and they’ve started to learn, started to get a sense of all the patterns that you find in English.
Maybe that’s true, maybe that’s a good way to learn or maybe learners of English should study the rules or at least study the patterns and do practice exercises in order to understand what’s right and what’s wrong. I think it’s a combination of both. That you need to study the language , you need to test yourself with it , you need to do exercises but also you need to combine that with high exposure to lots of listening and lots of reading and so the more you see of the language , the more you start to develop a feel for it. Hum, that’s my opinion, um, but nevertheless, um, some of the things that I discussed with my brother there, I think I should just clarify for you, anyway.
Um, so the first thing I asked him was, what’s the difference between a noun, an adjective and a verb and he couldn’t really answer the question, but as you may know, a noun is a word which is used to give something a name. We use things like, you know, a table, a chair, a cat, those are all nouns. They can be plural or singular. Three cats for example.
They can be countable or uncountable. If they’re countable you can, you can count them. For example three, you know, tables. A table is a countable noun because you can say one, two or three tables but a word like sugar isn’t countable, instead we just say some sugar. So it’s like a mass of tiny little granules of sugar that together makes something uncountable. They can also be abstract, for example the names of things you can’t actually touch or feel. Umm, so concepts like ‘love’ is a noun. Umm, it’s also a verb but you could say ‘all you need is love’ and in that sentence it’s a noun. It’s an abstract one there and it’s uncountable. That’s nouns. Obviously there’re, nouns can be very complex, they can be larger, kind of phrases you could say like a noun phrase like for example, hum, let’s see, umm, like mobile phone technology is a kind of noun phrase and you can use that as the start of a sentence. Mobile phone technology is developing very quickly, right? So nouns can also be sometimes a number of words together.

Umm, right, the next one is a adjective. Well, an adjective is a word we use to describe a noun. Umm, it’s used to describe a noun, so we would say for example, the food was delicious, right? So delicious describes the food. How was the food ? It was delicious. You could also say delicious food. Like that, of course. Umm, so that’s an adjective.

Umm, and then the next one was a verb and the verb is the doing word. These are words we use to express sort of actions, um, so like play, eat, go, for example. Those are verbs, um, and we also have little verb phrases, which are things like phrasal verbs and that’s a verb in combination with other words and phrasal verbs are difficult because, well, somme of them are easy and some of them are difficult . The easy ones are easy to understand because the meaning is very similar to the original verb. So, if you’re talking about, um, oh, let’s see, hmm, ‘ go on’ , like ‘ go on’, meaning continue. I’s fairly clear what that means because go, we know what ‘ go’ means. ‘ Go on ‘ just means go and don’t stop going, continue. That’s fairly easy but some of them are difficult like if you take the expression ‘give up’. ‘ Give up ‘ umm, meaning to quit. Hum, that’s not quite so easy because the verb ‘ give’ you know, we think, well, ‘ give’ . Give someone a birthday present but in this sentence ‘give up’ has a completely different meaning to give which makes it very difficult and the fact is as learners of English you just have to learn phrasal verbs. You just have to try and learn them because they are all unique words with their own meanings, just a combination of a few words. So that’s, umm, that was the first thing I asked my brother. The next thing was about ‘present perfect’ and ‘past simple’.

So we know the ‘present perfect’. One of the, actually this is one of the most common bits of grammar that you study when you’re learning English. Present perfect of course is like ‘ have’ plus a past participle or ‘ has’ plus a past participle, like I have lived in Japan for example. Umm, she has eaten a pizza, right? And ‘past simple’ obviously everyone knows. I lived in Japan, she ate a pizza, for example. Umm, so the difference, well that’s quite a big one and it’s something that everyone is studying. So the difference between ‘past simple’ and ‘present perfect’ basically we use, we use ‘past simple’ to talk about a finished action in the past but the time period is important and we tend to, with ‘past simple’ express a kind of distance from the act. So there is a distance in time basically, which means that the action
happened in a finished time period. I lived, erm, well let’s say, umm, I ate, no, I drank a coffee. It’s pretty, probably suggests that you that you drank a coffee yesterday or you drank a coffee last week or you drank a coffee, umm, during breakfast, right? So it’s like in a finished time. ‘Present perfect’ is used to describe finished actions which happened in an unfinished time. So there’s a connection to now. That’s the most important thing. So, basically you might say for example, I have drunk three cups of coffee today. Umm, today is not finished, so you can say, I have drunk three cups of coffee today. Hum, so the time period is always connected to now. It’s a bit more complicated than that but that’s is all basic difference.
Hum, to be honest, if I was to explain ‘present perfect’ and ‘past simple’, I’d need to record a completely new podcast and I could do that. So, I might, I might do that.. ‘Past simple’ and ‘present perfect’.

The next one was about 2nd and 3rd conditionals. So we know the 2nd conditional would be for example, umm, let’s see. Err, if I bought a lottery ticket, I would win the lottery. Not a very good example because, it’s not definite that you’d win, so, if I?
Okay, let’s say, if I, if I went outside, I, no, no, no … Okay, if I studied hard, I would pass the exam. So, you’re talking about the future but you use past tense like studied, if I studied, now, we’re not talking about the past , we’re talking about the future. And we know, it’s the future because we’ve said’ if’ . So ‘ if ‘ plus a ‘past tense’ is actually used to describe a kind of unreal future. So you use the past tense not to create distance in time but to create distance in reality. In this sense it’s an unreal or hypothetical future because you don’t think it’s realistic. So, if I studied hard, I would pass the exam but I’m not going to study hard because I don’t want to, right? So compare that with the 1st conditional. If I study hard, I will pass the exam. Umm, ‘present tense’ after ‘ if ‘ , still talking about the future but here we think it’s a realistic future. So, there’s no distance from reality. We think it’s real and it’s followed by ‘ will ‘. Umm, if I study hard, I will pass the exam. So, that’s it, it’s like a definite future with its definite future consequence!

The 3rd conditional talks about the past and there we use ‘had’ plus a ‘past participle’ in the ‘if clause’, in the second clause we have ‘would have’ and a ‘past participle’. So, let’s say, the exam was last week and I failed, you could say, ‘ If I had studied for the exam, I would have passed, right? The fact is, I didn’t study and I didn’t pass but if I had studied, now here we’re using ‘ had studied’ and that’s like, it looks like past perfect, but it’s not actually past perfect, it just looks like it, but it’s used to create distance from reality in this sense, in the past. Umm, so we go from ‘past simple’ I didn’t study, we go one tense back to what looks like ‘past perfect ‘. ‘If I had studied’ and then in the second part ‘I would have passed ‘. Again to refer to a past consequence.

It’s all very complicated and to be honest rather boring but you kind of have to learn it. Again, I could do a completely separate podcast all about conditionals because it’s such a big topic.

The last thing I talked about with my brother was ‘prepositions’ and if you’re learning English you’ll know about prepositions. They’re very, very difficult. They are the little words that we use to connect nouns and verbs and adjectives together and you find the prepositions are linked to other words and there isn’t really a decent set of rules to explain these links. The fact is, you just have to learn them. You just have to learn that we say ‘to be nice to someone’ right? ‘Nice to’ those words go together. You’ve just to learn that you have to remember it and there’re lots of combinations of verbs and prepositions, nouns and propositions and adjectives and prepositions and there are so many lists, really that, it’s just a case of noticing them and then try to remember them. Umm, what you should do, is realize that prepositions are linked to other words and then see these word combinations as separate units of meaning that you should learn. So, you don’t just learn the word for example ‘consist’ but you learn the expression ‘consist of’ right? Okay, so a hamburger , a Big Mac consists of bread, salad, beef and cheese for example. Umm, so, ‘consists of’. Those words always go together.

Umm, so that’s basically it. Those are the things I’d discussed with my brother. I expect, if you’re a learner of English, you understood the rules of grammar a little bit better than my brother did. Umm, in which case you should feel quite good about yourself. Um, remember you’re, you’re learning the grammar of the English language and you’re learning the grammar actually better than most native speakers. So, well done you.
Umm that’s the end of this podcast, I hope you found it interesting. That’s all for me . Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye…

Enjoy.

30. The Mystery Continues

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Part 2 of the mystery story which I started in the previous episode.

[DOWNLOAD] [LISTEN TO PART 1] [FREE AUDIOBOOK OFFER]

Part 2 of the strange story from the last episode. Use this podcast to improve your listening, reading, vocabulary and pronunciation. You should listen to it after listening to the previous episode “Mystery Story / Narrative Tenses”.

This episode of the podcast is continues the story of the last episode. Find out the answers to the mystery of the strange Doctor.

This podcast includes:

Lots of very descriptive language – learn how to describe people, places and feelings
Complex sentences and examples of effective use of narrative tenses
Clear pronunciation in a couple of slightly different accents – raise your awareness of connected speech and intonation
Some amusing cultural information about London’s heritage – learn more about the culture of the language

How to use this podcast to improve your English:

I recommend that first, you listen to the podcast and just follow the story. Second, listen to pick up language – use the tapescript if you like. Third, pronunciation – use the script to copy sentences from the story. Fourth, record yourself telling the story, and try to make it sound really interesting, and alive and funny. Listen to yourself and do it again, focussing on the weak points from the first time. You will improve more quickly, and develop an instinct for the structure of the language, which helps you make quick decisions about what is right and wrong in English. There is no other way to do it: exposure to natural English is very important in learning the language.

So, now! Enjoy the story…

The Man & The Moon, part 2…

When I arrived home that night, I immediately wrote everything that had happened into my diary.
“I could make a great podcast out of this”, I thought to myself…

The next day I told my friend what had happened.

“I know just the person who can help you!” he said, “There’s a man who lives in Baker Street, in the centre of London”, he said.

“Yes, I know where Baker Street is – it’s quite a famous street y’know”

“Yes! Anyway, this man is the best detective in London! He’s the most brilliant mind there is. The police have to use him to solve all their crimes, and some say that even the Queen asks him for help when she has lost her TV remote control down the back of the sofa! You should go and visit him. I’m sure he’ll be able to help you.”

I took the address and immediately went to Baker Street on the underground. I took the Picadilly Line from Hammersmith, and changed at Green Park station, but the Jubille line was closed, so I had to get back on the Picadilly Line and then change at Leicester Square onto the Northern Line, but that was delayed due to engineering works and a signal failure at Waterloo station. But finally, after an hour an a half on the underground, I arrived at Baker Street. I found the address: Flat number 21b and knocked on the door. An elderly woman answered.

“Yes?” she said.

“Umm, hello, I’m here to get some help. A friend told me to come”

“Alright, come in then.”

We walked through into the hallway. I could smell pipe tobacco, and what sounded like a cat being murdered in the next room. Then I realised it was a violin being played, very badly.

The woman knocked on the door of the front room, and the violin stopped playing.

“There’s a man here to see you” “Yes, yes, I know” said a loud, commanding voice from inside the room. “Show him in Mrs Hudson, thank you”

Mrs Hudson stepped aside, and I walked into the room.

I immediately felt nervous and awkward. There, standing at the fireplace was a very unique looking man. He was tall and thin, and old. I’m not sure how old he was exactly. His hair was going grey, and his skin was wrinkled, but his eyes were bright and youthful. He could have been as old as 80, but he had the spirit of a much younger man.

He was wearing a brown suit, with a waistcoat, and long leather winter boots. In his hand, he was holding a Stradivarius violin, of very fine quality. On the mantelpiece next to him was a smoking pipe.

“Umm, my friend Smith recommended you. He said that you would be able to assist me” I said.

“Smith? Hmmm?” said the man. “And…?”

“Oh, and, well, the thing is, I need your help… it’s…”

“Well, what do you think Watson?” Said the man, quickly, and only then did I realise that there was a third person in the room. To my right, in a dark leather armchair, there was a red faced man, probably about 65 years old. He had a large brownish red moustache which covered his top lip. In his hand was a large glass of Brandy, and in his other hand, a cigarette. He seemed very comfortable, as if he had just woken up from a lovely sleep by the fire”

“Huh…? Oh, hello! How do you do?” he said, smiling at me and yawning.

“What do you think Watson?” Snapped the man with the violin.

“Oh, err… a student? Perhaps a waiter… erm… ah! An unemployed librarian!”

“No no no! Watson. Completely wrong! Don’t overcomplicate matters! Now, let me try…”

I stood there, feeling confused. The tall man looked at me. “Your name is Thompson, am I right?”

“Well, how on earth did you guess…?”

“Not a guess Mr Thompson… Not a guess… Allow me to demonstrate something for you, if I may”

I stood in silence. I was in the presence of a great mind, I could understand that now.

“Let me see…”

He looked me up and down for a second.

“I would say that you are an English teacher… of no more than 10 years experience, but no less than 5. Let’s say 8 and a half years.”

I was gobsmacked.

“You worked in the far east, didn’t you?” “In Japan?”

“yes! Yes I did!”

“Kanagawa prefecture?”

“Oh my god, yes!”

“Now, I suppose something happened to you, near the river, which you don’t understand, and you need answers, so your friend told you to come and see me so I could sort it all out for you, is that right?”
“Oh – My – GOD! How did you know…? It must be magic, or … a trick!”

“Alright, I’ll tell you” he said, with a bored look on his face.

“Using simple empirical methods of observation and deduction, the truth will almost always reveal itself to you as the most reasonable answer. You just look at the evidence, and think logically. Usually, the simple answer is the best.”

“Would you like a cup of tea? He might take a while” It was Mrs Hudson.

“Oh, yes please” “two sugars”…

The man continued… “One simple look at your hands revealed your occupation. Your nails are badly chewed and damaged. This must be due to stress. A common problem for any teacher, but especially one that has to deal with demanding students from different countries who all want to know about the difference between all the past perfect continuous passive conditional verb tenses, and adjectival noun phrases and reduced non defining relative participle clauses and such matters.” I looked at my fingers, he was right. The nails were a terrible mess… “I saw also that your hands are very dirty with blue and red ink. This must be from using whiteboard marker pens. You write on the board, and in your haste you make a mistake, and then quickly rub it off with your hand, hoping that no-one notices…”

“Umm, yes, that’s true.”

“That’s the evidence which told me that you must be an English teacher.”

“Wow!” I said

“Yes, that and the fact that you’re holding a copy of New Headway Upper Intermediate Teacher’s Book by Liz and John Soars, which kind of gave it away… oh, and Watson googled you before you arrived, but anyway… On your face I noticed wrinkles – around your mouth and eyes. This is from smiling all the time, to keep your students happy, is it not?”

“Yep. Well done. Right again”, I said, sipping my tea, getting a little impatient. “Umm, sorry but could you hurry up a bit? It’s just that this is going to be a really long podcast, and I don’t want anyone to stop listening…”

“Yes yes! I counted the wrinkles on your face, and estimated that since graduating from university, you have been smiling at students for exactly 8.5 years. Simple: Count the wrinkles on the face, divide by 5 (the average teaching hours per day) and the result: 8.5 years.”

“Fair enough” I said.

“And when you entered the room, you bowed slightly. This must be body language which you picked up while living in Japan.”

“Yep. Well done… very good”

I was getting annoyed and impatient. I gulped down my sugary tea.

“OK, you’ve convinced me, you’re a brilliant detective. Now, will you help me out please, Mr…?”

“It’s Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, and this is my companion, Dr Watson”

“Wow, it really is Sherlock Holmes”, I thought. “I’ve read so much about him, but I never thought he was real! And his faithful companion Dr Watson! Fantastic!” I looked again at Watson. He was fast asleep in his chair.

“WAKE UP WATSON!” shouted Holmes, throwing a chess piece at him. It bounced off Watson’s head, and he woke up suddenly, and smiled at me sleepily. “So, how can we help you then Mr Simpson?”

“It’s Thompson you fool!” Shouted Holmes quickly” “And we must hurry to the riverside in Hammersmith immediately! There’s another mystery to solve! Come Watson!”

“How did you know it was Hammersmith…?”
“Oh, never mind…” said Holmes.

The three of us jumped in a cab on Baker Street and drove to Hammersmith bridge. On the way there, I told Holmes about how I’d sat down by the river the night before, how it had been a full moon, how a green monster had nearly grabbed me, how I’d heard weird noises and seen a strange blue light and how I’d been saved by a mysterious man called The Doctor. When we arrived I took Holmes and Watson to the spot where everything had happened. A cold chill ran down my spine as I remembered it all again.

“This is where it happened Mr Holmes” I said.

“Excellent” Said Holmes, a magical light shining in his eyes. “Stand back! I shall investigate the area.”

“He always does this” Said Watson. “He’ll be busy for an hour or two I reckon.”

Holmes was bent over, studying the ground next to the river with a magnifying glass. Occasionally he stopped suddenly, and picked something up and placed it carefully in his pocket. He walked close to the water and looked in. He looked up at the sky and down at the river again. He sniffed the air with his big nose. He picked up a stone and dropped it into the water, and then went back to look at the steps where I had been sitting the night before.

Watson yawned, and said to me “There’s a pub over there, fancy a pint while Holmes does his investigation stuff?”

Watson pointed at a pub called The Black Lion. “Umm, alright. Yeah, why not!?” I replied.

“We’re just off for a pint in that pub” shouted Watson.

“Hmmm” said Holmes, as he studied some markings on the ground.

Watson and I sat in the pub next to the fire, and made small talk.

“So, you’re a doctor, are you?”

“Yes, that’s right”

“Hmm, that’s interesting…”

“Yeah, it’s alright, I suppose. Most of the time I just hang out with Holmes to be honest. Do a bit of writing. That sort of thing. It’s pretty boring really. I like a quiet life, you know?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. The man I met last night said he was a doctor. You don’t know who he is, do you?”

“A doctor? Doctor who?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t say his name. He just said ‘you can call me The Doctor…’ and then he disappeared. It’s really annoying…”

ly: ‘book antiqua’, palatino;”>Just then Holmes burst into the room.

“Come with me Watson, we must walk up the river bank and investigate the mud near the sewage outlet for evidence!”

“Umm, do we have to? I mean, why don’t we just stay here in the pub, and you go and look in the mud near the sewage outlet? How about that?” said Watson, sipping another pint of beer and warming his feet by the fire.

“Oh Watson, you stay here then, if you must. Your love of the local Chiswick ale will be the end of you Thompson, what about you? Fancy getting up to your knees in mud??”

“Erm, I think I’ll stay here with Watson actually, if that’s all right.”

“Fine, stay here, both of you! I shall return within one hour.”

59 minutes and 59 seconds later, Holmes returned. His leather boots were covered in brown mud, and he had a grim look on his face. He suddenly looked much older, and tired. I was a little bit worried about him.

< /p>

We took a cab back to Baker Street and Holmes remained quiet and moody for the whole journey. I stared out of the window and dreamed about the present perfect continous passive tense. Watson fell asleep.

When we got in, Mrs Hudson brought us some cake and Watson opened the drinks cabinet. “Brandy anyone?” he said, pouring himself a large glass.

Holmes ignored him, and sat in his chair, smoking his pipe.

For what felt like 2 hours, Watson drank brandy and nodded off by the fire, while Holmes sat silently in the chair surrounded by clouds of his own smoke, his face tight with concentration. The sun went down, and Holmes stayed in the chair, and his pipe smoke stretched outwards across the room, running along the ground and wrapping itself around my legs like claws. The moon shone in through the window, and I began to fall asleep.

Suddenly Holmes jumped out of his chair, a young man again. The room seemed brighter.

“THOMPSON! I have solved your mystery!” Shouted Holmes, confidently!

“Wow, that was quick!” I said. I looked over at Watson. He was fast asleep.

Holmes proceeded to walk around the room, rubbing his hands and laughing to himself.

“So! What’s it all about??” I asked, impatiently.

“I have read about cases such as this before Thompson, and I have been very much looking forward to having the opportunity of working on one myself. And this Doctor of yours… well, I never thought I would be lucky enough to…”

“To what?? I asked… just tell me what’s going on, please! This is going to be such a long podcast, and I’m really worried that all my listeners will be really bored, and they’ll stop listening, and, there’s not enough pedagogical content, and…”

“ENOUGH!” Shouted Holmes. “I will explain everything. You would be wise to listen carefully. I have looked at the evidence, which has been presented to me. There wasn’t much, but there was enough. First, you told me that this happened near the river. Inspection of the riverbank revealed several things to me.”

“I discovered some vital clues. I found two green hairs, which must have come from the ‘monster’ which you talked about. I checked the hairs, and they perfectly match hairs which have been discovered near the Thames before. They are hairs from a lunaris goblarmunas – a moon goblin!”
“Yes, I already know that! What the hell is a Moon Goblin!”

“Oh, it’s a monster which lives in the water, and which comes out when there’s a full moon to eat people. They worship the moon, and some people say that they are aliens which once lived on the moon, but they escaped to earth millions of years ago when the moon lost its atmosphere.”

“Oh, right… wow, I never knew about that. How did they travel to the earth, through space”

“Oh, err, well, they’re actually robots”

“Robots, what do you mean?”

“Oh never mind, it’s too difficult to explain…Yep, it’s true, there’s loads of them in the Thames. They’re responsible for a lot of stuff actually. The Queen knows all about it, so does the Prime Minister…”

“They do?”
“Yeah. Anyway, when I investigated the mud up the river, I noticed that there were lots of goblin footprints. They’re very active. In fact, there’s many more of them than I first thought. I will have to tell her majesty all about it. She will want to know.”

“I’m sure she will… Anyway, what about this Doctor guy…”

“Oh yes, while you and Watson were having such a lovely time in the pub, I inspected the area near where you were sitting last night. I found some very interesting scratches on the ground. They were blue scratches. They must have been caused by something very heavy, blue in colour, and square in shape.”

“What, like a big blue box?” I said.

“Exactly Thompson! Exactly!” I estimate that it was similar in size to a telephone box. It must have been there for a moment, and then it moved away quickly.

“So you’re telling me there was a big blue telephone box there one minute, and then the next minute it was gone?”
“Precisely”

“I also found some footprints near where the box had been. Those must have been the footprints of your Doctor. The size of the feet match the description you gave me. I also found this lying on the ground, near where the blue telephone box had been”

He showed me a silver ticket. It was a concert ticket, made of an amazing shiny material. It said “Prince Michael Jackson II – Live in Concert – Wembley Arena September 16^th 2021”

“Oh my god! Prince Michael II? That’s Michael Jackson’s son! But, how is this possible!? How can the doctor have a ticket for a concert from the future?”
“Let me explain. Look at the evidence. The goblins from space, the blue ‘telephone box’, the strange sound, the blue flash of light, the man who called himself the doctor who appeared and disappeared out of nowhere, the thing he pointed at that goblin, the special knowledge he had about the moon goblins, the ticket from the future. It all means one thing.”

“What!? What does it mean?!” I demanded.

Holmes stared at me with dark eyes. Watson snored in the corner of the room.

“There is no other answer. The Doctor you told me about. Well, he must be a Timelord.”

“What? Is that your answer? What the hell is a Timelord?” I asked him.

Holmes stood up, and said.

“If you want to find out, then YOU’LL HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE NEXT EPISODE OF LUKE’S ENGLISH PODCAST!!!!”

I sighed with frustration.

“Don’t worry Thompson.” Said Holmes. “I know an expert on Timelords, and he will tell you everything he knows about The Doctor. Just wait for the next episode of the podcast, and you’ll learn everything.”

I left 21B Baker Street wishing I had never gone there in the first place. Holmes wasn’t quite the brilliant man I thought he was, but I was still determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. I had managed to get some answers: The Doctor was a Time Lord who travelled around through space and time in a blue telephone box. That explained the strange light, the sound, and how The Doctor appeared and disappeared so quickly. But who was he really, where had he come from and what on earth was going on?”

With the address of the Timelord expert in my hand, I jumped on a number 27 bus towards Hammersmith, desperately hoping to get some final answers to this mystery, and silently hoping that none of my listeners got really bored with this stupid Sherlock Holmes story and stopped listening and decided to unsubscribe from Luke’s English Podcast because it’s gone a bit strange, and where are the phrasal verbs and idiomatic expressions that he said he would teach us…? I decided that I had to end this mystery as soon as possible, and then I could go back to teaching useful expressions and pronunciation… But before that, I was determined to find out about Timelords, and The Doctor… I arrived at the address, and went inside to meet the Timelord expert who Holmes had recommended…

To be continued…

: The Black Lion pub

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Luke’s ENGLISH Podcast

Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Category Archives: Transcripts

168. Please Vote! (and “stuff” like that)

Memory, Mnemonics & Learning English (How to Remember Vocabulary)

Characteristic sequence of letters

Letters of specific syllables in a word

Distinguishing between similar words

First letter mnemonics of spelling

164. Transcript Collaboration

153. The Talking Dog Story

London Olympics 2012

75. Not a Distraction!

71. The Ice Cream Episode

67. Cockney / London Accent

53. Discussing Grammar with My Brother

30. The Mystery Continues

Characteristic sequence of letters

Letters of specific syllables in a word

Distinguishing between similar words

First letter mnemonics of spelling

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