Tag Archives: native speaker

452. A Conversation About Language (with Amber & Paul)

Discussing language with Amber & Paul, including issues such as errors made by native speakers, language change, whether language standards are declining, the effects of technology on language and how to cut an avocado without injuring yourself.

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Introduction

The other day Amber and Paul came over to my flat do a podcast. We were having tea, chatting and getting ready to record something, and we just started talking about language, I think because Paul said that he found it weird that even though he can speak 3 languages really well, he knows nothing about language – he doesn’t know the grammatical terms, the rules of what makes something right or wrong or somewhere in between, and we were talking about it, and I quickly managed to press the record button and ended up recording about 50 minutes of us rambling on about language – all totally unplanned and spontaneous.

You’re about to listen to it. This is an Amber & Paul episode so you’re going to hear an unscripted and natural chat between friends so there might be a bit of swearing.

Before you listen to us discussing language-related issues, consider these questions, which are at the heart of our conversation.

  • What are some common errors native English speakers make in English?
  • How do native English speakers feel about mistakes in English, particularly mistakes made by other native speakers?
  • Are some errors worse than others?
  • How does a language evolve? Are errors a part of that process?
  • Has your language, or English, changed much in the last 100, 200, 300 years?
  • Is your language, or English, getting worse than before? Are standards of language declining?
  • Has a language ever totally broken down and died due to falling standards?
  • Why did latin die out as a language?
  • On a slight tangent, what’s the safest way to cut an avocado?
  • Back on track, how does Charles Darwin relate to language development?
  • What effect is technology having on our language? Is it making us better or worse at communicating?
  • Are we better at communicating than we used to be? Are we getting better at communicating? How do you even measure that?
  • Do you know more about English grammar and so on than most native speakers of English?
  • Do you know more about English grammar and so on than Paul Taylor?
  • Are you better at cooking than Paul Taylor?

Watch out for answers, and general rambling on the subject of those questions as you now listen to our conversation about language.


That’s it! Leave your comments below.

So there you are, that was our conversation about language.

I invite you to take part in the conversation by getting into the comment section.

Let me remind you of those questions from the beginning. (see above)

There were a few unanswered questions in there, and I think I might be asking David Crystal about some of them.

Remember that? I’m going to interview the world’s leading voice on language – Professor David Crystal. It’ll be a chance to ask him various questions about language. I’ve already collected some questions from my listeners, and I have loads to ask him too, but feel free to offer up a question or two and if I get a chance I’ll ask him.

Actually, I’ve already interviewed David Crystal, so it’s too late to send me your questions! Episode coming soon.

450. Comments & Questions

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

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Episode notes

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

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

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

David Crystal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent Comments on the Website

Here are some comments which arrived recently.

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

IMG_4148Oil painting by Sasha Sokolova

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

 

JAPANESE LEPSTER GIFT VIDEO ~ I need to do this!

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

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

Orion Transcription Team

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

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

Turning Input into Intake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Film Club: Touching the Void

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do me a favour!

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

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

Subscribe to the mailing list.

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

415. With the Family (Part 3) More Encounters with Famous People

Here’s the final part in this trilogy of episodes recorded at my parents’ house on Boxing Day. In this one my mum, dad and brother tell us a few more anecdotes about their encounters with some well-known people.

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Introduction Transcript + some ad-libs

The conversation you’re about to hear was recorded with my family on the same day as the last couple of episodes. It was quite late in the evening, after my uncle and aunt had gone home and after dinner and number drinks had been consumed. Picture a very warm and cosy living room with a wood burning stove going in the background.

After listening to Nic describing his encounters with some famous rock stars earlier in the day, the other members of my family wanted to get in on the action too with their stories about brushing shoulders with the stars. So here are a few other anecdotes from my dad, my brother and my mum.

It turns out that my family have met some genuine legends. I didn’t even realise that a couple of these things had happened. You’ll have to wait and see who they are. But here are some slightly cryptic clues.

Can you guess which people I’m talking about?

  • One of the UK’s favourite authors who wrote a series of beloved books which have also been made into successful films.
  • A British comic actor who likes eating ice-creams and fighting zombies, criminals and aliens, in his movies (not real life of course).
  • A small but very important woman who often appears in public but is also a very private person.
  • A nonagenarian who once said that he was “the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.” A nonagenerian is someone in their nineties – also, septuagenarian (70s) and octogenarian (80s).

There are others too, including an American punk rock star with lots of tattoos and muscles, a Shakespearean actor who has become a successful film director and an actor who had a bit part in the British TV series The Office.

I should perhaps remind you of several other anecdotes which you might have heard on this podcast before, which are mentioned in this conversation.

  • The time my brother ended up lost in Hastings and slept on a stranger’s sofa and woke up to discover the guy sitting in a chair next to him. Was the guy just friendly and welcoming, or slightly creepy? Originally told by my bro in this episode https://teacherluke.co.uk/2016/08/09/372-the-importance-of-anecdotes-in-english-narrative-tenses-four-anecdotes
  • The time my mum met the King of Tonga. Originally told in this episode too https://teacherluke.co.uk/2016/08/09/372-the-importance-of-anecdotes-in-english-narrative-tenses-four-anecdotes
  • The time I met comedian Eddie Izzard and was a bit lost for words. I sort of went to pieces a bit and made it really awkward and weird by saying “You’re in my head!” – not the right thing to say at all. Originally told be me in this episode https://teacherluke.co.uk/2014/06/10/184-lukes-d-day-diary-part-2/

Anyway, you can now sit back and enjoy some more time with The Thompsons.

***

Outro Transcript + ad-libs

Funny, isn’t he? My brother. I would like him to be on the podcast more often, if he’s up for it. The thing is that he’s a bit modest really and isn’t the sort of outgoing person who likes to broadcast his thoughts and opinions over the internet, although he obviously should because he’s got a lot to offer. He ought to do a podcast or something like that, right? He does have a YouTube channel but it’s mainly skateboarding. https://www.youtube.com/user/VideoDaze/videos

*All the background music in this episode was also made by James*

The people mentioned in this episode

If you liked this one, try listening to these ones

79. Family Arguments and Debates (with The Thompsons)

322. With The Thompsons

372. The Importance of Anecdotes in English / Narrative Tenses / Four Anecdotes

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408. Catching Up With Amber & Paul #4 (+ videos)

Amber & Paul are back on the podcast and we do the usual catching-up session and go off on a few tangents about Amber’s play, Paul’s showbiz life, marshmallows, microphones, tea & coffee, accents and more. There are videos for the intro and outro of this episode (below).

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INTRODUCTION

This episode sees the return of pod PALs Amber Minogue and Paul Taylor, which means that The Talkative Trio are reunited on the podcast once more.

Time was pretty tight for this conversation because Paul was working to a very strict schedule on the day it was recorded, which was yesterday in my flat.

As you’ll hear, Paul arrives a little bit late because he was having lunch with some TV industry people and then he has to leave before the end of the recording to be interviewed on the radio, because he’s so hot right now in the world of showbiz.

Amber has also been very busy recently doing various things including writing and rehearsing a play, so it’s been hard to get the three of us in a room together all at the same time.

As a result this episode was arranged at the last-minute and the conversation was completely unplanned. All I wanted to do was to catch up with the two of them and ask the usual question: What have you been doing?

You’ll hear that things carry on quite rapidly and there are plenty of the usual tangents – those moments when the topic suddenly goes off in a different direction.

It might be hard to follow, so to help you keep up, here’s a basic summary of the main things that we talk about. You’ll find these notes written on the page for this episode, including some words that you might hear in the conversation but not know. You might want to check these notes to see words that you might have missed, to check their spelling etc.

  • First of all Amber tells me about the play for children that she’s been working on with our friend James Simpson.
  • Paul then arrives, you hear the buzzer buzzing and he comes in carrying a bag containing a new iPhone 7, still in its box, which he collected from the shop earlier in the day. It’s a present which all his friends bought for him a few months ago for his 30th birthday, organised by his girlfriend. We all chipped in some money and got him a new phone.
  • Amber tells us some more things about her play, including how it contains a few slapstick moments, meaning some funny scenes of fairly violent physical comedy involving a first-aid box and some marshmallows. Apparently at one point in the play James hits Amber over the head with the first aid box. By the way, a first-aid box is a box that contains basic medical supplies for administering first-aid, that’s why it’s called a first-aid box. It contains, things like plasters, bandages, antiseptic, tiny scissors, and maybe some other little medical things that you don’t understand etc.
  • Also in the play they also fight over a marshmallow, which Amber wants to dip into her tea.
  • This leads us to talk about dipping things into cups of tea, like marshmallows and biscuits, which then causes us to talk about what you put in your tea when you’ve run out of milk, which actually happened to Paul the other day. His solution was to use whipped cream as a substitute.
  • That leads me to ask the question of whether you really can put cream in tea, and we agree that you can definitely put cream in coffee, especially a particular type of coffee which is served with whipped cream on top, which in France is called café Viennois – which I think translates as a Viennese coffee – or a coffee from Vienna.
  • That causes me to ask what they call a Viennese coffee in Vienna, speculating that they might just call it a coffee, which leads to a similar question about the French phrase “creme anglais”, which translates literally as “English cream” – but in the UK we just call it “custard”.
    I then ask Paul and Amber to explain to you my audience what custard is, and Paul suggests that instead of us explaining it at great length, you could just ‘google’ it.
  • I remind Amber & Paul that it is necessary to explain some words sometimes, like the word ‘custard’, because this is Luke’s English Podcast and it’s probably a good idea to explain words sometimes.
  • This prompts Amber to comment on the way that I seem to choose to explain words quite randomly in my episodes – like when I recently spent quite a lot of time explaining the word ‘flea’ in a recent conversation I had with my Dad on the podcast.
  • We then go back to food and talk about typical English puddings which can be served with custard, including crumble, sticky toffee pudding and the oddly named ‘spotted dick’.
    I refer to spotted dick as a dessert, which causes Amber to comment that this is the wrong choice of word and that I should say that it’s a “pudding” not a “dessert”.
  • This brings up the slightly confusing and long-running debate about the correct choice of words to describe certain things in Britain, especially in relation to the dinner table. This all relates to British rules of etiquette and language in polite society, perhaps relating to French vocabulary we sometimes use in English. We don’t talk about this very clearly and it might be a bit confusing for you, and really the whole subject of the rules of British etiquette and social class deserves an episode of it’s own.
  • Nevertheless, in order to clear it up a bit, here’s a quote from a book called “Watching the English” by Kate Fox. Kate Fox is a social commentator who writes about social behaviour in England, and “Watching the English” is a good book that explains many things about English life. This is what Kate has to say about the words “pudding” and “dessert” in English. By the way, both these words are used to refer generally to sweet food which is served after the main course. You have the starter, then main course, then the pudding/dessert. Your choice of the word ‘pudding’ or ‘dessert’ seems to depend on your level of class, and apparently according to upper-class culture the word “dessert” is vulgar. Kate Fox: ‘The upper-middle and upper classes insist that the sweet course at the end of the meal is called the ‘pudding’ – never the ‘sweet’, or ‘afters’, or ‘dessert’, all of which are déclassé and unacceptable’ (Fox, 2005, p79). So, according to upper-class etiquette, pudding is the correct term for the sweet course that comes at the end of the meal. Fine. Amber seems to think this is because the word “dessert” is of French origin, but I’m not sure. By the way, in some places (e.g. France and Japan) pudding is a specific kind of dish. For example in Japan ‘pudding’ is a sort of caramel or custard creme dish. In the UK it just means the sweet course at the end of the meal and can include all kinds of things, like cakes, pies, ice-cream, trifle, Eton mess, bread and butter pudding or even jelly. “What’s for pudding?” for example.
  • I try to explain all of this, but I can’t manage it, instead saying “This is tangent city” when I realise that we keep going off on mad tangents and it’s probably quite confusing for the audience – that’s you.
  • Our talk of pudding then causes us to start talking about Pudong, an area in Shanghai, and specifically the Pudong River in Shanghai. Paul tells us a bit about that and then there are a couple of references to the slightly rude sounding English words ‘poo’ and ‘dong’ before things settle down a bit and we start talking about Paul’s recent showbiz news, including how he is going to be interviewed on a radio station called “Oui FM” later in the afternoon, so we go from poo to wee in just a few sentences.
  • At one point Paul nearly uses quite a clever word – ‘concise’ but then doesn’t use it, preferring instead to choose a more simple way of putting things “using the least words possible” (which means to be concise).
  • We talk about responses to Paul’s recent videos including a few YouTube comments & some criticism he received from a serious person in an email (the criticism was in the email, not the person – you can’t put a person in an email).
  • Things get quite geeky when I then start talking about cameras and microphones and the challenges of capturing good audio when you’re recording videos.
  • There’s some talk of different types of microphone, including boom mics, lapel mics, dynamic mics and shotgun mics but then Amber decides it’s all getting a bit too geeky and we move onto something else.
  • We make plans to hang out again on Thursday on the set of Paul’s TV show while they’re doing some filming, and we decide to record a podcast while we’re there.
  • Following on from my recent episodes about accents, I ask Paul & Amber what their accents are, and what they think my Dad’s accent is, and Amber declares her love for my Dad.
  • Then Paul has to go for his radio interview on “Oui FM” and leaves, and Amber & I carry on and talk a bit more about her play before having a massive conversation about Christmas which will probably be uploaded in a forthcoming episode.

So, I hope that helps you understand what you are about to hear from the Tangential Trio. But, now, without any further explaining – here is that conversation as it actually happened!

JINGLE + CONVERSATION

‘OUTRO’

Amber and I started talking about Christmas there and we went on to talk about it for ages – like over an hour of chat about Christmas shopping, games, food, family traditions and everything else relating to the festive time of year. That conversation will continue in the next episode, maybe the episode after.

We talked a little bit about Paul’s English in that conversation.

People sometimes say “Paul’s accent/English is influenced by his French”.
It isn’t. Certainly not his accent anyway.

That’s one of the interesting things about Paul. When he speaks French there is pretty much no trace of an English accent in his speech, and when he speaks English there is no trace of a French accent.

Other announcements

LEP Moscow Get-Together
Hey Luke!
Well, the very first LEP Moscow GET-TOGETHER has just happened! The first of it’s kind, it seems to be a historical :) event in Russia! Everything went great, it was awesome to chat in ENGLISH with like-minded people!!! Personally I felt as if I had known all of the participants for ages – open, nice and smiley friends! I hope somebody else could feel a similar thing.
First, we got to know each other, which was the main achievement! It was interesting to know when and how everyone had found LEP one day, which episodes were our favourite ones, which experiences in English language learning we had (useful Internet resources, grammar books, pronunciation etc.)
A couple of pics and a short audio message from us to you are attached.
Thanks again and again for that announcement and actually for everything you do!!!
We hope to provide more listeners with a chance to meet and speak regularly and one more way to let them know is to “friend” your group on FB with ours https://www.facebook.com/groups/734996946664425/ and VK https://vk.com/clubnu1 .
Have a nice Monday, Jedi-Podmaster!
Dmitry

Here are those Moscow LEPsters saying hello!

Transcript Collaboration
~ well done everyone!
Thank you especially this month to Antonio for managing everything.
There is an email now for the Orion team. Just write a comment on the page for the transcript collaboration and Antonio will let you know what to do.
Make sure you read the rules.
Transcript collaboration page: https://teacherluke.co.uk/episodes-with-transcripts/transcripts/ 

Daniel Goodson – My Fluent Podcast
A LEPster podcast in which you can join Daniel in his quest to become better and better at English.
Daniel interviewed one of the managers of the Transcript Collaboration – Piotr from Poland
http://www.myfluentpodcast.com/e20-interview-with-piotr-from-poland-transcribing-transcript-collaboration/

Zdenek’s English Podcast
Also, on the subject of LEPster podcasts – Zdenek Lukas continues to do his show, called Zdenek’s English Podcast. Recently he’s been doing episodes about his experiences studying for the DELTA (Diploma in English Language Teaching for Adults) which is a seriously challenging postgraduate qualification in English teaching, which involves not only a lot of writing about linguistics and teaching methodologies, but also plenty of assessed teaching sessions too. It’s a difficult course with many challenges and many things to learn. You can listen to Zdenek talking about it on his podcast in some recent episodes.
Get it here https://audioboom.com/channel/zdeneks-english-podcast

Join the mailing list for direct access to the page for every episode, and for any other content I put up, including videos that I might start doing with my new camera soon.

That’s it! Cheers!

VIDEOS

Here’s one of Paul’s “What the F*ck France?” videos. This one’s about how it’s difficult to learn French.

LEP VIDEOS

Here are a couple of bonus videos of me recording the introduction to this episode, and a failed attempt at recording the outro too (I forgot to press ‘record’ on my audio device!)

They’re in black & white because I think it looks cool. The gorilla ↴ is pink, ok! 

Thanks for watching. I’m just experimenting with videos at the moment, but if you like them, I might do more.

The Russian Joke appeared in US TV show Parks & Recreation – watch until the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQ_ywY-luE

Music credits

Jazzy xylophone tune & piano tune by BenSound – www.bensound.com

Other music by me, or by my brother James Thompson.

395. “Have you ever…?” with Paul Taylor and Robert Hoehn

In this episode I’m joined by Paul Taylor and Robert Hoehn and we do a speaking exercise that I often use in my classes to help my students to practise using different grammatical structures in their speaking. I thought it would be interesting to record some native speakers doing the exercise too, so that’s what you’ll hear in this episode, as well as various little anecdotes, a few jokes and general chat. The conversation contains swearing and a few humourous comments which shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

[DOWNLOAD]

Today I’m joined by a couple of guests. First of all I have Paul Taylor with me, fresh from an appearance on French TV.

And also, Robert Hoehn is back on the podcast.

Last time Rob was on was in episode 143, in which we hung out together in Rob’s kitchen, we made some tea cocktails and then Rob offended everyone with some obnoxious comments about American foreign policy.

Since then I have never invited Rob back onto the podcast.

Until now.

I thought it was time to bring him back on since his name has been mentioned a few times recently.

First of all, we have to deal with the fallout from his last appearance (which actually wasn’t that bad) before going on to talk about some other stuff.

How Rob offended everyone last time (well, not everyone…)

Last time Rob said some comments which were not supposed to be taken seriously. Just some stuff about America bombing other countries.

He hasn’t been on the podcast since. (except for a brief appearance during one of the Star Wars episodes, and a telephone call to Paul once)

So I think we need to deal with that and perhaps roast Rob a bit before moving on. Once he’s been roasted, his name will be cleared and his debt to my audience will have been paid.

Jokes from Rob’s roast

A roast is something that American comedians do. It usually happens on someone’s birthday. All the comedians take turns to insult the roastee. It gets pretty harsh and insulting, but that’s the whole point and everyone gets roasted. You’re not supposed to get offended. It’s a tradition.

Here’s what I said during Rob’s roast.

Hanging out with Rob is a profound experience. After you spend time with him you might have a crisis of religious faith. Not because he has persuasive arguments against the existence of god, but because if god does exist that means he has created everything, including Rob – and the question is “Why?” “Why would he bother?” “Why would an intelligent creator choose to invent Rob Hoehn? what would be the point?” It’s impossible. It wouldn’t have happened. So, Rob’s existence is basically proof that we are alone in the universe. No intelligent designer would have decided to create Rob, so there is no god and this is all the result of random chance.

But it’s exciting hanging around with Rob.

I imagine it’s a bit like spending time in the company of a great ape, like an orangutan.

It’s exciting, because you never quite know what he’s going to do next, and it’s fun to speculate on just how intelligent he really is. Whenever he manages to do something, like communicate a complex message it’s always very exciting, “Ooh! he asked for a banana! Ooh he offended everyone! Amazing!” but there’s always a fear that he’s going to get confused and start throwing things around or pull someone’s arms out of their sockets.

Rob of course is American. He’s from Minnesota in the mid-west of the USA, and he’s a great ambassador for the USA because he basically embodies all of the values that we associate with the united states. Basically I’m saying that he’s fat and ignorant.

I invited Rob onto the podcast a few years ago. I thought it would be a good idea. I’d now like to read a selection of comments that I got in response to that episode.

The first one is a message from a regular commenter, someone who regularly commented on every episode I uploaded.

“Hello Luke, as you know we all love your podcasts because they’re authentic and full of life…”

That’s nice.

“…However…”

Ooh

“However, this American was utterly arrogant and full of himself. I’ve never heard such a smart alec person in my whole life, I feel like jumping off a bridge.”

I never heard from that person ever again. Never left a comment ever again. He disappeared. I don’t know what happened to him.

Here’s another one.

“Hello Luke. I’m afraid…”

That’s not a good start.

“Hello Luke. I’m afraid I am completely disgusted by Robert. At 42mins50seconds…”

So this person continued to listen, despite being completely disgusted.

“At 42mins50seconds, on the subject of American attitudes to other countries, he said ‘The truth of the matter is that we just do not fucking care. We do not care at all what anyone thinks, because we Americans know that we can completely dominate everyone and if someone pisses us off too much – BOOM! Smart bomb.”

I’m actually quite proud of these comments because I don’t know if you noticed but they are very well written. In fact, I have used Rob’s comments a few times in class because they are very motivating. The students can’t wait to give all kinds of angry and abusive responses to what he said. They just keep producing more and more English in response to his statements. So thanks Rob you have definitely helped to improve the motivation and productivity of my listeners.

Rob originally moved to France to train to become a clown, which wasn’t necessary, let’s be honest. He wanted to become a clown because he was so inspired by his hero Ronald McDonald.

So there we are Rob – all is forgiven. You’re back to square one again. Welcome back to the podcast.

Have you ever…?

This is a conversation generator that I use in class. I usually use it in fairly low level classes in which they’re just learning to use structures like:

  • present perfect for life experiences – “Have you ever ridden a Segway?” “Yes, I have / No, I haven’t”
  • Questions in past simple tense – “When did you ride it?” “How was it?” “Did you enjoy it?”
  • ‘would like + infinitive / wouldn’t like + infinitive’ – “Would you like to ride a Segway?” “Yes, I would / No, I wouldn’t”

Have you ever…?

  • seen a ufo
  • eaten an insect
  • flown in a helicopter
  • done a jump in a car
  • made a complete fool of yourself in public
  • killed an animal by mistake
  • had a public argument or fight
  • gone scuba diving
  • slept outside (not camping)
  • met a famous person

Tell us about them in the comment section. Have a good day, evening, morning, afternoon or night and I’ll speak to you again on the podcast soon. Bye.

Luke

Paul’s TV Show

Paul is currently having a lot of success on French TV (and on YouTube) with his series of mini TV shows in which he makes fun of French culture. The show is also produced with the help of Rob Hoehn, and Amber and I have writing credits on some episodes. Check out a couple of recent episodes below.

 

Photos

grasshopper-guacamole

Paul’s grasshopper guacamole

377. Holiday in Thailand (Part 1)

This episode contains stories and descriptions of my recent holiday in Thailand. You’ll hear some facts about Thailand, some descriptions of Bangkok and a few stories about funny experiences that happened while we were there. Part 2 is coming soon. More details and transcriptions below. Enjoy!

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Transcript

Hello everybody, I’m back from my holiday so here is a brand new episode for you to listen to. If you’re new to Luke’s English Podcast, then “hello” and welcome to the show. I have no idea how you found the podcast. It was probably on the internet, that’s how it normally happens. I doubt that you actually tripped over it in the street or anything. Oops ,what’s that – oh, it’s Luke’s English Podcast. I might as well have a look. You probably found it online, perhaps through iTunes or a friend recommended it to you perhaps. In any case, regardless of how you found me, welcome. My name’s Luke – and this is my podcast. It’s primarily for learners of English although I also have native English speakers listening to this too. In these episodes I talk to you in a personal way, telling stories, sharing some things about my life, discussing different topics, teaching you English and giving you the motivation to improve your English for yourself. I try to keep the podcast varied and I’m willing to talk about pretty much anything at all as long as it’s interesting. I’m an English teacher from the UK. I speak British English – with a standard accent from the South East of England. I’ve been teaching for more than 15 years so I have lots of experience to draw from. I’m also a stand-up comedian which means that when I’m not teaching English or doing the podcast I like to stand up in front of audiences of people and make them laugh with jokes and stories and things. I regularly perform comedy shows in Paris.

One of the principles which underpins what I do in episodes of this podcast is the understanding that simply listening to natural, spontaneous speech is a vital part of the process of learning English to a good standard. Obviously, you have to get an understanding of the grammar rules, develop an extensive set of active vocabulary, practise pronouncing the language and so on, but doing plenty of listening is an essential foundation. I usually recommend that LEP is best enjoyed as part of a balanced study program. For example I suggest that you also do plenty of speaking in order to activate the English that you passively pick up from these episodes. There are lots of ways to improve your English and you can just listen to previous episodes of the podcast to get my advice on that. At the very least, you can just relax and enjoy listening to my words on a regular basis, and I hope that it’s a fun process too. Certainly, I am sure that my podcast can really help all the other aspects of your English, not just your listening. I also believe it’s important to listen to English which is spoken at a pretty natural speed, which is spontaneous (i.e. not just written from a script) and I think you should listen regularly for fairly long periods, long term. Make it a part of your lifestyle to listen regularly and don’t give up.

I want my podcast to help you to do exactly those things, and so I try to make my episodes genuine, personal and humorous. So, if you’re new to the podcast – welcome and thanks for listening. I hope you stick with it. I believe that if you do continue to listen, you’ll see significant results in your English. Check out the episode archive on my website teacherluke.co.uk and you’ll see that you have plenty of other episodes to explore and enjoy.

If you’re not new to the podcast, and you are in fact a long term LEPster then welcome back! How are you? I hope you’re well. Did you have a good August? Have you listened to all the episodes I published before I went away? I hope so.

In any case, here is a new episode of this podcast and it is about my recent holiday in Thailand.

Holiday in Thailand

Yes, we went to Thailand this year and I’m going to tell you about it in this episode. In fact, in this one I’ll talk about these things:

  1. Why we went to Thailand
  2. Where we went in Thailand
  3. The things most people know about Thailand
  4. Some things you might not know about Thailand
  5. A few anecdotes about what we did and saw during the holiday
  6. A few dodgy jokes!
  7. An embarrassing story involving nudity
  8. A sad old memory that came back to me at a specific moment in the trip
  9. A mouse-related update (if you heard the last episode of the podcast, this will make sense to you)

We got back just the other day. I’m still a bit jet-lagged. I woke up at stupid o’clock this morning. My body is still on Thailand time, so at about 5AM my body woke up saying “hey it’s time to get up and go walking around temples in very hot temperatures! We’re on holiday come on!” No doubt I will randomly fall asleep this afternoon when my body decides that it’s bedtime. I have a sun tan – correction, I had a tan, until the flight back. As a very white English man, I have a slightly tricky relationship with sun tans. At the moment I am sporting the typical English man’s tan.

I have no idea how long this episode will be but I can just split it up into different chapters and it’s all good.

You will find some of this episode transcribed on the episode page on my website. Not all of it is transcribed, but a lot of it is, and you can read my notes too, which might be a good way to check out the spelling of any words you hear me use. They might be written on the page. By the way, if you’re just reading this – I strongly recommend that you listen instead of reading. Remember, anything that is written here is supposed to just accompany what I’m saying in the audio recording.

Why did we choose Thailand?

– My wife and I wanted to go somewhere exotic and far away (we want to explore places which are a bit further before we have kids)
– A break and a chance to get away from it all
– Never been before
– We like food !
– It’s quite diverse in terms of the things you can do – city, culture, beaches
– It’s not too expensive

Why didn’t you do an LEP Live event?

It was a holiday – so I was not working. That means I didn’t organise some sort of LEPster meet-up, or live podcasting stand up comedy extravaganza. I didn’t meet up with Olly Richards even though I have since learned that he was out there too learning Thai – no, it was all about walking around sweating, visiting temples, sweating, exploring street food markets, sweating, worrying about food poisoning, sweating, going to the beach and sweating there, learning how to cook local food, eating the local food with lots of chilli, sweating, doing yoga and meditating, drinking water and sweating! Just the average holiday abroad for a British person!

Where did you go?

In a nutshell, here’s where we went.

Bangkok for a few days, then up north to Chiang Mai for a few days, then down south to Koh Samui for a few days and then back to Bangkok for a few days and then home! Boom!

That’s the usual tourist route. It’s Bangkok in the middle, temples, treks into the forest, elephants, night markets and cooking classes in the north, then islands, beaches, diving, snorkelling and full moon parties in the south.

We didn’t go to the islands on the west side like Phuket because of the climate in August.

Also, just before we left and even while we were there, there were some explosions – some bombings, which was a bit worrying. We even considered not going, but then we thought – well, we live in Paris and we’ve got as much chance of being blown up there as in Thailand, so what the hell!

In fact our time was very peaceful.

Usual things people think about Thailand

The most typical clichés or stereotypes about Thailand: Busy, crowded, amazing food – specifically green curry and pad thai noodles, weird sex tourism in Bangkok, ladyboys, bizarre sex shows involving ping pong balls, full moon beach parties, buckets full of ridiculously full cocktails, kickboxing, temples, westerners being locked up in prison for drug possession, scooters, Sagat from Street Fighter 2 (Tiger uppercut), snakes, golden buddha statues, amazingly friendly and smiling people and the film “The Beach” starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

That’s partly true (perhaps for the average western tourist) but obviously it’s not the full picture, especially for the locals.  I will go into more detail about what it’s really like in this episode.

Things you might not know about Thailand

1. Full name of Bangkok. It’s the longest city name in the world. “Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OgUiux9QWw

2. Thailand, or “Prathet Thai” means “land of the free”…

3. Thailand has never been colonised by a foreign power, unlike other neighbouring countries which were colonised by European nations like Britain, France and the Netherlands. Thailand had a few wars with Burma, but was never successfully invaded. Well done Thailand.

4. Thailand has more than 1,400 islands. The most famous ones are in the south, and they are beautiful. Probably the most well known is Koh Phi Phi, which is where The Beach was filmed. (By the way, it’s a rubbish film)

5. It’s illegal to leave the house without underwear on. I don’t know how they enforce this law. Are they doing random underpant checks?

6. Thai currency is called the Baht and it’s illegal to step on Thai Baht. Now, you might be thinking – well, I don’t every go around stepping on currency anyway, so that’s not a problem. But the point is that this is because of the high level of respect that the Thai people have for their royal family. Like in the UK, a picture of the monarch appears on every bank note and the image of the monarch cannot be desecrated, in fact it is a crime to disfigure a picture of the king or queen in any way. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy, a bit like the UK, and they hold their king and queen in high esteem. There are lots and lots of images of them all over the country, sometimes you find little shrines in the street devoted to them.

7. The feet are considered to be very unclean (both clinically and spiritually) and so it is very rude to reveal the soles of your feet to anyone. So, don’t sit with your feet facing outwards, or put your feet up on the table like we do in the west sometimes. It’s also rude to point at people with your feet, which is fine because I literally never do that anyway. I’m sure I heard someone do standup about that and I can’t remember who, but it was very funny.

8. Similarly, the head is the highest point on the body and is considered to be sacred, so don’t touch it, slap it, poke it or whatever. In the west you might rub someone on the top of the head as a sign of affection, or whack someone round the back of the head to express annoyance. Don’t do that in Thailand. To be honest, I wasn’t going to do that either. I rarely touch the head of random strangers that I meet in public. I certainly wouldn’t slap the back of the head of someone. E.g. “Waiter, excuse me – we asked for 2 bowls of rice and you gave me one! Can we have another one? Thank you!” SLAP. No.

9. 95% of people are buddhist. It’s quite common to see Buddhist monks walking around. We talked to one of them and I’ll explain what he said later in this episode. Also there are buddha statues everywhere. There are thousands of them. It’s just buddha buddha buddha buddha buddha buddha buddha buddha buddha. Climb to the top of a mountain, there’s a buddha. Inside a cave? Buddha. Under a nice tree? Buddha. Inside this big temple? Buddha. In front of the big buddha statue, lots of other buddhas. In front of them, buddhas. Buddhas everywhere – which is great. They are beautiful, peaceful images and of all the religions I think Buddhism perhaps makes the most sense. Just try to reach a higher level of consciousness. Realise that everything is connected and that there is one universal vibration which passes through the entire universe. Reject selfish and materialistic urges in favour of achieving individual spiritual enlightenment. Fine.

10. It’s a very hot place – especially Bangkok. The hottest time of year is April where temperatures rise to 40 degrees C or more, with high humidity levels too. In August it’s the rainy season but it still gets really hot – it was regularly in the high 30s and with very high levels of humidity. Showers that happen in the evenings are a welcome break from the heat!

Read more about this on ‘the internet’ http://matadornetwork.com/trips/19-things-probably-didnt-know-thailand/

Bangkok

There are lots of stories about it, like the dodgy ping pong shows, the sex tourism and other weird and lewd things, but of course not everywhere is like that. We avoided the dodgy tourist parts such as Patpong, where there are these weird sex shows. Now, while I am quite curious to learn about the bizarre skills that some women have developed – I mean, some of the things are quite impressive. For example, apparently in these shows, some women are able to launch ping pong balls across the room – and not with their hands if you know what I mean, and some of them can even write letters with a paintbrush or pen, again, not with their hands. THat’s actually quite impressive, but I don’t really need to see it, and apparently the people who run the shows are very dodgy indeed and they lure you in with false prices and then when you try to leave they force you to pay a lot of money and it gets pretty ugly, so no thanks. No ping pong shows for us.

A mix between the chaotic and slightly sketchy places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos etc and the more modern JPN, particularly parts of this area where we stayed.

The streets are vibrant, chaotic, noisy, smelly, polluted, full of life. Scooters, cars, crossing the road. Nobody walks! Traffic is incredibly busy. There’s an amazing metro system called the sky train. Tuk tuks, taxis and so on.

Lots of street food, with people cooking all sorts of things on little mobile carts – chicken skewers, lots of seafood, noodles, fruits like mango and some things I didn’t recognise. People eat in the street sitting on little plastic chairs.

Incredible Japanese BBQ. Daimasu.

Massages

Onsen experience

Expectations vs reality.
Naked bald midget.
Only had a tiny towel. Not big enough to go around me.
A bunch of other naked guys, including a group of old men in the corner watching. They broke off their conversation to have a look at me when I walked in.
Only foreigner there.
Not normal in my culture.
I felt really embarrassed. Not because of my size – because I have nothing to be ashamed of in that department. Some might say I’m gifted, I would prefer to say I am average for a guy of my height, but I should add that I have massive hands and feet. Just saying. Anyway, I don’t really need to be ashamed of myself but this was very awkward for me but because I’m not used to being seen, and the natural response is to be self-conscious about your size, even in front of other men. You might think it’s not important what other guys think, but I’d never had to rationalise it before and the fact is, is still matters for some reason.
Size is important, even when it’s other guys. I can’t really explain that.
Of course I shouldn’t be bothered by it at all, but I’m English and it’s just part of our culture. First we don’t ever get naked in a public situation, except perhaps at a sports club but then it’s brief.
Also, for some reason it feels like you’re being judged. I did feel judged. I felt incredibly self co anxious.
Maybe I was being a bit paranoid, maybe not, but people weren’t shy about having a look. The old guys stopped their conversation to take a look at me. Others turned their heads etc.
Nerves = natural body response to protect the Crown Jewels.
Stayed in jet bath.
One by one the guys came over to the adjacent bath and had a look at me. Every time I thought “oh for fucks sake!”
I stayed there for 20 minutes not knowing where to look and absolutely boiling!
Tried to make a break for the next nearest bath but it was the cold one – no way.
Went for the soda bath. High CO2 apparently good for me but I thought I was going to die.
Left and got changed.
An absolute fountain of sweat.
Wife waiting for me, totally dry.

The massage was quite brutal, but ultimately nice.

Holiday = sweating, great discomfort, great comfort and relief, good food, discomfort, sweating, relief, sweating etc.

Rude massage joke

 

Thanks for listening – subscribe to the email list at the top-right of the page. :)

Luke

366. Talking about Nothing with Alex Love (Invaded by Robot Aliens) PART 1

On the podcast today I am in conversation with Alex Love, who you might remember from some previous episodes of this podcast. Alex is a friend of mine who I first met while doing stand-up comedy in London 7 years ago. He has featured in podcast episodes before, like the Brighton Fringe Festival podcasts (ep 104, 105 & 106), 109. The Drunk Episode and 226. On a Boat. All those episodes also featured our friends Paul Langton and Moz – both of whom have been guests on the podcast recently.
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Recent Episodes with Moz and Paul Langton:
Moz’s episode: https://teacherluke.co.uk/2016/03/23/337-murder-mile-walks-stories-of-londons-most-infamous-shocking-murders-some-explicit-content-swearing/
Paul’s episode: https://teacherluke.co.uk/2016/05/24/349-whos-the-best-superhero-with-paul-langton/

Alex Love regularly performs stand-up comedy gigs in London and in Manchester where he now lives. At this moment he’s preparing for the Edinburgh Festival where he will be performing a one-hour show which he has written himself, called “How to Win a Pub Quiz”. The show is a mix of stand-up comedy and pub quiz trivia and it has had some good reviews at previous festivals. If you’re in Edinburgh this August you can see Alex’s show at a venue called The Stand in rooms 5 & 6 (venue 319) at 12 o’clock midday from 4 to 14 August.
Bookings:  https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/alex-love-how-to-win-a-pub-quiz

As well as doing comedy Alex has also done a number of different jobs in his life, including doing a paper-round, working in a call centre, and writing journalistic pieces for The Guardian newspaper.

I invited Alex onto the podcast today mainly to talk about his Edinburgh show, but in fact, the conversation mainly involves Alex and me just wittering on about nothing in particular! That’s why I’ve called this episode “Talking about Nothing with Alex Love” because although we do talk about his show a little bit, I’ve found it quite hard to put my finger on exactly what it was that we talked about for the majority of this conversation. We just seemed to be talking about nothing and I actually think that’s a really great thing and a worthwhile thing for you to listen to.

Because, in my opinion, regularly listening to unplanned and slightly rambling conversations between friends, like in this episode, is genuinely good for your English, long-term. This is, after all, the way that we communicate with friends in the real world, isn’t it? Real conversations are not scripted or planned out in advance like the recordings you hear in published English learning course books, like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MVxesy1AFI 5.22. That’s an extract from a Headway course book published by Oxford University Press, which is a very good book and everything, but the audio conversations are a bit fake sounding because they’ve been written in advance and are being used to present certain bits of language. Of course, the vast majority of conversations we have with our friends in the real world are not planned in advance and usually involve responding to little moments that come up in the conversation, changing from one topic to another and simply rambling on about stuff in general. And we build relationships with people by rambling on about stuff in general, we have fun with each other by rambling on about stuff in general and we release stress by just rambling on about stuff in general, and this is why simply rambling on about stuff in general is actually rather a wonderful thing indeed.

So, I invite you, in this episode, to listen to us rambling on about stuff in general. Your job is to try to follow the meandering flow of the conversation, take note of certain phrases or aspects of language that you hear, and generally just let the English wash over you like some kind of refreshing language shower. An English language shower. A languashower if you like, or perhaps an Englashower.

One technical detail before we start: There are some moments when the Skype connection breaks up and Alex sounds a bit like an evil robot. That happened a few times and it actually really annoyed me during the recording because it was quite disruptive to our conversation. For some reason, whenever we started talking about something serious some connection problems occurred and Alex started sounding like an Aphex Twin remix or a drunk robot or something. You’ll hear it happening sometimes in the conversation and you’ll also hear that I got a bit annoyed by it later in the conversation and I said the phrase “This is doing my head in” which means “this is really annoying me and making me angry and frustrated.” To be honest, I have managed to fix the vast majority of the technical issues in the recording because I have done *a lot* of editing, so in fact you probably won’t notice any of these technical issues and all of this explaining that I’m doing here in the introduction is probably completely unnecessary, so I’m now going to stop doing it and just move on.

I hope to have Alex back on the podcast again soon for another episode in which we do a kind of podcast pub quiz of our own, which you can take part in. That would be good, wouldn’t it? Yes of course it would. Everyone likes a pub quiz. That’s another episode for another time, perhaps while Alex is in Edinburgh and has a better internet connection.

I should also mention that there’s a little bit of swearing in this conversation. So, “there’s a little bit of swearing in this episode.” There you go, you’ve been told, and I know that the vast majority of you are now thinking – “fine, that’s absolutely fine Luke. Not a problem. In fact, good – that’s good. We fucking love swearing Luke. IN fact, swearing is sharing.” Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about but I’m glad you’re happy. I encourage you not to swear too much though OK, even if you hear it on the podcast. Do what I say, don’t do what I do. OK.

Well, right then, without any further explaining, let’s now get started, and we’re going to jump straight into the conversation mid-flow right now so this is it, off we go, it’s time to get started so let’s get down to business right away without any further hesitation or messing around or time-wasting and so here it is then, let’s start, we’re all set, you’re set, I’m set, everything’s set and ready to roll so here we go, on your marks, get set, get ready, get steady, let’s get ready to rumble… OK GO.

*Episode Begins*

By the way, what’s a “Pub Quiz”? Well, it’s a quiz that happens in a pub. Typically, pub quizzes happen in the evenings in pubs all over the country where teams of people get together to answer questions which are read out by the quiz master. It’s just a game and a good excuse to get together, have a few drinks and test your general knowledge. The winning team is usually awarded some sort of prize – typically restaurant vouchers, bottles of wine or something like that. Pub quizzes are very popular in the UK. In fact, according to Wikipedia, “a 2009 study put the number of regular weekly pub quizzes in the UK at 22,445.”

Everyone loves a pub quiz, they’re very appealing. So, Alex’s Edinburgh show is quite a clever combination of a stand-up performance and a pub quiz in which the audience have to answer various funny questions read out by Alex.

Title: Alex Love – How to Win a Pub Quiz

Venue: The Stand 5 & 6 (Venue 319)
Dates: Aug 4-14
Time: 12:00 lunch time
Length: 1 hour

Description from the Ed Fringe website: This highly interactive show is part stand-up, part actual pub quiz. Expand your trivia, compete against other teams, witness results. After playing to capacity crowds in 2015, this unique hour is back with more facts, prizes and niche-referenced nonsense.
Reviews: ‘Alex Love is great fun’ (Scotsman). ‘It takes quite a show to create such a sense of engagement that one music question can become a full-blown sing-along, but this is the spirit of How to Win a Pub Quiz.’ (BroadwayBaby.com). ‘Such a quick brain’ (We Are Funny Project).
Bookings:  https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/alex-love-how-to-win-a-pub-quiz

Alex on Twitter: @thisalexlove https://twitter.com/thisalexlove

Follow me on Twitter @englishpodcast https://twitter.com/englishpodcast

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Now, go and make a jet-pack and your dreams of flying will come true! Yes you can!

;)

Luke

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End of Part 1 – ‘Outro’ – Transcript

Hello everyone – I’m interrupting the conversation here because I’ve decided to divide this episode into two parts and I thought that this dramatic moment where Alex has moved into the bathroom to find a better mobile internet signal is a suitable moment to do that. So this is the end of part 1. Part 2 should be ready for you to listen to right away – so go ahead and get stuck into it now.

OK then, so that’s it for part 1. Don’t forget to join the mailing list at teacherluke.co.uk and then you’ll get an email whenever I upload a new episode and the email will direct you straight to the page for that episode where you will find notes, transcriptions, links, videos and other details that relate to the episode.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you again in part 2.

Bye.

340. LEP Photo Competition Results & Winners / It’s LEP’s 7th Birthday / Ramble

In this episode the results & winners of the LEP photo competition are announced, and – it’s the 7th birthday of Luke’s English Podcast! This episode is long but you don’t have to listen to it in one go. You can listen, pause, do something else, listen later and so on. Enjoy!

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Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please because the results of the LEP photo competition are here. Try to contain your excitement. I know we’ve all been waiting for weeks with bated breath to know who has won this most prestigious of prizes, but you can now relax and breathe normally because the wait is over! Yes, in this episode I’m going to give you the results of the photo competition. I’ll tell you the winners and the runners up, I’ll describe the winning photos in some detail including my thoughts and feelings about them, and later in the episdoe I’m going to ramble on about some other stuff.

Also, this is the 7th birthday of my podcast!

Also, I’ve just realised that this is the 7th birthday of LEP! It’s been almost exactly 7 years since I uploaded the very first episode of Luke’s English Podcast. So, this is not just the photo competition episode but also the 7th birthday of Luke’s English Podcast too! Wow. Has it been 7 years? 7 years of my life have gone into this project. I have put a huge amount of time and energy into this over the years and I’ve loved every moment of it. Time flies doesn’t it. Yes it does. I’ll talk more of birthday-related things later, but if you’re feeling like you want to congratulate the podcast, celebrate the birthday, send me a card or a gift, or say thank you for my work or something like that, and you’re wondering what the appropriate thing to do is – well, here are some suggestions:

You could…

  • leave a lovely comment on the website explaining briefly what LEP means to you. It’s always nice to read your feedback and it helps the podcast because new visitors will see that I have an active, engaged, positive audience and that the podcast is good. It’ll help me reach a wider audience.
  • give the podcast a review on iTunes. This is really important actually – lots and lots of new people come to my podcast through iTunes and many of them will look at the reviews. So, if you enjoy this podcast and you feel it’s made a difference to your English, leave me a good review on iTunes. Lots of other people will see your review and it will really make a difference to the reputation of the podcast. Just go to https://itunes.apple.com/fr/podcast/lukes-english-podcast-learn/id312059190?l=en&mt=2 , view the podcast in iTunes and leave your review.
  • the most sincere way to say thanks is to leave me a donation via paypal. You should be able to find a button on every page of the website that says DONATE. This is the most sincere way you can thank me, because it’s like an investment in the podcast. Any contribution you make will support the podcast directly because it’ll help me to cover costs, such as website hosting and other payments, and because it just means I can do things like buy my wife lunch or something, and that’s important for my quality of life and my energy, which then feeds back into the podcast.

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Prizes

There will be more birthday celebrations later but first let’s get back to the photo competition, and here is just a quick reminder of what’s up for grabs in terms of prizes (this is where things get very dramatic and exciting – the tension is almost palpable isn’t it?!) First place will get two prizes: an LEP mug and another gift of the winner’s choice (so, another mug, a t-shirt, a pad or a tote bag), the two runners-up will receive one prize: an LEP mug each, and then there’s a surprise 4th prize, in a category that I’ve just added, for the winner of the Luke’s Choice Award (a gift of the winner’s choice from the gift shop).

I know some of you might be listening to this thinking – “What competition?” “What’s he talking about?” If that’s the case it probably means you haven’t listened to episodes 313-327 and so you’re blissfully unaware of this photo competition. Either that or you just forgot about it, or you had your memory wiped by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones or something. So, if you don’t remember, go back to episode 313 and 327 to remind yourselves of this competition and to find out more details.

Hey, don’t skip this episode, alright?

Some of you might also be thinking, “Oh, very good Luke, very good, but I might skip this episode because I’m not involved in the competition because I didn’t send a photo and I didn’t vote and yada yada yada”. First of all I should say that I would be deeply shocked and saddened if you skipped an episode. I mean really. It would upset me very much and it would be a huge trauma for me. I might have to go and have a lie down or a cup of tea, just to get over the emotional impact of knowing that you’d decided not to listen. In fact, I’m feeling very emotional about it right now just thinking about that… But if it makes a difference to you I’d like to say – I do hope you stay and listen, because I think there are some good things to be gained from listening to this, and I’ve got some biscuits here. Don’t you want a biscuit?  Anyway, this episode is not just about announcing the winners, but it’s also about describing some of the popular photos using words, in English, and sharing thoughts and feelings with the LEP community.

Yes, I will be describing and commenting on the photos during the episode – so you’ll hear some descriptive language. I suggest you check the page for this episode to see the pics I’m talking about. Also, in episode 327  I taught you some very useful little phrases and techniques for describing pictures, which should be very important if you’re taking a Cambridge exam, or if you’d like to learn some useful little phrases and techniques for describing pictures. So, that’s back in episode 327.

Summarising the Competition

Just in case you don’t know, or you’ve forgotten or something, let me quickly sum up the competition again.

Some time late last year I opened up this new contest. I got the idea originally from a Long Term Lepster (LTL) called Guillaume who suggested it to me ages ago by email. He said, “Hey why don’t you do a competition in which you ask your listeners to send you photos of them listening in different situations, and you could share the photos on your website and people could vote for their favourites, and the winner could get a prize like an LEP mug or t-shirt or something?” and I thought, hmm, a competition in which my listeners send me photos of them listening in different locations and I could share the photos on my website and people could vote for their favourites, and the winner could get a prize like an LEP mug or t-shirt or something, that’s not a bad idea! And so I decided to do just that, and in episode 313 ( I think) I said, “I’m launching a competition in which you my listeners can send me photos of you listening in different locations and I’ll share the photos on my website and people can vote for their favourites and the winner could win a prize like an LEP mug or a t-shirt or something. All you have to do is take photos of yourself listening in different situations and I can share them on my website and everyone can vote for their favourite ones, and the winner could win a prize like an LEP mug or a t-shirt or something. What do you think?”
And people said “What? Sorry, can you repeat the sentence?”

Most people seemed up for the competition, which was nice.

There was just one condition , I said – “you have to include something that proves that you’re listening. So, that could be some headphones in the pic, or an LEP logo, or something like that.”
And that’s exactly what happened, everyone sent me pictures of themselves listening in different situations and I shared them on the page for episode 327 and then everyone voted for their favourite ones. I say, everyone – I actually don’t mean everyone – not everyone in the world. I didn’t get 7.125 billion votes, and not even everyone who listens to this podcast voted. In fact, just a small fraction of my listeners voted – which means that there’s a good chance that you, listening to this right now, yes you, the one with the ears – there’s a good chance that you didn’t take part in this at all. And I’d like to ask you why not?? What were you doing? Did you have something better to do? I can’t imagine what could be more important than voting in this competition! Except maybe writing a report for work or something – in fact there might be lots of things that stopped you from voting maybe you were going food shopping to buy food to keep you and your family alive, maybe you were cooking dinner and you couldn’t vote, eating dinner, feeding dinner to your family or friends, cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, digesting food (I can’t vote I’m busy digesting), washing clothes, wearing clothes (sorry, I couldn’t vote, I was too busy wearing clothes), taking your clothes off in the evening – that’s time consuming, sleeping, being woken up by your alarm, putting your alarm on snooze, going back to sleep again, being woken up by your alarm again, putting it on snooze again, going back to sleep again, being woken up by the alarm AGAIN, and putting it on snooze AGAIN, then suddenly realising that you’re really late, smashing the alarm with a hammer, jumping out of bed, putting your clothes back on, having a shower, changing your clothes because they’re all wet, going to the toilet, taking another shower, cancelling 3rd world poverty, making coffee, leaking sensitive legal documents to the media that reveal the hoarding of massive amounts of secret money by a law firm based in Panama as part of a huge multinational tax avoidance scheme involving the leaders of many developed countries and various semi-legal tax avoidance schemes in offshore accounts based in tax-havens all over the world revealing incredible levels of alleged corruption at the highest level, eating a banana, going to work. You know, just the usual daily chores that take up our time. Maybe you were doing one of those things, and you couldn’t vote in the competition. I understand! That’s fine! I think that most people for one reason or another decided not to take part in the competition, and probably said to themselves – “Who? Me? Send pictures of myself listening in different situations so that Luke can share them on his website and then people can vote for their favourite pictures and the winner could win a prize like an LEP mug or a t-shirt or something? That sounds nice, but sorry Luke I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment – I’ve got a big meeting with the boss this morning, and I’m trying to learn phrasal verbs, I’ve got to shred a few documents at the Panamanian law firm where I work and I have a conference call between with David Cameron, Vladimir Putin and some other world leaders that I have to attend to, and I have to eat these biscuits and I’ve got to escape from this pink gorilla that’s chasing me and I’m trying to learn the phonemic script to improve my English pronunciation… so I can’t do it I’m afraid, I can’t vote – but carry on anyway, it sounds like a lovely plan.”

Right. Are you following this?

I’m just saying that most people didn’t get involved in the voting, but that’s totally fine of course, and in a way it’s perfect because if 7.125 billion people had voted and sent me photos, I would have been impossibly busy over the last few weeks and my website would have crashed and so on… So, all’s well that ends well.

Total number of votes and photos? In fact I received a grand total of about 115 photos and then a total of about 270 votes.

Why did I do the comp?

I wanted to see things from your point of view a bit. Obviously, I do these podcasts on my own, mostly. Sometimes I’m joined by other people, which is lovely. But usually I just sit here on own (sad, lonely music?), I record episodes, publish them, read comments from some of you, and watch the download numbers go up and up and I think – who are all these people? Where are they? What are they doing? What are they thinking? It turns out, you’re all just normal human beings (which shouldn’t be a surprise) – I mean, you’re all normal people (I say normal, of course you’re all extraordinary) but seriously, you’re ordinary people just going about your lives in different countries, in different weather conditions, in different environments and you find time to listen to this podcast while you’re doing it. There’s a pretty diverse range of people out there in different situations, but the cool thing is that you’re all united by the fact that you listen to this podcast. You’re united by other things too of course, like the fact that you’ve all got legs (although, saying that I realise that some of you might not have legs of course and that’s great) or you’re united by the fact that you live on earth and other things, like that you need to drink water regularly, breathe air, eat food, go to the loo sometimes, we’re all united by these things, you probably like eating good food – who doesn’t? and you probably don’t like it when you have a stone in your shoe, it’s annoying when your neighbours play loud music all night, sometimes you run out of sugar or milk or, err, rice, and you get angry, like “Why don’t we have any sugar left!? Oh god!!!” or you find it embarrassing when you drop something in public or you trip over in the street and you’d love to get more sleep in the mornings. Yes, you’re all united by those things, but you’re also united by the fact that you all listen to this podcast.

In all seriousness, I can’t really overstate how amazing that is. It’s amazing. It is amazing. It’s amAAAAYzing. OK? Thanks for listening and thanks for your photos & votes.

But really, I was quite surprised at what a fun and even touching experience it was to look at all the photos that were sent. Did you check out the page for 327? It was a genuinely lovely experience, that was just a little bit heartwarming. Unless you’re a steel-hearted terminator of a person, who doesn’t let emotion defrost the edges of your frozen heart, I imagine that you felt it to be quite sweet as well, to look at all these pics of people around the world.

Not all the photos were outstanding works of photographic genius of course. In fact many of them were probably taken right at the moment that you were listening to episode 313 when I said “just take a pic while you’re listening – just take a pic of whatever you can see right now” and that’s exactly what a lot of you did – so there are some photos of computer screens, or mobile phones, or views from car or bus windows and stuff, but these pictures do have interesting details in the background or on the edges of the frame – just revealing little things that show us the things we have in common but also differences like which part of the world you’re in, or what your life is like – for example, the weather, the landscape, your working environment, other people we can see in the pictures, public spaces, etc.

Luke gets deep and meaningful

I’d like to take this opportunity to get deep and meaningful now and say some profound things about what your contribution to this photo competition means to me personally, and the way it represents something special as we move through life in this crazy world we call ‘earth’, struggling to make sense of what’s going on around us and searching for some oasis of calm and some sincere sentiments outside the usual banal nonsense we are exposed to in the media and in advertising. So, here’s some profundity for you.

So here we are, all living on this planet. We all lead these separate lives in different places with our own unique problems, stresses, responsibilities etc, but at the end of the day when we put our heads down to go to sleep, or when we lose a sock in the washing machine, or when we put our headphones on to listen to LEP, aren’t we all the same in some ways? We essentially care about the same things, don’t we? Despite being in different countries, divided by political boundaries, geo-cultural distinctions, ethnic and religious differences, we are all connected. We live pretty similar lives and we share the world together (cheesy). Things we do, even small things, affect the world around us, and affect other people’s lives – even people we can’t see might be inadvertently affected by our actions in some way, and what’s good for other people is good for the world ultimately is good for us too. You know, it’s like what Cypress Hill said – “What goes around comes around”. (Cypress Hill – “What go around come around!” – I couldn’t have said it better myself, except that it’s “what goES around comeS around”, but other than that, well done Cypress Hill.)

OK this might sound bit cheesy and naive but I think it’s true, and what I’m trying to say is that it’s stupid to divide ourselves up into little groups and isolate from each other, alienate people, stigmatise or scapegoat people and point the finger at others for being different. We should celebrate our differences, like our different customs and behaviour but we shouldn’t let those differences drag us into fighting each other on behalf of people who just care about their own power. Yeah man. Deep. OK, that was a cheesy and slightly preachy message there, but there it is. I think there’s a place for a little bit of cheese and maybe the odd bit of preachiness on this podcast sometimes because I enjoy the fact that my podcast is something that crosses borders and I think these things need to be said. It’s nice. If you don’t agree that we’re all interconnected in complex ways and that humans all basically deserve to be treated with respect, and that we have more things in common than differences – if you don’t agree with me, then leave your comments on the webpage unless you’re too busy shredding documents in an office somewhere.

So, back to the photos

Seeing people’s working lives – it’s awesome to observe the different types of work that my listeners do, and there are some interesting things in there, like Julia from Russia who works with gold for example.
Multitasking – it’s great to see so many people managing not just to listen to the podcast but also to do other things at the same time – like playing the piano, cooking, driving or in some cases answering the call of nature – (that means going to the toilet – yes I got a couple of pics of people listening in the loo). Good work (not for the toilet thing – I’m not judging you based on your performance in the toilet) but good work for the multitasking if that’s how you listen to this podcast!
Babies listening – There are a couple of little babies (newborn ones) listening too, which I do think is a good way to get the kids started on English. I wonder what this new generation will be like in English – the generation who will grow up with access to English online. It’s possible to raise kids with good English if you just let them interact with it from an early age. It’ll definitely help. Obviously, you should speak to them and get them to speak to you in English too. Hunter in Taiwan – I’m happy to see he’s smiling while listening to the podcast!
I know that some of my episodes are really long. I’ve spoken about how I think that’s good for your English. But I realise that your time is precious and I think it’s just brilliant  that you choose to spend that time listening to this.
So, as ever – thank you for devoting your time to this podcast. I’m glad my work is appreciated.
Obviously it’s a free podcast and I do this in my free-time so really it’s you who should be thanking me – writing me heartfelt messages filled with praise and admiration, sending me generous donations and and religiously recommending my podcast to every single person you meet (literally everyone) but nevertheless, thank you for devoting your time to LEP. In fact, joking aside, many of those things are true – I really do get regular messages from my listeners telling me how appreciative they are. In fact, you may have sent me an email or written a comment or something saying thank you and I appreciate that. Your feedback is great.

Also, congratulations to you for having the sense to listen to a podcast to improve your English, because in my professional opinion it’s a very good thing for you to do and it should give you an edge over other people who don’t do it. Obviously you should also do other practice as well, to activate your English including doing plenty of speaking if you can find ways to do that. But, you know, congrats for adding an English language podcast to your lifestyle. It’s BOUND to have an impact on your English.

So, now that I’ve rambled on about the podcast for a while let me now ANNOUNCE THE WINNERS of the competition and DESCRIBE THE PHOTOS in more detail. (why did I put those words in CAPITALS? …I don’t know – it just seemed more EMPHATIC!)

PHOTO COMP – RESULTS

4 prizes: 2 runners up, the winner, and the Luke’s Choice Award.

RUNNERS-UP (a mug each)

RUNNER UP (3rd place) Walter near Milan in Italy – highest listener? 20 votes.

Walter near Milan in Italy - highest listener?

Walter near Milan in Italy – highest listener?

Thoughts: This is simply an amazing view and it looks like the perfect place to listen to the podcast. Walking in the mountains must be invigorating and energising, and I hope you also get some mental stimulation from the podcast while you’re doing it. I also like the composition of the photo.

RUNNER UP (2nd place)

Photo title: Sergio’s illustration of me as a Jedi in training / Sergio Tellez LEP JEDI and artist! Total = 22 votes

Sergio Tellez LEP JEDI and artist! He decided to draw a picture of me as a Jedi in training! :D I'm Luke Skywalker, finally.

Sergio Tellez LEP JEDI and artist! He decided to draw a picture of me as a Jedi in training! :D I’m Luke Skywalker, finally.

Here’s a closer look at that illustration:

This is Sergio's illustration of me as a Jedi in training. :D There's another photo in the competition with Sergio doing the drawing - I consider them to be the same pic (this one https://teacherluke.co.uk/2016/01/20/327-the-lep-photo-competition-please-check-out-the-photos-and-vote/sergio-tellez-lep-jedi)

Note: Just describe the photo. What’s yoda whispering in my ear? “Mmmm, strong in the ways of podcasting you have become, but incomplete your training is.” Why master Yoda? What must I do to become a true Jedi Master of English Teaching? “Hmmm, monetise your podcast you must! Yes! Create online courses! Download them people will! Help them learn, you can! Video courses you could produce, yes! Study packs, pdf worksheets. Publish and sell your own materials online you must. Only then, a Jedi you will be.” OK master Yoda. I’ll try. “Hmm speak not of “TRY”. DO or DO NOT. There is no ‘TRY'”. Your voice is a bit weird master Yoda, are you ok?

Thoughts: A lot of effort went into this. The illustration is great, particularly Yoda. You’ve also done a pretty good job of capturing my face, probably based on just one photo. Also, the picture shows a lot of things like the fact that you’re listening while drawing, you’re a Star Wars fan, and you’re aware that I am too. It shows that you’ve been paying attention! I am Luke Skywalker after all. It’s really funny and nice!

OVERALL WINNER (1st place) (a mug + t-shirt, bag or pad)

Gabriella in Italy – listening while doing the housework (29 votes)

Gabriella in Italy - listening while doing the housework

Gabriella in Italy – listening while doing the housework

Thoughts: This is a great pic because it shows very clearly the way that many people listen to the podcast – while doing something else. Gabriella is obviously very clever to combine the two, and she seems so happy! Big smile on her face, and it’s just a very striking and colourful picture. There’s something appealing about it. It’s a slice of life. We have a glimpse into your home, and we get a sense of how much you enjoy listening to the podcast. Lovely stuff!

Luke’s Choices for Honourable Mentions (from ones that didn’t win) – and one of these will receive a Luke’s Choice Award (a mug)

These are photos that didn’t win or get runners up prizes, but which I’d like to mention because I like them.
Esther and so many ginger biscuits 9
Dima Okun – listening all the time! 8
Lеksandra Sokolova – an artist who listens while illustrating – sashasokolova.com 8
Denis (Bosnia and Herzegovina) during his Orchestra Rehearsal 9
Thavorn Twinant from Thaliand in San Francisco 10
Hunter in Taiwan listening with 14 day old son 12
Zdenek_Lukas in Czech Republic 13
Sylke Strüber and her pet dog Robin in Germany 13
Meliana and bear in Wroclaw (in Poland), which is this year European Capital of Culture 15
Mateusz from Poland – and his LEP fish 3
Paquan Satamparat in Thaliand with another LEP Ninja – turtley amazing 1
Anna – on the way from China to Vietnam 5
Guido in Milan – giving LEP some free publicity 7
Mayumi padawan learner from Japan just having seen Star Wars 6
Alexander in hospital in Russia – don’t worry he’s ok – and he’s listened to every single episode of LEP while recovering.
Lê Phương Thảo sunrise after staying up all night studying 1 (stayed up all night studying and then chose to listen to my podcast – instead of crashing out in bed, exhausted – you’ll go far my friend)

The ‘Luke’s Choice Award’

This is an award given to one of the photos that didn’t win, but which I personally like.
I like them all, but of the ones that didn’t win, this one stood out for me.

The award goes to:
Daria Bokova from Russia living China, cycling through the polluted streets (5 votes)

Daria Bokova from Russia living China, cycling through the polluted streets

Daria Bokova from Russia living China, cycling through the polluted streets

Why have I chosen this one?

It’s a slice of life. First of all, we get a sense of daily routine. It seems so busy, with other people cycling past. A sense of movement. A sense of multiculturalism. Environmental issues – with he pollution. A sense of urgency. Although it was probably taken very quickly and it’s essentially a selfie, I like the composition, with the cyclists moving past in the background and to the side, with Daria on the left, quite close engaging us with those lovely blue eyes. It makes me wonder what she’s thinking while surrounded by all this traffic. It must be a stressful daily commute, but she seems calm while listening to the podcast. And she l looks like a ninja, which is cool.

If you’d like to buy some merchandise, click the image below to visit the LEP GIFT SHOP.

Click the image to visit the gift shop where you can buy LEP merchandise.

Click the image to visit the gift shop where you can buy LEP merchandise.

Other entries and their votes

Lê Phương Thảo sunrise after staying up all night studying 1
Amir Khosh – the Dentist who listens to LEP 1
Sara Viñas in Beijing China with a mask for pollution 1
Gabriel Reis 1
Armando Torres driving in Mexico with the iztaccihuatl volcano in the background 1
Mohsen from Iran 1
Paquan Satamparat in Thaliand with another LEP Ninja – turtley amazing 1
Vlad from Kharkiv in Ukraine, where it looks very cold indeed 1
Alex from Spain making delicious chocolate cookies with the kind help of her two girls 1
Valtesse Maria Thompson – hashtags are enough proof! 1
basma-salman listening in bed I think! 1
Mike in Sri Lanka or India 1
Ewelina – keep on running! (with headphones on) 1
Carolina from Santiago Chile 1
Amaia Garcia – Bilbao in Basque Country – Guggenheim museum 1
Emília Hosszú – she nominated herself in the most boring category – in the UK I think 1
Julien the French stonemason 1
Emma Lee – LEP Ninja from Australia – in her 6 year old son’s room 1
Adam from Poland, now a sheet metal worker in Leicestershire in England 1
Irina Lavrova – another frozen Lepster! 1
Tania from Chile now in Munich 1
Aine Ito – LEP Ninja from Japan now studying in Edinburgh 1
Farid from Algeria now living in Montreal Canada 1
Tetsro – shaving in Japan with Philip’s shaver – did you ask Philip before you borrowed it? 1
Junji Yanagi, from Japan, who prefers walking than taking the train because it gives him more time to listen to LEP – 2
Jonatan Uriel Vidal Carmona in Mexico City 2
Francesco Lotto – a foggy day in Italy 2
romana from höflein, austria – running betwen vineyards 2
Anthony CP from Spain – listening in Northern Ireland 2
Ivan Irikov at the Gym 2
Anna Maria Chachulska (Polish girl living in Netherlands) and Kermit and a gin and tonic 2
A lovely photo of Renato in a typical listening situation 2
Guillaume driving with The Thompsons in Switzerland 2
Ariel Tsai (from China) marking her students homework 2
Quyền Cao commuting and listening 2
Sebastian from Poland – feeling good after a 5 km jog 2
Sergey Abakumoff – somewhere in Russia – spot the headphones 2
Alexey Алексей keeping an eye on the road in Russia 2
playdoh crow multitasking with a nude_potato 3
Mamen – waiting for the snow in Biescas in Spain 3
Mateusz from Poland – and his LEP fish 3
Kaline who listens everywhere! 3
Vasyl Usik on a bike ride in Ukraine 3
Sylke from Germany 3
Marina F with her listening partner – Daniel 3
Achim Winter – Cooking with Luke 3
Facundo Vilicich with a skipping rope in the PLaza Malvinas 3
huda s – favourite place for listening 3
Maxi from San Nicolás, a small town of Argentina – with the view from his kitchen and a cup of mate (local tea) 3
Paulina from Poland – listening in the morning. 3
Hideki from Japan and the Tokyo Skytree 4
Marina in Moscow 4
Jose, who listens while running to the toilet 4
Sabine from Germany – starting the day brushing her teeth in English 4
Leila somewhere in Russia 4
Carlos Rodríguez from Chile – multitasking 4
Alessandro from Rome on a ferry from France to England 5
Anna – on the way from China to Vietnam 5
Kristina listening at -20 degrees C 5
Daria Bokova from Russia living China, cycling through the polluted streets 5
Charleston from Brazil – on the way to his girlfriend’s house in the middle of the night 6
Julia from Minsk in Belarus 6
Eric in France – raising a glass to LEP 6
Mayumi padawan learner from Japan just having seen Star Wars 6
Julia from Russia – a restorer who works with GOLD – note the golden LEP 6
Cristian cooking for his British fiancee – who also is a lepster 7
Joanna from Poland and her comments! 7
Kristina in Moscow – smiling despite the snowstorm 7
Guido in Milan – giving LEP some free publicity 7
Serezha Sergey from Moscow 8
Weijia Wang from China 9

Other stuff

Crikey! It’s the 7th birthday of LEP! I completely forgot about that!

Top countries by download over the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, year.

Nicknames for LEPsters

I expect I have many types of listener. Some of you have been listening for ages, some might be quite new. Some of you leave comments, some don’t. Some of you use transcripts, some just listen. I was thinking of nicknames I could use to refer to the different types of listener I have.  Here are a few ideas. They’re mainly acronyms. *Let’s see how many of these nicknames I can actually remember in the future! and Let’s see how many get adopted by you*

LEPsters (all people who listen)
LEP Ninjas (People who listen but never comment, or people who comment rarely, or people who comment anonomously and then slip away into the darkness)
DLLs – Dedicated Language Learners (obviously that’s everyone – but these are people who really go all out to learn using the podcast, like listening numerous times, repeating what they hear, keeping vocabulary records, studying transcripts, or using any kind of serious work ethic while listening)
Dudes – Anyone (men or women) who just likes to chill out while listening. You might have a cup of tea and lie down on your nice rug and just listen for the pure enjoyment of it)
Civilians or “muggles” (People who don’t listen and who have no idea that it exists)
Splitters! (People who used to listen, but decided to stop for some reason – especially if they listen to OPP but not mine)
Scrubbers! (People who know the podcast exists but just ignore it, choosing not to listen)
Passive smokers / Second hand LEPsters / Significant Others (Wives, girlfriends, boyfriends or husbands who listen because they’re with another LEPster)
Younglings (Kids who listen to the podcast)
Comrades – I’m referring to fellow English teaching professionals who listen to this podcast. I have a special sense of solidarity with other English teachers.
All creatures great and small (any animals who listen)
Aliens (just aliens – I imagine they’re scanning all broadcasts on earth)
NSA Agents (Those American secret service agents who are listening to this – imagine Agent Smith from The Matrix)
LTLs (Long Term Lepsters – people who have been listening for years – maybe since 2009 – early adopters)
Newbies – Anyone who’s just started listening recently.
The Lost Adventurers – Listeners who are quite lost  because they just don’t really understand what’s going on in episodes, but they keep pushing forwards anyway, searching for the truth. I imagine you sort of lost in the jungle, slashing at the foliage with a machete, trying to find the path that will lead you to the temple of English enlightenment.
Transcribers (LEPsters who take part in the transcription process)
Audiophiles (People who have downloaded audiobooks from Audible)
Talkers (People who talk on italki)
Cowboys / gunsligners = people who think I talk too much “You talk too much”
Readers (People who just read the show notes and transcripts, but don’t actually listen to the episodes)
Multitaskers (people who listen to LEP while doing other things)
Philanthropists (people who donate money to the podcast out of generosity and kindness)

I’m sure you could think of plenty of other types of listener. So, I invite you to think of other names and add them in the comment section.

POLL – What are the most common types of listener? Complete this poll to find out!

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I was interviewed by Olly Richards on his podcast, called “I Will Teach You a Language” and we talked about language learning

Did you enjoy episode 332 of my podcast, with Olly Richards? It seems to have been a popular one. If you did enjoy it, you might want to check out this new episode of Olly’s podcast, because he interviewed me. *I’m so proud right now*

It’s episode 90 👇

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I was very happy to be interviewed by Olly because I listen to his podcast and think it’s great. He always gives such practical and motivating tips for language learning and all his advice comes from his own valuable experience as a learner of many languages. I was glad to be considered a worthy guest.

Olly chose to ask me about being a teacher and podcaster and what I’d learned from those experiences. Like in LEP#332 we continue to talk about some key principles about being a good language learner – attitude, time, practice and material. We also reflect on 7 years of Luke’s English Podcast (has it really been 7 years?!) and the pros and cons of the language classroom as a learning space.

Head over to Olly’s website to find out more, and to listen to the episode.

325. Catching Up with Oli (Part 1) Past Challenges

Here’s a 2-part episode featuring a conversation with my cousin Oliver in which we talk about first some challenges he faced over the last few years (including dramatic things like a scooter crash, a tropical disease, a burglary and how he completely flooded his own house) and then some more positive things about being a father and predictions for how society will be different in the future. Also, listen for some general news and announcements about Luke’s English Podcast.

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Announcements & News

  • I hope you enjoyed the episodes I recorded as a tribute to David Bowie. Unfortunately, so soon after we lost Bowie, the news came that another great person has died – the British actor Alan Rickman, who like Bowie was 69 years old and died from cancer. He’s most famous for playing the part of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, and the part of Hans Gruber the bad guy in the film Die Hard with Bruce Willis – both very enjoyable and distinguished performances, but he played many other roles too. Alan Rickman was known for his sardonic humour, his wonderfully rich and unique voice, and for bringing a great amount of weight and humanity as well as humour to his roles. He will be missed too.
  • And, I haven’t even mentioned Lemmy – the lead singer of the group Motorhead, who also died recently. Lemmy played a massive part in the invention of heavy metal music, and was generally a huge personality in the world of British rock. He was on the scene all the way from the 60s until this year when he passed away due to cancer. Lemmy was known for his gravelly voice, his appearance (he looked like a biker dressed in leather with big mutton-chop sideburns and moles on his face – he wasn’t a pretty guy like Bowie by any means), his hard-drinking speed fuelled lifestyle and his bizarre obsession with Nazi regalia – clothing, weapons and so on from the Nazi era. He wasn’t a bad guy, he just liked the designs and imagery from that time – it had nothing to do with the ideology, and at heart he was just committed to playing loud and fast music and living a loud and fast lifestyle – and he will surely go down in history as a true legend of the music world. So, that’s three people, at least. So, can famous British people stop dying please!? If we carry on at this rate there’ll be none left by the end of the year.
  • But let’s not dwell on these dark things any more! I’m glad to present you this episode today because this one is all about the future, and new life because my cousin Oli is going to be a Dad for the first time – his wife is expecting a baby daughter at any time, so let’s look to the future, with new life and positivity and all that stuff! We’ll start that in just a minute, but first – a little bit of admin…
  • The comments issue on the website is fixed. I just needed to do a few updates. You can now post comments on the homepage again. No worries!
  • Email subscribers – are you still receiving emails when I post new episodes? I had a couple of messages from listeners recently who said they hadn’t received emails with new episodes. How about you? If you’re an email subscriber, could you let me know if you received emails for the David Bowie episodes, the episode called With the Thompsons, and the Star Wars spoiler review.
  • Picture comp is finished – so, don’t send me any more photos please! Thank you for the photos I have received in my email account, and, of course, I have loads of pictures. They’ll go up on the website soon and you can pick your favourite. I’m a little bit concerned about how that’s going to work because there are about a billion photos, but I’ll work something out.
  • I’ll be meeting Paul and Amber again soon. Firstly to catch up with them both – because quite a lot has happened since we last spoke on the podcast. Amber went to Costa Rica, and Paul Taylor is now something of a celebrity as his comedy video about kissing in France went super-viral over the last few weeks. His video, “Paul Taylor – La Bise” is about his frustration with the French custom of kissing people when you meet them. It was uploaded onto Robert Hoehn’s YouTube channel French Fried TV on new year’s day and within the space of just a few days it got over 1 million views. He was featured on lots of French websites, radio and TV, and then the video went global on the BBC’s website and more. Paul also has a new solo comedy show every Saturday (as well as the one with me on Thursdays) and it’s completely sold out for the next 10 weeks or something. Wow! Remember when he was on this podcast talking about how he quit his job to do comedy? Remember how difficult it was in Edinburgh? Well, things seem to be working out for him now! Good news!

  • Also, I hope to get Amber and him on this podcast again (if he’ll come on now that he’s such a big celebrity) in order to do that interactive version of the Lying Game – remember that? Listen to “318. The Rematch (Part 2)” to find out the details. Basically, this is a chance for you to get involved in another version of the lying game.  All three of us said some statements, and you now have to write questions in the comments section for episode 318. IN the episode we’ll ask each other your questions, and answer them. Then you can decide if they’re true or lies. Again, listen to 318. The Rematch (Part 2) for all the details (listen until the end).

Introduction to this Episode

As you know at Chrimbo I want back to the UK and stayed with my family, and with my cousin at his home in Bristol. It’s been a while since he was last on the podcast, and quite a lot has changed with him. In our conversation we talk about lots of things and I really think this is an interesting episode, and a very valuable one from a language point of view. The topics we talk about are diverse and quite in-depth and as a result we use lots of different features of grammar and vocabulary. I always encourage you to notice language while listening to native speakers on this podcast, so try to do that in this episode if you can. First we talk about what happened to Oli since the last time he was on the podcast, so watch out for the ways in which we talk about the past – tenses, and other forms. Oli faced a few difficulties and challenges, so watch out for the ways he describes those things. Essentially, he tells me a few anecdotes about some of his difficulties in London, watch out for past tenses and so on. Then we talk about the future, and about various predictions for the next 10-20 years, so naturally you can try to notice the specific language, tenses and modal verbs that we use to describe the future, make predictions and make judgements about the future. As well as that, there’s a lot of vocabulary related to technology, transport and communication.

In my opinion this is a very useful conversation for you to listen to. I loved catching up with Oli and I sincerely hope you enjoy listening to it, and by the way, listen all the way to the end to hear Oli play a bit of guitar – and he’s a really good guitarist.

That’s it!

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