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361. Getting things off my chest! (Part 1) Brexit / Football

Here’s another episode about what’s going on in the UK at the moment – in politics and in football. I know I am talking about this subject a lot at the moment, but I just can’t help it – it’s too big. Too many things are happening! So there will be more Brexit & football in this episode and then it’ll be back to podcasting as usual. Oh and by the way there will be some swearing in this episode because I’ll be sharing some comments from some angry people online and generally there has been quite a lot of swearing and kicking of furniture all across the country since Friday – especially yesterday while watching England get knocked out of the Euros. Swearing is rarely appropriate – remember that. Only at the right time in the right place. E.g. when watching England play football, or while thinking for two seconds or more about the EU referendum. Also, another preface here – you’ll notice that I’m pretty unhappy about things at the moment, but don’t worry I’ll bounce back, and Luke’s English Podcast will continue with the usual sort of episodes soon. I just have to get some things off my chest about what’s been going on.

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Just a quick sponsorship mention before we go further. If you’re interested in learning about British History, for example you want to know about all the diverse origins of the British people and the story of our royal family and all the big moments that led us to the current modern state of affairs, why not download an audiobook from Audible with the special offer available to LEPsters. First of all – go to teacherluke.co.uk/audible to start a free trial with Audible – they produce and sell audiobooks on the internet. You can start a trial with them and it includes a free audiobook download. Why not download “British History for Dummies”? It’s a really detailed history of Britain, and it’s told in a really humorous way. THat’s “British History for Dummies” and there are other history books too. https://teacherluke.co.uk/audible or click an audible logo on my website.

Right, now let’s get stuck into this episode. Here’s a jingle. *Jingle plays*

The Word of the Moment: Turmoil

The word of the moment: turmoil (uncountable noun) = A state of great disturbance, confusion, or uncertainty. (Oxford dictionary online)
E.g. “the country was in turmoil”
+ examples from a Google news search.

Just in case it wasn’t enough for England to pull the UK out of the EU, England had to pull themselves out of the Euros as well. What a rubbish performance that was against Iceland. What on earth is wrong with our national team? In typical fashion we just got knocked out of another international football competition in the early stages. And you know what, I’m close to saying that I just don’t care any more. Why should I? I’m not proud of England. We didn’t show a lot of character. It wasn’t bad luck. We simply weren’t good enough. In fact I think part of the problem was that there was a lack of character on the pitch. Where was the fighting spirit? Where was the passion? Those players just kept waiting for someone else to provide the goods. Perhaps this is a result of them playing in the Premiership all season and essentially playing a supporting role to other players from abroad, who actually provide the end product in club games. So, I’m pretty pissed off about that, but you know what – I’m not going to waste any more time or energy on being annoyed about it. England just seem to be into pulling out of things at the moment. First it was Brexit, now this. I’m pretty sure the Brexit one is more important. Naturally, everyone has been making jokes about it – like “The Brexit is now finalised” or whatever. Fair enough – the joke is just begging to be made, so go ahead and make it. Now I suppose Wales will be the next ones to follow the referendum result with an exit from the Euros too.

I’ll talk more about the football in a bit.

More Brexit stuff Luke? Yes, I have to talk about this more! But normal podcasting will be resumed soon.

The main reason I wanted to record this episode today was just because I just wanted to publish something between the “Day after Brexit” and the one I’ve done about Muhammad Ali, because I did that one before the referendum happened – it’s recorded and ready to be published, then UK voted to leave and we ended up having this extraordinary situation unfolding every day – all this turmoil in the UK.

So feel like I can’t just upload this episode about Ali without just saying a few things in between.

It feels like everything relating to the Brexit situation is just so real and over the top at this moment that it has to be mentioned. Also there’s football to deal with.

In the last episode I pretty much told you what I thought about the result and my opinions haven’t changed much since then.
I was feeling a little bit shell shocked and tired when I recorded that.
I’m in a better mood today.
I still think the situation is a mess and I am still angry about it.
There have been a few developments and I’m going to talk about them later in this episode.
I think it is absolutely fascinating what’s going on.
It’s almost impossibly complex. Just understanding the referendum result and how it happened is one thing, understanding what’s going to happen next is another thing, and then putting this into the context of European events and then world events is another story too.
It’s just huge and I feel like I could spend all my time at the moment either reading about this, watching video interviews on the subject and talking about it on my podcast.
Obviously, I can’t do that.
So I just wanted to say that I will continue to talk about Brexit here from time to time but not in every single episode of course.
Life goes on and as ever there are loads of other things to cover, language areas to explore, games to be played with Amber and Paul, guests to interview and all sorts of other things.
This podcast will continue to look at the culture of the English language and that involves the UK’s place in the world.
At the moment that does include Brexit.
So to sum up – normal podcasting will resume soon, with the Muhammad Ali episode.
But before that I’m going to talk in this episode about some more UK news including the political situation and some football.

Comments

Thank you for recent comments. I have enjoyed reading your responses. The vast majority have been respectfully and thoughtfully articulated.
Like I’ve said before I do welcome all opinions and I encourage you to develop your arguments.
I just ask you to be respectful in your comments.
As the webmaster of my website I do reserve the right to moderate or remove comments which I consider to be inappropriate and that includes content which I consider to be unacceptable – mainly because of hateful comments.
This doesn’t mean I am against different opinions, on the contrary. I am always ready to read differing points of view.
But I won’t tolerate hate speech in the comment section.
Saying that, it very rarely happens on my website.
By and large LEPsters are thoughtful, respectful and peaceful people.
That’s what it means to be a LEPster. Of course, you’re also interested in learning real British English and having a laugh or two in the process, just to take the edge off. But it seems that we are united by a certain outlook, which is a generally positive celebration of our differences and an understanding that we’re all basically the same underneath the cultural codes and political distinctions. We can disagree with each other and we should listen to each other.
And there’s no place for hate-filled comments.
If you’ve got a point to make, go ahead and do it.
But if you resort to name calling, insults or old fashioned smelly old racism.
Leave your comments elsewhere.
This is my house and I’m not putting up with that kind of nonsense.

The Democratic Process

I understand that it was part of the democratic process. A lot of people have been expressing their dissatisfaction about the result, and the standard response to that is “Stop complaining about the result. You’re just being a bad loser. You have to accept it as part of the democratic process.” But as Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons in 1947:
“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

So democracy is the least bad of our options. It certainly is not perfect.

Now, the referendum decision was part of the democratic process, but that doesn’t mean it was the right decision and I am well within my rights to express my dissatisfaction about it. That is part of democracy too.
I think the reaction to the result from the people who campaigned to leave has been quite muted.
Even the right-wing press that supported the leave are running stories about the turmoil that the country is experiencing as a result. It’s unescapable. It’s obvious that this result has suddenly put the country in a crisis situation.
The economy is crashing. The pound has plummeted to its lowest level since 1985. The AAA credit rating has been lost. Britain is immediately worse-off than it was last week.
It’s not just the economy.
There have been lots of reports of racist abuse against foreigners in the street, which show that the result has given a big boost to general intolerance the UK. It’s like a big thumbs up to racists everywhere. Not everyone who voted leave is racist of course – definitely not, but racists in society will be feeling like this is a victory and they’ll feel legitimised by the whole thing. I imagine they now feel it’s acceptable to be outwardly hostile to foreigners, regardless of whether they are EU citizens or not.

If you need to be convinced, here’s some evidence from Twitter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/racist-incidents-skyrocket-after-brexit-vote_us_57713b71e4b0f168323a16df

Let’s be clear – comparing people to vermin (rats) or cockroaches is an extremely dangerous thing to do. As soon as people are considered less than human, their rights are considered less than human and then they get treated as less than human, and the next step is that people will not feel bad about abusing those people. It has happened time and time again in the past. Comparing people to rats or cockroaches should be a massive red flag and is never acceptable.

There’s always been some racist people like that in the UK, like in every country – but now they feel they have the backing of the whole country, and it’s a real danger. That’s in London, which is supposed to be a progressive and multicultural place, which voted to remain in the EU. There have been many many more reports too and I am sure that in some communities today it is not easy to be a foreigner of any origin.

All of this is not just difficult and dangerous for individuals, it is also making the whole country look very bad indeed and it makes me feel ashamed. What has just happened to my country? It appears that the leave campaign has “taken our country back” and just given it to the worst people.

Trump

Americans must be delighted at the moment – not because they wanted to see the UK out of Europe, but just because the USA is no longer the world’s dumbest country. Apparently the UK is the Mr Bean of the world at the moment, until November of course because that’s when the US elections are happening and we’ll see what they choose. If the USA elects Trump all eyes will be on them and they’ll be back in pole position again.

Speaking of Trump – this is quite funny. Soon after the result happened, Trump arrived in the UK – because you know, he has to be where the attention is. It’s all part of his publicity. Also he was supporting the Leave campaign because it sort of fits in with his anti-immigration positions. So he went to the UK in order to celebrate. He usually goes to Scotland because he owns land there. But he made a stupid mistake on Twitter.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-am-learning-so-much-cool-slang?utm_term=.sf6rlem5zJ#.xhRNRbVlg7

#regrexit #bregret – Regrets

Lots of people are expressing their regret about voting leave. In fact #bregret and #regrexit have been a trending hashtags on twitter. Also, according to google trends, the biggest search criteria immediately after the referendum were questions about the EU – like “What is the EU?” and “What happens if the UK leaves?” It seems a lot of people left it a bit too late to ask those questions.

It seems that people didn’t quite realise what they were voting for, or didn’t realise that they had a chance of actually getting a leave result.
A lot of people seemed to think that “leave” were the underdogs in the whole situation, and didn’t have a genuine chance of winning, and that their vote wouldn’t make a difference and would just be considered as a protest.

Anger

I’m angry with the leave campaign – all those Brexiteers who campaigned for us to leave.
I think they mislead people. They made empty promises they couldn’t keep even when they must have known they couldn’t keep those promises, and that leaving the EU would put so many things in jeopardy.
In fact now those who argued for Leave are actively distancing themselves from the things they said and the promises they made during the campaign.
It’s now blatantly obvious that they never even had a post-Brexit plan. They’re now doing U-turns on many of the biggest promises they made, e.g. that £350 million a week will go to the NHS, that migration will be controlled.

How the hell did these people win? They played upon people’s insecurities and prejudices, suggesting that all our problems are the result of being part of the EU and that leaving the EU would magically make everything alright again. It’s just wrong and we’re obviously now facing years of continued turmoil.

I’m going to come back to those broken promises and u-turns in a bit.

Scotland are likely to leave the UK. The SNP is now pushing hard to get another independence referendum, and they’ve got a very good case to get one. They clearly showed that they don’t want to be part of a UK that is separate from the EU.

The Leave campaign argued that we should “Take back control of our country”. They said we should do it for Britain – they put Britain first. But the country is now in turmoil as nobody knows what to do next, our Prime Minister has quit and we don’t know who is going to take over, the opposition is completely falling apart because of lack of confidence in the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – loads of Labour MPs have quit in protest at his leadership – they believe he is not the man to lead the party through this next period because he failed to defend the remain vote and doesn’t appear to feel strongly about the EU, the economy is crashing – the UK just lost it’s AAA credit rating – which is a disaster, the Union looks like it is going to break up and nobody has a plan for what to do next, the UK is now the darling of all the right-wing movements in the EU, and people are now being openly racist in the streets. Congratulations guys. All our worst nightmares have come at once.

Brexiteers are saying “Don’t overreport the negative aspects” and “At least we’re free”. There’s no over reporting going on, just reporting. There’s no need to put a negative spin on these events – just say it like it is. It’s undeniably bad all round. It could take decades for the country to get back to the stable position it had before this referendum. And “At least we’re free” – we’re not free. We’re now far more compromised than we were before. We’re weaker than before and we’re worse off than before. The other argument is – well, when the EU crashes at least we will be on the outside. If the EU crashes it will be bad for everyone, us included.

The Leave campaign presented an ideological and emotional argument which was full of misleading propaganda and mistruths.

Let’s have a look at some of the things they promised which they can’t or won’t deliver. This is from a comment on episode 359 by a LEPster who is ironically called Boris:

Promises of the Leave Campaign

Here are  the promises of the vote leave campaign. I think It was a big mistake leaving the EU.

Source: Indy100 “8 of the most misleading promises of the Vote Leave campaign, ranked in order of preposterousness” http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/8-of-the-most-misleading-promises-of-the-vote-leave-campaign-ranked-in-order-of-preposterousness–WyxD59VO3Nb

1. We aren’t going to see a fall in immigration levels

No one in the Leave campaign actually gave any target figures, at any time, ever. Conservative MEP Dan Hannan has already said this morning that people expecting immigration to come down will be “disappointed”.

Here is Daniel Hannan on the BBC programme Newsnight, effectively saying that the UK will probably have to stay in the single market and that obviously means that immigration is going to stay the same. Remember that this guy was one of the most vocal proponents for the leave campaign, which used immigration as one of the principle arguments for leaving.

2. We aren’t going to save £350m a week

The Leave campaign claim that the UK gives £350m a week to the EU has been thoroughly debunked. (First of all the figure was not true, and secondly Nigel Farage said just hours after the result came in that it was a mistake to make that claim – Boris Johnson travelled around the UK for weeks before the referendum in a bus – and on the side of the bus it said “We send the EU 350 million a week, lets fund the NHS instead.” He also made public appearances campaigning for Leave in front of a poster which said “Let’s give our NHS the 350 million the EU takes every week.” They have no intention of funding the NHS. These far-right tories have never cared about the National Health Service. Why did anyone believe they would be any different? You can’t lie in business or in advertising. That’s not allowed. It’s criminal. It’s called false advertising. But there’s no law to say you can’t lie in political campaigns. They’re not going to be held accountable for that, even though it’s a gross deception of the public’s trust. Oddly enough the leave campaign have now wiped their campaign website, which contained all those statements about giving EU contributions to the NHS. They’ve been wiped. I wonder why. Why would they remove all their promises?

Listen to Nigel Farage just a few hours after the results came in. This is him on breakfast TV. He was part of the leave campaign which made that promise. Listen to him being questioned on this ITV programme. He admits that it was a mistake to make that promise. When pressed on the issue he just goes back to saying how the UK now has this extra money, despite the fact that in just a couple of days British stocks lost £125 billion after Brexit – £125 billion pounds of value lost, which is equivalent to 15 years worth of EU contributions, as a direct result of leave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0ktojE6WQA

Farage’s claims about how we now have a “featherbed” as he calls it of extra money – a “featherbed”. It’s just not true, and he can’t stop the rhetoric. The arrogance, stubbornness and lack of responsibility of this man is astounding.

Now, his party – UKIP, had one aim – independence from Europe. Now, they’ve achieved it. They’ve got independence. So they can now go away, can’t they. Job done. Go home and don’t come back Nigel. What are you still doing here? You got what you wanted? Your party is no longer necessary. Go away.

End of Part 1

That’s the end of part 1! I hope you’re enjoying this rant – it actually feels pretty good to get stuff of my chest like this. In part 2 I’ll talk about the rest of the promises made by the leave campaign, then I’ll talk about the reasons people voted for ‘leave’, I’ll also tackle the tricky subject of immigration in more detail and then there will be some commentary and jokes about the shameful England football team.

Thanks for listening!

Luke

359. BREXIT JOKES / EU REFERENDUM NIGHT

It’s referendum night and I’ve decided to share my stand-up comedy material about the EU referendum in this episode, because after today I might not be able to use these jokes ever again! This works much better in front of a live audience of course – so you’ll have to imagine that! Anyway, I hope you enjoy listening to some of my ‘jokes’ and humorous comments about this big moment in UK history. By the way, when I recorded this I didn’t know the result of the referendum. I expect that when you listen to this you’ll know if the UK has voted to leave or remain. in any case: I hope you enjoy this stuff!

[DOWNLOAD]

I was invited onto Craig Wealand’s weekly Blab, and we talked about comedy [VIDEO]

Last week I joined Craig Wealand on his weekly Blab with some of his regular listeners. Every week Craig has a 1 hour Blab in which he invites podcast listeners, students and anyone else to chat with him about different subjects. It’s a very friendly atmosphere, anyone can get involved and it’s a good way for people to practice their English in a low-stress environment. This time the subject was comedy and Craig invited me into the conversation. If you like, you can check out the video of the conversation below. Cheers! Luke

267. Earthquake in Nepal + other news

I’ve taken a break from exam marking to record this episode rather quickly. You’ll probably hear some noises in the background, including my wife making lunch. She’s making smoothies too. I’m a lucky guy.

[DOWNLOAD]
This episode is mainly about the recent earthquake in Nepal, but I’m also going to mention a couple of other news stories that are worth talking about, including the UK’s general election which is happening at the end of next week, and the fact that Kate Middleton has just given birth to a baby girl. It’s all over the internet and on TV now – but how important is it really, considering so many people’s lives are in jeopardy in Nepal at the moment?

The Earthquake in Nepal
As I hope you’re already aware, recently there was a very big earthquake in Nepal, near Katmandu, the capital. Thousands of people (I think about 5,000) are confirmed dead, and thousands more are missing. It’s a big disaster.

I’m going to describe the story a bit (in case you don’t already know the details), let you know of a way to help the rescue workers there, talk a bit about earthquakes, and also about Nepal and its relationship to the UK, focusing especially on the people known as the Ghurkas.

Sadly, tragic events happen around the world all the time. This includes large scale violence of any kind – terrorist, military or whatever you want to call it, but also disasters like the recent sinking of a boat full of emigrants from Libya, and now a huge earthquake in Nepal. I don’t mention every bad thing that happens in the news on my podcast. It’s not necessarily my job to highlight these things. It’s not normally the focus of my episodes of course, but today I felt moved to record something on this topic, because of the scale of the event, the opportunity to help in any way and because I received a message from a Nepalese listener to this podcast, who reached out to me, politely asking if I would mention it in an episode. Seeing the news reports about this natural disaster, and reading the message from a listener was enough to push me to say something about it on the podcast.

Please consider donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee
Sometimes I suggest that you donate to my podcast to help me keep doing it, but of course today I’d like to say please do not donate to me and instead consider donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee, who are helping to deliver relief to the areas which are badly affected by this earthquake. You can do that by visiting http://www.dec.org.uk. It’s easy to do it. 5,000 people are already dead, and this number could reach 10,000 according to some estimates. That means that this follow up period is vital. They need resources for the rescue work, the treatment of injured people and all the other vital aid that can be given there. The disaster is ongoing because of the damage to buildings, the aftershocks (other smaller earthquakes) and all the injuries and loss of food and shelter. It might seem like a small contribution from you, but even a little donation could make a big difference to people who have no resources or basic services. Of course, it’s completely up to you. But you could make a difference. http://www.dec.org.uk

Here’s the message I received today
Hi Luke,
What’s been going on?
I am Sagar Bhandari from Nepal and recently in Australia as a student. I am a regular lepster. I have been listening to your podcast for about a year but I have managed to get through every episode including the phrasal verb podcast as well. So I am proud to say the fact that I had the guts to write you, is due to you. Today the fact that I can write this much of english is all your contribution. To be honest you really egged me on.

We all know that Nepal is now suffering from a devastating earthquake which even took the life of more than 5000 people, and the death toll is rising all the time. On this very sad moment I feel guilty about not being in my country but also didn’t give up on listening to the jokes episodes. So I am not going to request you to raise a donation or fund regarding the disaster but I am hoping to listen a episode about disasters like earthquakes, which you can relate to the recent quake in Nepal. I am also known about UK is also with us, as David Cameron said he would help us. Also it would be fruitful if we listeners can listen to an episode about earthquakes, their history, impacts, and how to be aware of them.

Ok that was a trendy news but also i was thinking you to write about the GURKHAS who are serving your Nation from 200 years ago. You might know that Gurkhas are also the people from Himalayan regiom of Nepal. So the relation between Nepal and UK started from 200 years ago. I also would like to listen about the episode about the Gurkhas as it was a great topic in UK once about their residency.

So please if you could manage to do some research and brainstorming about those topics and could make an episode, we all listeners would love to listen it in authentic British English.
Thanks

Regards,
Sagar Bhandari
Nepal

What happened in the Nepalese earthquake?
Here are details from Nature.com – it’s a clear and concise summary http://www.nature.com/news/major-earthquake-hits-nepal-1.17413

How to donate money to help the people affected by the earthquake
Please consider donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee

In other news
The UK is having a general election. It’s a huge subject which I would absolutely love to cover in proper detail on Luke’s English Podcast, but I’m not sure I have the time! In a nutshell, it’s extremely close, and we’re probably going to have a coalition government – but between who and who? It’s quite clear that UK politics is moving away from the traditional two party system, into a more fragmented and pluralised system with lots of candidates from different parties representing the views of not just different political positions, but also the views of people from different regions.
The main issues are:
– Labour and Conservatives are very close, but neither will get a majority. That means they both might be in a position to form a coalition with another party, but with who?
– The SNP have loads of support in Scotland after the independence movement involved lots of the Scottish people in their politics. The SNP are in a position to have a big influence over UK politics now – either in coalition, or just with a significant presence in the house of commons. They’ll be able to influence laws.
– Some people in England are worried about the influence of so many Scottish MPs on English law.
– UKIP – the anti-immigration and anti-EU party might get more seats in commons, and there’s a chance they’ll form a coalition with Conservatives. How would this affect Conservative policy, especially on Europe?
– If David Cameron gets into power again, the UK will have a referendum on EU. If we vote to get out of the EU, that would be a massive change to the UK.
– I was interviewed on TV about this on Thursday – completely by surprise! I was invited on the show just 2 hours before it was broadcast live. That was fun!

The Royal Baby
– Kate just gave birth to a daughter. We don’t know the name yet. It’s a princess though.
– The TV is full of images of patriotic Brits and tourists outside Buckingham Palace.
– I’m always disappointed to see on French TV that they always interview the slightly crazy people who dress in union jack clothing and sit outside the hospital for days. They’re not normal English people! It just confirms a stereotype that we’re all eccentric passionate monarchists, which is only partly true.
– Ultimately, how important is this story? Perhaps it makes people feel better, but shouldn’t we focus attention on the more serious things going on?

On that note, please consider donating to the Disasters Emergency Committee

That’s it for this episode. Thanks again for your feedback. I recently added a feedback form on my website. I’ve asked my listeners questions. I value your feedback very much. I want to know what you like about LEP, and what changes you’d like me to make. I can’t guarantee to make all those changes, but it’s helpful for me to be able to keep LEP as relevant to you as possible, while also ultimately, being the one who decides exactly what goes into these episodes. You can find the form in the CONTACT section of the main menu of teacherluke.co.uk.

That’s it. Watch out for more episodes in the near future!

http://www.dec.org.uk

Luke’s Interview on InglesPodcast

Hi listeners!

I’m still seriously busy at the moment and I haven’t had time to record and upload episodes of LEP, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I hope you’re still managing to be patient during this period and I promise that new episodes will arrive soon.

In the meantime, check this out:

Last week I was interviewed for half an hour by Craig Wealand, an English teacher and podcaster based in Spain. His website is called La Mansión del Inglés. It’s mainly for Spanish learners of English. They feature interviews with interesting people, and Craig considered me to be sufficiently interesting to be interviewed. You can listen to the interview below.
Click here to listen to Luke’s interview on InglesPodcast.com. You can also find a vocabulary list and short quiz.

I hope you like the interview, and that it helps you wait for the next full episode of LEP – coming soon!

All the best,
Luke

237. OPP: Other People’s Podcasts (Part 2)

Part 2 of my top 10 list of podcasts that I listen to regularly and which I would like to share with you. [Download]

Small Donate ButtonThis episode is not about podcasts for learners of English. It’s also not about podcasts made by LEPsters. It’s just some podcasts that I love to listen to and that I’d like to share with you.

They aren’t for learners of English specifically. This could mean they’re hard to understand for you. However – it could be really good for you to at least try listening to one of these podcasts and see if they click with you. It could be really good for your English, especially if there’s one that really grabs your attention.
Click here for part 1 of this episode.
5. The Bugle (UK)tumblr_static_bugle_logo
This is a satirical news-based comedy podcast. The show is presented by stand-up comedians Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver. Andy is based in London and is one of the country’s top satirical comedians. He specialises in puns, which are word jokes. Often he goes off on a whole series of puns based on a certain topic. John Oliver is based in The USA (you might have seen him on The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight). With Andy in London and John in NYC they tend to focus on the big political news events of the moment and they generally take the view that many of those world events are ridiculous, especially the hypocrisy of politicians and the questionable actions of world leaders. They also take a pop at smaller events in the news. Mainly they use politics and news as a starting point for comedy. Andy has quite a surreal take on issues and John Oliver has a slightly hysterical approach as an Englishman living in one of the craziest countries in the world, USA. I find their podcast hilarious and it regularly has me laughing out loud on the Paris metro, and then embarrassingly realising that other people are looking at me like a weirdo.
Listen to: Scottish Referendum.

cover170x1704. The Smartest Man in the World (USA)
Greg Proops is amazing. He’s a stand-up comedian (of course he is!) with an incredible talent for improvisation. In the 90s he became famous for being on a show called “Whose Line is it Anyway?” which was a fantastic improv comedy show. These descriptions don’t really do him justice though, because you might just think, oh another stand-up comedian, great. Well, Greg Proops is also a voraciously intelligent commentator. He’s a scathing satirist. A left-leaning libertarian (if such a thing is possible) with little patience with the agenda of most of our world leaders or heads of corporations. He’s incredibly well-read, has fantastic taste in music, and uses a wickedly articulate and broad range of vocabulary. In fact, he wields words rather like a beat poet, and his podcast is an intoxicating mix of improvised comedy, biting satire, beat poetry, ranting and raving about the state of the world, movie-related banter, anecdotes, drug stories and so many other things. His podcasts are almost always recorded live, in various places around the world. I recently saw him recording a podcast in Paris and it was just amazing to see him there in person, recording an episode of the podcast, responding to questions from the audience, dissecting current events in the newspapers, ranting about the NSA and generally being the awesome and immaculately dressed dude that he is. Greg for me, as well as being a top-class entertainer, is also a raconteur and by that I mean that he is a person who tells anecdotes in such a funny and articulate way that he’s raised it to the level of performance art. He manages to evoke the spirit of America’s greatest writers, actors and poets from some golden age of Hollwood in the 1930s, 40s or 50s. His podcast is one which you should listen to at night, with a glass of something to drink and maybe a pipe a jazz cigarette or something. Typically Greg drinks vodka during recordings of his podcast and yet his mind always stays clear and incisive. Greg Proops is a classy dude and he is definitely worth listening to. However, you might find him hard to follow because he does speak very fast, with quite a strong Californian accent, and he makes lots of specific cultural references you might not be familiar with, and he is also very verbose – he uses lots of big words. If that’s your sort of thing, you should definitely check out his podcast.
Listen to: The beginning of an episode – Reds
America is England’s Fault (talking to an audience in Australia)

51o5s-S7gVL3. The Ricky Gervais Podcast (UK)
This was the first really big podcast – when it was regularly being uploaded it was the most downloaded podcast in the world at one point. It came out probably about 10 years ago and it is still available but you now have to purchase the archives on iTunes or maybe on Audiable.com for just a couple of pounds per season. It’s not a lot and it’s worth it. I used to listen to this back in my kitchen in Ealing, West London while I was doing my cooking and it used to make me laugh out loud every time. The Ricky Gervais Show is not really recorded any more but it is still a classic podcast. The set-up is simple really. It’s Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. Ricky and Steve are well known comedians and writers. They won awards for their show “The Office” and they’re generally considered to be top-level comic talent. Karl Pilkington is just a bloke. He’s a really ordinary, average working class bloke from Manchester. He’s not very well educated. He’s not a sophisticated guy, but he is perhaps one of the funniest people I’ve ever heard – but he’s not really trying to be funny. He seems to just be quite serious most of the time, and yet the things he says are brilliantly straight-forward and simple minded while also being incredibly funny. It’s like seeing into the mind of an idiot, but it’s more than that because Karl often has such a simple view on things that he’s quite hard to argue with. His common sense might be ill informed, but it’s got an undeniable sense of simple logic about it. Often he’s completely wrong about things, but you can understand why he has those views. He’s also slightly obsessed by certain topics, like stories of monkeys acting like humans, or insects which he’s discovered in his daily life, or stories of tribes in remote parts of the world. Generally what happens is that Ricky and Steve start talking about something and then they ask Karl what he thinks. Then Karl gives his view and it provokes hysterical responses from Ricky and Steve, who berate him for being an idiot while arguing with his stupid ideas. It sounds a little cruel at times, as if Ricky and Steve are bullying Karl – but really this is just the way male friends in England talk to each other. We often take the piss out of each other and argue, but really we’re close friends. You can see that the relationship between these three is actually very close and that Ricky and Steve really love Karl but they’re also amazed by his thought processes. Karl used to be a technician or producer on Ricky’s radio show but because of the podcast he’s become a successful travel writer and TV presenter in his own right now.
Listen to: The first episode of the Ricky Gervais Show.

WTF_with_Marc_Maron2. WTF with Marc Maron (USA)
Surprise Surprise, Marc Maron is a stand-up comedian! His podcast, called WTF is one of the biggest podcasts on the internet. Basically, the show is hosted by Marc in his own garage. Marc is a sort of washed up comedian with all kinds of personal issues, neuroses, addictions and psychological hang-ups. he originally started his podcast about 6 years ago when his career was on the rocks. At that time his marriage had ended in divorce, he was recovering from drug and alcohol addictions, and his anti-social behaviour and neurotic attitude had caused his career to nosedive into the ground. His friends (including Louis CK) were finally achieving the success they’d been working for, but Marc was broke, paranoid and on his own. Then he started the podcast with the aim of trying to work out what the fuck was wrong with him, and what the fuck was going on. He’s remarkably open, sincere and frank on the podcast, talking in great detail about his personal feelings and problems. Sometimes it feels like he’s complaining and moaning in a very self indulgent way, but I have to admit that it’s one of the most engaging podcasts I listen to. It’s really raw, real and gripping and I find that I learn all kinds of things about the human condition from listening to it. No other interview show or podcast goes so deep into feelings, motivations and choices. In each episode he talks about his life for about 15 minutes, including difficult choices, damaged relationships or just anecdotes about social situations he’s found himself in. Then he invites a guest on the show, usually a comedian, actor or musician, and talks to them about their whole career, dealing with their whole life story really. The thing is, Marc is an excellent interviewer and he has a particular talent for engaging with his guests in a very honest and open way. His interviews are really revealing, and he gets under the skin of his guests brilliantly. Sometimes he’s so close to the bone that the interviews are quite uncomfortable and awkward, even confrontational, as Marc attempts to challenge his guests to explain themselves and answer their critics and so on. The result is a really fascinating listening experience, which can be amusing, revealing and touching. It’s also particularly inspiring for me because Marc has rebuilt his career on the back of the success of his podcast. In fact, the podcast has completely revived him as a stand-up and now he has his own TV show, he has successful books published and he regularly sells out theatres for his one man comedy performances. It just proves to me that podcasts are a really valuable and valid form of media communication – just as valid as traditional forms like radio or television.
Listen to: Episode 500 – from 1:16

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo1. Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo’s Film Review (UK)
This is my favourite podcast and the one which I have been listening to for the longest time. I first started downloading this podcast back in 2006 but I’ve been listening to Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo talk about films on BBC radio for many years. Mark used to be the film reviewer on radio 1 in the 1990s and Simon has been on the radio for even longer than that.
There are several great things about this podcast. One of them is the interplay between Simon and Mark. Mark Kermode is a very well-respected and highly qualified film critic. He’s an academic, he’s written books and made documentaries about films and he really knows what he’s talking about. He can be a bit pretentious and annoying, but really we love him because he has strong beliefs, and a genuine passion for films. In fact, his principles (which are sort of left-wing really) are what guide his approach to movie reviews. He tends to passionately rant about the films he loves and hates, speaking very quickly, using all kinds of imagery, stubbornly arguing against big-budget brainless Hollywood films like Transformers or Sex In The City. He often gets very angry and worked up about films he’s reviewing – going on and on in a very amusing way about exactly what is so awful about a certain film he’s seen. Simon on the other hand is the calm voice of the ordinary man. He is a reasonable guy who doesn’t get so hysterical about films and this provides a really great counterpoint to Mark’s obsessional approach to his film reviews. Mark gets angry, Simon stays calm. Mark passionately hates a film, Simon then says that he quite enjoyed it, and Mark nearly explodes! They argue, they bicker, and they regularly witter on about nothing in particular. In fact, this is is a podcast about films, but it’s not really about films, it’s about everything really, but the subject of movies is what holds the show together. Mark and Simon complement each other perfectly. They have slightly differing world-views, but they also have a lot of things in common – their age, the fact that they have families and so on. Although they argue and pick on each other, they clearly have a lot of affection for each other. Ultimately, this is a heart warming listening experience which also teaches you lots of things about movies. Highlights for me are the running jokes, the emails from listeners, and Mark’s epic rants about films that he hates. The podcast is available on the BBC and is uploaded every week. I highly recommend it – but it’s just my own personal choice. It’s one of the most popular podcasts in the UK. It’s recorded while they do their radio show, then edited and uploaded immediately after the show is broadcast on BBC 5 Live.
Listen to: One of Mark’s epic rants. (Pirates of the Caribbean)

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A Letter to My Listeners

This letter was written in April 2014.

Dear All,

There’s no audio associated with this post. It’s just a letter written to you. I do this sometimes if I’m unable to record and upload audio podcasts, usually because I’m too busy or I’m sick. In this case it’s a bit of both. I have been suffering from a sore throat which has affected my voice, so I’m giving it a rest at the moment to let it get better. That’s why I haven’t recorded any episodes recently. I’m also snowed under with plenty of work. Exam time at the university has begun, which means I’ve been preparing a challenging test for my students, and starting tomorrow I’ll have hundreds of papers to mark. That’s going to take up a lot of time! Also, I’m writing a course for a summer school in Oxford. They are running a business English course for young learners, and I’m developing it. I’m just putting together the final parts of the course now, but I have a very strict deadline which I must respect, so next week I’ll be working on that a lot. It’s really hard to focus, especially when I get easily distracted by the internet!

Four big milestones are approaching for L.E.P. In a couple of months, this website will have received 1,000,000 views, the podcast will have been listened to over 1,000,000 times since November 2013, I will have received 5,000 likes on Facebook, and L.E.P. will have passed its 5th birthday. What a combination! I must celebrate all this somehow. I’m thinking of launching a competition to celebrate the 5th birthday. Briefly, I would like to invite listeners to contribute some audio which I can share on the podcast. It’ll be similar to the last competition I did in 2012, but with a twist. Watch this space for more information!

I’m going on holiday to New York at the end of next week. We’ve been preparing this for ages and I’m really excited about it. It’s going to be amazing to explore one of the most vibrant and famous cities in the world, and to get immersed in American culture for a few days. I really want to check out the famous sights, but also sample some of New York/America’s great cultural heritage – jazz music, stand-up comedy and comic books. I will do a podcast about the trip – perhaps recorded there (which would be cool if I have the time) or a summary of the experience when I get back. Either way, I’ll share it with you and make a podcast episode out of it.

I might be a bit quiet for the next few weeks, but I haven’t disappeared. Keep refreshing your iTunes subscription, check your RSS feeds, come back to this website from time to time, have a look at my Facebook page – because new stuff will pop up before too long ;) Also, watch out for easter eggs on this website…

Luke’s English Podcast is going stronger than ever, and it’s largely thanks to you – my listeners – for keeping up with it, downloading it, sharing it with your friends, recommending it, sending donations, commenting with your thoughts and generally being awesome fans. I still plan to take this podcast to the next level. People sometimes write to me with advice on how I can do that (for example, tips on website development, social networking, sponsorship programmes, e-book publishing, shopping cart e-business, Google adwords etc) and I appreciate all that advice very much, even if I don’t follow it immediately. I do intend to build the podcast to a more professional level, it’s just a question of time management, and I’m getting married next year (boom! newsflash!) and we all know how much time and organisation that involves! (I don’t normally talk about my girlfriend/fiancee on the podcast, because I would prefer to keep some aspects of my personal life private – I’m sure you understand!)

Ultimately I’m super proud to be a podcaster and to have a really cool audience of listeners. If I can take it to a higher level, I will, but even if I simply continue to do L.E.P as I do now, it will continue to be an amazing experience.

I’ve got loads of ideas for future episodes up my sleeve. I have to finish the series on slang, I’m preparing something on connected speech & verb tenses, I’d like to continue introducing you to bits of great British comedy, specific episodes about the English language, accents, and more). Also, I want to do as many phrasal verb episodes as I can this year, so that project is alive – it’s just on hold at the moment.

Hi! Well done for reading this far! I expect a lot of people didn’t get to this point, so I’d like to just take this opportunity to thank you and congratulate you! Thanks & congrats!

In fact, that’s pretty much it. Ideally, this letter would end with a profoundly emotional conclusion, but all I can think of at this moment is just to say: Thanks for reading this letter, a new episode of the podcast will be uploaded before too long, but for now, it’s bye bye bye bye bye…

Luke

174. How to Learn English with Luke’s English Podcast

This episode contains lots of ideas, advice and suggestions for ways of improving your listening, reading, writing and speaking using Luke’s English Podcast. A transcript is available below. ;)

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This should be a useful episode. I’m going to go through a whole bunch of ways that you can improve your English with Luke’s English Podcast. You’ll find a list of these points on my website. I’m going to expand on them here.

I’ll be talking about key areas: listening, reading, writing, speaking, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and discourse. Much of what I’m saying is written on my website. Just find the episode called “How to Learn English with Luke’s English Podcast”. I’ve written a lot of this down because it contains lots of specific bits of information which I wanted to make sure I included. I try not to do too many episodes in which I read things to you. I promise that the next one will be unscripted. Anyway, I’ll do my best to make this sound as natural as possible, which is an art in itself. Actually, you could use this script to help you practise your pronunciation, you could record yourself reading this too, and compare it to my version. What are the differences in your version and mine? What can you learn from that? Record yourself doing it again, and compare that to your first attempt. It’s bound to sound a lot better. In fact, I guarantee that you’ll sound more natural and convincing with each attempt. More on that later.

For now, here is a list of tips and advice for learning English with LEP. ;)

Just listen
First of all, you don’t really have to do much more than just listen to the episodes. I realised some time ago that a lot of the students of English that I met at school in London did not listen to enough authentic English. They were willing to spend money and travel across the world in order to improve their English, and yet most of them, for some reason, were not prepared to take a bit of time every day to listen to something in English. Why? I think partly this is because they didn’t know what to listen to. A lot of people watch TV and movies in English. Fine. But honestly, that might not be the best way to improve your English. Film is very visual. A lot of what you understand from a movie is the visual storytelling. It’s important to just focus on the audio – on the language. So, a lot of students didn’t know what to listen to. They thought that they didn’t have much choice. Actually, there’s plenty of choice out there. The BBC has plenty of podcasts, there are loads of podcasts on different topics on iTunes – but they’re all made for native speakers. They’re too difficult to listen to, and ultimately, that’s not motivating. There are some podcasts out there which are made for learners of English, but a lot of them are just focused on language learning, at the expense of entertainment. They’re useful, but they’re a bit dull. This is less the case now, because 5 years after starting this podcast, there are more interesting things out there for learners of English, including my podcast. So I decided that I’d try and create something for learners of English to listen to that they would actually want to listen to, beyond just learning English. Ultimately, I think to listen to English for extended periods of time, you have to have an interest in what is being talked about, or you have to find it entertaining. Otherwise, it’s hard to really sustain your concentration and it becomes like a chore. There is real value in listening to English for extended periods of time, but it’s difficult to achieve because you get put off by not understanding things, or because the recording is a bit patronising and dull. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet here too much, because I’m sure that my podcast is not always as entertaining or as engaging as it could be, but I think the only way to get people to keep listening, is to try and make it entertaining as well as informative about English. So, I record this podcast with you in mind, but I try to keep it as authentic as possible. I try to avoid being simplistic. I try not to grade my English too much. I know it might be challenging for you sometimes but I attempt to hold your attention by talking in an enthusiastic way about subjects which I personally find interesting. Hopefully, the result is that you keep listening, and that you feel personally involved in it somehow. Then, by exposing yourself to lots of English in this way, you are able to acquire the language – to pick it up, in a variety of ways.

Stephen Krashen & Language Acquisition Theory
Let me now refer to the language acquisition theory of Stephen Krashen. This theory is very well known among language learning theorists, and it underpins a lot of what we know about learning and teaching English. Krashen believed that there are two ways to develop our language learning skills. One is through language acquisition and the other is through language learning. Language acquisition means that it is possible for adults and children to learn language in a subconscious way – meaning, in a kind of passive way – by simply engaging with the language. The important thing is that you focus on the message in a bit of language. So, when listening to Luke’s English Podcast this means focusing exactly  on what I really mean, rather than just on the specific items of language I’m using. The primary focus is to just understand what I mean (hopefully at a fairly deep level – in order to laugh at something I’ve said, or feel moved by it) and then you kind of ‘pick up’ the language as a result of that. You might not be immediately aware that you’ve learned some new language in this way. In fact, this kind of acquisition probably informs your passive knowledge of the language. According to Krashen, another type of language development is language learning. This is when you focus on learning specific forms  – like studying grammar rules for example. It involves having some instruction by a teacher, perhaps in the form of error correction, or from a grammar book which explains the ‘rules of English’. The downside of this kind of learning is that it is rather dogmatic, can be boring, complex and abstract. It doesn’t necessarily replicate the organic way in which we pick up language as children, and doesn’t quite allow the subconscious acquisition of language that occurs from just engaging with the language in order to understand a message being communicated.

Alright, so how does this apply to the way you can learn English? Well, I think it’s pretty important to get both aspects of language learning into your life. This is what I call “having a balanced diet”. You shouldn’t just study the grammar rules in a dogmatic way, although that is undeniably important. You should also attempt to just engage with the language as it is used in natural, authentic and meaningful situations. How can you do that? Ideally, this would mean going out into the world and doing things in English. In fact, this might be the best way to improve your English. If you get a job that requires you to use English all day you will improve quickly. It’ll be really hard, but you’d be forced to improve. That’s like a boot camp for language acquisition because you’re not really studying the language, you’re just attempting to survive in it. You’re really focusing on the communicative acts you are trying to achieve. You’re really focusing on meaningful messages, and you naturally learn the most direct and effective way to understand and communicate meaningful messages. You might not be able to do that in your life. You might not have access to native speakers in that way. So, my podcast can be a substitute. It’s not really the same as attempting to work in an English speaking environment, but the key point is that you can replicate aspects of that experience by just attempting to follow/keep up with what I’m saying, and do that regularly, over long periods of time, and you’ll pick up massive amounts of English.

So, just listen, try to follow everything I’m saying, try to enjoy it and engage with it, listen regularly, listen for extended periods. This will all contribute to your acquisition of English, as described by Stephen Krashen.

That’s language acquisition, but you can also do more traditional language learning alongside Luke’s English Podcast. First of all, outside of listening to the episodes, you can do your formalised language studying from a book or in class, and use LEP as a companion to that. Study the language, and then try to notice aspects of the language that you’ve studied in episodes of the podcast. For example, if you’ve studied verb tenses, you can listen to a story I’ve told on the podcast and try to notice those verb tenses, how I’m using them, how I’m pronouncing them, and so on. It can back up, confirm or clarify the language study you’ve been doing. You should always refer to authentic language usage as a way of checking language that you’ve studied.

Also, you can study the things I say in the podcast more directly. The podcast can be a study tool. Here are some ways you can do some active language study with the podcast:

Use transcripts
You could read a transcript and check new words in a dictionary as you find them. Pay attention to the way I use the words, including the grammatical context, collocations between words and pronunciation. Any new words or structures you find, make a note of them and practise using them yourself.

You could attempt to write your own transcripts. This reveals a great deal about the gap between the English you know, and the English that I use in the podcast.  Try transcribing a section of one episode. You could do an episode that has already been transcribed. Listen carefully to it, and try to write down every single word. There may be certain utterances that you just can’t identify. Mark them with question marks. Listen again and again. You could just focus on a specific 5 minute section of an episode. Keep listening until you’ve done your best. Now check the proper transcript for that section and compare it to what you wrote. What are the differences? Now you can identify the gap between what you understand, and what I said. Try to close that gap. Check the words you didn’t know. Identify why you missed the pronunciation of something. Think about how I say these words and phrases, and their definitions. Then you can start working them into your English when you speak. We’ll look at ways of developing your speaking in a few minutes.

A note on transcripts. You may be aware that a lot of my episodes have transcripts, which can really help you to study the language (although you shouldn’t read them all the time). But you can also contribute transcriptions to my website. If you fancy transcribing a few minutes of an episode, please send it to me and I’ll be able to correct it and publish it on my website. I have a transcript collaboration going on using Google documents. You might already know about this because I did an episode on that subject a couple of months ago. You can go to my website and click “transcripts” to find out more. Basically, writing transcripts of my episodes is not only a great way to use the podcast to improve your English, it also helps me to provide an even better service to my listeners.

So, Luke’s English Podcast is best consumed as part of a balanced diet. Listen freely and just try to enjoy and understand what I’m saying, and let your mind naturally acquire the language, but also mix this with more formalised language study to get the full 360 degree effect.

You might think the formalised language study part of that is boring and time consuming. That’s fine. You don’t have to do any of that, but as a compromise, what you can do is just be mindful when you’re listening. Your first aim is to focus on the message, but you can also try to notice specific aspects of the language too. Try to identify words, phrases and grammatical structures. You don’t have to formally study them, just notice them as you hear them. Like “oh he’s saying depend on” so it must be “depend on” in English, not “depend of”. Things like that. Just be mindful when listening.

I record different types of episode here. My main aim is to engage you and keep you interested, while presenting English to you in an authentic way. In some episodes I try to draw your attention to the language more specifically. For example, I teach/explain/demonstrate vocabulary items referring to a topic, or bring your attention to an aspect of pronunciation. In those episodes, you can just chill out and follow what I’m saying, but you can be more active, and make notes of the vocabulary, try to remember phrases, listen again and pause the recording to test your memory.

Listen in comfort, and enjoy the experience. Krashen also writes about the affective filter hypothesis. This relates to the conditions in which learning takes place, and how these can have a big effect on the successful acquisition of language. Basically, good conditions for learning are: motivation (the listener really wants to hear what’s being said, and is keen to learn the language), high self-esteem and relaxation. These things allow the flow of acquisition to move freely, without being blocked. Mental blocks occur when the learner is stressed, anxious or feeling bad about themselves. This creates a mental block to the acquisition of language. I guess this relates to one of those situations in which you’re in an unhappy language class. You feel stressed because of pressure from the teacher or from the judgement of your classmates, you feel low self-confidence because you don’t get any positive reinforcement from taking part in a communicative exchange and you’re just not enjoying the experience of being there in the classroom. As a result, there is a kind of mental barrier which really prevents you learning anything. In fact, it might even make it worse because you associate learning English with painful or boring classroom situations. The advantage of Luke’s English Podcast is that the emphasis is on fun, a lot of the time. You have nothing to fear or worry about when you listen to this. In fact, it can be an extremely pleasurable experience. I’m not just bigging myself up here. I know what it’s like to listen to your favourite podcast. It’s quite a personal experience. I listen to Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo’s Film Review Podcast on my way to work, and I can’t begin to explain the joy of listening to it. They’re like my friends, and I’m sharing a really nice conversation with them. I listen to their voices in private, through headphones, while I’m sitting on a smelly underground train with miserable people all around me, but I’m in my comfort zone. In fact, sometimes I’m disappointed when I reach my metro station, because I just want to keep listening to the podcast. Hopefully, listening to Luke’s English Podcast is a similar experience for you. That’s certainly the idea. This should be a personal and enjoyable experience for you, and I invite you to just enjoy being part of the podcast community, and remember that all around the world there are other people like you, listening to me ramble on about stuff. There’s no chance of the affective filter giving you a mental block in this situation because you should be in your comfort zone. That’s the advantage of podcasting. You really can listen to this whenever and wherever you want, and you are free to get as comfortable as you please. As I’ve said before, feel free to listen to this in the bath, on the loo, or as you softly and slowly drift off to sleep at night. Of course, you can also listen at your desk, with a pen in your hand, or while typing, in order to make notes or write transcripts. You can also sit up and read transcripts. It’s up to you. The main thing is to just enjoy yourself and let the English go into your head. Just imagine that my voice is bouncing around inside your mind, and lots of the words, and sounds are sticking in there.

You should certainly listen to episodes more than once. In fact, if you’re interested in really learning English from this podcast, I think it’s vital to listen several times. Once is not enough. In fact, you might only scratch the surface if you listen just once. Listening again and again will allow you to get really familiar with what’s being said. You’ll notice and remember things that you didn’t catch the first time. Repetition is really important as a way of helping your brain notice patterns. After a couple of listens, you’ll remember certain phrases, bits of intonation or responses and they will be reinforced when you listen again. It might be asking too much of you, but you could even start to remember and repeat some of the things you’ve heard on Luke’s English Podcast. I don’t necessarily expect you to repeat everything I say, but perhaps you could memorise the lines of a comedy sketch that I present to you, and then repeat the lines to yourself or your friends, or just while you’re listening again. I’m a bit of a geek and I love Star Wars. When I was a kid I used to watch Star Wars on heavy rotation. I’d watch it again and again. Now I can remember all the lines from the film. In fact, I don’t just remember the lines, I remember the bits of music and sound effects too, as they occur in the film. It’s the same with Monty Python films and sketches. I’ve watched them so many times that I can repeat a lot of the script from memory, and in fact some phrases from those movies have found their way into my vocabulary. You can do that too, by listening to episodes more than once, and listening to some comedy sketches which I present to you many times. Soon I’ll be doing an episode about Monty Python. For some reason, Monty Python’s sketches are very memorable. In fact, there are several generations of people in the UK and America who grew up watching Monty Python films and who are able to recite whole sketches to each other. Again, you can do the same thing, realise that there are some terrifically funny things in English, and use that as a way to pick up language.

There are a number of different areas to focus on with English.
4 skills:
Listening
Reading
Writing
Speaking

Language systems:
Grammar
Vocabulary
Pronunciation
Discourse

Listening
I’ve already talked a lot about the benefit of just listening for fun, or listening in a more active way. I did mention that it’s good to be comfortable when listening. I should add too that I think it’s important to try and listen to things that you don’t completely understand. It’s fine to listen to things that you don’t understand completely, and the general opinion on this seems to be that you should push yourself when you listen, and don’t get put off if there are things you don’t understand. It’s in that challenging experience that your brain is really piecing things together. For example, if you struggled to understand my conversation with Daniel Burt, that’s fine – in fact, that struggle is good. Listen again, and keep trying. Don’t give up. Push through those moments when you don’t understand. Keep going. Don’t let confusion stop you.
Also, try to identify subtle differences between accents. You may only notice little differences at first, but eventually you’ll be more and more aware of the differences between accents. Eventually, you’ll be able to say “this guy is from the north of England”, “This one’s from Australia” or whatever.

Reading
Reading transcripts on my webpage.
Outside of the podcast – read a variety of texts. Again, try to find things that you enjoy. You should also be aware of your purpose for learning the language. What are you going to use English for in the future? You may need to read emails, or business reports. It may be worth reading articles that talk about business trends. Otherwise, just reading any well-written text for enjoyment is a really good way to improve your literacy. I must add a page on my website with recommendations for reading. There’s loads of reading you can do – blogs, newspapers but also books which you can download free online. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m planning to give you a list of some good things to read.

Writing
Again, this is not one of the things that I focus on a lot on Luke’s English Podcast. The focus is mainly on spoken English. However, transcribing podcast episodes can be good for your writing. You could also write your own blog which contains your opinions or your outlook on a topic. Feel free to write a response to episodes of my podcast in the comments section. You should aim to concisely express your opinion, in a structured way, using the most appropriate words you can find (perhaps including some words you’ve picked up from that episode of the podcast). Think about the person reading the comment – make it easy and enjoyable for them to read, and focus on stating very clearly and efficiently exactly what it is you want to say. Considering those ideas can help you to make your writing more effective.
If, however, you need to practise writing for the IELTS test, you will need to do more specifically focused writing practice, probably using an IELTS preparation book, or following an IELTS course of some kind. My podcast can help you with general skills (vocab, etc) but for specific kinds of writing work, you should do some specific writing practice. Practice practice practice. As I said before – to get the best out of Luke’s English Podcast, use it as part of a balanced diet.

Speaking
Perhaps the best way to improve your speaking is to actually practise it in real-life situations. The requirements of that situation will train you to say the right things at the right time, with the right tone. You should certainly be aware of how intonation is important in affecting a message. These are things you can learn from trying to enter into meaningful acts of communication and learning from your mistakes. You might also need a teacher to actively correct your errors. But, you can definitely use Luke’s English Podcast to improve your speaking too. Let’s look at some ways to do that:
Just try to take some aspects of my speech and apply it to your speech. You could just add some words or phrases you’ve heard from me, and use them yourself. Or you can pick up some speech patterns, pronunciation from me and add that to your speech too. If you like, you could use my speaking as a kind of model for your own speech.
More specifically, you could copy and repeat some of my sentences. Listen to a line I say, and then repeat it and try to sound exactly like me. You could listen to phrasal verb episodes, and whenever I present an example sentence, pause the episode and repeat it after me. Keep doing that until you feel you’re version is pretty similar to mine. So, just listen and repeat until you’ve worked out how to make the same sounds as me. Think about vowel & consonant sounds, combinations of consonants and how to make those sounds with your mouth, think about connected speech – what happens when words are pronounced fluently together in a sentence – they might get pronounced differently, certain sounds may be dropped when words are linked, and some sounds may be added when words are linked too. Pay attention to these aspects of pronunciation. I should do a whole episode on connected speech, and it’s one I’ve had in the back of my mind for ages.
Pick an extract from the podcast, with transcript, and record yourself saying it. Compare your version with my version. Then, work on the transcript. Underline the stressed words, add lines to represent pauses for emphasis, identify word links in pronunciation. Listen to me saying that extract again, and check your ‘sound scripted’ transcript. Now record yourself doing it again, this time adding the intonation, pausing and sentence stress. Compare that to the original. This can help you develop awareness, and control of speech patterns.
Record yourself just talking in response to one of my podcast episodes. If I’ve talked about UFOs for example (not yet, but I will!) then you could record yourself talking about UFOs too. Try to include any words I’ve presented to you on that topic. If you like you could leave an audio comment on my Audioboo page, and let the world know how you feel about something.
Or, you could start doing your own podcast, like Zdenek from Zdenek’s English Podcast. He’s not a native speaker, but following a suggestion in one of my episodes he decided to do his own podcast. He now has followers and listeners and he’s really into it. Listening to his episodes I get the sense that his confidence is developing and he’s finding his own voice. It must be very good for his English (which, of course, is already excellent). You could do it too if you want.
The main thing is practice. Use as many opportunities to practise as you can. Join clubs to meet English speakers. Use the internet. Find groups on Meetup.com in which people are doing language exchanges. Put yourself outside your comfort zone. Don’t be shy, give it a try. Take the initiative. No-one can do the speaking for you. There’s no shame in making mistakes. You have to be in it to win it, so open your mouth and get talking. Remember that English is about what you can do, not just about what you know. Be active, find your voice in English. If you’re in a classroom – don’t be one of those quiet students. It’s completely up to you to start talking, and why not do it in the safety of a language class. That’s the whole point! Speak up in class and use that as a safe place to experiment and make mistakes. Experiment! Switch off your editor! Don’t listen to the voice in your head which is telling you to keep quiet, or telling you that you can’t say something because it might be wrong. It does not matter if you’re wrong. Remember that you have to say something wrong about 5 times before you get it right. Get through those 5 times nice and quick, and then you’ll be fine! Sometimes, opening your mouth is the hardest thing to do, but once you’ve started speaking it gets easier. Keep up the momentum. Keep your voice warm. Stay positive, enjoy expressing yourself. Your teacher will love it if you are an active member of class. In fact, you need to prove to your teacher that you’re making an effort. We always like those talkative and positive students. Use that to your advantage – you’ll be more likely to get good grades, and get levelled up. Be nice, be friendly, be talkative. But also listen to others and help them too. That’s a recipe for success for any language learner!
Actually, I just sent Zdenek a message and asked him for his comments on the subject of using LEP to improve your English (particularly speaking) and here are his comments, which I agree with wholeheartedly. In fact, before I read his comments it may be necessary to remind you that Zdenek is a well-qualified teacher of English from the Czech Republic who lived in the UK for a number of years and who has got a master’s degree in English Language. So, he definitely knows what he’s talking about. I’m sure many of you listening to this have similarly good advice and comments on this subject. I am very keen to encourage you to share that information – you can leave text or audio comments under this episode. So here are Zdenek’s comments:
How can listening to LEP improve your speaking skills? It can mainly improve the following skills/subskills:
1) listening (obvious)
2) reading, spelling (reading scripts, additional notes)
3) writing, spelling (script, feedback or thanksgiving emails to Luke),
4) grammar (listening to grammar patterns as part of exposure theory)
5) vocabulary (learning new vocab also guided by the exposure theory),
6) pronunciation (passive listening)
As for the speaking, it is a different question. If you want to improve your speaking through LEP, you have to approach this actively. Not everyone is willing to do this. Some people tend to be shy, have approach anxiety etc…and prefer listening to the podcast as passive recipients. That is fine. However, here are some suggestions on how you can actually improve even your speaking skills.
1) Contact someone via LEP community. There are a lot of interesting people eager to learn English from all around the world. Contact those who have a similar level as you – this way you can both benefit and learn from each other and no one will get bored. Ideally, have an interest in common (sci-fi films, sport, you already have one important topic in common = LEP)…try to befriend these people, add them on facebook, start skype conversations with them or something.
2) Record yourself speaking about a topic. Ask yourself questions related to LEP. Answer these questions or just practice vocabulary Luke teaches you. Listen back to yourself. Try correcting your errors. Re-record. Compare your recordings you made some time later to see your improvements.
3) Record comments in Audioboo (max 3 minutes) –why is everyone so shy? Is everyone afraid that they will be judged? Who cares? Just be friendly and you should be accepted by the community. Luke is a teacher. He deals with mistakes every day. We all make mistakes. Never be afraid to make mistakes. A man who never made mistakes, never made anything. Are you afraid to take on a challenge and face our greatest fear – public humiliation? Well don’t be! If we fight it actively without fear, we can significantly improve our speaking skills this way.
[I just want to add a couple of points here about making a fool of yourself, my experience of speaking French, and of fear of public speaking]
4) Try running your own podcast. Most of you can do it. Again it is only about facing your fears of making mistakes and exposing yourself to the public. This podcast can be just for you and your friends. I make loads of mistakes in my podcast and I am a teacher. I feel ashamed; I have to edit them out. But if you are not teachers, why worry? And even as teachers? You shouldn’t worry.
5) You can always speak to yourself in the mirror and go crazy. Become the next Hamlet. Speaking is not about passivity so move your arse and find some interaction
Note: By following these tips, you will work on your English speaking skills, pronunciation (actively), grammar, vocab (you can focus on trying to use expressions Luke has taught you), listening skills (as you listen to your friends talking for example). There are so many benefits to active speaking practice.

Thank you Zdenek. As I said before, I welcome your comments too. Let’s share our thoughts on this subject together. It’s time for my LEP ninjas to come out of the shadows and deliver some powerful advice! LEP NINJAS – ASSEMBLE!!!

Regarding language systems, I have some things to say about grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and ‘discourse’.
To be honest, I’ve already spoken enough about grammar & vocab. Let me just remind you of the theory of ‘exposure’. I have talked about this before. The idea is that by listening to lots of English over extended periods, you’re feeding your subconscious with all the patterns of English usage. Your brain is hearing all these patterns of English, including frequent word combinations (like prepositions), tenses, features of pronunciation etc. Ultimately, it all goes into your head, and informs your sense of instinct for the language, so that when you come to do a test in English, you feel the answer. You know that this particular preposition goes with this particular verb, just because you’ve heard it a number of times before and so it feels natural. Feed your head with English. Feel the English rather than knowing it. Use the force young jedi, and remember, the force will be with you… always. Oh, and don’t forget – you’re never too old for this. Language study is a great way to keep your mind fresh and supple. My grandfather is over 90 years old and he’s still really sharp. Perhaps this is because he’s still going to French and Spanish classes on a regular basis.

Regarding pronunciation – a lot of the tips you’ve been given here will help with that. But, I just want to add that improving your listening skills will naturally improve your pronunciation skills too. The two things go hand in hand. The more you’re able to understand natural spoken English, the more you are able to decode the sounds used to make it. Understanding this natural sound code can allow you to start using it too. There is a direct connection between listening and pronunciation, but to fully reap the benefits, you need to need to actively practise pronunciation. The methods I’ve mentioned already in this episode – repeating, recording, re-recording, comparing, speaking in front of the mirror, etc – they’re all good approaches to practising and improving your pronunciation. Don’t be shy, give it a try. You’ve got nothing to lose, just things to gain. Go for it!

As for discourse, this is really about how you structure your speaking. How do you link your ideas up? When you listen, try to notice any specific phrases I use to link my ideas together, move from one topic to another, deal with moments when I don’t know what I’m saying and so on. What are the tools I use to perform certain functions. Can you identify these things and take them on yourself? Try talking about a topic for 5 minutes. See how difficult it is to talk on your feet. Do it again and again until you develop methods of thinking and talking at the same time. Listen to discussions and focus on the ways in which people interrupt, agree, disagree or whatever. Think about the way we use the language to be polite or indirect. How is humour added to what we say? How does intonation affect the hidden meaning behind our words? Explore these ideas when you listen, and then test them out in your speaking.

That’s it for this episode. I hope you have found it motivating, and inspiring. Leave your comments, and I wish you all the very best of luck keeping up your English. I’m sure you’re doing great. Well you must be, because you’re already listening to Luke’s English Podcast – and long may it continue.

BYE!

171. A Cup of Tea with Daniel Burt (Part 2)

[2/2] Here’s the second part of my conversation with Daniel Burt, who is a journalist, comedy writer and performer from Melbourne, Australia.

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In this conversation we talk about these things:
Daniel’s move to London
Aussie pubs in Paris and London
Cliches about Australian people
Australian pronunciation
Typical Australian English phrases
The Australian character and national identity
Australian politicians
The future of Australia & Australia’s image of itself
Sport & competition
Interviewing Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Martin Freeman (The Hobbit), Matt Smith & David Tennant (Doctor Who)

To contribute a few minutes of transcription for this episode, click here to work on the google document:

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.

All the best,
Luke

Daniel’s Video Showreel
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9V3cKGvISU&w=500&h=281]