Tag Archives: english

8. Dating and Relationships

This episode is about words and expressions related to dating & relationships. In part 1 I talk about what I’ve been doing recently, and talk about the Present Perfect Continuous Tense. Part 2 is the feature section which is about dating & relationships. I play you a BBC TV comedy sketch about a blind date. Part 3 – I teach you some of the most common words and expressions that English people use when they talk about dating & relationships.
FULL TRANSCRIPT NOW AVAILABLE BELOW!

Right-click here to download.
Small Donate ButtonHello, and welcome to Luke’s English Podcast. This episode is in 3 parts:
Part 1 – I’m going to talk about what I’ve been doing recently, and I’m going to talk about the Present Perfect Continuous Tense
Part 2 – This is the feature section which is about dating & relationships. I’m going to play you a BBC TV comedy sketch about a blind date.
Part 3 – I’m going to teach you some of the most common words and expressions that English people use when they talk about dating & relationships.

Part 1 – What have you been up to?
A typical conversation between friends who haven’t seen each other for a while would be like this:
A: Hi, how’s it going? (Hi, how are you?)
B: Fine thanks, you?
A: Not bad. What have you been up to?
B: Not much. I’ve been working hard recently. Work is really busy at the moment…

So, we use this question to ask about recent activities: “What have you been up to?” or “What have you been doing?”
‘up to’ – means ‘do’ or ‘doing’.
The tense here is the Present Perfect Continuous tense: have/has + been + -ing
This tense is used in the question and answer: “What have you been doing recently?” “I’ve been working hard”
It’s very common for people to use this when they see their friends.
E.g. “Hi Luke, what have you been up to?”
-I’ve been teaching a legal English course recently
-I’ve been playing football in Regents Park
-I’ve been enjoying the good weather
-I’ve been looking forward to the new Star Trek movie
-I’ve been listening to a lot of funk music
-I’ve been on a couple of dates recently
(Present Perfect Simple tense)

Part 2 – Here’s the transcript of the comedy sketch:
Woman: I’m really glad Lisa set us up together
Man: Me too Woman: I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers
Man; Yeah
Woman: Thing is… all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid… I think you’re different though… well, touch wood! [she knocks on the table]
Man: [thinking it is the front door] Sorry, that’ll be the door… [he walks to the front door]
Woman: Good…

Part 3 – Useful expressions for talking about relationships & dating
To flirt with someone: When you like a boy or girl, you act in a way which shows that you like them. E.g. girls will laugh at a boy’s jokes, she might play with her hair, she might smile at him a lot, she might touch him on the arm and laugh… When a boy flirts with a girl he might try to make her laugh or show her how strong he is.
To fancy someone: This means that you think someone is attractive. E.g. “I really fancy Jane! I think she’s really good looking.”
To chat someone up: This is when you talk to someone to make them fancy you. E.g. when a man sees a nice woman in a bar, he might chat her up by asking her if she wants a drink. “Would you like a drink? Do you come here often? You’ve got beautiful eyes…”
To go out with someone: This has 2 meanings. 1 – It means that you go on a date with someone. 2 – It means you are someone’s boyfriend/girlfriend. E.g. “We’ve been going out with each other for 2 years. We’re getting married next year.”
To ask someone out: This means to ask someone to go on a date. “Would you like to have dinner with me on Friday?” -he asked her out.
To have chemistry: This means there is a natural magic feeling between people who fancy each other. Chemistry is very important in a relationship.
To fall for someone: This means to fall in love with someone
To drift apart: This is when a relationship goes bad. You drift apart when you become interested in different things, and you don’t enjoy being with each other any more. It means that you slowly become bored with your partner.
To split up with someone: This means that the relationship finished. E.g. “Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston split up with each other a couple of years ago”
To dump someone: This means that you leave your partner and end the relationship. E.g. “She’s really sad because he dumped her. He told her that he didn’t love her any more and that he didn’t want to see her again…”

OK, so that’s it! Those are really useful expressions for talking about dating. Don’t forget to email me if you have any questions or comments. luketeacher@hotmail.com Bye for now!

p.s. here’s the comedy sketch on YouTube:
The TV show is called Man Stroke Woman (BBC)

TRANSCRIPT TO 8. DATING & RELATIONSHIPS

 Hello, welcome to Luke’s English Podcast. Thank you very much for listening and downloading. Um… I’ve been getting various messages from people. Um… Basically saying that they love the podcast and some people are using it just to learn English when they are, for example, driving to work, or travelling on the bus, or on the underground, and some people are teachers who are using the podcasts in their English lessons. So, I’m happy about that, very glad that it’s becoming so popular. Um, you can, of course, find this podcast on iTunes. If you go to the iTunes Store, you can do a search for Luke’s English podcast and you will find it there and you can subscribe to the podcast using iTunes there. And also, you can leave a short review of the podcast on that page. Um… and I’ve had couple of ratings but I haven’t had any reviews yet. So, please leave a review saying how brilliant the podcast is, okay? I mean, I’d like you to say how brilliant it is of course so that way I can get more listeners, yeh? You don’t have to say it is brilliant. I mean you can be honest, for example, and say ‘I think it’s quite good but I found some of the episodes are a bit too long these days’ or something like that. Or you can say ‘I think it’s very useful but the problem is Luke doesn’t write a transcript for the episodes. It would be better if there is a transcript,’ something like that. Just write a comment, leave a message. I’d like this to be an interactive podcast. So the more messages you send me, the better. So you can leave a review on my iTunes page or you can send me an e-mail by teacherLuke… no, it’s luketeacher@hotmail.com.

Now, in today’s podcast, first of all, I’m just going to tell you what I’ve been doing recently. So I’m going to give you an update on things that I’ve been doing. And, when I talk about that, I am going to be telling you as well about the present perfect continuous tense and how useful that can be when you are talking about recent news, okay? So, the first part would be little bit about my recent news and the present perfect continuous tense. Then, in the feature section, you are going to listen to a small comedy sketch about a date, okay? And then in the language section at the end of the podcast, I’m going to teach you some really really really useful and very important expressions that you can use to talk about dating and relationship, okay?

[3’08” Jingle playing]

Right, so what have I been up to recently? What have I been doing? Well, I’m going to tell you in a second. But before I do that, I’m going to teach you something really useful about English, some really useful and important language, okay? Now when you see your friends, for example, if you haven’t seen your friends for a week or two, in English, it’s very very common to say something like: ‘What have you been up to?’ or ‘What have you been doing?’ Right? ‘What have you been up to?’ or ‘What have you been doing?’ And those questions are about your recent activities, okay? Maybe since the last time you met. So, a common conversation might be something like:

A: Hi, How’s it going?

B: Fine. Thanks. You?

A: Not bad. What have you been up to?

B: Well, …[and then you talk about what you’ve been up to.]

Okay? So that’s ‘Hi, How’s it going.’ ‘How’s it going’ is another way of saying ‘how are you’.

A: How’s it going?

B: Fine. Thanks. You?

A: Not bad. What have you been up to? [‘Up to’ means ‘doing’ actually.]

B: Well, nothing. [Very common for people to say nothing. ]

‘What have you been up to?’

‘Well, nothing.’ [Nothing really or nothing special.]

But sometimes, you know, you can talk about the things that you have been doing. Right? And when we talk about recent news like that, we often use the present perfect continuous tense or sometimes the present perfect tense. Okay? So, the present perfect continuous tense is structured like this, we have ‘have’ or ‘has’ + ‘been’ and then an ‘-ing’ form. For example, ‘I’ve been teaching English’ Right? Or, ‘I’ve been playing a lot of football recently.’ Yeah? I’ve been doing something. And we use that form in the question as well, ‘What have you been doing recently.’ Yeah? So, for example, if you ask me: ‘Hi, Luke. How’s it going?’ And I’d say: ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’ And you’d say: ‘What’ve you been up to recently?’ Well, I’d say:

I’ve been teaching a legal English class recently. Um… At school at the moment, I’m teaching a law course – Legal English, which is very interesting. It’s quite difficult. Some of the language is a little bit complicated. But it’s very interesting to be teaching a different kind of English, in this case, English that is used to describe a legal system or civil court procedures and so on and so forth. That’s very interesting. Also, I’ve been playing football in Regents Park. Regents Park is one of the many parks in London. It’s very beautiful there actually. It’s close to London Zoo. And it’s right in the middle of the city. And every Wednesday, I play football in Regents Park. So, I’ve been playing football in Regents Park recently. Um, I’ve been enjoying the good weather. At the moment, it’s spring here in the London and the sun is shining and the birds are singer and it’s really really nice. London is so much better when the weather is good. It’s really fantastic. So, I’ve been enjoying the good weather. Um… Let see, what else… I’ve been looking forward to the new Star Trek movie. So ‘looking forward to’ means waiting for something because you want it to happen, right? So, waiting for something that is good. Something that is good is going to happen. I’ve been looking forward to the new Star Trek movie. Now I’m not like a big Star Trek fan. I prefer Star Wars actually. But all the critiques say that the new Star Trek film is very very good. So, I’m looking forward to seeing it. I might see it later today actually. And then I can tell you what it’s like. You can see the trailer for the new Star Trek film on the Internet if you go to YouTube and type Star Trek movie. It should be a very good science friction movie, very entertaining. Um… I’ve been listening to a lot of funk music recently. Now, I love music, right? And probably my favourite genre of music is funk or jazz funk. And that sort of music that was being made in the 70s and it’s good music to dance to. And it also got some jazz in it. So there’s [re] some really great solos in jazz funk or funk music. And the musicians are excellent. So it’s really a real pleasure for me to listen to that kind of music. If you don’t know what jazz funk or funk sound like, well, it sounds a bit like this.

[8’35” Funk music playing]

I think you get the idea. Isn’t great? Sounds fantastic, doesn’t? Um, you might say that it’s a little bit cheesy. Right. But I love it. I love that kind of music. Anyway, what else have I been doing recently? Well, I’ve been listening to a lot of funk music like that. And also I’ve been on a couple of dates recently. Um… Now, I’m single at the moment and I’ve been trying to meet someone. So, I went on a[n] online dating service. Now, you might think: Ugh, online dating? That’s a bit sad, isn’t it? Well, I mean it’s not really sad anymore. In London lot and lot of people sign up to online dating services. A lot of my friends are on various online dating services. Lot of people do it here in London. It’s actually a good way to meet people I think. It’s not really sad anymore to do that. So, I signed up for one called Guardian Soulmates, which is run by the Guardian newspaper here. And I’ve had a couple of dates actually from it, which is great. Now, I’m not going to tell you any more about that because it’s person and private. And it’s, well, it’s none of your business really, is it. Yeah, so, I’m not going to tell you any more about that. You will just have to use your imagination to try and guess how those dates went and what the girl was like and all those things. So, yes, I’m not going to tell you any more about it. Instead, I’m going to move very quickly on to the feature section of this podcast, which is all about dating, actually. So, there you go. Just before we move onto the feature section, let me just summarise the little bit of grammar that I told you about there. So, we use present perfect continuous to talk about things that like activities that we have done recently. And, so, you should start using present perfect continuous like that. When you have conversations with your friends. So:

Hi! How’s it going?

Fine. Thanks. You?

Pretty good. What have you been doing recently?

Well, I’ve been listening to Luke’s English podcast.

Luke’s English podcast, what’s that? It sounds fantastic.

Well, it is fantastic actually. It’s brilliant. It’s a really interesting and useful way to learn English.

Wow, what’s the address?

Well, it’s teacherluke.podomatic.com and so on.

Okay? So, don’t forget to use present perfect continuous to talk about your recent activities. Now, let’s move on to the feature section of the podcast. Here we go.

[11’54” Jingle playing]

Okay, so, the feature section today is about dating. Um… Right, going out with people. Trying to find someone so that you can have a relationship with them. Now, in England, people meet their girlfriend of boyfriend in lots of different ways. Um, so, how do people meet each other? Well, it might be that their friends hook them up, right? If your friends hook you up with someone, it means that they know you and they know you are single, they also know someone else. So, it might be they know you but they also know a girl, or a boy that they think will like you. And, so, they arrange for you to meet. So they hook you up, right?

Um… And it could be a blind date, for example. They might hook you up on a blind date. So you end up meeting somebody that you’ve never met before. And that’s usually quite a difficult kind of date to go on because it can be very embarrassing if you don’t like each other. It can be a bit difficult and you have to try to make conversation. Ugh, it’s usually quite an awkward situation – a blind date. But a lot of people meet like that. How else? Some people meet at work. You know, I think actually most people in relationships meet their boyfriend or girlfriend at work. It’s very very common.

So, they might, for example, meet at work and flirt with each other and chat each other up at work, and then go out with each other. It might be the guy if he fancies a girl at work. They might flirt with each other and then he might ask her out. And then they go on a date and then you know, who knows, they might fall in love or something. I think it’s very common. By the way, I might use some English expressions in this part of the podcast that you don’t understand. But don’t worry, I m going to teach you those useful expressions at the end of the podcast, okay? Listen to this now and if you don’t understand something, I will explain it later. Also you can send me an email of course if you got any questions.

Okay. So they might meet at work. A lot of people meet in a bar or in a pub or in a nightclub, and it’s a very very common way to meet someone actually. People tend to go out on a Friday or Saturday night, they dress up in their best cloths, they put some perfume or aftershave on and they go out and they drink usually so they get a little bit drunk, which makes it easier to meet someone I think. And they go out and they dance with people and they chat each other up. And then eventually maybe get a telephone number form them and then arrange to meet up on a date in the future. Right? So a lot of people meet each other when they are drinking in a pub or in a club or something. Some people, especially these days, meet each other on the Internet.

So, if you are single, you might decide that you’re going to sign up to an online dating agency. And then you can find someone very quickly and very easily. But the problem is that there are so many people on the Internet that you have to kind of go through a lot of people before you find someone who is right for you. As well as that, a lot of people meet on holiday. [It is] very popular to go to places like Ibiza or Spain or other popular holiday destinations and you meet lots of other people who are at the same age as you. And something being on a holiday means that it’s a romantic situation. And so lots of people have meet[met] their boyfriend or girlfriend on a romantic holiday or something.

And these days some people go speed dating. Now, speed dating is a kind of very quick way to meet lots of people in one night. What happens in speed date is you go to a bar and first of all you have to sign up, so you apply to do it over the telephone. And then you go to a bar, and there might be about 10 or 15 tables in the bar and all the girls sit at the tables. And all the boys have… Well, you have 3 minutes, basically, to try and chat each other up. And after 3-minute, someone rings a bell – ding, ding ,ding – and then you have to move, all the boys move onto the next table. And you talk to the next person. And you got 3 minutes to talk to them. And then the bell rings again and you move to the next table and meet the next girl and talk to them and after about an hour, you have met about 15 people in one night. And then at the end, you write little comments on a piece of paper about them. And you can decide who[m] you’d like to meet again. If both people say that they’d like to meet each other, then they can exchange telephone numbers and have a date in the future. So, it’s very popular these days. A lot of people do it.

Um… Now, you’re going to… I’m going to play you, now, the audio from a little comedy sketch, which is from a BBC television programme, a comedy programme. Now, in this sketch, you are going to hear a conversation between a man and woman who are on a blind date. Okay? Now their friends have set them up, they’ve hooked them up with each other. And you hear the girl talking about how usually it’s very difficult when her friends hook her up with men. And usually, the men that her friends hook her up with are very stupid. But she is very pleased that this guy seems to be different. So, she’s very happy that they met each other. But there is a little joke, a comedy joke in the sketch. Now, I’m not going to explain any more about it. I’m just going to play it to you now. And I’d like you to see if you can understand what is funny about it. What’s the funny thing about this little sketch, okay? So, I’ll explain it to you afterward if you don’t understand. So, here is the sketch:

[18’57” Comedy sketch playing]

Woman: I’m really glad Lisa set us up together
Man: Me too

Woman: I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers
Man; Yeah
Woman: Thing is… all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid… I think you’re different though… well, touch wood! [she knocks on the table]
Man: [thinking it is the front door] Sorry, that’ll be the door… [he walks to the front door]
Woman: Good…

Okay. Now, don’t worry if you didn’t understand that or you didn’t find it funny. Um… It’s very difficult to understand comedy if you are learning the language. And probably comedy is one of the things that you will appreciate or enjoy later when you become a more advanced speaker of English. So don’t worry if you didn’t find it funny. The main thing here that I’d like to do is to help you understand what happened in that sketch. Now, maybe you understood it but if you didn’t, I’m going to explain it for you bit by bit now. So let’s just quickly listen to some of the sketch again. So here is the first little bit:

Woman: I’m really glad Lisa set us up together

Man: Me too

Okay. So she says, ‘I’m so glad that Lisa set us up together,’ and he says, ‘me too.’ So, I’m so glad that Lisa, that’s her friend, set us up, that means arranged for us to meet. Okay? ‘I’m so glad that Lisa set us up together.’ ‘I’m so glad that Lisa arranged for us up to meet.’ And he said me too. Fine, easy. Now, here is the next bit.

Woman: I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers
Man: Yeah


I normally hate it when friends pair you off with complete strangers. Okay? So, when a friend pairs you off with someone, it means that your friend put you in a pair with someone. So, your friends arrange for you to meet someone so that you’d become a pair, you’d become a partner. Okay? Now, a complete stranger is someone that you’ve never met before. So, she means I usually hate it when my friends put me on a blind date with someone. Okay? Right, here is the next bit.

Woman: Thing is… all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid…

The thing is all the guys I’ve been out with recently have been unbelievably stupid. Okay? Now, ‘the thing is’, that’s like saying, ‘the problem is,’ all the guys I’ve been out with recently. So, to go out with someone means to go on a date with them. Right. So, all the guys I’ve gone on a date with recently have been unbelievably stupid. So, ‘unbelievably stupid’ means really really stupid. Okay? Now, so, here is the next bit.

Woman: I think you’re different though

Okay, she said, ‘But I think you’re different though.’ But I think you’re different though. She thinks that he’s not like the other guys that he’s not unbelievably stupid. Okay. Well, she hopes so anyway.

Woman: Well, touch wood!

Okay, there she says, ‘well, touch wood.’ Now, to touch wood in England is a superstition. It’s like a kind of good luck thing. So, if you hope that something will happen or you hoped something is true, you touch wood like that. Okay? So, she’s saying ‘you’re not stupid like the other guys’. Well, I hope you are not anyway. Touch wood, right. Yeah, so, that’s what that bit means.

Man: That’ll be the door

Woman: Good…

He says, ‘Oh, that will be the door.’ Right, so, what happen is, she said, ‘I hoped you are not like the other guys, I think you are not like the other guys. Well, touch wood. Actually, he thought that was somebody knocking on the door. So he is very very stupid actually. Because when she went touch wood, he said that would be the door and he left the table because he thought somebody was knocking on the front door. So, he is very very stupid, yeh, or an idiot. And then she said ‘good’ at t he end but she doesn’t really mean it. I think she is shocked or surprised. So, I’m just going to play you the whole sketch again, so that you can listen to it from the start to the finish.

[23’24” Comedy sketch playing]

Okay, so there it is. I hope you enjoy that, I hope you find it funny. Now, in the next section – the language section, I’m going to teach you really useful expressions to talk about dating and relationships.

[23’56” Jangle playing]

Okay, in English, there are numbers of expressions that we always use when we are talking about romantic relationships, boyfriends, girlfriends, and going on a date. Okay? And you really have to learn these expressions because people always use them when they are talking about this subject, okay? So, these expressions are really important and really useful for you. So, I recommend that you learn them and use them, okay? Now, I used some of these expressions in the feature section when I was talking about dating, okay? So, you… I’m going to explain some of those expressions for you now. Okay, so, let see. First expression is a verb, and it’s ‘to flirt’, to flirt with someone, ‘to flirt’. Um… To flirt with someone is when you… If you like someone, if you think someone is attractive, then you act, you behave in a way show that shows you like them. Okay? So, for example, girls might play with their hair. Right? They often play with their hair when the flirt. Or they laugh at everything that the guy says. So, even if the guy says really bad jokes, she’ll laugh about it. ‘Oh, you’re so funny.’ And she might, for example, back her eye lids at him, or just act in a way that shows she really fancies him, she really likes him, okay? Um… Guys when they flirt, they try to make girls laugh, they might try to show how strong they are, show off their muscles or something, so that’s flirting. And people flirt all the time. When they like someone. Okay?

Another expression is ‘to fancy someone’, ‘to fancy someone’, and ‘fancy’ is a verb. And if you fancy someone, it means you think they are attractive, you think that they are good looking. Okay? So, if you fancy someone, you might start flirting with them, for example. So, ‘fancy’. Yeah. Um…

Next expression is ‘to chat someone up’, ‘to chat someone up’. And that’s a phrasal verb – ‘To chat up, to chat someone up’. If you chat someone up, it means that, first of all, you find them attractive, you fancy them, and then you start talking to them, to try to make them fancy you. Okay? Now I think usually, traditionally, men chat women up. Um… These days, women chat men up a bit as well, but traditionally it’s men who chat women up. And, so, for example, if a man sees a girl in a bar and he fancies her, he might walk over to her and start to chat her up. And there are typically things that man say when they chat women up. So, they’ll say ‘hi, would you like a drink?’ or ‘hi, do you come here often’ or something like that. And then they start chatting, talking to try [to] make the girl fancy him, okay? So, typically things are: ‘Do u come here often,’ ‘Can I buy you a drink,’ or ‘you’ve got lovely eyes,’ that kind of things. So that’s to chat someone up.

Next expression is to go out with someone, to go out with someone. And, there are two meanings of these really. One meaning is to go out with someone means to go on a date, right? So, to go out with someone just means to go on a date. ‘I went out with her last night.’ But we also use ‘to go out’ to mean that you’re someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend. And, often in a continuous form, so, ‘I’m going out with her,’ means she is my girlfriend. Or ‘are you going out with anyone at the moment,’ means do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend at the moment? Yeah? I’ve been going out with her for 6 months, for example, means she’s been my girlfriend for 6 months. Yeah? ‘To go with someone.’

Another useful expression is ‘to have chemistry with someone’, ‘to have chemistry’. Now if you have chemistry with someone, it means that you get on with each other and there is some like magic between you, so you just really get on with each other and you both fancy each other and just naturally, when you are together, there’s like a magic feeling between you, and that’s called chemistry. And chemistry is really really important in a relationship. You have to have chemistry, because it’s the chemistry actually, the interaction between you that makes it exciting, that makes it interesting, okay? So, for example, if you go on a date with someone, and there is no chemistry, then the date will be really boring. You will think that whatever they are saying is not interesting; it’s not exciting. Yeah? But if there is chemistry, it’s kind of exciting, you fancy each other, you know, you might want to kiss each other, and there’s a good feeling between you and that’s called chemistry. Chemistry is also the word of the name of kind of science. But we also use it to mean good feeling between boy and girl, Chemistry.

Now you can, if you fall in love with someone, you can say that you fall for someone, so ‘to fall for someone’. So, for example, you know, she’s been going out with him for about four weeks, and she really fancies him, and actually, I think she’s starting to fall for him means she’s starting to fall in love with him. So, ‘to fall for someone’. Okay.

Now, for example, if you meet some one, you fancy each other, you flirt with each other, you stat to chat each other up, maybe, if you fancy them, you can ask them out, so, to ask them to go on a date with you. You ask some one out. So, may be the boy fancies her, he asks her out and she says yes, so they go on a date with each other. There is chemistry between them and they start going out with each other so they start becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, and then, maybe the fall for each other And then, eventually, perhaps, who knows, they get engaged and get married and have children and live a lovely happy life.

But sometimes it goes bad; sometimes a relationship will go wrong. Okay? And, so there are few expressions that we can use to describe when a relationship goes bad. For example, you might say that, um… You and your girlfriend are drifting apart. To drift apart, so, that means you are slowly moving away from each other, slowly moving away, so you are drifting apart, okay? Um… And if u are drifting apart, if you don’t love each other anymore, then you may split up with each other. So that’s a phrasal verb, ‘to split up with someone. So if you split up with each other, it means that the relationship is s finished. Okay? So, for example, they were going out with each other, but then they split up with each other and now they are single. Okay? ‘To split up with someone.’ Now, you can also use an expression to mean that you leave some or you’ve finished a relationship, and that is to dump someone. Okay? So, for example, if, you know, she was going out with him for three months. But after three months, she realised that he was really boring and she didn’t fancy him anymore, and so, she dumped him. Right? When you dump someone, you have to tell them a reason, you have to say, ‘look, I’m sorry but I don’t think this is working’ or ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t fancy you anymore’ or ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not you, it’s me you know. I’m not ready for a long relationship.’ Okay? And when you say that, you’d say, ‘I don’t think we should see each other any more.’ Then you dumped that person. It’s very sad. It’s not a good thing to do over the telephone, for example. Although a lot of people do it over the telephone, so to dump someone. So, those are some of the sort of most important expressions, I think, to describe a dating and relationships.

There are more expressions that you can use. And I think that because this is a good subject, I’m going to do more podcasts about this in the future. And, in fact, what I’d like to talk about in the future would be good chat up lines, so that’s good things you can say to chat someone up. And things that people often say when they dump each other. I think it’s a interesting subject, so, hopefully, I’m going to interview some of my friends and get their good chat up lines and things that they might say if they dump someone, okay? Now I will write all of the expressions that I’ve explained on the podcast home page, which is, of course, teacherluke.podomatic.com. You can see all the expressions written and I’ll also write a transcript of the comedy sketch that you listened to. So, don’t forget to visit the site to get some of the words and expressions that I’ve explained for you here. And also, don’t forget to send me an email. I’m going to end this podcast with a question. And the question is, ‘how do people meet each other in your country.’ Now, I told you about how people meet in England, but I know that in some countries like, for example, in Japan, there are different ways to meet your partner. So, how do you meet each other in your country? Send me an email; I’d very much like to hear from you. That’s the end of the podcast. I hope you have a nice day. And I hope you enjoyed listening. Take care. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye….

6. Vampires! (with vocabulary for describing feelings & emotions)

This podcast episode today is about vampires! It includes a lecture on the myth of the vampire in modern popular culture, with a language focus on really useful vocabulary and expressions to describe feelings and emotions.

Small Donate ButtonRight-click here to download.

Transcript Available below.

Hello everyone. This podcast feature today is about vampires! The language section is about really useful vocabulary and expressions to describe feelings and emotions.

See below for the transcript for this episode. Just scroll down the page. After the language notes you can read the transcript. 

I hope you’re well. I know I said that I would talk about men & women in this podcast. Well, that podcast isn’t ready yet. Instead, I’ve done this one about vampires.  I can hear you asking the question “Why vampires??”. It’s because there are some movies out at the moment which are about vampires. Actually, there’s always a movie out which is about vampires! If you think about it, we love vampires, don’t we? People seem to think they are interesting. There are hundreds of movies and books about them. They’ve been in literature for hundreds of years… but why? That’s what this podcast is about.

The first part of the feature section is about Twilight. Twilight is a very popular American movie. It was recently released on DVD. It’s particularly popular with teenagers (especially teenage girls) and it’s about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. Hmm, interesting. It’s also a very successful book by Stephanie Meyer. I think it’s the most popular book on Amazon.com at the moment.

The second part of the feature section is about the history of the vampire in literature and movies. The information comes from a lecture by the British academic Sir Christopher Frayling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Frayling) who is a brilliant and intelligent expert on popular culture. He gave a lecture a few years ago about vampires. I listened to it, and have summarised it for you here. It’s all about why we find vampires interesting, and why there are so many movies about vampires in the cinema every year.

The language section is about useful words and expressions to describe your emotions. Here is the language summary of those words and expressions. Remember, if you don’t use them – you lose them!!

Fear / Being Frightened

“I was absolutely petrified / terrified” – This just means, I was really really scared! “I was scared stiff” – This means I was really frightened, and I couldn’t move. “It frightened the life out of me” – This means, it really frightened me. “I jumped / It made me jump” – This is when something scares or surprises you and you jump into the air.

Shocked – I was really shocked

“I was speechless” – This means that I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to say. I was lost for words. “I was shocked and stunned” – I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to do. If you are stunned, it means you can’t move. “I couldn’t believe my eyes” – This is when you see something shocking and you can’t believe it! “I couldn’t believe my ears” – This is when you hear something, like some shocking news, and you don’t believe it!

Angry

“I was absolutely furious!” – I was really really angry. “I was so pissed off” – Pissed off means angry. It’s informal, and a bit rude. In American English they say “I was pissed”, but in British English ‘pissed’ means ‘drunk’. “I lost my temper” – I became angry. We never use the word ‘temper’ on its own. We only use it in expressions like this. “Don’t lose your temper” “You’re so bad tempered” “I hit the roof” – This is an idiom which means ‘I became really really angry’ The roof is the top part of your house, so if you hit the roof, it means you fly through the top of the house with anger!

Happy

“I was absolutely delighted” – This means I was really really happy. “I was chuffed (to bits)” – Chuffed means really happy or pleased. It is informal English. It isn’t rude. “I was over the moon” – This is an idiom which means I was really really happy.

Disappointed

“I was absolutely devastated” – This means I was really really disappointed. I was so disappointed, that I was nearly destroyed. Very serious. “I was gutted” – Again, this means I was really disappointed. ‘Gutted’ is an informal expression. It isn’t rude.

Sad

“I was absolutely heart-broken” – I was really really sad, like when your girlfriend has left you… So sad… :( “I was really down in the dumps” – This means I was depressed & sad. E.g. after my girlfriend left me, I was down in the dumps for weeks & weeks.

OK, so that’s it for the language section. Remember: you can email me and ask me more questions if you want to: luketeacher@hotmail.com

Transcript:

Episode 6 – Vampires!

You are listening to Luke’s English podcast. For more information visit teacherLuke.wordpress.com.

Hello to everyone out there in podcast land. Thanks very much for downloading the podcast. It’s a Saturday lunch time right now and it’s a beautiful day outside, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and I am sitting here indoors in front of a computer. So obviously I have got my priority to write, haven’t I? I think that as soon as I finish this I am gonna go outside and enjoy the good weather because to be honest, here in London, the weather isn’t always good. You’ve got to try and make the most of it when it is good, so I shouldn’t be sitting here in front of the computer, should I? I should be out there enjoying the sunshine. So I will be doing that soon.

So first of all I would like to say thank you again for downloading the podcast. On my podcast page I can see all of the downloads that I have had all over the world and it’s fantastic actually because I get like a map  of the world with little flags that show where I’ve been downloaded and people are listening to me in Canada, somewhere way up in the north of Canada, I’ve being listened to in the middle of America , in Toronto, Ireland, all over the UK, in Spain, in Algiers in North Africa – as well as there I am being downloaded in Holland. Some people are listening to me in Luxembourg. Let’s see where else: Milan in Italy, Greece, Istanbul in Turkey. I am being listened to in Kazakhstan and a couple of places in China. Some people are downloading me in South Korea. I am being listened to in Japan in Tokyo and in Sapporo as well so it’s really great to be able to communicate with people all over the world, like this and I am enjoying it very much. Don’t forget to send me a message as well. I really like to hear from you.

Let’s see, in today’s podcast in the feature section I am going to be talking about vampires. Now I know that before I said I was going to be talking about men and women. Well, actually I have changed my mind. I am not going to talk about men and women in this podcast. It’s going to be about vampires instead. That’s because I was planning to talk about men and women but that’s not ready. That podcast isn’t ready yet. I’ve interviewed some people about that but I’d like to interview some more people as well. So it’s not ready yet. You have to wait until probably next time to hear about men and women. So instead this one is about vampires. Now that’s because there are a couple of movies which have come out recently. the first one being ‘Twilight’ which is an American film which recently has been released on DVD and another film is a Swedish movie called: ‘Let the right one in’ and they are both vampire movies, both very popular and so I am going to first of all talk about Twilight which is this very very popular vampire movie –  particularly popular with  teenagers – and then I am going to be talking about vampires in popular culture, the history of vampires in literature and movies and talking about why are vampires so popular. What do they really mean? What is it about vampires that makes them interesting for us, okay?

So that’s the feature section.

Then in the language section I am going to teach you some useful vocabulary you can use to describe emotions and feelings. That’s like different ways of describing being scared or being frightened – being sad, being shocked, being very happy, being very angry, being disappointed. Lots of really good useful language that you can use just when you are describing things,  when you are describing things that happened to you. I will write the vocabulary and the definitions on the web page and then you can start using them and making them part of your normal vocabulary. So you can look forward to that in the language section.

I know what you are – you are impossibly fast and strong. Your skin is pale and white and ice cold.

Are you afraid?

Only afraid of losing you

That’s a clip from the movie Twilight and if you didn’t catch that -she said: I know what you are – you are impossibly fast and strong. Your skin is pale white and ice cold.

And he says: are you afraid? and she said: I am only afraid of losing you.

Mmmm, well she should be afraid, really because it turns out that this guy is a vampire, believe it or not. Now, Twilight is a massively popular film. It’s huge. It’s particularly popular with teenage girls. It is based on a series of books by Stephenie Meyer. The books are currently the number one bestsellers on amazon.com. It’s a whole series of books and they are all very very popular all over the world. Basically, this is the new Harry Potter and the first movie which was released last year is massive. Okay, especially with teenagers and especially with teenage girls. Now Twilight is about a girl called Bella, whose parents split up. So she has to move to a small town with her dad and she has to go to a new school. Now, normally in these Hollywood films where a teenager has to go to a new school, you get the usual problems.- for example they find it difficult to make  friends – perhaps they get bullied by nasty members of the school. But this doesn’t really happen in this film . Bella goes to the new school and  actually the other kids are very friendly. She gets on very well with them. But what happens is that, she thinks that the other kids at the school are actually a bit simple. They seem to be quite sort of a  basic, a bit stupid really. She notices another group of people at the school who seem a bit strange and a bit mysterious and they don’t hang around with all the other kids at the school and they look very – kind of romantic looking. They look a bit gothic and very mysterious and interesting and one of them in particular. His name is Edward. She becomes very fascinated with and  – let’s see – she quickly becomes very attracted to Edward and she thinks he is very fascinating but she doesn’t know why he keeps avoiding her. Now, like I said before it turns out that well, he is a vampire. I don’t think I am giving away any secrets about the film there. It is a vampire movie. So it turns out he is a vampire. But he is not a bad vampire. A lot like someone like Dracula for example because him and his little vampire family – they are not bad vampires, they are good vampires because they don’t kill people, they don’t drink people’s blood – what they do is, they catch animals and they drink animal blood and they avoid people if they can. Okay, so, they are basically good vampires. Now basically what happens is that Bella and Edward – they are obviously very attracted to each other – they fall in love. But they are very afraid that they will lose control over each other because basically if Edward  loses control – if he gets to passionate, then he won’t be able to stop himself and he bites her. Okay?

So what we’ve got is a kind of teenage romance high school movie with a vampire scene and romantic elements with the fact that these two people love each other but they can’t really be together because he is a vampire.

Now actually I saw this film in Norway. I was in Oslo a couple of months ago and it was a Saturday night and I had nothing to do because I was there on my own and I decided to go and see this film. It was showing at the local cinema and I went to the cinema and before the film started, I was almost alone in the cinema – so I thought – okay fine, I’m just gonna be able to sit here quietly and watch the movie.

But slowly but surely more and more people arrived  and the cinema basically filled up with lots of teenage Norwegian girls and me. Right? So I am sitting there on my own, surrounded by   teenage Norwegian girls, right? Which I mean I am not complaining or anything –   it wasn’t bad, but it was a bit strange. And the movie starts and the first time you see Edward these girls just went crazy. I mean they were all giggling and laughing and talking to each other. Now obviously Edward is a very popular character with the girls out there and the actor actually is called –  I can’t remember his name,   I think he’s called Robert Pattinson and he’s been in a couple of other movies. Most famously he played Cedric Diggory in a  Harry Potter series and in this film he is made to look very handsome indeed and is very popular with teenage girls. And like I said before Twilight is a very very popular vampire film.

Now, what I’d like to do now is just talk about vampires in movies and in literature and what I’m going to say here is based on a lecture that I heard by the great academic whose name is Christopher Frayling, actually Sir Christopher Frayling. He is also the head of the society of arts here in the UK and he is a great academic and an  expert on popular culture. So that’s things like literature and movies and he gave a lecture about vampires in popular culture. So I am going to give you a kind of summary of what he’d said.

So the vampire myth really started in the 18th century and in that time there were stories that people told each other that involves vampires and blood suckers and so on and at that time the vampire was a kind of – let see – a countryside figure, a rural folklore figure from agricultural society, okay? So actually at that time vampires were working class labourers who worked in the countryside and the vampire story when it first started involved lots of superstition and some very primitive societies, Okay? So it’s a kind of…it was part of stories that people told each other by word of mouth and the vampire was related to a kind of folklore myth. These stories were based in Eastern Europe basically. Then in 1816 on Lake Geneva there was a very famous meeting of a number of famous horror writers. They included Byron, Shelley and Mary Godwin. They had their summer holiday there at Lake Geneva and the weather was terrible, so what they did for entertainment was they told each other very scary horror stories. And these horror stories became some of the most famous horror stories that we know now. Things like Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde I think and as well as that the first vampire story which was told by Byron. Now his story was about a Lord who went around corrupting young men. So that means he went around, making these young men immoral, interested in sex and alcohol but not interested in the church. The story was set in Greece where this Lord finally died a romantic death, a bit like Dracula and then is brought back to life in the  moonlight. So it’s really the first vampire story that showed vampires as we know them now and it was different to the old folklore stories because in the Byron story the vampire is not a rural character not in the country side biting sheep and things. Now the vampire is a high class character and is sexualised, a kind of sexual person. Also this new vampire story kind of looks at the bad reputation that upper class aristocrats had in the 19th century. So then later in the 19th century the story gets repeated and rewritten by lots of people. Some of the things change for example you get female vampires as well and some things like that. Some of the things stay the same, for example the location. Pretty much all of these stories are based on the edge of western catholic Europe,  so somewhere out  on the edge were…we  don’t quite know what happens on the edge of western Europe. Now the most famous telling of the vampire story is Dracula by Bram Stoker. This is the version that everybody knows and which has been repeated many many times. Now in the Bram Stoker story Dracula all the basic elements of a vampire story are introduced, okay? So the vampire is a powerful man, a sort of Lord or aristocrat, someone in upper class society related to the aristocracy, okay? He has to bite people and then they become a vampire. He bites someone on the neck, he has sharp teeth, sharp canine teeth. Vampires hate crosses. Sunlight kills them, You can kill a vampire with a wooden stake which is kind of like a sharp stick and you stab the vampire in the heart and that can kill them. You can also kill a vampire by chopping his head off. Vampires in this story can change shape, they can become a bat or perhaps a dog or a wolf. Now, all of these classic vampire elements get repeated in lots of movies after that and lots of other stories. And this is really what we now know a vampires to be. One of the most famous images of Dracula comes from the British Hammer horror movie called Dracula which star the actor Christopher Lee as Dracula and often when people think of Dracula they see the Christopher Lee performance. And Christopher Lee in the movie is a very tall handsome charming Dracula with the sharp teeth. Now, later on, after this image of Dracula is produced by movies and by Bram Stoker, later on the vampire becomes domesticated which means he becomes closer to  home and more similar to us. So this is done for example in books like Steven King’s book ‘Salem’s Lot’ and also  other Hollywood movies. So the whole vampire thing gets updated and is put into contemporary modern America – as sort of normal every day set in. So this is a new way of making vampires frightening and scary. So for example a vampire can live on your street or even in your house. They don’t just live in a big castle in another country somewhere or in the countryside. They can live in your town, okay? Also the vampire becomes americanised, so that’s put into normal American society. Now this is a very common pattern in horror stories. Many horror myths start as a European folk myth so not written down by but shared by word of mouth, then the stories get written by 19th century British writers and then later they are made into American Hollywood movies and they are updated. So it’s a very common pattern in all. And one that we can see has happened with vampires. So, now the vampire is an ordinary person like a teenager in a high school for example. So he gets things like the TV programme ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or movies like Twilight, for example.  And first of all this is more scary because it makes it a bit more realistic but also teenagers, for example, who are the target market for these vampire movies usually – teenagers can relate to vampires and vampire movies and then these movies are about issues that effect normal American people, okay?

So the vampire has really changed and it has survived through from old old eastern European folks stories through the 19th century British horror writers into modern day American Hollywood films. So the vampire is very flexible, very adaptable and the vampire can survive. You can’t kill it, you just can’t kill the vampire. It will always survive in popular culture because for some reason it’s very meaningful for us and we can see lots of important issues, meaningful issues to us in the vampire myth. So the vampire movie is like a metaphor. So on the surface it’s a scary movie but underneath that the vampire movie allows us to think about lots of other issues and a vampire movie can be about more than just being scared,  but it’s also about a number of different issues that relate to us in society, okay?

Right, so I am going to at …just quickly look at some of the themes that you can find in many vampire stories. So one of the first themes that you see in a vampire film is the theme of disease. Now this is a very old thing which you can see in the first vampire film which is called ‘Nosferatu’. That’s a German film from 1921. In that film the vampire is presented  as like a plague of rats. So the vampire’s bite is like the bite of a disease which infects your blood. The disease spreads as well  from person to person through the blood. Although there is a sexual connection with seduction and the exchange of body fluids.  So in that sense Dracula or vampires can be seen as a metaphor for even something like the aids virus which is a big issue in society at the moment. For example if you look at Francis Ford Coppola’s  movie which is called Bram Stoker’s Dracula. There are scenes in that movie which show a doctor looking at someone’s blood under the microscope and seeing that it’s infected by vampire’s kind of micro organisms. So certainly in a lot of vampire books and movies they are a metaphor for disease in society.

Also sexuality is a big theme in vampire stories and movies. Vampires are in a way a safe way for us to look at eroticism. So, the vampire really is a very sexual creature. Often he seduces his victim, he bites women and then turns them into whores, he appears in women’s bedrooms, he bites on the neck, he sucks out body fluids. These are all very sexual images. Also the desire to bite and it’s an __________ like sexual desires which is part of a sinful act.

Now as well as those themes you have a theme of the fear of death or growing old. So vampires can represent both the fear of death and the fantasy of immortality. That’s never dying. So if you like, beating death. So by becoming a vampire you can escape death but you have to hide from society and kill people. So there is the tragedy of becoming a vampire which combines the fantasy of never dying with the tragedy of having to escape from society. Also  the tragedy of seeing your loved ones grow old and die and you can see that theme in the famous movie with Tom Cruise and Brett Pit called interview with a vampire which deals with the whole theme of immortality and the tragedy of having to kill in order to survive and stay immortal.

You can also see the theme of drugs in some of these vampire films. Being a vampire means that you have to live at night. You become very pale skinned. You need to drink blood in order to stay alive and if you don’t, you get sick. So in that sense it’s similar to kind of heroin addiction perhaps.

Now, movies like the Lost boys with Kiefer Sutherland which is an 1980th Hollywood movie. A great movie. I used to watch it when I was a kid with my brother. We loved it. Movies like the Lost Boys are about loss of innocence and the pressure to copy people of your age. So do the same as people of your age. There are about temptation and the night time drug culture of young Californians.

In the Lost Boys it’s about two brothers who moved to a small seaside town in California and how one of them becomes seduced by a group of vampires who live in the area. And for me it’s like – the subtext of the film is like he becomes a drug addict. If you watch the film and imagine-  he is not a vampire but a drug addict it becomes very meaningful, I think.

Okay, so you can see how vampires are kind of very important in a way in our culture and how meaningful they are. It’s interesting how the vampire film consists to survive. It never dies. Instead it gets revised, it changes and it also becomes a way for us to look at various issues in society.

So if you haven’t seen Twilight then I ….I can recommend it. I thought it was very sweet story about first love and how it can be very hard to lose control of your feelings when you first fall in love as a teenager. It’s also about the danger of passion and your emotions and the power of attraction and how it can be very confusing and frightening when you first fall in love because the feelings can be very strong and that can be quite frightening. Now, I thought the film was quite corny, it was a bit embarrassing sometimes.

Some of the sequences were a little bit funny but basically I think it is a sweet film and I think it is a good film and so if you haven’t seen it I recommend it. There is also another Swedish film which is in the cinemas at the moment called: ‘Let the right one in’ and I haven’t seen that but apparently it’s excellent. All the critics are saying this, that it is very very good vampire film, indeed. So I hope to see that very soon. If you have seen that and if you have seen Twilight then send me a message. Let me know what you thought of both of those films. Remember the email address is Luketeacher@hotmail.com and I look forward to hearing from you.

Okay, so this is the language section and like I said at the beginning of the podcast this is going to be about expressing your emotions, describing your feelings. Now all of the language in this section you could use for example when you are telling a story about something or when you are describing an experience that you had. So all the examples  I am going to give will be in the past tense. So you might use this language for example if you are describing an experience like for example how you felt about your exam results or how you felt when you first heard about some news. So  the areas I am going to talk about are being frightened or being scared, being shocked, feeling angry, feeling happy, feeling disappointed and feeling sad.

So obviously very very common emotions and very very common in our daily experience and when you’re describing your experiences it is very very good to use these colourful descriptive language to express how you felt at the time. So all the language I am going to teach you I will write on my web page so you can see all of the expressions on the web page with some definitions. Don’t forget the web page is teacherLuke.podamatic.com  and you can see all of it explained for you there.

So we’ll start with fear or being scared.Being frightened. So one thing you could say if you were very scared, you could say: I was really scared or I was really frightened, of course. You can also say: I was absolutely petrified. I was absolutely petrified. So petrified is an extreme adjective means very very scared. I was absolutely petrified. You could say: I was absolutely terrified, as well. Another thing you could say is: I was scared stiff. I was scared stiff. That means you was so scared, so frightened that you couldn’t move, right? I was scared stiff.

Another one would be: It frightened the life out of me. It frightened the life out of me. That means: I was really really scared. Basically :It frightened the life out of me.

Another one is sometimes when you are very scared, when something scares you – you jump – you kind of go “huuu!”, so you could say: I jumped or it made me jump.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

For example: I woke up last night because I could hear noises from downstairs. I thought it was robbers in my house. I was absolutely petrified. I couldn’t move. I was scared stiff. I managed to pluck up the courage to go downstairs. I picked up a cricket bat and I went into the kitchen. I could hear some really strange noises so I went through the kitchen and suddenly my cat jumped down from the window. “Huu” it made me jump! Right? It frightened the life out of me. I thought it was a robber but it was just my cat. Now in that story I said I plucked up the courage to do something. So if you pluck up the courage it means even if you are scared you kind of become brave enough to do something. I plucked up the courage to do something.

The next one is being shocked

 

So for example when you hear some really shocking news like for example if you hear on the radio that someone has died or a famous person has died like if you  heard on the radio that John Lennon had died, for example you could say: I was really shocked or you could say: I was absolutely speechless, I was absolutely speechless. That means: I couldn’t say anything. I was so shocked, right? You can say. I was shocked and stunned, I was shocked and stunned and they always go together.

Stunned means that you couldn’t move. You were so shocked, you didn’t know what to do. I was shocked and stunned. And the other expression is: I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe my eyes. So that is if you see something shocking and it’l like: Is that real? I couldn’t believe my eyes. Like when I saw the UFO I just couldn’t believe my eyes. You also could say: I couldn’t believe my ears. That’s if you heard some very shocking news. So for example when I heard on the radio that John Lennon had died, I was absolutely speechless. I didn’t know what to say. When I won the lottery I was shocked and stunned. I didn’t know what to do. And, let’s see, when I saw my exam results, when I saw that I failed my exams, I couldn’t believe my eyes. All right?

The next one is about being angry.

Being angry. Of course you can say: I was really angry. But you could also say as an extreme emotion, you could say: I was absolutely furious. I was absolutely furious, which means very very angry. A slightly rude expression would be: I was really pissed off. I was really pissed off. And that’s a British English informal expression which is a little bit rude to mean, I was angry. Now in America they would say I was  pissed, just pissed, not pissed off. Now in British English I was pissed means I was drunk. So there is a difference between the British and American English.  In British English we say: I was really pissed off. Pissed off. A little bit rude and a bit informal. If you become angry you could say: I lost my temper. I lost my temper and that means I became angry, okay? And another kind of idiom expression you can use is: I hit the roof. That means I became really angry. I hit the roof. So for example, when my dad heard that I had failed my exams he was absolutely furious. He was so pissed off. He really lost his temper and he hit the roof and was very angry with me.

Now, the next one is about being happy.

Now, of course you can say: I was really really happy, but a more extreme adjective you can use is delighted. I was absolutely delighted. I was absolutely delighted. Probably a good idea to repeat that, right? Practising it by repeating. I was absolutely delighted. An informal British English expression is the word chuffed. Chuffed to bits. I was chuffed to bits. You can read that on the web page if you don’t know how to spell it. I was chuffed to bits. And an idiom you can use when you are really happy would be: I was over the moon. I was over the moon. So for example: When I passed the exam I was absolutely delighted, or if you are a girl you can say: When he asked me to marry him, I was over the moon. And when I got the job I was chuffed to bits.

The next one is about being disappointed.

Being disappointed, okay? So, obviously you can say: I was really disappointed. But you can also use an extreme adjective which is devastated. Devastated. That’s when you are really really disappointed like really badly disappointed. I was absolutely devastated. So for example: When my dog died – I really loved my dog – right, I really loved it. When my dog died I was absolutely devastated. An informal British expression is: Gutted, gutted. I was absolutely gutted which means really really disappointed. So for example, when England lost the football game, I was gutted. I was absolutely devastated. Because obviously football is very important here in the UK, especially in England.

The next one is about being sad

 

So obviously you can say: I was really really sad, but an extreme adjective would ‘heartbroken’, heartbroken. I was absolutely heartbroken. And an expression you can use to describe someone who is sad is down in the dumps. Down in the dumps. Down in the dumps. He was really down in the dumps. That means really sad, so when my girlfriend left me, I was absolutely heartbroken and then for weeks I was really down in the dumps.

So there it is, some useful language for you to express your emotions and opinions when you’re describing your experiences. Of course you should try to use some of those expressions when you are chatting, when you are speaking in English. It will make you sound  like a more advanced speaker. So, you might not be able to remember all of them, but I’ve given you lots of useful expressions there. Try to use some of them. You don’t have to use them all. Just try to use some of them. Look at my web page you will see all of the expressions written, so you can see what the words look like and how to spell them and you can check them in the dictionary as well if you like.

But that’s the end of the language section and it’s also the end of the podcast. And so I am going to end with a final question: I’d like you to tell me – let’s see – okay

Two questions. One question is: Have you seen the movie ‘Twilight’ or have you seen the other movie ‘Let the right one in’ ? And if you have seen them what did you think of them. Also have you read the book Twilight. For it’s a very very popular book. It’s I think, one of the most popular books in the world on  amazon.com at the moment. So if you’ve read that what do you think of the book? Is it better than the movie or worse and the second question is: Tell me about something, tell me about an experience that was very frightening or maybe disappointing or something that made you very happy. Tell me about it. I’ll read it out on the podcast and you can tell the rest of the world about your experience that way. Okay? So I hope you enjoyed that podcast. I hope you found it interesting. Don’t forget to download and listen to more podcasts in  the future and to download and listen to the old ones again. I recommend that you listen to them several times. Listen to them more than once cause it’s a really good way of practising your listening.

If you have any suggestions for me, if you want me to speak about something or if you want me to do something differently just let me know and I will try to do those things.

Okay, so that’s the end of the podcast. See you later.

Bye,bye,bye,bye

Thanks for downloading Luke’s English podcast. Don’t forget to email me at Luketeacher@hotmail.com.

VIDEO
Still want more vampire action? Here’s a really interesting documentary on vampires by Sir Christopher Frayling.

2. Easter / Interview with my Dad / Language Focus: Adverbials

A conversation with my Dad about Easter, and a language point about adverbials. Full transcript available below.

Right click here to download this episode.

Small Donate Button This is the transcript to “EPISODE 2 – EASTER”
Hello, and welcome to Luke’s English podcast, the real British English podcast. This is episode two of the podcast and I’m very pleased because I’ve already had a couple of emails from a couple of people who’ve listened to the podcast, and one of those emails comes from Jose Manuel in Alicante in Spain and he asks me about Easter because it’s Easter at the moment. He asks me what we do normally in the UK at Easter and, well it’s funny you should ask that Jose (Jose, I’m sure that’s how you say it) because right now I’m at my parents’ place. I’ve travelled up on the train from London and I’m at my parents house which is in the countryside in Warwickshire and this is a typical thing that people of my age do, they normally travel back to their parents’ houses and they spend time with their families together and actually in this episode I’m going to be joined by my dad so I’m going to interview my dad about Easter, so he’ll tell you some typical things about Easter time in the UK and so that’s going to be our feature in part two and then at the end of the podcast I’m going to talk about some adverbs, some useful adverbs in response to another email that we got and so that’s what’s going to happen in today’s podcast.

Luke: OK, so I’m now joined by my dad, Rick, but obviously I call him Dad, I don’t call him Rick. Hi Dad,
Rick: Hello Luke
Luke: How are you?
Rick: I’m fine, thank you very much
Luke: Good, so, obviously I’m here at my parents’ house because it’s Easter, at your house. This is what I normally do, isn’t it?
Rick: Yes, it is, it’s a time to get together with the family
Luke: Right, ok so, so Easter then. Now Easter is a season when we remember the death and rebirth of Jesus Christ by telling our children that a large rabbit comes in the night and leaves chocolate eggs in the garden, now I don’t know about you but that seems a bit strange to me I don’t know what the connection is between the Jesus thing and a big rabbit and chocolate and eggs and things, what do you think about that?
Rick: Well this idea of the Easter rabbit coming and bringing eggs is a bit of an American idea really and I think that it’s a very interesting mixture between Christianity and old pagan beliefs, I mean, obviously the Christian celebration of Easter is, as you say, about the crucifixion and, after three days, the resurrection of Christ, so it’s a crucial celebration and stands alongside Christmas, the birth of Christ and then the death of Christ, the two big Christian festivals.
Luke: That’s the Christian thing, you said something about Pagan, what does that mean?
Rick: Well of course you know experts will tell you that 2,000 years ago when Christianity started to spread across Europe it did, if you like, take over the Pagan festivals that already existed
Luke: So Pagan is the kind of religion that people had …
Rick: it’s pre-Christian …
Luke: … before christianity,
Rick: Yes and it’s got a lot to do with various gods and superstition and of course pagan times there was a big winter festival and there was a big spring festival and the spring festival was of course the festival of fertility and growth and new growth …
Luke: …and new life
Rick: … of new life and of course if you lived in a society where it was very important that the crops didn’t fail this was a time when you wanted to have all the good luck you could get, to have the gods on your side to make sure that the crops had a very successful season …
Luke: OK, so before Christianity then, Easter was a festival, a pagan festival when people celebrated the start of new life and spring time and good luck for your, you know, farming for that year, right?
Rick: yes
Luke: now I understand the egg connection because an egg is the symbol of new life right? But why … now actually one of my students asked me this last week, why do we have chocolate eggs, why chocolate?
Rick: Well I must admit I’m not entirely sure, but my guess is that people have given each other eggs at Easter time, or if you like, at spring time as a gift because it is, as you say, the time when all the birds are laying their eggs
Luke: right, chickens and stuff
Rick: well chickens but all the wild birds are nesting and making nests and laying eggs and remember that in the old days people used to use the natural resources very very much, the berries and the eggs were a resource …
Luke: so they …
Rick … and they would go out into the countryside and gather the eggs and eat them …
Luke: right, so they used …
Rick … so the egg season came in and people would no doubt give each other eggs and presents and then when we discovered the joys of chocolate I suppose it was a natural thing to give people chocolate eggs instead
Luke: just a sort of gift …
Rick: … a gift which symbolises new life
Luke: so its nicer really to give someone a chocolate egg than just an egg because just an egg, I mean, it’s alright, you can boil it or fry it or something but it’s nicer as a gift to give someone a chocolate egg I suppose
Rick: yes I suppose
Luke: right so let’s see, what do English families usually do then at Easter in the UK? oh um yea, what do English families normally do at Easter?
Rick: well it is a traditional time for the family to get together and it’s a long weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and those four days is when most families, you know, get together and these days they get in the car and they drive to the parents or the grandparents and it is very much a family get together and they give each other chocolate eggs in most households.
Luke: When I was a kid I remember what you and mum used to do is at Easter you used to hide eggs, you used to hide chocolate eggs around the house or around the garden and me and James, (James and I) would go and try and find the eggs, so that was always fun.
What did you do when you were a child?
Rick: Well I remember I used to go to my grandparents’ house. They lived up in the north of England in the countryside, and they had real boiled eggs, hard boiled eggs which were boiled in water that had been coloured with something so you were given a pink egg or a blue egg or a green egg and we would roll them, this was really quite a well established tradition that you roll the eggs down some kind of bank, down a hill, you roll the eggs down a hill, why I’m not sure but that’s what people did, they used to roll the eggs down the hill and run after them as a kind of game
Luke: so you’d walk up a little hill with your blue or pink eggs and then you would sort of roll them down the hill and then run after them and have a lot of fun running after some blue and pink …
Rick: … that’s right and if your egg broke it didn’t matter because it was hard boiled it was cooked and then you would eat the egg at the bottom of the hill, that’s what you did, you rolled the egg down the hill and you chased after it and you caught it and you ate it.
Luke: Right, well that sounds like lots of fun I suppose these days if … I think probably children are so lazy now that if you hid some chocolate eggs in the house they would probably, you know, be too lazy to get up and try and find them, you’d probably have to leave ipods or something around the garden, because if you left an ipod in the garden then a child would probably get up from in front of the TV and try and find it. I think kids these days are too lazy to do anything really unless there’s an ipod involved.
Rick: I don’t really agree with you Luke and I know you’re really just teasing, but the point is of course is that it’s fun and kids do like to search for things, to hunt for things whether it be a little chocolate egg or indeed a little chocolate rabbit and sometimes you hide little chocolate rabbits around the house and ask the children to find them and they love it.
Luke: I hit a rabbit the other day in the car when I was driving.
Rick: Really?
Luke: There’s lots of rabbits around here, you know I was I – um my parents live in the countryside, listeners – and there’s lots and lots of rabbits especially at this time of year and I was driving the car to the station to pick up my brother James, and a rabbit ran out in front of the car and I didn’t hit the rabbit with the wheels so I didn’t squash it but the rabbit went under the car and I heard a kind of noise …
Rick: … clonk …
Luke: … a kind of dum noise as the rabbit, probably the rabbit hit his head on something under the car. I looked in the mirror and there was just a dead rabbit
Rick: what a horrible thought! Mind you you do see an awful lot of dead rabbits on the roads these days there are thousands of them and they do have a terrible habit, a rabbit habit of running out in front of your car …
Luke: they’re stupid aren’t they?
Rick: … they wait until you’re coming and then they run out
Luke: They’re just stupid really aren’t they. Anyway there are so many of them that it doesn’t matter
Rick: Well it’s a pity for that particular rabbit but there’s nothing much you can do about it when it hurls itself in front of your car
Luke: Well there’s plenty of food for the birds
Rick: That’s quite right lots of birds eat the dead rabbits – the crows, the magpies and the buzzards, they live on the rabbits which are killed on the roads.
Luke: Well, thanks very much Dad for, you know, for agreeing to talk to me, yea, it was very nice, thank you
Rick: ok and I hope you have a very happy Easter Luke
Luke: Yes, happy Easter to you too
Rick: Thank you.

Ok so that was my dad, um a very nice man, very well educated, he knows a lot of things about history and all sorts of things so I’m very lucky to be able to interview him.
Now like I said at the beginning of the show, I had another email about an English question, now I got an email from Miho in Yokohama in Japan and she asked me what ‘basically’ means, because she heard me in the first podcast using the word ‘basically’ a lot and she’s right I do say ‘basically’ quite a lot, it’s a very common word, particularly for me. Lots of people use the word ‘basically’. Now the word ‘basically’ is an adverb and adverbs are great words, very useful words that you can use at the beginning of a sentence. Now a word like ‘basically’ doesn’t really mean very much but people use it almost like a habit. Really, ‘basically’ is used to say … before you say something you use the word ‘basically’ to show that you are going to say something in a simple or basic way, OK? So for example if I use the word ‘basically’ you put it at the beginning of the sentence and you’d say something like this: “basically, this is a podcast to give learners of English some listening practice” OK?
Now there are lots of other adverbs that you can use in a similar way at the beginning of a sentence and you’ll probably know adverbs because most of them end in ly, now we get lots of different kinds of adverbs in different positions in the sentence but the adverbs I’m going to teach you now are ones you can use at the start of a sentence. So we’ve got adverbs like basically, actually, obviously, strangely enough, frankly speaking, recently, unfortunately, amazingly and hopefully. Ok so I’m just going to give you some examples of that now, so we’ll start with ‘actually’:
“Actually this is only the second podcast I have ever done” ok? So there’s an example. Now if you speak Spanish and some other European languages, ‘actually’ in your language means ‘currently’, meaning ‘now’ so actually doesn’t mean ‘now’i t just means ‘as a matter of fact’, right? So, “actually this is only the second podcast I have ever done”.
The third one is ‘obviously’. Now we use “obviously” to say something that is obvious, so say something that everybody knows. Now, football players use ‘obviously’ a lot when they are doing interviews now, just as an example you might say “obviously we were the best team in the competition” right? Now you would say ‘obviously’ because your team won so of course your team was the best one. “Obviously my team was the best team in the competition” for example.
The next one is ‘strangely enough’, now that’s used to say something that is strange. OK, so for example, “strangely enough I don’t really like fish and chips, even though I’m English” right? So that’s strange because most English people like fish and chips, so “strangely enough I don’t really like fish and chips even though I’m English”.
The next one is ‘frankly speaking’, now this is something you would say that’s rather honest, OK, so for example, “frankly speaking it was the worst film I’ve seen in a long long time” so if you are being very honest about something you can say ‘frankly speaking’, “Frankly speaking it was the worst film I’ve ever seen”.
The next one is ‘recently’. Now you probably know ‘recently’, we use it to say something that happened in near or close time. Right? So for example “recently I’ve been listening to lots of Rolling Stones records”. Ok? “Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Rolling Stones records”.
The next one is ‘unfortunately’, and we use that one to talk about something bad that’s happened, OK? something that you regret, OK? So for example, “unfortunately, I had to leave before the end of the lesson” OK ? “unfortunately I had to leave before the end of the lesson”. So that would be a bad thing because, obviously you want to be in the classroom for the whole lesson, but “unfortunately I had to leave before the end of the lesson and I missed the most important part”, for example.
And finally, the next one I’d like to teach you is ‘amazingly enough’. We use that one to describe something amazing for example “Amazingly enough, I’ve never been to Edinburgh” “Amazingly enough I’ve never seen a musical” and “amazingly enough I’ve never been to Harrods”. Now that’s amazing because I live in London and I’ve never been to Harrods, right? So “amazingly enough I’ve never been to Harrods”, OK?
Oh there’s one more, and that’s ‘hopefully’. Now if you hope for something then you can use ‘hopefully’, for example “hopefully this podcast isn’t boring” right? Ok?
Right, so that’s the end of part three and that’s the end of this podcast. Don’t forget to email me. I’d like to end with a question again now, and the question this time is: what kind of music is popular in your country at the moment? so what are people interested in at the moment in terms of music in your country? So, for example is it mainly English language music so music from American or Britain, or is music from your country more popular than English Language music? So, don’t forget to email me, that’s: luketeacher@hotmail.com and I look forward to hearing from you very soon. That’s the end of the podcast, bye bye bye bye bye…..

Hello world!

Hello everyone. This is Luke’s English Blog.

I’m using this as a place to add transcripts, notes and other details which go with my podcast episodes.

I’ve done this to help reduce the amount of information on my podcast homepage.

Send me an email if there are any problems with the site: luketeacher@hotmail.com

bye bye bye bye bye bye bye!