Category Archives: Writing

869. Working at UNESCO | English in International Diplomacy

In international diplomacy, “communication is everything”. This is the main point of this conversation, in which I talk to my friend who works for the UK delegation at UNESCO in Paris. We discuss the work that UNESCO does, and the various communication challenges involved in working together with representatives from countries all around the world, including the collaborative writing of official documents where the use of a single comma can be debated for hours, and the meetings and conversations in which cultural sensitivity and good-will are essential elements for success. Also includes some communication idioms and guitar playing near the end of the episode.

[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

Introduction Transcript

My guest today is my friend who works at UNESCO. 

UNESCO stands for The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (Wikipedia)

It is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) which has the aim of promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. 

Perhaps the most famous thing they do is to protect certain world heritage sites, but that is only one of the things that they are involved in.

My friend works there and in this episode you’ll hear us talking about his work and about communication in the context of international diplomacy.

This is quite complex stuff actually. 

Normally in these situations, when I’m publishing an episode like this, I have to make certain decisions about what to say in the introduction.

How much should I explain in advance? 

What kind of support should I give to my audience before you listen?

People listening to my podcast have varying levels of English. Rather than slowing down and stopping to explain every word, I want to give you a conversation at natural speed, but explaining some context at the start can really help a lot of people. It’s not just because of English. It’s also just a question of general knowledge too.

Before I met M__, I didn’t really know a lot about what UNESCO did, and honestly, I think most people probably find it a little bit of a mystery. 

So I have decided to explain one or two things here, so you are properly placed to understand all of this and therefore enjoy it and benefit most from it.

Of course I don’t want to say too much or repeat myself or anything, so I’ve written this introduction in advance to try and keep me focused, to be informative but also efficient, and then you can just get stuck into the conversation with my guest.

M__ works for the UK delegation at UNESCO, which has its headquarters in Paris by the way. The word “delegation” comes up a few times (also the word “delegate”) and that will be explained.

UNESCO HQ is in Paris – I did stand-up there once, which was weird! I was invited as part of a festival in 2019 called Paris Talks. It was a bit like a series of TED Talks, all of them serious – about the future. 

***Luke talks spontaneously for a couple of minutes about doing stand-up comedy at the UNESCO HQ in Paris***

Whenever I chat to M__, if we have a drink together or something, I am always really curious about his work and I find it really fascinating. Hopefully it’ll be fascinating for you too.

So, we’re going to talk about the work that UNESCO does and the way the organisation works, but also about the different forms of communication that happen there, and this, for me as an English teacher, is perhaps the most interesting thing about it.

Imagine, nearly every nation in the world collaborating together at a government level on very important projects. This of course includes nation states which have different relations with each other, some friendly, some antagonistic. 

Also, you’re dealing with often vastly different cultures with different communication styles and values. But you’ve got to try to work together with these different groups towards a common goal.

This involves communication at a very high level – international diplomacy. What does it take to cross these barriers of culture, politics, economics, at a state level? 

Diplomatic communication is a huge part of it and working in this context requires a variety of different types of communication skills. 

There’s persuasion, there’s negotiation, there’s showing respect, there’s using pressure, there’s giving compliments and expressing gratitude and it can happen in writing and in spoken English too at various levels of formality.

Imagine these different communication contexts:

  • Huge meetings with representatives from countries all around the world, sitting at tables with little flags on them and everyone attempting to work together to agree on certain big decisions. Sometimes they don’t want to do the same thing. There are groups that are friendly, and groups that have their differences.
  • The collaborative writing of very formal documents in those big meetings. These are documents which UNESCO issues – a bit like laws passed by a government (although UNESCO doesn’t actually make laws)
  • Smaller, less formal meetings in which different delegations attempt to build support for their proposals, with negotiations and persuasion.
  • Individual one on one conversations or conversations in small groups, between the more formal meetings, where representatives might stand up and chat together perhaps over coffee and a softer form of persuasion or negotiation occurs, and the building of relationships and alliances.
  • And the work of interpreters – who sit in other rooms, looking through windows, with headsets on, having to simultaneously translate what is being said in these important meetings from one language to another, and the quick decisions they have to make about how exactly they should word things without subtly changing the tone of what is being said. Interpreters are a huge part of this. Maybe some of you listening are considering becoming an interpreter, or maybe you already are.

How is language used in these different situations? How does the language change?

We’re talking about different levels of formality, and the pragmatics of diplomacy at this high level.

Also, what does UNESCO do exactly? How does it actually work? What does M__ actually do on a daily basis?

These are the things I was very interested in capturing in this conversation.

Before we start, here are a few more details.

Here’s some more information from Wikipedia.

UNESCO was founded in 1945 and its founding mission, which was shaped by the events of World War II, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations.[10] 

It pursues this objective through five major programme areas: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and communication/information.

What does it actually do? I find this quite hard to work out!

  • It assists in the translation and dissemination of world literature – making sure the best works of literature are available to be read by everyone, and not just in their countries of origin.
  • It works to bridge the worldwide digital divide (attempting to reduce disparities between developed and developing countries in terms of what technologies are available to people)
  • It creates inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication. By Knowledge Societies, UNESCO means societies in which people have the capabilities not just to acquire information but also to transform it into knowledge and understanding, which empowers them to enhance their livelihoods and contribute to the social and economic development of their societies. UNESCO has launched several initiatives and global movements, such as Education For All.

How does it actually do these things? As far as I can tell, they create what M__ calls “standard setting documents”. 

Those are not laws because they are not legally binding but they are similar to laws because they set out guidelines on what should or should not be done. 

Governments in the member states can use these standard setting documents to help them form policies and laws, in line with UNESCO’s overall objectives.

So they’re not binding legislation but these UNESCO documents are still very formally written. 

M__ tells us about how this is done, at the various stages, referring to different communication contexts in the process.

This all might sound a bit dry in my descriptions, but just let me take you back to that image of the large meeting room at UNESCO with all these representatives or delegates from the different countries. Imagine you are actually there. 

Imagine having to open one of those big meetings. Imagine the mood in the room as you look out and see these different faces representing the different nations. Imagine the tone you would have to use in your speech, the specific wording, to gain their attention and their respect, to speak with the relevant level of importance, to try to create a feeling of goodwill, to make the different delegations feel respected, and then to attempt to unite these different nations with competing interests and worldviews.

Imagine having a specific project, and trying to get it off the ground – arranging smaller meetings to try to build alliances. Taking the time to chat one on one with people between meetings, drafting emails with proposals, and finally trying to edit formal documentation in collaboration with other delegates in huge writing sessions that can last days.

That’s the world we’re talking about here and specific things about how we have to adapt our language in these situations.

Several other things

  1. My friend is also a really good guitarist, and so at the end of this conversation we couldn’t help but turn our attention to the guitars in my podcastle. He plays one of my guitars and we talk about guitars. So, we do move from international diplomacy to guitars. If you want to hear him play, just stick around until the end of the conversation.
  2. Background noise. There was a guy in the corridor outside my podcast room doing some work – sanding a wall. So, apologies – you’ll hear the sounds of normal life bleeding into the recording slightly. I think it’s not too bad, but if you hear some noise and wonder what it is, it’s a guy sanding a wall outside.

Right, so without any further ado let’s get started. The first thing you’ll hear now is me saying that often the most difficult part of podcasting is the very beginning of a recording, and M__ gives me a good bit of advice which he has learned from his work at UNESCO.

So, let’s now join the conversation at that point. I’ll chat to you a bit at the end.


Communication Idioms (explained at the end)

  • To beat around the bush
  • To talk at cross purposes
  • To grab/get the wrong end of the stick
  • To hit the nail on the head
  • It strikes a different chord in people’s minds (if you speak from the heart)
  • This guy is trying to wrap me round his finger (to manipulate/control me)

863. Welcome Back / Your English in 2024 with LEP 📈

A new year episode to welcome you back to my podcast, to encourage you to reflect on your learning of English over the last 12 months, to consider your English learning in 2024 and how this podcast can help you. Includes plenty of ideas for how to improve your English, some reflections on my learning of French, and some ‘help’ from my baby son 👶.

[DOWNLOAD]

https://youtu.be/XNlEn9OS0E4?si=o1gdm29flD8qojZy

📄 Get the PDF Transcript 👇 (text also included below 👇👇)

🏆 LEP Premium information 👉 https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo

Episode Text (This is the text on the PDF – but the vocabulary is not highlighted in green here)

Happy New Year everyone!

This is my first episode of 2024 and let’s get serious for a moment because actually the purpose of this one is to help you consider where you are with your English (because that’s what this is all about isn’t it?) to encourage you to reflect on your learning of English in 2023, to approach 2024 with the right mindset and also give you loads of advice and tips for how to keep improving your English with this podcast and in plenty of other ways.

This episode has mostly been written out in advance, so I’m reading from a script in this one. 

You’ll find the PDF script on the page for this episode and there’s a link in the description wherever you are listening to this. 

“Link in the description” – Do you know what that means? 

You can just download it free and I’m not even going to ask for your email address and then send you loads of emails tempting you to buy my online course which is only available for a limited period of time for mysterious reasons that aren’t fully explained. 

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do that. You can just download the PDF directly like in the old days of the internet.

By the way, if you prefer rambling episodes with no script, just hang on because I’ll be doing one of them after I’ve done this episode. 

The plan is to do this one which is fully planned and scripted, and then just do something totally spontaneous in the next episode. 

So, there is a New Year rambling episode coming soon. Also there will be a premium episode coming soon for premium subscribers focusing on some of the language I use in this episode. 

Premium subscribers – watch out for some of the words and phrases which are highlighted in a lurid green colour on the PDF – those bits of vocabulary will come up in a premium episode soon. 

If you’re not a premium subscriber, you can still notice those highlighted phrases and just consider how much you are missing out by not being a premium subscriber, and of course if you just can’t stand missing out on the magic, and you want to be a premium subscriber or you just want more information about it, then go to www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo 

By the way, I chose that lurid green colour so that it will also show up if you print the PDF in black and white. Also, it’s a way of subtley reminding you to keep noticing vocabulary.

Also, I have various other episodes in the pipeline which I recorded late last year and they are coming too, over the next few weeks including a couple of Amber & Paul ones, an episode with Lindsay from All Ears English, one with my friend who works at UNESCO and some others, so just bear with me, they are coming as well! 

As usual, I just have so many episodes to publish and things I want to say. I’d love to just publish new episodes every few days, to be honest, but I don’t want to overload you completely. I know some of you might be happy for me to do that, but really – podcasting wisdom says that I shouldn’t do that.

This episode

What’s this episode going to be? Let’s get started.

First of all, I want to welcome new listeners and remind old listeners who I am and what this is all about. A lot of people will be turning over a new leaf and trying to make a fresh start with their English. Is that you? Have you made a new year’s resolution to improve your English this year? 

Maybe you’ve decided to listen to podcasts in English and here you are. Or maybe you’re already a regular listener and you’re happy to be back in LEPland with this new episode. In any case, welcome and welcome back. It’s good to doing the first episode of the show in 2024.

Some info about LEP for new listeners (and old listeners too, whose memory isn’t what it once was) 

Hello. Forgive me for stating the obvious here but I’m Luke Thompson and I’m the host of this podcast that you are listening to right now, which is called Luke’s English Podcast. It’s a podcast for learners of English. I’m Luke, hence the title of the show – Luke’s English Podcast. Yes, I am very original and creative and I worked very hard to come up with that name. 

In my episodes I talk about all kinds of stuff and help you learn English. All you have to do is listen, although if you want there are plenty of other ways you can use my episodes to work on your English. I’ll mention some of those things later. 

I talk about different topics, chat with different guests, tell stories, just ramble about what’s on my mind, give advice for learning English, talk about British culture such as music, films and comedy, explain jokes and generally give you something to listen to in English on a regular basis. This is an award-winning podcast by the way and I have a very loyal, enthusiastic and lovely audience who are affectionately called the LEPsters. 

I’m an English teacher from England (West London and the West Midlands). I’ve been teaching English for nearly 25 years now. I first taught in Japan many years ago (have I ever mentioned that I used to live in Japan? – you get a point every time I say that, remember) then I taught in London for a long time at various language schools in places like Oxford Street, Covent Garden, Waterloo, Holland Park and Hammersmith, and these days I live and work in Paris, yes the one in France. 

I went to university in Liverpool a long long time ago and graduated with a degree in media and cultural studies which means I am very good at watching movies. 

I have CELTA and DELTA qualifications in English language teaching to adults, so don’t worry, you are in safe hands, you can trust me I am fully qualified. I am a professional. I have a particular set of skills which I have developed over a very long career. 

As well as being an English teacher, I am also a stand-up comedian, which you must have realised already because you can’t have failed to notice how funny and witty I am. I do stand-up which means I go on stage in front of audiences and make them laugh with hilarious jokes and stories and things and it always works really well and everyone in the room laughs so much, so hard that they die and then can never tell anyone else how funny I am, which is why I don’t have my own Netflix special. 

I’ve been doing stand-up on a semi-professional basis for about 15 years – roughly the same length of time as this podcast, but not as consistently as this I have to say. 

Most of the time these days I perform at comedy shows in Paris in the evenings sometimes, in English, to audiences of English-speaking ex-pats, tourists and local Parisians. If you want to hear me talking about my stand up comedy, check out my recent appearance on the Stolariod Stories podcast. The episode was called The Art of Making People Laugh with Luke Thompson from Luke’s English Podcast. The Art of Making People Laugh: with Luke Thompson from Luke’s English Podcast

I have been doing this podcast for about 15 years now. The show has had over 150 million downloads in total, which is mind-blowing. It is listened to by people all over the world. I am actually very famous but nobody knows who I am. Does that make sense? No, it doesn’t. But somehow it is still true. 

If I got all my listeners together in one place I’d be able to fill a few football stadiums, but that’s never going to happen and I’m not even very good at football so it wouldn’t be a very good idea anyway.  

There are audio versions and video versions of this podcast. 

Audio in podcast apps, video on YouTube. Let me explain that to the uninitiated. *

*Remember the words and phrases highlighted in green? That was one of them → “the unititiated”. Get the PDF from the episode page on my website and you can see those highlighted bits. 

I’ll add them all in a list at the end of the episode as well because I’m nice. You’re welcome. I’ll explain them in a premium episode coming soon, to help you remember them and also use them. 

You can listen to the audio podcast in any podcast app on your phone and this is the way that most people listen to my episodes, for example using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts and so on. 

I imagine people do something like this. They get up in the morning, stretch, have a shower, question their life choices, eat breakfast, maybe get the kids ready for school, go to work, and at some point get their phone out, put their headphones in, open up their podcast app of choice, tap on “Luke’s English Podcast” and start listening to a new episode or continue listening to one they started the day before. 

Other people might just stay at home (because what’s the point of leaving the house really?) and maybe get their phone out, connect it to their bluetooth speaker or something, then listen to my podcast and maybe do some really exciting housework or something like that. 

So that’s how to listen to my episodes in a podcast app on your phone. If you’re already initiated into the world of podcasting, that all might strike you as being very obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t understand what podcasts are, how they work or even how the word podcast is spelled or indeed pronounced. 

POD-CAST. POD-CAAAAST. /pɒdkɑ:st/ not postcard or pot-cat

I understand. It can be a tricky word actually. It’s a relatively new word and in terms of pronunciation there are a couple of tricky consonant clusters in there. 

The bit where the D and the C combine and the bit where the S and the T combine. Tricky stuff actually. 

  • /pɒdkɑ:st/ POD – CAAST
  • Try it again.
  • Not POST KAAAAST
  • POD KAAAST
  • Not POK-KAAAST  either
  • POD CAST
  • Podcast
  • Luke’s English Podcast

ok

The word podcast is actually a combination of the word broadcast and the word iPod

It’s a broadcast on your iPod. A podcast. 

It’s a kind of audio broadcast (like a radio show  – radio is broadcasted through radio signals from a radio tower thing, right? 

The radio waves are sent out into the air and picked up by your radio. But with a podcast, the audio is sent out via the internet and you get it and put it on your iPod, although nobody actually uses iPods any more, it’s all mobile phones now isn’t it? 

So, it might as well be called a Phonecast – because I broadcast my show to your phone. Not a phone call, because that’s not how it works. 

I don’t just call you and start talking. I could, but that would be a very inefficient way of doing this, if I had to call you all one by one and say this to each person I called, again and again. No, thank goodness, that’s now how it works. It’s not a phone call, and it’s not a phonecast, even though you listen on your phone (unless you listen on your computer on my website or something, or you actually do listen on an iPod because you’re still using one. So, it’s not a phonecast, it’s a podcast. That should be clear. 

If you don’t know how to subscribe to the audio podcast, just download a podcast app on your phone. They’re completely free (podcast apps, not phones). I recommend PocketCasts. Go ahead and download PocketCasts free from the app store on your phone. Install it, then open it and search for Luke’s English Podcast, then tap “Subscribe” or “Add” (or whatever the equivalent is in your language) and my show will be saved in your list of subscriptions and you’ll always be able to go back to the app to listen to my latest episodes when they are published, and the entire back catalogue, and your life will improve just a little bit, certainly a step in the right direction. Switch on notifications and your phone will tell you when I’ve published a new episode. Happy days.

One of the advantages of listening to the audio podcast on your phone is that you can do other things while you listen, and people tell me that they listen while travelling, working out in the gym, doing housework, running or walking in the countryside, driving, and even at work or school while they should be doing something else. 

I expect some people listen while doing incredible things, like flying planes, recovering from a general anaesthetic after having surgery or operating the safety systems of a nuclear power station. 

I also publish video versions of these episodes on YouTube, and it’s usually the same content as the audio versions, but often the audio versions have even more content because sometimes I ramble a bit at the beginning and end of episodes (and in the middle), and those bits don’t always end up in the video versions. 

My YouTube channel nearly has 1 million subscribers now, which I find incredible really. Not all my episodes get a million views of course, except the ones called “Learn English with a Short Story” which are particularly popular on the platform. The advantages of the video versions are that you can see me while I speak (do you consider that to be an advantage?) 

You can see my body language, facial expressions and the movements of my mouth. For the more visually oriented people, that is a good thing. There are also automatic subtitles on YouTube which are getting better all the time, and I often show text on the screen while I record so you can read and listen at the same time (that text is usually also available on my website for the audio listeners). But, again, the video versions often have less content than the audio versions and you do have to basically stay looking at the screen the entire time, whereas with the audio episodes you can just put your headphones in, put your phone in your pocket and do something else, like fishing or taking your dog for a walk, or  if you prefer dogging and taking your fish for a walk, I mean it’s your life, you can do what you want can’t you? 

My episodes can be quite long, but this shouldn’t be a problem really (who said it was a problem?) Anyway, it shouldn’t be an issue, because you can just pause the episode whenever you want, do something else, and when you return to your podcast app and find that episode again, the app will remember where you stopped and you can continue from that point. YouTube does exactly the same thing if you are signed into it with your google account. 

So, you can just chill out about the whole “Your episodes should be 28 minutes long, no more no less” thing. Just listen to 28 minutes, then stop, then listen to another 28 minutes the next time. 

So, long episodes aren’t really an issue because you can listen to as much as you like, stop and do something else, then carry on where you stopped before. 

Having said that, I do try to keep the length of my episodes under control. I don’t want them to be too long, but the fact is I just have stuff that I want to say and I find it hard to shut up, so I need all that time! 

For me, these episodes are similar to English lessons I do at school. 

Lessons are usually at least 90 minutes long, often more. English lessons in a language school are very rarely less than one hour long. So, it’s a similar story with my episodes. 

Also, I also have a premium subscription (have I mentioned that before, I don’t think I have, have I? No, I definitely haven’t mentioned the premium subscription. Hey, I have a premium subscription. It’s called Luke’s English Podcast Premim. Forgive me for mentioning it again, it’s just that the modest amount of money that I make from it helps me to feed two starving children and one wife and to heat our home which otherwise would be cold, and allows me to buy microphones and guitars and things – all essential purchases of course. Anyway, LEP Premium costs just 4$ a month (and has the price gone up in line with inflation? No, it hasn’t. Starbucks have raised the price of their bizarrely-named coffees, the fuel you put in your car is more expensive, but LEP Premium remains the same despite all those things) and gives you access to extra episodes which focus on teaching you vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.

So, my podcast has two branches → the free episodes and the premium episodes 

The free episodes → this is what I described before – me talking alone or with guests about things which I hope you will just find interesting and entertaining to listen to as part of your effort to get plenty of English into your brain via your ears. The free episodes are the ones which are available free in audio podcast format, or YouTube video format.

The premium episodes → extra episodes published every month, and also available in a podcast app on your phone. When you sign up you can add the premium episodes to your podcast app. 

Last year I published over 30 premium episodes, so that is 2 or 3 episodes per month. This is not just bonus content or out-takes or something. These are carefully prepared and thought-through lessons in which I help you build your English. All the info about the premium subscription is on my website at www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo 

The main difference between the two branches is that the free episodes are all about input and the premium ones are much more about teaching you directly.

In the free episodes I want to give you something to listen to in English which is made for you, which is entertaining, interesting and authentic, to help you listen more, listen for longer periods, and listen long-term. 

Sometimes I ramble and just share my thoughts with you in a kind of stream-of-consciousness way, sometimes I talk with guests including my friends & family and other people who I hope will have interesting things to say on the show, talk about a variety of topics, tell stories.

In the premium episodes I tend to focus on teaching you things, and this usually means vocabulary – explaining, highlighting, demonstrating, clarifying words and phrases, showing you how words and phrases are actually used with collocations, and other little important details. I also deal with grammar sometimes, and pronunciation every time – mainly giving you something to use for listen & repeat practice so you can regularly repeat after me, but also giving you insights into the pronunciation system in English in various ways. So, the focus is on teaching you language bit by bit.

Sometimes those two branches cross over, and I end up doing premium-type stuff on the free podcast (explaining vocabulary in short story episodes for example) or doing free-podcast type stuff in premium episodes (rambling episodes, short story episodes).

And, as a foundation, I want you to remember that I have been teaching English for most of my adult life now and so it is deeply ingrained in me, and in fact I couldn’t really stop teaching English even if I tried, and so even when I am just talking to you I am still teaching you. There is always that intention there to help you notice language, to engage with this language, to aid you somehow – so even when I’m just talking with seemingly no focus, there is a focus and a method in the background which is to help you connect with English as it is spoken, English as a living language, and English which is a medium for making connections with people and for expressing yourself. 

I am always attempting to reach out to you through the things I say and sort of grab you and shove English straight into your ears, but in a nice way. 

Also, I just love doing this podcast and hopefully my enthusiasm will rub off on you and will encourage you in your journey. 

I could continue to ramble on for ages about the benefits of listening to English podcasts long term, but I have done that plenty of times before. Just have a look back at my episode archive and see what you can see.

By the way, I wrote most of this over the last few days of the school holidays while sitting on my sofa in moments when my baby son was asleep or when my wife took the kids for a routine checkup at the doctor and I had some time to write down some thoughts which had been building up in my head during the Christmas holiday. I wrote these ideas down, and have edited them and added to them a bit since then.

You & Your English in 2023 and 2024 📈

Now I’m going to talk about you and your English over the last 12 months and into the forthcoming 12 months.

Usually in the New Year period I do some kind of New Year episode, and so I have been thinking “What can I say to my audience that will put them in the right mental space to help them learn English with my podcast in 2024? What inspiring words of wisdom can I impart? What sage-like advice can I give?” 

And after I had lowered my expectations for myself and just started writing, this is what came out. Listen carefully and hopefully you will get swept up in what I’m saying and the outcome will be that you’ll get a renewed sense of positivity and possibility for your English this year. Or maybe you’ll just have a nice relaxing sleep. I don’t know. Hopefully it’ll be good for you, either way. Just please be careful if you are driving or operating heavy machinery whil listening to this.

Remember, there’s a PDF for all of this and you can download it from my website. Just click the link in the show notes to find the episode page – the PDF is there.

It’s the new year period. This is a time when we look back and survey the year we’ve just completed, then look forward to the forthcoming 12 months and consider how we’re going to spend that time. I invite you to do that with me here in this episode. 

This is a podcast for learners of English. So, we’re going to focus on English of course. In this episode I want to encourage you and help you to take stock of your English learning at this moment in time.

First let’s look back and consider the last 12 months, and your English. 

Over the last 12 months

  • What kind of progress have you made in your English? 
  • What has worked for you? 
  • What have you done that has had a positive impact on your English?
  • What were some positive experiences and moments you had? 
  • What about negative experiences? What can you learn from them?

Grammar Pause

Note that I said “over the last 12 months” there and then used present perfect tense “What progress have you made?”. If I’d said “in 2023” then it would be past simple “What progress did you make?” “What worked for you?”. 

This is because “Over the last 12 months is an unfinished time period. Basically – don’t use past simple with unfinished time periods. 

For more details about present perfect (in fact, everything you ever wanted to know) then listen to premium series 12 – P12. That’s a premium episode. Did I mention my premium subscription? Again, get the details at www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo 

So, those questions again.

Over the last 12 months

  • What kind of progress have you made in your English? 
  • What has worked for you? 
  • What have you done that has had a positive impact on your English?
  • What were some positive experiences and moments you had? 
  • What about negative experiences? What can you learn from them?

Perhaps you have no clear sense of what you’ve done or whether it’s been positive or negative. 

If that’s the case, if you’re thinking “errr, I dunno actually” it probably means that…

a) you haven’t really done much with English – and this doesn’t just mean “studying” in the traditional way, but just using English either in a productive way (speaking, writing) or receptive way (reading, listening). There hasn’t been much English in your life for the past 12 months, 

or… 

b) you’re just not being very mindful about your relationship with English or the things you do in relation to your English. Perhaps you’re not really that aware of the ways that you are learning this language. You listen to my episodes, do other things in English sometimes but you don’t reflect on it all in an objective way, or an academic way. 

To be honest, I doubt that you fit the description I just mentioned. I think most of my audience are pretty aware of their English.  

And in fact maybe you are very conscious of it, and take quite a  metacognitive approach to it – maybe you are constantly analysing and strategising the way you learn English, and applying different methods.

In any case, this is a moment when I invite you to be mindful about your English. 

Maybe you feel like you haven’t really noticed a significant improvement in your English recently, which is a very common feeling.

Is that you? Are you waiting for some kind of breakthrough moment? Do you feel like you’re on a long plateau? Do you feel like you made significant progress a while ago but nothing has happened more recently? 

Or maybe not, maybe you’re currently really excited because you’ve discovered new abilities, like a superhero in the first half of their superhero origin movie or something.

But it is very common to get stuck in the so-called “intermediate plateau” and if that is the case for you, then I will say these things: 

don’t give up, don’t stop, keep going. The progress might not be obvious to you, but it’s probably still happening and will be revealed later. You just have to be willing to stick with it.

Sometimes you get stuck in a rut, or stuck in a routine and it feels like you’re going over the same ground and you’re not climbing to the top of any mountains or getting any significant feelings of reward moments of triumph or glory.

But that’s ok. You can’t have those moments all the time. 

Sometimes they are few and far between. Sometimes those breakthrough moments in language learning, or those meaningful moments of magic are rare. 

But keep going. Sometimes there is a lot of progress being made, but it’s under the surface and you don’t notice it.  

Language learning can be a weird thing. It can be hard to see it happening. It can be invisible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. 

With English you have to put in a lot of hours. You have to absorb a lot of language, and you have to do plenty of practice. Spending a lot of time on it is necessary, and so you have to see the bigger picture

Imagine it like a long journey. There might be times on that journey where you climb to very high points, like the top of a hill or mountain and you get a clear, dramatic sense of achievement. But at other times you have to travel along a long flat plain and it can feel like you’re not even moving at all. But keep going. You’re making progress, but you might not be aware of it. It’s not all going to be moments of glory and sometimes your progress is not fully visible to you, but it is happening. 

You also have to fail quite a lot – you’ve got to get things wrong a lot before you come back and get them right. This can make you feel disheartened, as if you just keep making mistakes.

But keep going. Don’t stop. This is all part of a process. People don’t improve in their language learning because they give up. So, keep listening, keep doing whatever you’re doing. Stay in the game. Keep your English alive in 2024, and there will come a time or a moment when the time you have spent with it will pay off somehow.

At the very least, you’re understanding everything I’m saying, right? You’re understanding this. You understand me and you’re also noticing that I’m using certain phrases and expressions, aren’t you?

I’ll sum them up for you later. Not all of them, but a lot of them – I’m talking about some of the little phrases I have just used (the ones which are highlighted in that lurid green colour on the PDF), like “breakthrough moments” or “few and far between” or “disheartened”. I’ll sum them up later, help you properly understand them, remember them, and pronounce them too.

You’re noticing those things, you’re hearing them, aren’t you? 

It’s all going in. That’s all fuel or food for your English, you know. 

And the more you are exposed to English as a living thing like this, the better your position is, as a learner of English. The better prepared you will be for the moments when you have to open your mouth and produce the language, or when you’re on the spot and you’re in conversation with someone and you have to understand what’s coming out of their mouth and then you’re suddenly having to respond, and these bits of English come to you, seemingly from nowhere. That’s all thanks to the fact that you’ve been keeping your English alive and at the very least listening to this podcast and keeping your ears open. 

If you feel stuck at the intermediate plateau, keep going, keep the faith, realise that there is progress being made but you might not notice it every day. Keep your chin up

But also consider shaking things up a bit, adopting some new habits maybe, and perhaps give yourself a challenge – maybe some kind of speaking challenge, or change the kinds of practice you’re doing, or perhaps add a bit of discipline into your routines with some other little exercises you could do. I’ll mention some ideas for that later. 

What have you been doing with your English?

Now, bear in mind that in language learning anything is probably better than nothing, so even if the only thing you’ve been doing in English is to listen to podcasts sometimes, watch some stuff in English or occasionally speak it when the need arises, then fine, that’s still good. It’s better than nothing. 

Also, if you’ve been listening to all of my episodes I must say that puts you in a select group of extremely special people. Not everyone listens to podcasts in English. If you’re in public, have a look around. How many of these other people listen to Luke’s English Podcast, or any other podcast for that matter, in English? 

Ah, yes, you are one of the special ones. You are part of that elite group of people who have access to this exclusive and slightly secret world. You’re one of the ones who not only knows what a podcast is, but also how to pronounce it, spell it and also listen to it regularly.

Anyway, listening to podcasts is definitely good for your English, even if it is the only thing you do. But I do recommend doing more than just listening. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – this podcast is best consumed as part of a balanced diet.

Perhaps the worst things for your English are things like this…

a) doing absolutely nothing in English at all, and 

b) getting into a negative mindset in which you tell yourself that your English is no good, that you just can’t do it, or you’re one of those people who simply doesn’t have what it takes to use this language effectively. Never mind those negative thoughts. They will not help, so try not to say those things to yourself. Give yourself a break in 2024!

Everyone is naturally able to learn a language, you just have to maintain some good habits, a positive mental attitude, a sense of enjoyment and perhaps a sense of drive to push things further.

So, what have you been doing in English? What has worked for you? 

Can you recognise the things that have… 

a) helped you to make progress 

b) caused you to feel good about your English?

How can you put your best foot forwards and repeat some of the successes of the last year and build on them and generally move in the right direction, towards growth, progress and prosperity, in your English, but in your life?

Let’s try to maintain a positive cycle in 2024, where one good thing causes you to feel a bit more positive about your English, leading to a growing sense of confidence, which causes you to step outside your comfort zone a little bit more easily, and do something else with a bit more success, which again feeds into your positivity and sense of achievement, and this continues in a generally upward trajectory.


~ Let’s take a quick break here ~ 


To keep this simple, let’s consider these questions: 

  • What have been the good moments in your English learning over the last 12 months?
  • What were those situations? What exactly did you do? What happened? What caused you to feel an improvement in your English and the way you feel about your English?
  • How can you repeat those successes and build on them in the coming months?
  • And, if there were negative things – experiences or feelings in relation to your English, how can you learn from them?

To demonstrate this a bit, let me reflect on my learning of French, which admittedly I have not been engaging with properly (and there you see my somewhat negative attitude towards my relationship with French, revealing the frankly unhealthy condition of my French language learning).

Let me just reflect on my French here and consider my answers to the questions I have above.

Here are some notes which I will expand on.

The cooking class

  • Tell the story – where, when, who, what why etc…
  • The good things – I listened to what the others said and I copied them. I prepared myself in advance, in my head. I decided to just enjoy the moment. I went out of my comfort zone. I will remember the little things that I noticed and used.

Reading graphic novels

  • I love graphic novels in French and there are so many. I finished the series called L’Arabe du Futur, I’ve been reading one about the story of the making of Star Wars, one about an Indonesian woman who lives in France and observes funny cultural differences, one about crime and police in Baltimore which I found really difficult to follow, one about a journalist’s trip to North Korea and more. 
  • You can read direct speech.
  • There is awesome art work and the pictures definitely help to support my understanding. 
  • I get a sense of achievement from actually finishing the books. 
  • I have found something that I actually really enjoy doing in French. I don’t know why, but a lot of things turn me off. I find social interactions in French to be extremely painful.
  • I can go at my own speed (unlike TV shows which are harder to keep up with)
  • I tend to just read and read, and unfortunately I sort of skip over the phrases which I don’t understand or don’t know how to pronounce. I should actually stop and check those things, note them down, try to use them myself. (more comments on this kind of thing later)
  • There’s no audio though, so I can’t actually hear the pronunciation.
  • I should try reading other things like magazine articles or books. I did buy High Fidelity in French but just couldn’t get into the habit of reading it. I have quite bad reading habits actually, even in English. 

Open my ears and just listen to people around me

  • This really just means getting out of my bubble and noticing the French which people are using around me. 
  • Being part of conversations when lots of people are talking can be very overwhelming and exhausting. It’s all too much for me and I just become cut off from the French I’m hearing. As I’ve said before, I feel like I’m watching a game of tennis and after I while I just can’t see the ball any more. 

Being a bit more gregarious and outgoing – stop avoiding social interactions, take out my headphones and be a bit more present. 

Don’t beat myself up

Don’t care so much

Just enjoy it!

Lower my expectations for myself – take the pressure off my shoulders a bit

There are millions of other things I could be doing to improve my French – perhaps I’ll mention some of those things later – but you know what, part of what holds me back with my French is this sense of pressure that I should be a master language learner because I am a professional language teacher. I put a lot of pressure on myself and as a result I have a bad relationship with French and I often avoid it and avoid learning it. You heard me talk about some of these things in the episode with Fabio from last year. Episode 850 “Any Language You Want”, also the one with Rhiannon Carter. 

(This has become a therapy session now) 

Because I make it my business to help other people learn a language, and I do know a lot of methods and have so much pedagogy spinning around inside my head, and that is connected to job-related and career-related pressure, I am extremely aware of all the things I am not doing in my learning of French. I carry all of that on my shoulders and it causes me to feel quite ashamed of my language learning, and shame doesn’t help. It just kills that outgoing, curious, risk-taking, adventurous side that you need to encourage in yourself because that is so important in language learning. It also kills the motivation you need to push through things like slightly boring or unexciting language practice exercises you can do, which require discipline. 

There are also other reasons for my lack of progress including the fact that a lot of people just switch to English when they speak to me, I am actually more capable of having meaningful conversations in English than French, I can’t really speak French at home with my wife because our relationship is based in English and more. As I’ve said before, my French is not that great but my excuses are improving all the time. 

Anyway, I would like to take all that pressure off my shoulders and just come at this a bit more fresh, as if I have no idea that I’m climbing a big mountain – I’m just going for a great walk in the countryside and I’m enjoying the view.

Things to improve

  • Attitude (I’ve just talked about that – just take it easy on myself, basically)
  • Keep a vocabulary/grammar note book → just a notebook, or perhaps notes on my phone, where I can note down or jot down any little things which I notice and would like to remember. Little phrases, little bits of grammar or structures that keep coming up, little reminders of pronunciation. I can check an online French dictionary or even ChatGPT or other online tools like DeepL translator. Online translators can be extremely useful tools – just don’t use them to cheat (to writing all your emails and stuff), use them to help you learn.
  • Check my note book later and remind myself of what I noted down.
  • Practise by testing myself – simply covering up some words with my thumb, reading things out loud and then running them through Google Translate to hear them said, in order to check my pronunciation (Not translating, just making Google Translate say the French I’m learning)
  • Devote just 10 minutes a day to doing some reading or listening in French and then investigating the language I notice with my note book.
  • Try to convert listening to speaking, and reading to writing. Repeat some of the things I’ve heard. Write down some of the things I’ve read. ChatGPT can help with the writing – just ask it to correct you and perhaps explain your errors. Other chatbots are available of course. And I only mention ChatGPT here in case you can’t find or can’t afford a human teacher.
  • Consider taking some one-to-one lessons with a human being perhaps on iTalki.

    I have to sort out my time management for this. All my time is used up at the moment, but I should make time.

Questions for you

  • What do you think of the things I just said? 
  • I mean, did it make you think of your situation at all?

Maybe it just made you think of me and my language learning. To be honest, I don’t really want you to analyse and diagnose my language learning situation. I’m not looking for advice or help with my French, I’m just using it as a little example.

  • Did it encourage you to reflect on your English?

I strongly suspect that your English is better than my French, so your concerns might be a bit different to mine.  You’re probably looking for ways to get out of the intermediate plateau, or ways of progressing to a very proficient level of English. I have people with a pretty wide variety of English levels listening to this, from pretty low-level people who only just manage to follow what I am saying (you have my respect) to non-native speakers who are really advanced and even teach English as a living, and who just enjoy listening to another teacher do his thing, and want to maintain their level and keep their English alive and fresh (you have my respect too).

Anyway, with my own example as a case study, I gave some suggestions of little ways to work on your language there, beyond just listening to this podcast. 

Maybe that can give you some inspiration or ideas.

But really, the main thing I want to get across to you here is the importance of having a positive relationship with the language you are learning.

So, for me and my French, the things I will hold in my mind are

  1. The positive experience I had at the cooking class
  2. The comfort and enjoyment I experience from reading graphic novels in French

Hey! Leave a comment!

I have something to ask you. Please comment on this episode. Spread some positivity in the comment section. I want to encourage you to give any positive comment that you can right now. This will be good for you as it will help you realise something positive about your English and will give you a little bit of writing practice, but it will also be good for everyone else because it can help to create a good vibe and also can give people some inspiration and some general support in their English learning.

  • What positive experiences have you had with English?
  • What do you love about learning English?
  • What little methods, exercises or resources have helped with your English?
  • What have you enjoyed in English lately?

Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

Summary 

Sometimes I worry that I am too wordy and the main core message of what I am saying gets watered down by the slightly long-winded way in which I put things. It’s probably fine and I just worry too much about these things, or something. Anyway, I want this episode to be clear, so I’ve asked ChatGPT to summarise the things I just said to you. I entered the text which I wrote on my sofa over the last few days and which I have read to you, and asked it to summarise it for me. 

This is what it wrote.

Here’s what it said. 

The text you provided is an extensive reflection on English language learning and personal experiences related to language acquisition. The author encourages listeners to assess their progress over the past year, emphasizing the importance of reflective practice and mindfulness in language learning.
The piece delves into various aspects:
1. **Looking back:** Encouraging individuals to consider their progress in English over the past year. Reflecting on what has worked positively, identifying experiences that have impacted learning, and acknowledging both positive and negative moments.
2. **Acknowledging learning challenges:** Addressing the common feeling of being stuck in the “intermediate plateau” and offering encouragement to persist despite feeling stagnant. Emphasizing that progress may not always be immediately visible but is still happening.
3. **Adopting a positive attitude:** Encouraging a positive mindset, emphasizing that failures and setbacks are part of the learning process. Highlighting the importance of perseverance and staying committed to learning.
4. **Suggestions for improvement:** Offering personal experiences with learning French and outlining strategies for improvement, such as keeping a vocabulary/grammar notebook, practicing reading and listening, and exploring speaking opportunities.
5. **The importance of enjoying the learning process:** Stressing the significance of enjoying the journey of learning a language and removing self-imposed pressure to achieve perfection.
6. **Encouragement for sharing experiences:** Inviting listeners to share positive experiences, effective learning methods, and resources in English.
7. **Future goals:** Posing questions about how individuals want to spend the next 12 months, emphasizing the value of enjoying time spent learning English, and expressing enthusiasm for continuing the podcast journey.
Overall, the text serves as a reflective guide, encouraging learners to consider their language learning journeys, embrace challenges, find joy in the process, and engage with the learning community by sharing experiences and positive energy.

A note about AI chatbots like ChatGPT

Sometimes listeners on YouTube post AI-written summaries of my episodes in the comment section and they’re usually a bit wrong, for example the AI seems confused by moments of humour or comedy in my episodes, or by funny little conversational tangents and doesn’t seem to be able to distinguish between those tangential moments and the main topic of the episode, and so its summaries are a bit off the mark. I’m talking about Tammy AI here. I don’t know if it uses the same engine as ChatGPT. Anyway, that summary which ChatGPT gave me for this episode is good and I’m happy with it. 

By the way, I’m not relying on ChatGPT here, overusing it and becoming dependent on it. I say that because I think some people out there are wary of ChatGPT and see any use of it as being a slippery slope to over-reliance on it and therefore a sort of slipping of standards. But I think that AI can be used sparingly and to good effect, and that summary is an example of that. It came up with that summary in seconds. I read it, checked it and decided to use it.

Speaking challenges

I said before that I would give you some ideas for speaking and writing challenges. So here are some things you can do to work on your productive skills in English.

Working on your speaking

In a perfect world you will have people to talk to, and you can just have these long conversations, practise expressing yourself for long periods until you are really tired and that night you fall asleep with your mind whizzing and whirring with English words, structures and pronunciation. But, for so many of you out there, you don’t have this opportunity.

You could try joining a community of English speakers. For example, Zdenek has a Discord server called The Achievers Chamber which is a place where you can practise speaking with other learners of English who have a similar level to you. https://teacherzdenek.com/?page_id=2816 

Or you can go to italki.com www.teacherluke.co.uk/talk and find a person there to talk to, or a teacher to have lessons with. There are teachers from all over the world including the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, USA etc. 

You have to pay for this of course, and sometimes it can take time to find the right teacher or conversation partner for you, but it can be an effective way to find someone for speaking practice with feedback and also lessons for specific purposes. By the way, if you use my link you can get a $10 voucher when you buy some lessons on italki www.teacherluke.co.uk/talk

You could also enrol in language classes in a language school near you, like The British Council, and you’ll probably find that they offer courses which include lessons on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and all that stuff. You might not find specific classes only for speaking and feedback though. You’ll have to check the BC’s website for more information. See if they have a teaching centre near you, and what services they offer. They also have online courses. https://www.britishcouncil.org/english/adults  

But even if you can’t access English speakers or teachers for conversations and language feedback, you can still find ways to practise your speaking on your own. You just have to think outside the box a little bit and be prepared to do something that seems a bit unconventional, like speaking to yourself. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you’re weird, and if someone overhears you and wonders what you’re doing, just say “it’s ok – there’s nothing to worry about – Luke told me to do it.” and they’ll say “Who is Luke?” and then you’ll have to just make them listen to LEP and then they’ll become LEPsters and my evil plan will finally come to fruition and I’ll take over the world. 

Talk to yourself

Just try talking to yourself, out loud, in English. There are many things you can talk about or try to do (there are ideas coming). 

Simply the act of attempting to express yourself out loud in English is good practice. When you get stuck and you realise you don’t know how to say something you want to say, you can just go to Google Translate (other translators are available – DeepL for example) and just write what you want to say in your language and translate it into English. You can also press the “audio” button to hear how to pronounce it. 

This is not cheating. It’s using Google Translate as a tool.

You might think that Google Translate is a bad thing, it’s cheating, it’s lazy, it’s bad for your English or it’s unreliable. Well, it’s actually pretty good I find, as long as it’s not the only thing you are working with.

There’s also ChatGPT with the Google Chrome extention “Voice control for ChatGPT, which allows you to just ask questions to ChatGPT, get it to translate things for you, and listen to it say its responses. You can control things like speaking speed and different accents. It’s no replacement for speaking to an actual human, but if you see it as a tool for certain kinds of controlled practice, it can be pretty useful!

So, consider using things like Google Translate or ChatGPT as tools to help you practise speaking on your own. 

If you don’t know what to talk about, here are some ideas.

  1. Commentary
    Give a commentary of all the things you are doing while doing them.
  2. Commentary in the past
    While you are doing things, talk about them as if they happened in the past. Imagine you’re in the future and you’re describing all the things you did.
  3. Shadowing
    Listen to a short audio clip or video in English and try to imitate the speaker’s pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm. Repeat the sentences or phrases immediately after hearing them. There are specific episodes in the premium subscription designed to help you do this.
  4. Record yourself
    Pick a topic or a short passage (maybe a topic from a podcast episode, or a passage from an episode with a transcript – like a story episode), read it aloud, and record your voice. Then, listen to the recording and analyse your pronunciation, intonation, and fluency. Take note of areas that you could improve.
  5. Monologue or ramble challenge
    Choose a topic or an object around you and talk about it for a few minutes as if you’re giving a presentation. You can discuss its features, uses, history, or any related information.
  6. Role play
    Act out conversations between different characters or personas. You can use scripts from movies, TV shows, or even create your own scenarios. This helps with practicing natural language flow and expressions. Also, you can just talk to yourself. Try it now! (I’ll demonstrate it if you like)
  7. Describe and Explain
    Take an object, a picture, or a scene and describe it in as much detail as possible. This exercise helps in expanding vocabulary and enhancing descriptive skills.
  8. Debate with yourself
    Choose a topic you’re interested in and argue both sides of the debate. Express your opinions, provide reasons, and counter-arguments as if you were having a real discussion.
  9. Storytelling
    Create and narrate stories. It can be a personal experience, a fictional tale, or a summary of a book or movie. Just describe what happened. My StoryTime episodes in the premium subscription are specifically designed to help you do this. 
  10. Sing along and karaoke
    Practice singing along to English songs. It can help with pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation. You can also find karaoke versions of songs on YouTube with the lyrics on the screen and sing them as if you’re performing. Just remember that songs often break the rules of grammar and pop songs are usually sung in an American accent, not that there’s anything wrong with that of course.
  11. Read Aloud
    Choose a book, article, or any text in English, and read it aloud. Focus on clear pronunciation, appropriate pauses, and intonation as if you’re narrating it for an audience. If you also have the audio version of that text, you can listen to it and compare it to your version. I talked about the benefits of doing this in episode 794. 

If you have other cool ideas, feel free to share them in the comments section.

Remember, the key to improvement is regular practice. Mix and match these activities based on your preferences and gradually increase the difficulty level as you progress. But remember, self-assessment and feedback are really important for monitoring your improvement.

Again, consider recording yourself and listening back. 

Also consider using Voice Control for ChatGPT and talking to it, and then ask it to give you feedback. You can say “I am going to speak English to you. Can you give me some feedback on my English, and correct some of my errors?” Then speak for a few minutes. It will focus on things like grammar and vocabulary, rather than pronunciation though. But if you notice that you’re saying certain words and ChatGPT is hearing other words, it might mean you are pronouncing those words wrong, and then it;’s time to use Google Translate to check the pronunciation of the word or words you’re having trouble with. Of course, good online dictionaries have phonetic translations and audio recordings too.

Writing challenges

  • Write a diary or journal
    YOu can simply describe the things you did, or write about your feelings. Either way, it’s good to get into the habit of trying to express yourself in written English.

But it’s important to remember that we normally write certain kinds of text and so you should probably practise writing in these modes.

Here are the kinds of text you might have to write. This is the sort of thing that comes up in writing sections of Cambridge Exams

  • A for/against essay
  • A business report or academic report with an introduction, findings and conclusion
  • An informal letter to a friend or family member describing an event or planning something
  • A formal business letter to get or give information
  • A business proposal (similar to a report but with a recommendation at the end)
  • A short fiction story
  • A covering letter or personal statement for a job application

Again, I am going to refer to ChatGPT here, but there’s no denying how helpful it can be here, in lieu of a real human teacher.

Here’s a template for a ChatGPT prompt which you can use to create writing tasks.

Write this prompt. You can change the underlined part depending on what kind of writing you want to practise.

Can you give me a short writing task to help me practise my English? I’d like to write a business email. Can you give me some feedback on my writing, and also provide me with an example answer for your task?

ChatGPT will give you the task, then tell you to write your text as a reply and it will give you some feedback. It will also give you a sample answer to your task which you can use as a model to copy / get ideas from. 

Here’s ChatGPT’s response to my prompt:

Absolutely! Here’s a scenario for your business email:
**Scenario: You work for a software company and need to email a client regarding a delay in delivering a project. The client has been eagerly anticipating the completion of the project and is expecting it by the end of the month. Craft an email to notify the client about the delay, explain the reasons behind it, and reassure them about the revised timeline.**
When you draft your email, make sure to maintain a professional tone, be transparent about the situation, offer apologies for the inconvenience caused by the delay, and propose a revised timeline or solution.
For feedback and an example answer:
When you’ve written your email, you can share it here for review and feedback. Additionally, I’ll provide an example email response for the scenario described above:
Subject: Update on Project Delivery Timeline
Dear [Client’s Name],
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to provide an update on the status of the project we’ve been working on.
Regrettably, I must inform you that there has been a slight delay in the delivery of the project. We understand the importance of this project to your business objectives, and please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this delay may cause.
The primary reason for the delay is a need for additional testing and refinement to ensure the final product meets the high-quality standards we’ve committed to delivering. Our team encountered unexpected technical issues during the final phase of development, which required more thorough testing and adjustments than initially anticipated.
We are fully committed to delivering a flawless product that exceeds your expectations. To ensure the highest quality and functionality, we estimate that the project will be completed and ready for delivery by [Revised Date].
Rest assured, our team is actively addressing the challenges, and we are implementing strategies to expedite the process without compromising the quality of the final product.
In the meantime, we will provide regular updates on the progress to keep you informed about the status of the project. Your satisfaction remains our top priority, and we appreciate your understanding and continued trust in our services.
Should you have any questions or require further clarification, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Best regards,
[Your Name][Your Position][Your Contact Information]
Feel free to use this example as a reference while drafting your email. Once you’ve composed your message, share it here for feedback, and I’ll be glad to assist further!

So, you can use that prompt to ask ChatGPT to give you similar tasks, feedback and model.

By the way, I couldn’t help having a bit of fun with ChatGPT and I decided to write a really terrible response to the task it gave me. I just wanted to see what feedback it would give me.

Here’s my answer to your task.
Sorry mate but I ain’t done that thing you wanted cos sh*t got intense and I had to stay at home. Sorry about that can you give me more time though and it’ll get done proper innit bruv. Alright boss.

Here’s the feedback ChatGPT gave me. It showed great restraint here. If one my my students had given me this work I would not have been quite so professional I think.

Your message has a casual tone, which may not be suitable for a professional business email. To maintain a more formal and professional approach, consider the following revised version:
Subject: Extension Request for Project Delivery
Dear [Client’s Name],
I sincerely apologize for the delay in delivering the project as initially planned. Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances arose, requiring my urgent attention and presence at home.
I understand the importance of this project and the inconvenience caused by this delay. I assure you that I am fully committed to completing the project promptly and to the highest standard possible.
Could I kindly request an extension of [X amount of time] to ensure the project is finalized thoroughly and accurately? This additional time will enable me to dedicate the necessary focus and effort to ensure a successful outcome.
I appreciate your understanding and flexibility in this matter. Please be assured that I am prioritizing the completion of the project and will strive to exceed your expectations.
Thank you for your patience and cooperation.
Best regards,
[Your Name][Your Position][Your Contact Information]
This revised version maintains a polite and professional tone while effectively communicating the need for an extension. Feel free to incorporate this structure and tone into your future business emails for a more formal and appropriate approach.

OK, so that brings us to the end of this episode.

Well done for getting to the end. I trust you have not turned into a skeleton with headphones on. Do let me know that you are still breathing and that you found this episode to be useful.

What about that vocabulary highlighted in that lurid green colour on the PDF?

As I said before, I will devote a premium episode (maybe a series) to this vocabulary. So, you’ll need to be a premium subscriber to get that. Did I mention my premium subscription at all?

www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo 

But here is a list of all those highlighted expressions for your reference.

DID YOU NOTICE THIS VOCABULARY IN THIS EPISODE?

I’ll be explaining all of this in an upcoming Premium episode. 

  • watch out for some of the words and phrases highlighted in lurid green on the PDF
  • A lot of people will be turning over a new leaf and trying to make a fresh start with their English. Is that you? 
  • It’s a podcast for learners of English. I’m Luke. Hence the title of the show – Luke’s English Podcast. 
  • There are audio versions and video versions of this podcast. Let me explain that to the uninitiated
  • If you’re already initiated into the world of podcasting, that all might strike you as being very obvious
  • I just love doing this podcast and hopefully my enthusiasm will rub off on you and will encourage you in your journey
  • What inspiring words of wisdom can I impart? What sage-like advice can I give?” 
  • And after I had lowered my expectations for myself and just started writing, this is what came out. 
  • Listen carefully and hopefully you will get swept up in what I’m saying and the outcome will be that you’ll get a renewed sense of positivity and possibility for your English this year. 
  • This is a time when we look back and survey the year we’ve just completed, then look forward to the forthcoming 12 months and consider how we’re going to spend that time.
  • I want to encourage you and help you to take stock of your English learning at this moment in time.
  • “errr, I dunno actually”
  • you’re just not being very mindful about your relationship with English 
  • you’re not really that aware of the ways that you are learning this language
  • ou listen to my episodes, do other things in English sometimes but you don’t reflect on it all in an objective way
  • To be honest, I doubt that you fit the description I just mentioned. 
  • in fact maybe you are very conscious of it, and take quite a  metacognitive approach to it – maybe you are constantly analysing and strategising the way you learn English
  • Are you waiting for some kind of breakthrough moment?
  • Do you feel like you’re on a long plateau?
  • You just have to be willing to stick with it.
  • Sometimes you get stuck in a rut, or stuck in a routine
  • it feels like you’re going over the same ground 
  • getting any significant feelings of reward moments of triumph or glory.
  • You can’t have those moments all the time. Sometimes they are few and far between.
  • With English you have to put in a lot of hours.
  • you have to see the bigger picture
  • Imagine it like a long journey. (trip, journey, travel)
  • But at other times you have to travel along a long flat plain and it can feel like you’re not even moving at all. 
  • This can make you feel disheartened
  • the time you have spent with it will pay off somehow.
  • the more you are exposed to English as a living thing like this, the better your position is,
  • when you’re on the spot and you’re in conversation with someone
  • keep going, keep the faith,
  • Keep your chin up.
  • consider shaking things up a bit, adopting some new habits maybe
  • watch some stuff in English or occasionally speak it when the need arises
  • I must say that puts you in a select group of extremely special people.
  • this podcast is best consumed as part of a balanced diet.
  • getting into a negative mindset
  • one of those people who simply doesn’t have what it takes to use this language effectively
  • you just have to maintain some good habits, a positive mental attitude, a sense of enjoyment and perhaps a sense of drive to push things further.
  • How can you put your best foot forwards and repeat some of the successes of the last year and build on them
  • this continues in a generally upward trajectory.
  • To demonstrate this a bit, let me reflect on my learning of French
  • Here are some notes which I will expand on.
  • Reading graphic novels
  • This really just means getting out of my bubble
  • I just become cut off from the French I’m hearing
  • Being a bit more gregarious and outgoing 
  • Don’t beat myself up
  • part of what holds me back with my French is this sense of pressure that I should be a master language learner 
  • you need to push through things like slightly boring or unexciting language practice exercises
  • just take it easy on myself, basically
  • notes on my phone, where I can note down or jot down any little things which I notice
  • I don’t really want you to analyse and diagnose my language learning situation
  • I strongly suspect that your English is better than my French
  • Sometimes I worry that I am too wordy and the main core message of what I am saying gets watered down by the slightly long-winded way in which I put things. 
  • The piece delves into various aspects
  • its summaries are a bit off the mark
  • some people out there are wary of ChatGPT and see any use of it as being a slippery slope to over-reliance on it and therefore a sort of slipping of standards
  • AI can be used sparingly and to good effect
  • you are really tired and that night you fall asleep with your mind whizzing and whirring with English words

my evil plan will finally come to fruition and I’ll take over the world.

847. RANDOM TOPIC GENERATOR (A 1-Hour Rambling Episode)

Join me for an unplanned rambling episode about various things including: hump day, bed bugs in Paris 🐞, fashion trends I followed when I was younger 👟👖, CDs 💿 vs cassettes 📼 vs vinyl 🎵, the most relaxing place in the world 🛏, Japanese zen gardens ⛩, Hunter S Thompson 🚬, the most disgusting job I ever had 🤮, and more…

[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

Random Topic Generator 👉 https://capitalizemytitle.com/random-topic-generator/

837. Describing a Car Accident in 15+ Styles of English 🚗📚

How would the same car accident be described in over 15 completely different styles of English? What are the differences in vocabulary, grammar and organisational structure? How should I change my voice to read each description? Let’s see how English changes in different situations. Styles presented include: formal and informal English, news reports, an action movie screenplay, an Eminem rap, a romantic novel, a Shakespeare play, a politician making a speech, a stand-up comedian, Liam Neeson in the film Taken, and Luke in an episode of Luke’s English Podcast. PDF transcript available.

Small Donate Button[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

https://youtu.be/fQrQhQQEyWg

DOWNLOAD THE PDF TRANSCRIPT FREE 👇

Styles demonstrated in this episode 👇

  • An informal letter to a friend
  • Literary style
  • A stand-up comedy routine
  • A police report
  • An academic essay
  • A tabloid newspaper report
  • A broadsheet newspaper report
  • A conversational anecdote between friends
  • A Hollywood action movie screenplay
  • A news report on location
  • A child writing a letter to their parents
  • An 18th century romantic novel
  • Shakespeare
  • Eminem
  • JRR Tolkein
  • Luke’s English Podcast
  • Super-intelligent alien computers who have been dispassionately observing the human race for centuries
  • A politician making a speech
  • Liam Neeson in the film “Taken” (2006)

834. The best way to learn a language, according to research (Article) 📖

Reading an article by Gavin Lamb (PhD) about the conclusions of academic studies into language learning, and adding my own reflections and comments. What does research tell us about the best way to learn a language? What are the most important things to consider? What are the best methods? The article boils it all down to three main points.

Small Donate Button[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

📖 Gavin Lamb’s article on Medium.com https://medium.com/the-faculty/what-does-the-research-say-about-the-best-way-to-learn-another-language-797882ee0b45

https://medium.com/the-faculty/what-does-the-research-say-about-the-best-way-to-learn-another-language-797882ee0b45

Some previous episodes which are also about how to learn English 👇

823. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 3

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

Small Donate Button[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

DOWNLOAD THE PDF TRANSCRIPT FOR 823. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 3

Episode Transcript

Hello listeners,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It gave pretty good definitions I have to say.

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

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

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

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

Etymology

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

Create mnemonics to help you remember vocabulary

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

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

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

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

Ask it to transcribe things into phonemic script

But only in standard American?

Is it good at transcribing things in British English?

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

Different versions of the language

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sentence stress, pausing and intonation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☝️bad bad bad bad bad! ☝️

Grammar or vocab quizzes or tests

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

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

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

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

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

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

It always uses multiple choice.

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

Vocabulary review tests, to help you remember words and phrases

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

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

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

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

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

Text adventure games to practise grammar

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

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

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

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

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

Ask it to adapt its English level to yours 

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

Actually I just tested this with this prompt:

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

Also, this:

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

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

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

Overview / Comments / Conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have no idea. 

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

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

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

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

How might AI become a threat to humans?

Will ChatGPT help people to cheat?

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

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

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

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

Will there be more cheating as a result of ChatGPT?

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

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

That’s it – thanks for listening!

Leave your comments in the comment section.

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

🙏

822. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 2

In this series I am evaluating ChatGPT as a language-learning tool. In this part I’m experimenting with role-play conversations, job interview practice, creating texts and dialogues and seeing if it can help you prepare for Cambridge exams like IELTS or CAE.

Small Donate Button[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

DOWNLOAD THE PDF TRANSCRIPT FOR 822. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 2

Episode Transcript

Hello listeners,

This is part 2 of a 3-part episode in which I am playing around with ChatGPT in order to see how it can help you learn English. 

ChatGPT is a sophisticated AI chatbot. You can ask it questions and give it commands and it responds instantly. This is the most advanced AI chatbot I have ever used and it is quite impressive how it can do so many different tasks. We’re all finding out how we can use it and how it can be useful as a time-saving tool for many things, including learning and teaching English.

Of course ChatGPT is not without its critics. Some of those criticisms include the fact that ChatGPT will probably encourage cheating and will make it harder for institutions like schools to detect cheating. Noam Chomsky the well-known linguist and intellectual has described it as high-tech plagiarism, because it essentially regurgitates other people’s work and doesn’t provide citations or sources for the information it provides, and also people are suggesting that ChatGPT or AI in general could ultimately lead to a lot of people losing their jobs. 

Does that include me, and other English teachers like me? Can ChatGPT replace English teachers, content creators or even the need to practise English with humans at all?

I’m not entirely sure, and we’re all working these things out at the moment, since this is perhaps the first time this kind of technology has been so accessible and now everyone’s using it, learning about it and thinking about it.  

There are very interesting debates about this going on, but in this episode I’m focusing mainly on things you can do with ChatGPT, seeing how it works, and evaluating it’s effectiveness as a language learning tool. 

This is part 2. In part 1 of this I asked it to create a study plan as if I was an upper-intermediate learner of English, which it instantly wrote for me. The advice was presented very clearly and a lot of it was pretty decent advice at first glance, but was it appropriate advice for the learner profile I wrote? Was the information a bit generic? What experience or research was its advice based on? We don’t really know. 

Then I checked its ability to correct English errors and to explain those corrections, which it seemed to do quite well, although it lacked the ability of a human teacher to see the bigger picture and to use emotional intelligence, and then I started testing its ability to have a natural conversation, which it struggled with – mainly because as an AI language model it doesn’t have any feelings or opinions of its own and apparently these things are absolutely vital elements for a good conversation.

But is it possible to persuade ChatGPT to forget that it’s an AI chatbot and to pretend to be someone else, like a celebrity that you’d like to chat to, or your English teacher who can correct your errors while you chat?

This is what we’re looking at in part 2 here.

Also, coming up are these questions:

  • How well does it handle role plays in order to let you prepare to use English in specific situations?
  • Can you simulate job interview situations with it?
  • Can it create useful texts or dialogues for studying with?
  • Can it help you with exam preparation by providing sample written texts in response to FCE or CAE writing tasks?
  • Can it give you good advice for doing Cambridge exams?
  • Can it create reliable, useful exam practice tasks to help you prepare for IELTS?

Well, let’s find out now as we continue to play around with ChatGPT. By the way, there is a PDF script for all the things I am saying in this episode, including all the prompts I am using. You can get it on the page for this episode on my website – link in the description. If you are watching on YouTube you will see the text on the screen and I recommend that you watch this in full screen mode so you can see the text more easily.

OK, so let’s continue and here we go…

Conversation role plays for specific situations

If you need practice of using English in certain specific situations, you can ask it to help you.

I am a hotel receptionist. Can you help me deal with customer complaints?

It just gave me advice, like an article about how to deal with customer complaints. 

You can ask it to create sample dialogues for you, for different situations.

Can you make a dialogue between a hotel receptionist and a customer making a complaint about their room?

It creates a pretty good model dialogue. The language you can see is professional, and polite and a good example of the kind of English you would need in that situation. 

ChatGPT is good at this kind of thing. But, as a teacher in class, I might want to make sure this dialogue contained certain target language which I want to present and practise. 

Again, there isn’t a brain there looking at the bigger picture, guiding you, interpreting your needs and reactions, anticipating and planning as it prepares learning materials and activities for you. 

Conversation can be hard to maintain. 

You need to give it very specific instructions if you want to converse with it. Otherwise it will just generate a dialogue. 

Let’s do a roleplay. You pretend to be a hotel customer with a complaint, and I will be the receptionist. Can you also correct my English errors during the roleplay?

It just created the dialogue, writing lines for both people.

Let’s see what happens if I re-write the prompt more specifically.

Let’s do a roleplay. You pretend to be a hotel customer with a complaint, and I will be the receptionist. I will start by writing “Hello, can I help you”. Then give your response and wait for me to reply before writing the next line.

Can you also correct my English errors during the roleplay?

It’s very difficult to persuade it to do this.

Job interview role plays

Can you interview me for a job as a TEFL teacher at a new language school in Paris?

This worked quite well. It generated questions one after the other. It also responded when I asked for clarification. 

Let’s see it it can help you prepare for an interview for a specific position.

Can we do a job interview role play? I’ll input a job advertisement and can you then interview me for the position?

You can input all the details from a job advertisement. 

Just paste all the text from an online job advert, like “Marketing manager job advert” or “TEFL teacher France job advert” or “Podcast host job advert”

Inputting a large amount of text can confuse ChatGPT and it tends to just summarise the text. But then you can say “Ask me interview questions based on the job description I gave you”.

It should ask you some pretty good questions, relevant to that job, which will allow you to simulate the interview on your own, or at least prepare some answers. You could type your answers into ChatGPT and ask it for feedback.

But beware of just practising English through typing. Don’t forget that in the real world you have to speak spontaneously and you have to use social skills while doing it including things like body language.

Sample dialogues or texts

Ask it to produce sample texts or sample dialogues which you can then study with.

To be fair, this isn’t really necessary as there are so many texts and resources already available for you, including ones which are specifically created to help you learn English, but yes they are in published books and materials that you might not have immediate access to. Also, it’s simple to just go to ChatGPT and ask it to create any text or dialogue you want, following your specific instructions.

Can you write a 300 word text containing useful phrases for talking about using the toilet?

No speaking: Remember, Chat GPT won’t “say” any of these sentences because it is only in text form.

Can you create a 200 word story to present the use of narrative verb tenses in English?

What I want from this is a range of verb tenses. Past simple, past continuous, past perfect, with good clear examples of how those forms are used and how they are different to each other.

Did it do that?

Was it a good story?

Can it help with Cambridge Exam test preparation?

Let’s see if it can do a Cambridge First Certificate writing task. 

Sample answers can help us to practice our writing by providing a model which we can learn from. 

Let’s input a task directly into ChatGPT.

CAE Writing Part 1

You have received this email from your English-speaking friend David.

From: David

Subject: touring holiday

Some college friends of mine are visiting your area soon for a week’s touring holiday. They would like to travel around and learn about your local area and its history.

Can you tell me about some of the places they could visit? What’s the best way to travel around – car, bike or coach?

Thanks,

David

Write your email.

Write 140 – 190 words in an appropriate style. 

Dear David,

It’s great to hear from you!

I’d be happy to give some recommendations for your college friends’ touring holiday in our area.

There are plenty of places to visit and explore around here. If your friends are interested in history, I would suggest they start with a visit to the local museum, which houses exhibits on the area’s past, including its early settlements and industrial heritage.

Another must-visit is the old castle, which is one of the most famous landmarks in the region. Your friends can take a guided tour of the castle to learn about its history and its role in the area’s development.

As for the best way to travel around, I would recommend a car. There are several car rental agencies available in the area, and it’s an efficient and flexible way to travel and explore. However, if they are more comfortable with public transport, there are several coach tours available that take visitors around to the most popular sites.

I hope your friends enjoy their time here and get to experience everything that the area has to offer.

Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.

Best regards,

[Your Name]

Can you give me some advice on how to do a Cambridge FCE writing task, like the one I gave you?

The answer was pretty good but it got some things wrong.

  • It said that I should use a formal tone, but this isn’t always the case. 
  • The email to David shouldn’t be formal. In fact this advice contradicts what it did in the writing task. It used some informal language there. 
  • It didn’t refer to any assessment criteria.
  • I’m not sure ChatGPT is consistent or reliable enough to replace proper English language teaching.

Ask it to create IELTS practice tests

I asked it:

Can you create an IELTS reading section 3 practice test?

It created a test which looked good at first glance, but it was not a proper section 3 reading test. 

The test format was different and did not follow the true, false, not given format of IELTS part 3. 

So this means it is not providing sufficient practice for IELTS reading section 3. 

Each part of IELTS is specifically designed to test different reading skills and each reading test is very carefully created to test those skills. 

Chat GPT didn’t do this to the same standard as you would find in proper IELTS test preparation materials.

Part 2 ending

That is where we are going to stop part 2.

I hope you’re enjoying these episodes and finding them useful.

Don’t forget to leave your comments in the comment section if you have something to say. 

We are going to continue in part 3 of this episode, which will be available soon. In fact it might be available for you now – check the episode description for links.

In part 3 I will be attempting to get answers to these questions:

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

All of that, coming up in part 3!

End of part 2

821. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 1

An episode exploring the various ways that ChatGPT might be able to help you learn English. Can it create study plans? Can it correct your errors and explain the corrections? Can you use it to simulate natural conversations? This is the first of a three-part series in which I test ChatGPT’s usefulness as an AI language learning tool.

[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT FOR 821. ChatGPT & Learning English PART 1

Episode Transcript

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to my podcast for learners of English around the world.

I hope you are doing well today and that you are ready for this epic episode, which is called ChatGPT and Learning English

Yes, it’s time for me to talk about ChatGPT, just like everyone else this year! Everyone’s been talking about it. Now it’s my turn. It’s taken me a while to get round to doing this, but here it is.

There are absolutely loads of ways ChatGPT can be used. We are all discovering just how useful this is.

There have also been lots of discussions going on about how it might change the world, for better or worse. 

People have been raising ethical questions about things like whether it is a form of plagiarism, whether it will encourage and enable cheating and other issues. 

I’m going to focus here on learning English, mainly.

ChatGPT is basically an extremely sophisticated AI (Artificial Intelligence) chat bot developed and run by a company called OpenAI. 

It’s free for anyone to use. Just create an account at OpenAI and then go to https://chat.openai.com/chat and you can start. 

You just type in your prompt or question and away you go.

How do people use ChatGPT?

I asked it that question. Let’s see what it said. 


Most people use ChatGPT to ask questions and seek answers on a wide range of topics. 

As an AI language model, ChatGPT can provide information, explanations, and guidance on a variety of subjects, such as science, technology, history, culture, and more. 

People may also use ChatGPT for language learning, writing assistance, and brainstorming ideas. Additionally, ChatGPT can be used for entertainment purposes, such as generating jokes, riddles, or trivia questions. 

Overall, people use ChatGPT as a helpful tool for obtaining information, learning new things, and solving problems.

I’m recording this episode in March 2023 and I’m talking about ChatGPT3, which as the name suggests is the third iteration of this software, released by OpenAI in November 2022. This is the version that has got everyone talking.

What is OpenAI? 

This is the company that has created ChatGPT. 

According to Wikipedia, OpenAI is:

“… an American artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the non-profit OpenAI Incorporated and its for-profit subsidiary corporation OpenAI Limited Partnership. OpenAI conducts AI research with the declared intention of promoting and developing a friendly AI.”

  • Non-profit laboratory
  • For-profit subsidiary corporation
  • Research “…with the declared intention of promoting and developing friendly AI”

Declared intention → Interesting wording! 

That seems to suggest that there are also undeclared intentions, doesn’t it? 

Does this mean that they have other intentions that they’re not declaring, like maybe developing “unfriendly AI”, and what would that be like?  

Would it just be rude to you if you asked it a question? 

Like if you ask it, 

Can you recommend some good mystery stories to help me learn English?” 

and it just says… 

“No. What do you think I am, Google? Go and find out for yourself, and don’t ask such me stupid questions, human.”

That would be unfriendly AI. 

And that’s probably the best case future scenario for “unfriendly AI” isn’t it? Just a rude and unhelpful chatbot. 

Of course unfriendly AI could end up being a lot worse than just that. 

It could be… I don’t know… Terminators.

But don’t worry, because thankfully, this is not the case and they are developing “friendly AI”. 

So, everything is ok. I hope.

Am I a bit cynical or suspicious about this?

Forgive me if come across as slightly suspicious, cynical or even paranoid about this kind of thing, but I have to admit that when I read about companies like OpenAI that develop artificial intelligence products like ChatGPT or robotic developers like Boston Dynamics (you know the ones that make those vaguely terrifying robots)

and things like that, when I read about those things, it does make me feel like I’m living in a dystopian science fiction film or something. Just a little bit. 

It all has that kind of “dark sci-fi” atmosphere to it.

But no, this technology is not evil of course, yet, probably. 

I suppose it depends who is in charge of it and all sorts of other things, but having watched so many of those science fiction films, well, I can’t help feeling slightly alarmed or at least uncomfortable to some extent.

But of course those are just films and companies like Open AI are in no way similar to the fictional corporations in those films. Not similar at all. 

Look at their website – https://openai.com/ 

It is decidedly non-scary. It’s all nice with friendly people sitting around smiling and chatting and lots of green plants in the background and it’s all natural and sunny and safe.  

“Safe” is definitely a key word on their website. 

They really want us to know that they are making sure their projects are definitely safe and friendly and beneficial to humanity

No need to worry! We’re making it safe. 😊

https://chat.openai.com/chat

Anyway, this episode is supposed to be about how ChatGPT can help you learn English, and whether or not it will make me (and countless other people) completely redundant and unemployed. 

So, let’s get back to the point: 

ChatGPT and Learning English

Despite my ironic comments about science fiction films, I am fascinated by ChatGPT and the way it can be used as a tool. 

The potential is huge. Its use as a language learning assistant is only the tip of the iceberg really.

The more you play with it the more you realise what it can do, depending on the prompts that you give to it. You also realise its limitations and how it sometimes gets things completely wrong.

For example, the other day I was asking it random questions and I asked it this:

Who is the most famous guest ever to have appeared on Luke’s English Podcast?

So it does often get things completely wrong. 

That is something to bear in mind.

Useful ChatGPT Prompts

Chat GPT is basically a chat bot. It works like you’re having a conversation with it, in text form.

You write prompts into the chat box and then get responses as if it is a person writing back to you.

Usually these prompts are in the form of questions to request information or to ask ChatGPT to do things. 

What time is it?

So basically: 

I can’t tell you the time because I don’t know and anyway I’m above that kind of thing. Just consult some of your 20th century technology and don’t bother me with such petty simple requests.

Prompt: 

Can you give me some tips on how to make my podcast introductions shorter?

For some reason this screenshot was lost!

You can also enter imperative instructions, like this: 

Make a list of evil corporations in science fiction films

So, as I go through this episode I’ll be using various prompts. If you are looking at the notes/transcript on the page for this episode on my website or while watching the YouTube version, you will see all the prompts I’m using written in italics.

Tip: Writing prompts for ChatGPT

It’s quite important that you word your prompts carefully, and if you don’t get the response you’re looking for first time round, you should keep trying with more specific and detailed prompts in order to get the right response. 

I’ll show you some examples of this during the episode.

Specific Ways You Can Use ChatGPT to Learn English

Let’s look at some specific things you can do with ChatGPT to help with your English. I’ll show you specific prompts that you can write into ChatGPT and I will give my comments about each response it gives.

Overview

These are the things we are going to explore and assess during the episode.

  • Ask it to create a study plan for you
  • Ask it to correct your errors
  • Use it for conversation practice
  • Use it for practising English in different situations (e.g. job interview role plays)
  • Ask it to create texts or dialogues to study with
  • Ask it to help you with exam preparation (IELTS, FCE, CAE etc)
  • Ask it for definitions of words, and synonyms, antonyms, and collocations
  • Ask it about the etymology of words and phrases
  • Ask it to help you remember words with mnemonics
  • Ask it to transcribe things into phonemic script 
  • Ask it to convert things into different versions of English (i.e. between UK and US English, or other varieties)
  • Ask it to help you with sentence stress, pausing, intonation etc
  • Ask it to create grammar or vocabulary quizzes or tests
  • Ask it to create text adventure games to help you learn English
  • Ask it to adapt its English level (e.g. for low level reading)

Ask it to create a study plan for you

I am an upper-intermediate learner of English, currently stuck at the intermediate plateau. My main areas of weakness are listening, speaking and pronunciation. I want to speak with a British accent and I want to be completely fluent at a C1 level or higher. Can you create a step-by-step study plan for me?


Yes, I can help you create a study plan to improve your listening, speaking, and pronunciation skills and reach a C1 level of fluency in English.

Here is a step-by-step study plan for you:

Step 1: Improve your listening skills
Listen to English language podcasts, news broadcasts, and audiobooks for at least 30 minutes a day. Try to watch English language TV shows, movies and videos without subtitles to help you develop your listening skills. Focus on understanding the overall meaning of what is being said, rather than getting stuck on individual words.

Step 2: Improve your speaking skills
Start speaking English every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. You can practice with a language partner, tutor or a language exchange program.Focus on fluency rather than accuracy at first, don’t worry too much about making mistakes.Record yourself speaking and listen back to identify areas where you need to improve. Try to use vocabulary and grammar structures that you have learned in context, rather than simply memorizing them.

Step 3: Improve your pronunciation
Watch and listen to videos of native speakers and try to mimic their pronunciation. Practice individual sounds, such as vowel and consonant sounds, using resources like pronunciation apps, websites or audio resources. Work on intonation, rhythm and stress patterns in connected speech, which are important aspects of British accent. Take pronunciation classes or work with a speech therapist, if possible.

Step 4: Build your vocabulary
Learn new words every day and use them in sentences to help you remember them. Try to learn words in context by reading articles, books or watching videos in English. Use flashcards, vocabulary lists and apps to help you memorize new words.

Step 5: Work on grammar and writing
Study English grammar rules and practice them through exercises and quizzes. Write short paragraphs, essays, and emails in English to practice your writing skills. Get feedback on your writing from a tutor, teacher or language partner.

Step 6: Take formal English language exams
Take a C1 level English language exam such as the Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to measure your progress and get certified.Remember to stay motivated, practice consistently and have fun with the process of learning.

Good luck!

That’s all good advice. But as a teacher, I know that when I give advice like this to my students, there are always other questions, doubts and obstacles that the students have.

I wonder how ChatGPT would respond to these kinds of comments.

  • But I don’t have time to do all those things
  • I can’t understand that podcast that you shared with me, and it was too long
  • I can’t understand TV series without subtitles
  • I don’t have anyone to practise my speaking with
  • You say “don’t worry about making mistakes” but how can I improve if that doesn’t matter?
  • I try to copy native speakers, but who should I copy? Who has the best accent?
  • I copy native speakers but I still can’t lose my accent
  • Can you recommend a good book or website to help me practise my grammar?
  • If I write things in English, who can correct them for me?

Actually, I tried inputting those comments into ChatGPT and it did come back with some pretty useful and relevant advice. I won’t share it all here because there isn’t time, but you could try it if you like.

Error correction 

It can correct your errors. Just ask it to. 

Write a sentence or enter a paragraph and it’ll correct it.

Let’s try that. Let’s ask it to correct the errors in this comment which someone wrote on my website a few weeks ago. 

Can you correct the errors in this website comment please?

Hey Luke. How’s it going? Hope u enjoy. I’m walk to this website. Very well, its so exactly for me. I’m listening and hear you podcast (british), tbh i really like british accent. It posh vibes! And i like it. Thankyou so much for learn (british) english with your podcast in comedian, story telling, etc 


Sure, here’s the corrected website comment:

“Hey Luke, how’s it going? I hope you’re doing well. I’ve recently discovered this website and it’s been a perfect fit for me. I’ve been listening to your podcast, and as a fan of the British accent, I really enjoy it. The posh vibes are great! Thank you so much for helping me improve my British English through your podcast which features comedy, storytelling, and more.”

Let’s ask it to explain the corrections it has made. 

Can you give explanations for the corrections you made?


Certainly! Here are the explanations for the corrections I made:
“Hope u enjoy” –> “I hope you’re doing well.”

I changed this phrase because “hope u enjoy” is an informal and abbreviated way of asking how someone is doing, which might not be appropriate in all situations. Instead, I replaced it with a more standard greeting that asks how Luke is doing.

“I’m walk to this website” –> “I’ve recently discovered this website”

“I’m walk” is grammatically incorrect. I replaced it with “I’ve recently discovered” to convey the same idea in proper English grammar.

“Very well, its so exactly for me” –> “it’s been a perfect fit for me”

The original phrase is not grammatically correct and does not convey a clear message. I replaced it with “it’s been a perfect fit for me,” which expresses the idea that the website meets the writer’s needs and expectations.

“I’m listening and hear you podcast” –> “I’ve been listening to your podcast”

“I’m listening and hear you podcast” is not grammatically correct, and it’s not clear whether the writer is currently listening or has listened to the podcast in the past. I changed the phrase to “I’ve been listening to your podcast” to express that the writer is a regular listener.

“tbh i really like British accent” –> “As a fan of the British accent, I really enjoy it.”
“tbh i really like British accent” is an informal and abbreviated way of expressing admiration for the British accent. I changed the phrase to “As a fan of the British accent, I really enjoy it” to express the same idea in more formal language.

“It posh vibes!” –> “The posh vibes are great!”
“It posh vibes!” is an incomplete sentence and not grammatically correct. I changed the phrase to “The posh vibes are great!” to convey the same idea in a complete and grammatically correct sentence.

“Thankyou so much for learn (british) english with your podcast in comedian, story telling, etc” –> “Thank you so much for helping me improve my British English through your podcast which features comedy, storytelling, and more.”
The original phrase is not grammatically correct and does not convey a clear message. I changed it to “Thank you so much for helping me improve my British English through your podcast which features comedy, storytelling, and more” to express the idea that the writer is grateful for Luke’s assistance in improving their British English through his podcast.

This is actually very impressive for a chatbot, although it doesn’t provide the same level of detail in its explanations that I would as a teacher and of course a teacher can deal with questions, interpret what the learner wants/means, and adapt more organically while allowing the learner to practise their English communication skills in the process. But still, it’s impressive.

Use ChatGPT for conversation practice

  • Can you practise having a conversation with it? 
  • Is it capable of having a proper, meaningful conversation?
  • Can it provide the kind of conversation practice that you need for language learning? 
  • Can it pretend to be your English teacher or someone else?

Chatbots have always been very limited and quite annoying when it comes to having a normal conversation, because they just can’t do it, frankly. 

Let’s see if ChatGPT has made big improvements in that area. Is it easy to chat to, or does it quickly become weird and unnatural?

I’ve chosen some questions which I think would be totally normal conversation starters (with humans). 

Let’s see if we can start a conversation with it, using these questions.

Conversation starters

Let’s input these and see if we can have a conversation in real time. (no screenshots, just a realtime chat here in a new window https://chat.openai.com/ )

  • How are you?
  • Have you been busy recently?
  • What have you been up to?
  • I’ve been listening to a podcast about The Beatles. Are you a fan of The Beatles by any chance?
  • What’s your favourite Beatles album?
  • Who do you think is going to win the 6 Nations this year?
  • Did you see the Scotland vs France rugby game at the weekend?
  • Any idea what the weather will be like this weekend?
  • My brother’s birthday is coming up but I’ve got no idea what to get for him.

It’s better than previous chatbots but conversation is still limited.

Ask it to pretend to be someone else

Conversation becomes a bit easier and more natural.

Can you pretend to be Ringo Starr so I can have a chat with you?

How are you at the moment Ringo?

Ask it to correct your errors while having the conversation

Can you pretend to be my English teacher, and correct my errors while we chat?

It can continue the conversation and also correct your errors.

This works ok sometimes but, it doesn’t pick up on all your errors and after a few responses it seems to forget to correct you. 

It’s a bit difficult to keep a conversation going with a chatbot that has no emotions or opinions.  You have to carry the conversation quite a lot and, well, it’s not the best conversationalist. It tends to switch into “information mode” where it just gives you Wikipedia-like responses.

E.g. If you try to talk about Premier League football, it will mainly explain what the premier league is, rather than sharing opinions on it. I said “Let’s talk about the premier league”. It asked me what my favourite team was. I said I didn’t really have one but I liked Liverpool. I asked what it’s favourite team was. It gave me the same old response “As an AI language model I don’t have personal preferences or emotions…” and then proceeded to kind of lecture me about Liverpool FC, giving me a kind of summary of the club, like what you might read at the top of Liverpool’s Wikipedia page. 

So, it’s not the best conversationalist. It’s not bad, but it seems that sharing personal opinions or sharing our emotional reactions to things, is pretty vital in human conversation and since it can’t do that, conversations with it fall a bit flat. 

But it is fun to play around with it.

I tried having a conversation with it in French (a language which I am learning, badly) and wanted to see if my experience was different from the point of view of a language learner.

I found that it really helped. It was a good experience in terms of learning French. 

Just trying to express myself in written French was a challenge, and this was good. I need these challenges in order to progress. 

I asked it to correct my mistakes. It did it, and it felt almost like having a conversation with a person. 

I didn’t feel judged or stressed (as I often do when talking to a person) and I learned some correct phrases. I felt free to repeat certain things over and over again in order to practise, without judgement.

Ending script for part 1

This is where we are going to stop. This is the end of part 1. We will continue in parts 2 and 3.

I hope you’re enjoying this so far and finding it useful as a way of considering how ChatGPT might be able to help you learn English, or how it might not. 

This video is actually in 3 parts. I recorded all of this last week and it ended up taking me 3 hours to go through all the ideas I mentioned earlier, all the various ways you can use ChatGPT for learning English. 

Parts 2 and 3 will be available very soon. If I have already published them by the time you watch this, you will find links for them in the show notes.

Also you can get the PDF of the script for this episode and for the other parts – with most of the things I am saying and all the ChatGPT prompts which I’m using. Check the show notes/ episode description.

Coming up in part 2 I will be playing around with ChatGPT more and doing these things:

  • Continuing to evaluate ChatGPT as a way of simulating natural conversations
  • Seeing if it can pretend to be your English teacher and correct your errors and explain them
  • Testing if it can pretend to be someone else, to make conversations more fun or interesting
  • Checking how well it handles role plays in order to let you prepare to use English in specific situations
  • Seeing if you can simulate job interview situations with it
  • Asking it to create useful texts or dialogues for studying with
  • Looking at exam preparation by asking it to provide sample written texts in response to FCE or CAE writing tasks
  • Seeing if it can give yu good advice for doing Cambridge exams
  • Seeing if it can create reliable, useful exam practice tasks to help you prepare for IELTS

All of that coming up in part 2, which will be available soon or maybe now.

Personally I am finding it fascinating to experiment with ChatGPT and seeing what it can do, and wondering how it might change the world for better or worse.

There’s no doubt that AI like this will increasingly become a normal part of lives as we move into the future. What will the effect of that be on society and the planet?

There are some fairly strong feelings about ChatGPT going around. I’m curious to know what you think about it, so leave your comments in the comment section.

I’ll continue to discuss all these things and test ChatGPT further in upcoming episodes.

Thank you for listening or watching. If you enjoy my content, then share it with your friends, like and subscribe, leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this, and consider signing up for my premium episodes to get vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation episodes with stories.

OK, I will speak to you again in part 2 of this, but until then – goodbye bye bye!

End of part 1

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

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

Small Donate Button[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

DOWNLOAD THE PDF TRANSCRIPT HERE

Transcript

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

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

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

We’re going to consider some things about

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

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

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

Hopefully this episode will help you think about 

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is wrong with saying “you know” ?

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

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

Fair enough, that one is quite funny.

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

It’s not a competition, is it?

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

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

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

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

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

Common attitudes and assumptions about “good English” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you assess someone’s English level?

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

What is IELTS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking

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

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

Listening

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

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

This YouTube video from a couple of years ago 👇

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

Writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are those categories?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grammar and Vocabulary; 

Discourse Management; 

Pronunciation; 

and Interactive Communication. 

Marks for each of these criteria are doubled. 

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

This mark is then multiplied by four. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Specific IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors

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

What the hell does that mean Luke?

IELTS scores are given in bands. 

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

9 is high, 0 is low.

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

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

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

First, let’s picture the IELTS speaking test.

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

How do IELTS examiners assess someone’s spoken English?

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

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

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

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

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

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

✅ 

      Overall score / average: _________

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

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

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

Here are those categories. 

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

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

What do the categories mean?

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

This information is from IELTS.org again 👇

Speaking test: How are bandscores awarded for Speaking?.

What is “Fluency & Coherence”?

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

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

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

What is “Lexical Resource”?

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

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

What are “Grammatical range and accuracy”?

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

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

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

What is “pronunciation”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which categories are the most important?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

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

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

So keep your chin up! Keep practising! 

Don’t stop, even if it seems difficult! 

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

Don’t worry about achieving perfection! 

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

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

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

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

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.

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

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

818. Monster Bogey (A Children’s Book) with Anna Brooke

My friend Anna has written a book for children (7+) which has a full publishing contract and is available in all good bookshops now. The book tells the story of a boy who accidentally creates a monster when his secret collection of nose bogeys gets struck by lightning! This conversation includes lots of talk of snot and bogeys, as well as stories from Anna’s time as a travel writer.

Small Donate Button[DOWNLOAD AUDIO]

Get your copy of Monster Bogey here! https://www.chickenhousebooks.com/books/monster-bogey/

Read an extract from the book here https://www.chickenhousebooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Monster-Bogey-chapter-1-for-website-COMPRESSED.pdf