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Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. How are you doing today?
I hope you're doing fine.
So this is a story episode which means that as usual, I'm going to tell you a story and then use it to help you learn English.
What is going to happen is that first I'll read the story to you, you can just try to follow it and understand everything and then afterwards I'll summarise it just to make sure you've understood the overall meaning of what happened in the story and then I'll go through the story again line by line and I will explain bits of vocabulary as we go.
There's a lot of English to learn from this story, lots of useful phrases regularly used expressions and vocabulary which you could apply to a variety of different contexts.
This is the sort of natural up -to -date English that is used today presented in a story and then explained by me afterwards.
The story is short.
It's about 1 ,500 words long, something like that, which is short, but this episode might be long because I'm not just telling you the story, I'm also going to analyze and teach you a lot of the language.
The story itself will probably take about 15 to 20 minutes and then the rest of the episode will be me teaching you English.
So, short story but long episodes.
If you want to practise your pronunciation with this, you could repeat each line after me, you might need to use the pause button after each line, or perhaps read the story out loud at the same time as me, that's shadowing, you could try doing this both with and without the story text in front of you.
If the story is a bit long for you to shadow the entire thing, you could just maybe just focus on one part of it.
Also you could record yourself reading the story and then compare your recording to mine and identify differences, identify maybe little bits of pronunciation that were problematic for you, certain sounds which were tricky which you could then focus on, or you could just simply enjoy listening to the story without feeling the need to do anything else.
It's up to you. As usual there is a pdf for this which contains the full story text and all my notes, my vocab notes and stuff like that.
You can download that from my website.
you'll find a link in the description, right?
So let's get started, shall we?
Yes. So first of all, a general question.
A general question.
So think about this, as you listen to the story, what kind of story is this?
How would you categorize this story in terms of its style or its genre?
So what kind of story is this?
And one other thing, by the way, the main character in this story is Spanish.
He is a learner of English from Spain, so the main character is Spanish and when he speaks, rather than me attempting to do some kind of Spanish accent, instead I'll just be reading those lines in my normal English accent.
I think that would probably be best rather than me attempting to do some horrendous Spanish accent which wouldn't really be anyway so he's just going to speak in my voice maybe he maybe he listens to Luke's English podcast a lot and as a result he just speaks English without a particular Spanish accent.
anyway let's get started so what kind of story is this?
here we go this is the abduction also known as the bizarre abduction of Jose Martinez.
Here we go. Jose Martinez was an ordinary man, living in a quaint little town on the outskirts of London in England.
Originally from Spain, Jose had moved to the UK to improve his English by immersing himself in the language and culture.
He managed to find work as a mechanic fixing up old cars in a small garage.
His life was relatively simple and uneventful, except for one major hurdle.
His struggle to understand all the different British accents and dialects which he encountered on a daily basis.
And the food of course.
And the weather. And how expensive everything was.
And the drafty windows.
And the tiny kitchens.
And the carpet everywhere.
And the fact that there were two taps on every bathroom sink, so when he washed he either froze his hands in ice -cold water or completely boiled them.
There was also the visa issue because of Brexit, but except for all that, it was wonderful.
One crisp autumn evening Jose was closing up his garage, the sun setting in a blaze of orange and red behind the dark grey clouds.
As he was locking the door he noticed a strange light in the sky.
At first he thought it was a plane, then perhaps a drone, or maybe a ball from that weird game called cricket that people play in England.
But no, it was something even stranger than that.
It moved erratically, zig -zagging across the sky like a drunk mosquito.
Curiosity got the better of Jose, and he stood there, staring at the phenomenon, his mouth hanging open.
Suddenly the light grew brighter and zoomed towards Jose at an incredible speed.
Before he could react, Jose was enveloped in a blinding white light and felt his feet leave the ground.
Oh bloody hell! he said, because that's what English people say in this kind of situation and he was trying to blend in.
When he woke up, Jose found himself in a sterile metallic room.
He was lying on a cold hard surface, like the world's worst spa treatment.
At first he thought he was still in England.
He was cold and a bit uncomfortable like normal.
Then panic set in when he noticed there was no carpet on the floor and he realised he'd actually been abducted by aliens.
He tried to sit up but his body felt heavy and his head was spinning like he'd just come back from a trip to the pub with his English mate Barry.
A door slid open and two figures entered the room.
They were humanoid but taller, with elongated limbs and large almond -shaped eyes.
Imagine a yoga instructor had had a baby with some kind of insect.
That's what they looked like.
Standard alien stuff really.
Their skin had a blueish colour and they moved with an eerie grace, like ballet dancers who took their job just a little bit too seriously.
One of them approached Jose and placed a device on his forehead.
Jose felt a slight tingling sensation and suddenly the room seemed to spin faster.
Oh bloody hell! he said again.
Do not be afraid Jose Martinez, a voice echoed in his mind in English.
The aliens lips didn't move.
We mean you no harm.
Who are you, and why do you even have lips if you can do this mind speaking thing that you're doing to me currently at this very moment right now?
said Jose, quite impressed with his own English, but also wondering if this was all a big trick and he was actually on a terrible TV prank show or something.
He glanced around the room to see if there were any cameras but there weren't any.
All he could see was just weird alien technology all around him.
Oh, Jose, what have you got yourself into this time?
He muttered to himself.
We are the Zellara, the alien replied telepathically.
We've been observing your species for centuries.
We have chosen you, Jose Martinez, for an experiment that will benefit both our kinds.
Jose's fear slowly began to subside, replaced by curiosity as well as a bit of annoyance.
Look if it's about my visa I'm in the process of renewing it, honestly I just need to but the Zillara didn't let him finish.
We have developed a technology that allows us to share knowledge through direct neural transfer it explained.
You will be the first human to receive this gift. We will give you all our knowledge, including everything we have learned and observed about the English people and their language.
In return we ask that you share your Spanish culture and language with us." I'm from Barcelona, said Jose, and, well haven't you heard of Duolingo or podcasts?
But the Zillara continued.
Please, we ask you to share your language and culture with us and that you let us examine you.
Huh, said Jose, but before we could go any further, the alien activated the device on his forehead.
A flood of information surged into Jose's mind.
Grammar rules, vocabulary, idioms and all the nuances of the English language, every accent, even the Liverpool one.
It was overwhelming, like that time Barry tried to explain the rules of Snooker after they had drunk seven pints of Guinness.
Plus, Jose hadn't actually given his consent for any of this which seemed a bit wrong, like some kind of space crime or something.
However, as the minutes passed, Jose felt his understanding of English deepen to an extraordinary level.
He could now speak, read, understand, and write English with impeccable precision and could probably give grammar lessons to Shakespeare if he wasn't dead.
Shakespeare, I mean.
Jose was still alive, of course.
In fact, at this moment, he felt more alive than ever before.
Days turned into weeks as José adapted to his new environment, the discomfort of his initial adduction wearing off with time.
The Zillara were fascinated by human culture, and José shared stories, music and literature with them, along with his recipe for how to perfect Paella.
He even told them a couple of jokes he'd picked up while living in England, although the zillara showed no signs of having any sense of humour.
Hey, aliens, want to hear another joke?
Barry told me this one, said Jose, one afternoon.
The aliens just stared impassively, until finally one of them said, yes, please give Give us more examples of your fascinating Earth humour.
OK guys, look, you're going to love this one.
Just promise not to probe me if it doesn't make you laugh.
Alright? The Xelera looked at one another.
"'Never mind,' said Jose.
"'Here's the joke. What did the Spanish firemen call his two sons?'" The Xelera stared at each other, nodding their heads.
They seemed to be conferring together trying to find the best answer to Jose's question.
One of them replied telepathically.
Our research indicates that the most common male names in Spain currently are Martin and Matteo.
no no no no no said Jose chuckling.
The Spanish fireman called his two sons avoid Jose and host bee.
There was no reaction from the celara but Jose couldn't stop laughing at his own joke.
Get it? Jose and host bee.
Hoses, right? Fireman have hoses and he's a fireman and And his first son is called Jose and then Jose B and but the Zillara didn't laugh.
Instead they just looked at Jose, with their heads cocked to one side, unblinking.
Okay, too much wordplay, said Jose.
It's all right. I'll keep it simple.
Here's another one.
Ready? What'd you call a Spanish guy who's lost his car?
What do you call a Spanish guy who's lost his car?
The aliens continue to stare, unblinking at Jose.
One of them turned his head slowly to look at the others.
"...Spanish guy lost his car, what's his name?" said Jose, his eyebrows raised.
The aliens didn't respond.
Carlos! Jose laughed out loud for a while, enjoying his own joke a bit too much. The Zillara remained silent for a while and then thanked Jose for introducing them to more Earth humour before politely leaving the room.
In return for everything they learned from him that Zillara taught Jose about their advanced technology and interstellar navigation, which he thought was a pretty fair trade even though he was quite sure he'd never actually use interstellar navigation unless he decided to start an intergalactic uber service or something.
But he didn't want to.
Despite their differences, and the fact that they'd basically kidnapped him, Jose found himself growing fond of his captors, appreciating their wisdom and the peacefulness of their society.
Despite their complete lack of humour and their insistence on probing him as part of their research, which we probably shouldn't talk about now, one day that Zillara informed Jose that it was time for him to return to earth.
They had gathered the information they needed and, as promised, they would send him back with his new knowledge intact.
They even promised to provide him with a new pair of trousers as the others had been damaged during some of their research. Goodbye, Jose, son of a fireman, they said telepathically, waving their long graceful arms. Actually, my father was an office manager, said Jose, but before he could continue, the same blinding light enveloped him once more, and when he opened his eyes he was back in England standing in front of his garage.
The sun was rising now, casting a golden glow over the familiar surroundings.
It seemed that he'd just been standing there in front of his garage all night, with his mouth hanging open.
The whole experience felt like a dream, but the enhanced clarity of his thoughts and speech told him otherwise.
His brain was positively fizzing with brand -new, advanced English vocabulary.
Jose resumed his life, but he was forever changed.
After finally getting his working visa and indefinite leave to remain in the UK, he became a respected author and public speaker, sharing his experiences through beautifully written stories and TED talks.
He even started his own podcast, which, annoyingly, became even more popular than Luke's English podcast. But I suppose that's no surprise considering he was the only human on Earth ever to have been abducted by aliens, who then shared all their knowledge with him and so much more.
Jose's command of the English language and his incredible anecdotes captivated readers and audiences everywhere.
Although he never saw that Zelara again, he knew their encounter had opened a new chapter in human -alien relations.
He cherished his time with the aliens despite all the probing, which he wasn't convinced was absolutely necessary.
And every time Jose made paella he couldn't help but chuckle, wondering if the Zillara had learned to make it too and how they would find Safran in deep space.
The end. There you go that was the story of the bizarre abduction of Jose Martinez.
All right, so let me just kind of summarize the story in my own words.
It's not really a very complicated story, actually that question that I asked you earlier, which was what kind of story is this?
Well, it's supposed to be a kind of quirky funny science fiction comedy, really.
So it's sort of bit of science fiction, bit of comedy, I suppose.
So to sum up the story, Jose Martinez, a Spanish guy who'd moved to England to improve his English and he struggled with the typical things that people struggle with when they moved to England from a place like Spain, which includes stuff like obviously the language, understanding people when they spoke in different accents to him.
Then all the other usual typical things that people tend to complain about.
Like the food, the weather, the what else was it, the fact there are there's carpet everywhere, which is less the case these days but certainly in the past, English homes always used to have carpet just all over the place.
Which if you're not used to living in homes with carpet on the floor can feel a bit strange, it feels a bit dusty or a bit sort of maybe even unhygienic but it's nice and cozy in the winter when it's cold and you have to walk to the toilet in the middle of the night and you've got lovely soft carpet under your feet, that's nice.
But anyway he struggled with various things.
We'll look specifically at what those things were again in a moment.
And then one day, so he worked as a mechanic or something in a garage, one day he was locking up his garage and he saw a strange light in the sky, the light came flying towards him and he was beamed up into an alien spaceship and he was abducted by aliens.
It's happened to all of us, right?
When you get abducted by aliens, so annoying, isn't it?
Oh dear. I'm sorry I never got back to you about that email.
I got abducted by aliens for six months.
Oh, you too? It happened to my brother -in -law as well.
That's a nightmare, isn't it?
Anyway, so he got abducted by aliens and they kind of approached him.
These weird long kind of standard looking aliens really came up to him and attached a device to his head which allowed them to communicate with him telepathically.
And they basically said, so we're doing research into the human race.
I mean, They never explained why, you know?
What was their research?
What about the data?
Surely there needs to be some sort of data protection compliance with something like that.
But no, they just unilaterally decided to take as much data as they possibly could from the humans, and they wanted to learn about Jose's Spanish culture and language.
In return they were willing to share with him all of the knowledge they'd gained about English.
They could have just gone to Spain, I don't know why they had to do it in England, but anyway, maybe they couldn't get a visa for the EU.
Who knows. So they flooded his brain with information about English, which obviously was amazing, but they also probably took lots of information about Spanish culture and language.
And they had to probe him as well, which perhaps wasn't completely necessary.
If you don't know what probing is, I will explain it in the vocab part.
He kind of grew to like them, really, spending time with them, even though it was uncomfortable at the beginning.
He kind of grew to be quite friendly with these aliens, kind of like Stockholm syndrome maybe and he even told them a few jokes, but they have they had absolutely no sense of humor and didn't get the jokes at all.
I wonder if you understood those two jokes.
I expect the first joke probably went straight over your head, the second joke is much easier to understand.
I'll explain them. I will just dissect those jokes in a little bit.
And then eventually it was time for for them to send him back to earth and as promised they did that and he arrived back on earth but he was suddenly, what's the word, in his knowledge and his use of English had been enhanced to an incredible level where suddenly he had mastered the English language and he was able to then become a well recognised author and public speaker doing TED talks and writing best -selling books and he even started his own podcast which became annoyingly even more popular than my podcast but it's no surprise and that's kind of the end of the story and he lived happily ever
after that's basically it.
Now I don't mean to suggest this is the only way that you can master English that the only way that you can really master English is to be abducted by aliens who then use some weird alien technology to flood your brain with vocabulary and grammar. There are other ways of learning, of course.
That's not the only way.
It helps, but it's unlikely, isn't it?
Let's now go through some of the vocab.
Let's go through the story again line by line, and I'm going to explain and point out some phrases from this.
OK? Here are some phrases and bits of vocabulary that you can pick up from this.
Here we go. The abduction, AKA AKA also known as, OK, that's an acronym.
AKA means also known as.
So this story is called The Abduction.
That's the short title.
The full title is The Bizarre Abduction of Jose Martinez.
An Abduction, well, we talk about an alien abduction, abduction, but to abduct someone is to take someone or kidnap them.
It's another word for kidnapping, but someone could be kidnapped or abducted.
But in the case of aliens, if aliens do it we always use the word abduction.
Aliens don't kidnap people, they abduct people, I suppose.
Do they actually do it?
I mean, is this... I know there are lots of accounts of people saying that they've been abducted by aliens and especially in the United States of America for some reason.
In the US, the number of alien abduction reportings is strangely completely focused on the United States for some reason.
And there aren't that.
But why is it the aliens are only abducting American citizens?
Hmm, interesting that.
But anyway, so, an alien abduction, right?
Jose Martinez was an ordinary man living in a quaint little town on the outskirts of London in England.
So we've got the word ordinary which is, you know, not too complicated.
Synonyms of ordinary would be normal, typical, usual, commonplace.
It was just an ordinary guy.
A normal man a typical bloke, okay.
An ordinary person.
An ordinary day, just ordinary circumstances.
For example, it was just an ordinary day at work.
Nothing exciting happened.
Or she's an ordinary person.
There's nothing particularly special about her, right?
Just an ordinary person, not a superhero or anything like that, you know.
Ordinary man living in a quaint little town.
Quaint means attractive, cute, old fashioned with a specific style to it.
So a lot of towns in England could be described as quaint little villages.
If you've ever been to somewhere like the Cotswolds in England.
It's full of these really quaint little towns with little rivers or streams running through them.
Old -fashioned, attractive, cute maybe, with a specific style to it.
So a quaint village, a quaint cottage, a quaint custom.
For example, we visited a quaint village in the Cotswolds that looked like something out of a Then we've got the outskirts of London in England.
The outskirts of London – we talk about the outskirts of a city, it means on the edge of the city, in the area surrounding the city.
So for example they live on the outskirts of the city, it's on the outskirts.
The new shopping centre is located on the outskirts of town.
On the outskirts, on the of town but we also say in the suburbs which is a similar thing I mean the I suppose the difference between the outskirts of town and the suburbs normally we think of the suburbs as a sort of residential area which is outside the city but in the area just outside the city so you've got city suburbs countryside probably the outskirts of the city is just like this sort of like similar to the suburbs might be the same kind of thing but just the edge of the city basically.
On the outskirts, on the edge of town, in the suburbs.
Originally from Spain, José had moved to the UK to improve his English by immersing himself in the language and culture.
Immersing yourself in the language.
And immersion... right.
To be surrounded by it, to be fully inside it.
To be immersed. He managed to find work as a mechanic fixing up old cars in a small garage.
So fixing up here is a phrasal verb.
It's quite interesting maybe to compare just the word fixing and the phrase fixing up.
So to fix something is to repair it.
So if you've got old cars that don't work anymore, you need to fix them so you get your tools and fix them so that they work again.
Okay but fixing something up means not just repairing it but kind of completely repairing it.
Repairing it totally and maybe even renovating it to make it look new and presentable.
So you can imagine if you've got an old beaten -up old car that not only doesn't work but it looks kind of run down you would fix it up.
So not just repair the engine and other technical things but also make it look nice, make it usable, that's to fix something up.
Okay. Here's a quick quiz for you.
Is it fix or fix up?
Which one would you use?
For example, this one.
I've found this broken old bike in the market.
I'm going to... and give it to my son as a birthday present.
I've found this broken old bike in the market.
I'm going to... and give it to my son as a birthday present.
That would be... I'm going to fix it up.
Okay. Not just repair it, but make it look make it look nice and make it usable completely again.
Another one, their the spare bedroom before the baby is born they are the spare bedroom before the baby is born.
So, they're gonna have a baby and they are sort of preparing the spare bedroom maybe redecorating it getting it ready for the baby.
So, that would be they're fixing up the spare bedroom, and it's in the continuous form.
They're fixing up the spare bedroom before the baby is born.
How about this one?
I spent the afternoon in our dishwasher which had stopped working the night before.
So you can imagine someone with their head in the dishwasher trying to maybe repair a part of the dishwasher so it works again.
I spent the afternoon fixing our dishwasher and again that is an ING form.
I spent the afternoon doing it, spend time doing something.
So I found this old bike, I'm going to fix it up.
They're fixing up the spare bedroom.
I spent the afternoon fixing our dishwasher, repairing it.
So that's fix versus fix up.
Let's keep going. So his life was relatively simple and uneventful, except for one major hurdle.
So relatively simple.
His life was simple, I think we understand that, but his life was relatively simple.
So relatively adding this adverb before the adjective simple, it just means it was simple when compared to other people's lives.
So it's kind of like saying fairly simple, reasonably simple, quite simple.
Relatively simple compared to everyone else's lives.
It's just one of those grading adverbs, you know, which is quite, quite nice.
It's quite expressive instead of saying his life was good you know or his life was easy his life was simple his life was fairly simple his life was relatively simple and uneventful okay um uneventful meaning without any major events right and fairly quiet not full of drama Quiet, peaceful, nothing much happened really.
His life was uneventful.
An uneventful life, an uneventful day.
How was your week? Uneventful, really.
Okay? It's not particularly negative or positive, it just means nothing really happened very much. His life was relatively simple and uneventful, except for one major hurdle.
So, a hurdle is an obstacle which you have to get over.
Like in athletics in the Olympics, running, you've got the running events, track and field events running around the track, you've got the normal 100m sprint or 200m or 400m running races.
But then you've got, let's say, the 400m hurdles.
And that's when there are hurdles on the track that you have to jump over.
So, these barriers or obstacles that you have to get over, these called hurdles, so a hurdle is basically an obstacle that you have to deal with, a thing that gets in your way, a problem that you have to deal with in order to continue.
A major hurdle is a big hurdle, a big significant obstacle.
So his life was basically pretty simple except for one big problem which he had to deal with, one major hurdle.
His struggle to understand all the different British accents and dialects which he encountered on a daily basis, okay, that's fairly clear, he encountered these accents and dialects to encounter something is to you know is to essentially meet them to come across them, you know you meet a person, but you encounter a problem right in this case he encounter something, he encountered these different accents and dialects in his daily life.
He would meet people and they would speak to him and it would be difficult to understand them.
The difference between accents and dialects, accents are the ways people in different communities pronounce a language differently.
So accents are all about differences in pronunciation.
You've got different accents in London.
You've got a Birmingham accent, a Liverpool accent, Manchester accent, West country accent, Welsh accents, different Welsh accents, different Scottish accents, different sort of Norfolk and Suffolk accents, so many different accents all over the country, they're just differences in pronunciation.
And dialects are the ways that different communities use different words in a language.
So that dialects is about differences in vocabulary usage within different communities of that language.
Dialects are also often considered to be just like non -standard varieties of a language.
Basically, all these different versions of English that he encountered, the sorts of things that you don't typically get in the average English language coursebook that you might study with in your home country, often the English that you get from those is a sort of standard, received pronunciation.
But when you actually go to the UK, suddenly you realise that everyone is kind of, so many people speak a version of the language which doesn't quite match the one that you have been taught.
So these are the things he encountered on a daily basis.
And the food. So, of course, people typically complain about the food in England and I'm fed up with hearing about it, to be honest. when I meet people who say, oh, yes, I went to England, let's say, people from somewhere else.
I went to England as a student or I spent a year in England, oh, yes, what did you think?
Oh, it was great. Then they always have to tell me, oh, except for the food, why do you have to tell me that?
Why do you have to give me a TripAdvisor review for my country?
I don't know why. People feel the need to tell me the English food is no good i don't know why i don't even agree you know there's plenty of really good food you just have to know where to find it and i don't know what i'm supposed to do with that information as well if people tell me that like oh great okay and next time i'm back in england i'll make sure i tell everyone so oh everyone yeah um yeah i know you're really enjoying that sandwich but i think you'll find that it's disgusting yeah i've been told yeah we need to we need to sort it out apparently i I don't know.
So, there's the food, the weather of course, as everyone knows, people always assume that it rains all the time, which is not true, and how expensive everything was.
Well, this is true in the UK.
Amazingly, everything is incredibly expensive, especially in London.
And the drafty windows.
Drafty, a draft is air that kind of comes in through the window.
if the window isn't perfectly insulated right then little bits of cold air might come in the window and if you're sitting next to the window, if you're sitting next to it with your back to it you might feel like a little cold air on the back of your neck and then suddenly you're coughing and sneezing and you've caught a cold because there are drafts in your home and this is another thing that visitors to the UK or at least students living in the UK and studying English that I used to teach for many years when I was teaching in London, this is one of the most common complaints that people would complain about,
the drafty windows.
It's kind of true, I think, the thing is that especially in London, a lot of the houses have got these old -fashioned windows which date back to the Victorian period, these sash windows, these old really sort of grand -looking old wooden sliding windows.
They're actually a good design in many ways and people who have windows like these old -fashioned windows in their homes don't really want to replace them because first of all it's very expensive to replace them because they've got complex systems in them.
And also because those old windows are actually a selling point.
If a home has the original Victorian windows, that is kind of a selling point that it means that there's value in the property.
And the tiny kitchens and the carpet everywhere, I've mentioned that, carpet all over the place, which some people find strange.
And the fact that there were always two taps on every bathroom sink.
Yeah, this is another typical complaint which I have talked about a lot on this podcast over the years that people complain about the fact that there are two taps typically in British bathrooms and not one single unified tap.
That's the point that they are separated taps.
That of course, a lot of kitchens in Of course, a lot of bathrooms in the rest of the world have a mixer tap where you can mix the water that comes out of one single tap, but typically, if you've been to England, you might have seen this, that you get one tap on one side for cold water, another tap on the other side for hot water.
What are you supposed to do in that situation?
Either you're getting ice -cold water from one side or you're getting boiling hot water direct from hell on the other side, how do you deal with that?
And what you're supposed to do is put the plug in the plug hole and fill the sink or the basin full of water, and then wash your hands and face in that water.
Some people, perhaps understandably, consider that to be unhygienic because it means that if the bowl is not completely clean, then that could be a bit dirty.
So I mean, as an English person growing up in England, this was never an issue for me, never thought it was a problem.
When people started to complain, when I was teaching English in London, meeting people from around the world and I would say, you know, what's different about England?
And this was one of the most common complaints.
Why do you have two taps in the bathroom?
And I would kind of say, what do you mean?
Why do you have two taps?
One for hot, one for cold, obviously.
But then they would explain no, but you know, we can't do it.
We don't understand how do you live like this, you weird English people?
And I suppose what I always did is either I would wash my hands and face in cold water, which was fine really.
And when people complained about that, I used to think, God, you're so soft, aren't you?
Everyone from the rest of the world, you're so soft, just a little bit of cold water.
You're like, I can't take it.
But I kind of understand now.
So, I'd either do that just washing cold water or I'd fill the sink and just make sure the sink was fairly clean.
And growing up in my house, my mum always made sure that things were clean.
So that wasn't an issue.
But I suppose if you were in shared accommodation in London with a bunch of other students, then maybe that might not be the case.
Or I would actually turn on the hot tap and use the hot tap to wash my hands and face.
And by the time I'd finished doing all that, the water would be too hot, right.
So but while I was doing it the water would be slowly heating up because you know often it takes time for the hot water to heat up, it's not instantly boiling hot.
It kind of goes from cold to through to quite warm, to warm to nicely warm to a bit too warm to boiling hot, right.
So I would manage to wash my hands and face in the time it took the water to get too hot.
Also, the other thing you can do is you kind of mix it in your hands, so you get a bit hot, bit of cold, bit of hot, bit of cold and then use that.
It was never really a problem but I understand why people would complain about that.
Here I am again talking about two taps in the bathroom for the millionth time on this podcast. The fact there were two taps in the bathroom, when he washed his hands, when he washed, he either froze his hands in cold -water or completely boiled them.
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There was also the visa issue because of Brexit, but except for all of that, it was wonderful.
Just in case you don't know about Brexit, how could you not know?
I mean, I haven't talked about it for a while but I used I did a long series with my dad of episodes when Brexit was happening.
Can you believe it's nearly 10 years ago, it's like eight and a half, it's about eight years ago that the Brexit referendum happened.
Basically this is where the UK had a referendum which was...
I won't go into it.
Don't get me started.
But the UK had a referendum.
I mean, I won't go into what I think about it.
UK had a referendum him on membership of the European Union and 51 .8 % of people voted to leave and so that was it and then we left the EU, but I still don't really know what the advantages were supposed to be.
Let's not get into all the politics of it.
But it was a bloody stupid idea.
One of the problems is that now freedom of movement is really difficult, which means that if you're an English or British person, you can't freely go and, you know, our freedoms and rights have been reduced quite a lot.
You can't now just go freely into Europe and travel and work there, you have complicated visa processes that you have to go through.
Similarly, the other way around.
If you're from the EU and you want to go to the UK and stay there, you've got a much more complicated process of applying for different kinds of visas, and blah, blah, blah.
So that's Brexit. Just a little bit of Brexit.
So except for all of that, it was wonderful.
One crisp autumn evening.
So crisp. This is interesting.
In this context, the word crisp is being used to describe the weather, or the climate, or the air.
There are different definitions of crisp, either to describe the texture of objects or materials or to describe the weather or to describe a feeling of clarity, a sense of things being clear.
So the general definition of crisp would mean firm dry and brittle to the touch like crisp paper.
This paper is quite crisp, right?
This is quite crisp paper.
It's quite firm and dry, crisp potatoes, you know like potato crisps.
When you eat them, they crunch. They're quite dry and brittle, so that's the texture of crisp texture.
In terms of whether crisp weather or crisp air is cool, fresh and invigorating.
A lovely, crisp morning and in terms of clarity when crisp refers to clarity we talk about it being clear and precise in sound, in appearance or in style.
Clear and precise. So crisp audio, crisp you know one of the things I like about Jose's podcast is the crisp audio meaning it's really clear crisp handwriting very clear perfectly reproduced handwriting when describing an autumn evening crisp refers to the cool fresh air often experienced at that time of year the temperature is often chilly enough to make you feel clear and invigorated but not freezing cold it might suggest a sense of clarity in the atmosphere.
Imagine cool air, vivid colours, blue sky freshness, you know, that's a crisp autumn evening.
Jose was closing up his garage.
So we had before, we had fixing something and fixing something up.
We now have closing something and closing something up.
So closing something means, as you know, like, you know, to close the door, securing it, finishing it.
We closed the contract.
I closed the episode.
Closing a door, closing a window.
Right? Closing up is the same thing.
Finishing it, securing it, but also adding up there suggests an extra sense of completeness.
In the case of the garage, that means that the whole garage is closed.
Right? Not just closing the door, but the whole thing is closed.
He's turned out the lights.
He shut down the equipment.
He's finished all his work, he's tidied everything away, he's put the tools back in the boxes, he's locked the door.
Business for the day is ended.
He's locked the place up.
He's closed up the garage, right?
You see the difference?
We often have up in phrasal verbs, fix something up, close something up, lock something up.
The particle up in a phrasal verb often conveys a sense of completeness, thoroughness, or bringing something to its final finished state okay.
For example use up, eat up, to use something up, to eat something up, to listen up, to clean up, to break up, to tear up, to lock up, to dry up right.
I'll go through those quite quickly.
So to to use something up, for example we used up all the sugar while making the cookies, I used up all the ink in my pen.
When I was writing, I used up all the ink in my pen while I was writing notes while listening to Luke's English podcast. The episode was so long I used up all the ink in an entire pen meaning to consume all of something until there's none left. Eat something up or drink something up.
Come on. Eat up your dinner before it gets cold, means finish eating everything on your plate.
Come on drink it up, there's a good there's a good boy.
Or drink it down as well we also say.
Meaning it goes all the way down inside you.
Listen up means now listen up.
It's not just listen but listen with your full attention.
Now listen up I've got something very important to tell you, right?
Luke's English podcast premium is available at teacherlouge .co .uk slash premium info.
Okay to clean up means to tidy everything make something completely clean.
For example after the party we stayed up late to clean up the mess.
When my son has played with all his toys and they're all over the floor, we sing the clean up song and we say clean up clean up everybody everywhere and he's supposed to clean up with me but it's generally just me.
Clean up clean up everybody everywhere or maybe just me then okay you clean up all the mess to break up and a relationship completely not just break but break up suggesting it's permanent they decided to break up after five years together tear something up means to rip something or tear something into small pieces completely so to tear something would maybe just be once, but to tear something up is to tear it into tiny little pieces, tearing it up into pieces, right?
She tore up the letter in frustration.
She tore the letter, so she tore up the letter.
You know, it's like, dear Sophie, I'm sorry, but I've decided to leave you.
I've fallen in love with another person.
You know, well that's the end of that tear up the letter into tiny pieces right.
That's to tear something up.
Lock up, secure something completely by locking it don't forget to lock up the house.
That's to lock up the house.
You know everyone's got that many locks on their house haven't they.
To dry up means meaning to become completely dry or to exhaust the supply of something, for example, the river dried up in the summer, so all the water went away, went completely dry, the river dried up.
My inspiration, you know, you might say your inspirational motivation could dry up.
Hopefully my inspirational motivation for doing these podcasts will never dry up.
Okay so that was closing up.
Jose was closing up his garage, the sun setting in a blaze of orange and red behind the grey clouds, the sun sets in the evening, and it rises in the morning.
So that's sunset and sunrise.
A blaze of orange and red.
A blaze is a fire. So in this case, it's sort of a metaphor to describe the colour of the sky a blaze of orange and red.
Then we have… next we have as he was locking the door he noticed a strange light in the sky.
At first he thought it was a plane then perhaps a drone or maybe a ball from that weird game called cricket that people play in England.
No one understands the rules do they?
Actually they do. Second most popular spectator sport in the world?
You should know. And whenever I say that there's always someone who goes, yeah, but that's just because it's popular in India, it's like why?
And that doesn't count.
Why, just because it's popular in India, there's still humans that still counts, right?
That's wrong, isn't it?
Anyway, but no, it was something even stranger than that.
It moved erratically, zigzagging across the sky.
if something moves erratically or if something is erratic it means it moves in an inconsistent way in an irregular or unpredictable way.
You know like an alien spaceship you do do do moving unpredictably this way and that way I don't know is that how alien spaceships move I don't know maybe if the if the person doesn't know where they're going if the alien is like over there no no left, left, left, left, you know?
All the aliens are like, oh, the GPS isn't working.
The sat nav's not working.
That way, no, no, turn left. Oh, no, no, no. You know, and where are you going?
I told you. You just didn't, you know, can't you read a map?
There's two aliens arguing in a UFO.
No, UFO's moving erratically.
Yes, zigzagging. It's a movement in diagonal lines to move diagonally.
That's zigzagging, right?
You know like the way you have, you're supposed to run when you are being chased by a crocodile.
Did you know this? Well next time you're being chased by a crocodile just remember that you're supposed to run in zigzag lines, so diagonally left and right.
The reason being that crocodiles are not very good at turning and running.
They tend to prefer running in one single direction and if you turn they're like oh for god's sake and then you turn left and they're like oh God all right come on can't be bothered I'm going back to the river so next time you're being chased by a crocodile make sure you run in a zigzag kind of fashion yes curiosity got the better of Jose curiosity we know the feeling of being curious what's that who would love to know more about that, what is that?
I'd love to have another look at that.
What is it? Should we go over and have a look?
What is that thing anyway?
No, but what's, but really though, what is that?
Right, that's curiosity, but curiosity got the better of him.
If something gets the better of you, right, to get the better of someone, it means that a feeling becomes so powerful that it takes control over you and then guides your actions.
So something becomes an impulse which makes you do something, it got the better of me.
So, for example, his emotions got the better of him, meaning, like, his anger got the better of him.
So he decided to stop the car and get out and have an argument.
Curiosity got the better of her and she looked up his profile on Facebook.
Anger got the better of me.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry I snapped, I didn't mean to snap.
up. It's just that, you know, when you said that thing, the anger got the better of me.
Fear got the better of her and she decided to stay in.
Her curiosity got the better of her and she opened the mysterious box.
He wanted to stay calm but his anger got the better of him during the argument.
I tried to resist but the temptation got the better of me and I ate the cake.
His fear got the better of him and he decided not to take the risk.
In this case, curiosity got the better of Jose and he stood there, staring at this phenomenon with his mouth hanging open.
A phenomenon is just like a thing that happens that might be significant or extraordinary.
It's just a thing that happens that could be out of the ordinary.
He stood there with his mouth hanging open.
So his mouth was open Like you would do if you saw an alien spaceship UFO thing in the sky you would probably go What's that No way You would probably stand with your mouth hanging open and you would look Quite stupid and the UFO the aliens would be like, what about him?
What about him? shall we abduct him?" And I'm like, no, he looks like an idiot.
Look at him with his mouth hanging open.
What about me? Yeah that's why I've never been abducted by an alien because I'm always just like that.
Anyway suddenly the light grew brighter and zoomed towards Jose at an incredible speed.
So the light grew brighter.
Grow, meaning get bigger.
Sometimes the word grow means become.
The light grew bigger.
Other examples, after listening to episodes of Luke's English podcast, my vocabulary has grown stronger.
I've grown more confident over the years, meaning I've become more confident.
I liked the first series of The Walking Dead.
Here's another example, I liked the first series of that zombie TV show The Walking Dead, but it grew boring after about series six or seven.
I mean, how many times can they repeat the same storylines over and over and everything seem to happen on one single stretch of road in the Georgian countryside?
I mean, just like it grew very boring.
So, that's to grow brighter, to grow better, to grow stronger, to grow more and more boring, meaning become.
The light zoomed towards Jose at an incredible speed.
So it zoomed, meaning it went really fast. If something zooms it means it goes fast usually in some kind of motor driven machine.
They zoomed past me, you know, zoom is I suppose an on -a - Payer.
It's one of those words that sounds like the things it describes.
Zoom, right? I zoomed down the road on a motorbike and then I crashed into a tree and died.
The end. It can be for other things too, not just motor -driven vehicles.
My kids zoom down this road on their skateboards, making so much noise.
My son and his friend spent the morning zooming around the back garden playing games.
I don't know where they get their energy from, just running around the garden.
Look at them zooming around in the garden.
Also, zoom is that famous teleconferencing software as well, a zoom call, a zoom meeting.
You know, that's a company's name, zoom.
Why did they call themselves zoom?
I suppose it was to evoke feeling of efficiency, speed, clarity, you know.
Zoom is also a thing you do with the camera you zoom in on something and zoom out, zoom in and out, zoom in to get closer, zoom out to get wider so maybe that's what the company Zoom we're looking for, something about zooming in, getting a detailed view but also things moving quickly and efficiently and also zoom is quite a snappy memorable word isn't it.
Before he could react Jose was enveloped in a blinding white light to be enveloped in something.
Now you've got the word envelope, an envelope, right?
Do you remember envelopes?
Do you remember these things?
I've got some envelopes in my room which I'm probably never ever going to use.
I wouldn't be surprised if I lived my entire life without ever using up my supply of envelopes that I have on the shelf over there.
Envelopes are things that you put letters in, remember letters, things we used to write on paper.
That's right. Yeah, I'm being stupid of course but you write a letter, you fold the letter, you put it in an envelope and then you seal the envelope, close it, put the stamp on it, put the address on it and post it.
Right? Those were the days weren't they?
Not really. It was annoying.
You know it would take ages it would take days for a message to get to someone you know.
Imagine that because these days you can just type to someone hey what you doing and then instantly they reply to you but in the in the days before texts and emails and stuff you would literally have to write a letter.
Dear Mr. Stevenson, what are you doing?
Yours sincerely Luke Thompson.
In the post six days later you get a reply, I've got my letter from Mr. Stevenson, my friend Mr. Stevenson.
I'll open it with my letter open and you open it up and and..
Dear Mr. Thompson, not very much. Yours sincerely Mr. Stevenson, so it's not not really doing anything.
Alright, well I'll write to him again.
Would you like to come over and play Playstation with me, you know, it would take bloody ages!
These days you could just do it on WhatsApp can't you?
Anyway, so that's an envelope right?
But to be enveloped is the verb, an envelope contains a letter.
The letter is inside the envelope.
The envelope is around surrounding the letter covering it.
In this case Jose was inside this white light.
The white light was all around him and he was inside it.
He was like the letter in the envelope but in this sense the white light was the envelope and it enveloped him.
So envelop is the verb and envelope is the noun but you can see there's a difference in word stress.
Enverlep, and envelope the noun that stresses on the first syllable.
Also enveloped this is one of those ed ending verbs in the past form so many of these but this is got a this one's got a sound so he was enveloped.
Depending on what your first language is you might be tempted to say he was an enveloped but nope it's enveloped.
he was enveloped in a white blinding white light, so blinding okay blinding a blinding white light.
a light that is blinding is very very bright and it means you can't see.
What's that a blinding white light?
I can't see...wait a minute Jose Martinez...who's that?
I can't see you. switch out the switch off the light for goodness sake you know Jose Martinez who is that I can't see anything Jose Martinez I can't see what's going on should we just leave him he seems to be an idiot this one okay zoom off they go that would be a shorter story a blinding white light he felt his feet leave the ground.
His whole body went up in the air and he could feel his feet come off the ground.
He started floating.
His feet lost contact with the ground.
He felt his feet leave the ground.
Bloody hell, he said, because that's what English people say in this situation, and he was trying to blend in.
To blend in, another phrasal verb, if you blend in it means that you are the same as everyone else, so you're not obviously different.
You don't really everything else and become part of everything else.
We use it in other situations as well.
For example, if you are cooking, you would blend ingredients together, you, you know, you blend egg and cream, when you're making a quiche, you put the egg in a bowl, you put the cream in the bowl and you mix it, you whip it or you blend it all together.
You might use a blender, which would be a machine.
You put the ingredients in the machine and then press the button, and it blends all of the ingredients, that's blend, to blend in with something is to kind of like, mix in with others, okay?
When talking about something that people do, blend in means to be the same as everyone else so that people don't notice you.
In this case, Jose wants to act like British people so he can integrate into society and to do the same things that the locals do, all right?
This is a bit like me when I wear a Stripey t -shirt in France.
And I always have one with me, you know.
I've always got a Stripey t -shirt with me in my bag so that if I ever need to blend in, I can just put that on and start smoking a cigarette, maybe grab a baguette.
And I'm fine. And no one knows that I'm English, because I've successfully blended in.
And if I'm still not sure and then, you know, I just go on strike, maybe get stuck in a traffic jam, start talking about food, and then I will blend in and everyone assumes I'm French. As long as, well, I can't start speaking about food.
I have to eat, just eat some food, go shopping for some food.
As long as I don't speak then I can blend in quite comfortably.
When he woke up, Hose found himself in a sterile metallic room.
Sterile means clean with no bacteria.
For example, a laboratory should be a sterile environment unless of course you are actually growing bacteria there, but you know what I mean.
An operating theatre where surgery happens, that should be sterile.
The instruments used by the doctors, the scalpels and stuff should be completely sterile, all the needles and swabs, those wooden things that doctors put in your mouth and stick on your tongue and they say, they put a wooden thing, that should be sterile.
If they put thermometer in your mouth.
The thermometer should be sterile, especially if it's been used by someone just before you and especially if you live in France where they tend to check your body temperature with a thermometer by putting it in your bum.
They love doing that here because apparently it's more accurate.
He woke up in a sterile metallic room.
Metallic means made of metal or something similar to metal, a metallic room, a metallic taste you can have water you know this water has a sort of metallic taste.
if you keep water in a metal container then the water might end up having a metallic taste.
you can hear have a metallic sound Clang clang, metallic sound a metallic color for example a car can have a metallic color.
if you like my car I chose metallic blue for the paint it looks nice doesn't it so that's metallic, Metallica heavy metal band at first he thought he was still in England he was cold and a bit uncomfortable like normal because it's cold and uncomfortable in England isn't it?
No not always actually.
Then panic set in when he noticed there was no carpet on the floor and you know he knew he'd definitely become very English there.
If something sets in, it means it takes effect.
It starts to happen, it becomes noticeable.
It's a feeling and then the feeling gradually arrives and then it stays, so the feeling sets in.
Jose suddenly started to feel panic.
Panics set in. Other examples of set in.
Jane, in terms of feelings or emotions, Jane suddenly realised she'd lost her phone.
As the reality of the loss set in she began to cry.
Oh wait, my phone no!
Unwelcome or persistent conditions could set in.
Winter set in early this year.
The cold set in early this year.
Negative developments.
if untreated the infection can set in and become more serious the infection can take hold and get worse yes and he realised he'd been abducted by aliens so there's that there's that word again we say abducted by aliens not kidnapped by aliens yeah this is when you need Liam Neeson isn't it I mean that they need to do, sorry to talk about taken and Liam Lissen again, but they need to do - I mean we still haven't had taken four, but obviously they need to bring in a science fiction alien element into that, don't they?
Taken 4, where his daughter gets abducted by aliens.
I don't know who you are, I don't know which planet you've come from, I don't know what you are.
I don't know what you, I don't understand your language.
I know you have my daughter.
If you give an, if you let her go now, that'll be the end of it.
That would be good.
I would definitely watch that.
BOO! BOO! BOO! Liam Neeson is Brian Mills taken for, taken to Mars in Santa Mars, knew you from Friday.
Yes, so moving on. He tried to sit up but his body felt heavy.
To sit up now, what's the difference between sit and sit up.
The up part here refers to, uh, it's more literal than we've had before, like close up, lock up, you know, all those things.
Sit up here means sit in an upright position, okay.
So, you know, the only time you we say sit up is when you're, you've been lying, lying down or lying back and then you go into a sitting position, an upright sitting position with your upper body vertical, but you're not standing.
So we might as well, we might as well say sit, he tried to sit.
But what it really means is he tried to go from a lying down position to a vertical sitting position.
He tried to sit up.
That's sit up. But funnily enough to sit down, as you probably know, means to go from a vertical position to a sitting position.
So sit up is from horizontal to sitting, and sit down is from vertical to sitting.
Yes. God, that's useful, isn't it?
This podcast. I mean, you know where else are you going to learn these things?
Sit up, sit down. In a dictionary no doubt or any other language learning material that teaches that sort of thing.
What am I talking about?
Okay. He tried to sit up but his body felt heavy and his head was spinning.
His head was spinning, it means his head was going around really really fast, bit like a basketball on someone's finger.
Phew! You know those cool people who can, they get a basketball?
And then they spin it on their finger.
Aren't they annoying people who can do that?
And I'm like, oh yeah, that looks easy.
No. Basketball instantly falls off.
I've never managed to make a basketball spin on my finger.
Anyway, to spin, his head was spinning, so he felt dizzy.
he felt kind of disoriented right.
The door slid open.
Slid is the past form of slide, slide, slid, slid.
So a door slid open.
So because doors on alien spaceships or UFOs, they never have normal, they never have doors like that do they on spaceships.
Yes. what is it? Zygarth 3.
We have observed the humans and we think that an abduction may be possible.
Thank you Zygarth 3 you can go back to your post. Like no alien UFOs have doors like that.
It's always some other sort of sliding door every time.
So the door slid open and two figures emerged.
Two figures entered the room.
So figures here means a figure is like the outline of a person's body.
So we can call a person a figure when we can't quite see them clearly.
We can just maybe see their outline.
So you might say, you know there was a figure in the distance.
I saw two figures in the distance.
I saw two figures walking up the dark street, you could also say people in those situations, but figures suggests body shapes.
It's a bit more specific and obviously in this case these things were not people they were kind of things that looked a bit like the shape of people in a way but they weren't people, so two figures.
Figures also can refer to numbers, we say facts and figures, a figure can also be a number as well.
Figures can be numbers on a document or spreadsheet or something like that.
Figures can be numbers or like the shape of someone's body.
They were humanoid but taller.
Humanoid means sort of looks like humans, same kind of body shape as a human, or maybe acts like one but isn't human.
Looks like a human but isn't human arms legs head body you know that sort of thing so humanoid human shaped let's say with elongated limbs, limbs are arms and legs right there's a B in the word limbs but the B is silent like in climb okay and comb that you used to comb your hair, climb a tree, all those words have got a silent bee in them, and limb, elongated limbs, arms and legs.
Elongated means long and thin, narrow and slender, right?
Longer than normal.
They're with large almond shaped eyes, almond shaped eyes shaped like an almond obviously, but that kind of, you know, like alien eyes, they're almond shaped.
and notice the pronunciation of almond also has a silent letter in this case the silent letter is l so that's almond it's not almond it's almond other words with a silent l while we're on the subject calm you know calm and quiet calm c a l m calm palm the palm of your hand that's the soft underside of your hand, the side that you used to hold something, that's the palm of your hand, P .A .L .M.
The yoke of an egg, that's the yellow part of an egg, is called the yoke, y -o -l -k but it's pronounced yoke.
Walk, to walk. W -A -L -K of course and to talk, t -a -l -k, talk, could, would and should.
All have an L in them it's not kud, wuld or sh 'uld, it's cud, would, should.
And folk, like folk music, f -o -l -k, folk.
And the word half. Half, quarter, eighth.
Half, h -a -l -f, but pronounced half.
Okay, let's move on.
I've got to... I've got to hurry up a little bit here.
Imagine a yoga instructor had had a baby with some kind of insect.
Had had, yes. This is possible, normal and frequent it's just when we use when we conjugate the verb have in past perfect to have in this case to have a baby but imagine a yoga instructor had had a baby so it's past perfect with the verb have okay it's normal common for example I decided that I had had enough enough neth I decided that I had had enough that's how you pronounce that or I decided that I'd had enough just often in spoken English the auxiliary had gets contracted to just just the sound I'd had enough I decided I'd had enough I decided I had had enough when I stood up I realised I'd
had too much to eat or I had had too much to eat after we'd had a break after we had had a break after we'd had a break we got back to work okay so that's what they looked like standard alien stuff really, standard alien stuff, just the typical normal standard things you get from aliens in this kind of story or film.
Nothing particularly original here, just standard alien stuff.
Tall kind of blue coloured things with almond shaped eyes and no nose and sliding doors, a lot of sliding doors everywhere.
Their skin had a bluish colour, bluishish.
I've explained this before, here we go again, ish is a suffix that we add to words often adjectives to mean approximately or kind of something like okay, so that is the suffix ish.
We use it with adjectives like it's new ish.
It means it's quite new.
It's a kind of bluish greenish color.
Right, it's a sort of blue, sort of green.
We also use it with approximate times and numbers – she's sort of 30ish, right, she's about 30 years old.
Let's meet what time?
About 12ish, around about 12 o 'clock.
That's ish. Their skin had a blueish colour and they moved with an eerie grace.
Eerie means strange, weird, odd, bizzare.
A little bit creepy maybe.
Ooh, like the way the aliens moved so gracefully.
It was almost like a bit strange.
A bit creepy. An eerie feeling.
An eerie noise. She heard the eerie noise of the wind howling through the trees.
An eerie feeling. He had the eerie feeling that he'd met this stranger before.
You know, didn't we meet before?
No. No. No. no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I'm sure I've met you before.
Well, actually, now that you say it, I am your father dun, dun, dun.
So, um, eerie feeling, uh, and they moved with an eerie grace.
So, um, a quality of moving in a smooth, relaxed and attractive way, a bit like a ballet dancer or a ballroom dancer move with such, they move with such grace and elegance ballet dancer notice that the tea is not pronounced it's not ballet but ballet ballet dancer okay okay one of them approached Jose and placed a device on his forehead one of them approached him meaning moved towards him and placed a device placed in this case means put it in a specific place, in this case, on his forehead.
He placed this device on his forehead.
The forehead is the front part of your head, where if you play football, that's the bit where you head the ball.
Right, in a game of football, you hit the ball with your forehead.
Or if you are sort of exasperated by something, you slap your forehead.
Oh God, not again! And you slap your forehead with the palm of your hand.
Face palm. Oh my God.
Normally you smack your forehead, right?
So one of them placed a device on his forehead.
Okay moving on. Hosse felt a slight tingling sensation.
A tingling sensation is a feeling in your body or in parts of your body as if tiny little pins and needles are touching your skin, right?
that's a tingling sensation.
You might get it in your legs if you've been sitting in one position for too long.
Okay, like whenever I go to a Japanese restaurant and I have to sit on the floor, after about 10 minutes I get a tingling sensation in my legs and I have to stand up I've got to stand up, I can't sit like this for too long, very inflexible, when my legs go dead from sitting on the floor for too long if you hold out your arm in front of you for a time.
The blood eventually drains from your arm and you might start to get a tingling sensation in your arm, so generally it just describes a sort of strange sensation in your body that could be due to a loss of blood or a loss of circulation or it could be fear or it could be excitement or it could be some sort of sort of electromagnetic signal or something like that or or alien technology, right?
So I imagine, I mean it's never happened to me but I imagine that when an alien places a brain communication device on your forehead and switches it on, you would feel a tingling sensation, and you might think, God, I hope that there aren't many radioactive...uh...uh...
sort of waves that come from this.
I mean I thought mobile phones were a problem, but this thing probably is going to fry my brain, excuse me, sorry, could you so if you've ever been abducted by aliens and they connect mind reading technology directly to your brain and communicate with you telepathically, telepathically, let us know in the comments section if that's ever happened to you.
Did it give you a sort of tingling sensation?
Let us know in the comments section.
Do not be afraid, do not be afraid Jose Martinez, has a voice echoed in his mind echo, echo, echo, echo, echo.
Echo is when a sound repeats, probably when it bounces off different surfaces, a bit like when you're in a cave and you shout hello, hello, hello, hello, right?
You hear the voice bouncing back, presumably the voice, in this case, the voice echoed inside Jose's mind because presumably his mind, his brain is quite empty or something and the sound just bounced around inside his skull.
This is what it's like inside your head because there's nothing in here.
Either that or it's just the effect of the mysterious technology.
I don't know. We mean you no harm, they said.
We mean you no harm just means we don't intend to hurt you.
We don't intend to harm you.
This phrase is definitely used this is definitely the phrase to use when you encounter a frightened creature or a species from another planet you can just say we mean you no harm we come in peace why does my voice sound like this I don't this is what it sounds like in space we now you know we are from earth we mean you no harm we come in peace now please take me to your leader show me all your resources so I may take them back to my home planet of Earth and use them for our own selfish purposes." If you do meet some sort of simple primitive civilisation from another planet, just say that and you'll
be all right. Who are you?
Why do you even have lips?
said Jose, let's move on.
He thought he was on some sort of TV prank show.
A prank show is a practical joke show.
A prank is a practical joke, like a little trick that you would play on someone for fun, like for example swapping the sugar for salt or vice -versa, swapping the sugar in the cupboard for salt, and then watching your brother put loads of salt in his coffee and filming his reaction when he tastes it and nearly throws up everywhere all over himself because it's so disgusting and then laughing about it and putting it on the internet for everyone to see.
That would be a prank.
Pranks aren't always filmed but that's a prank.
A TV prank show is one where people play pranks on each other and it's all filmed with hidden cameras and then they make a show out of it, you know the kind of thing.
Oh Jose, what have you got yourself into this time?
So, to get yourself into something means to cause yourself to be in a certain situation, to get into a difficult or problematic situation.
The sort of thing that you would say if you found yourself in a tricky situation and you kind of, it's your fault that you got into that situation.
oh what have I got myself into now?
Imagine meeting some strangers in a pub, getting to know them a bit, and then they invite you to their home for a game of cards and you say yeah okay and when you arrive things are all a bit strange and there are other people there and it seems they've been having some kind of strange party and doing things and they want you to join in and you think oh God how did I become part of this?
I just want to leave and you escape to the toilet and you stand and look in the mirror and think to yourself oh god what have I got myself into this time not that not that that's ever happened to me of course I mean you know it's just an example, yeah.
We are the Zillara, the alien replied telepathically.
Telepathic means being able to communicate with other people just using your mind using special magic mind connections and not words or physical signals so just telepathic communication.
If you suddenly hear a voice in your head like this, it means that someone is communicating with you telepathically.
Yes you left your Bluetooth connection on and I've been able to hack it yeah so that's telepathic communication to to reply telepathically, yes.
To be honest if this kind of telepathic communication technology ever gets to Earth and is introduced here, then my job as an English teacher is finished.
I mean, I'm done. This is why I think that we should be very hostile and aggressive against aliens.
We need some hostile, aggressive anti -alien policy on Earth to prevent huge job losses for Tefil teachers whose jobs are already under threat from you know AI technology.
The last thing we need is aliens coming in with telepathic mind readers.
I think Jose should immediately inform the army about his alien encounter so they can send special space commandos from Earth into space to track down the Zillara and then shoot their spaceships with laser rockets and blow them all up just to protect my job.
job, but it's not going to happen, is it?
It's not going to happen.
Who cares about teachers?
Anyway, we've chosen you, Jose Martinez, for an experiment that will benefit both our kinds.
Kinds here means kinds of people.
This usage is a bit old -fashioned.
It's a sort of old -fashioned sounding language referring to people, types of people as kinds, just kinds.
It's not kinds of people but just kinds.
It will benefit both our kinds.
It's the sort of thing you hear in science fiction, especially Star Wars, especially The Mandalorian for some reason, you know you hear that people are always talking about he's not of your kind, you know and we need to take him back so he can be with his kind.
I need to return the child to his kind or your kind aren't welcome here or you are the last of your kind, you know.
It's the sort of thing you hear in that sort of science fiction stuff, in normal English we would just say kind of people.
I need to return the child back to his people.
Or your kind of people are not welcome here.
Or you are the last of your kind of people.
You are the last of, you know, our English teacher, you are the last of your kind.
AI developments and alien technology have made all of your kind redundant.
You know, that's the sort of thing that's going to happen in my worst nightmares.
What is it darling?
Oh, I had the dream again.
Oh, not about the aliens.
Jose's fear slowly began to subside, subside go down, become less strong.
Look, if it's about my visa, I'm in the process of renewing it.
to be in the process of renewing something, meaning you're currently trying to renew it.
To renew your visa, renew your passport, make it new again.
I'm currently in the process of renewing my visa.
Basically, I'm doing the paperwork, gathering the documents.
That Zillara didn't let him finish, we've developed a technology that allows us to share knowledge through direct neural transfer.
Transfer, of course, moving information from one thing to another, like bluetooth or something, Wi -Fi, or just emailing someone a document with wetransfer .com.
Direct neural transfer, neural relates to the body's nerve systems and the brain.
So direct neural transfer is moving information directly from one brain to another brain, a bit like using a Wi -Fi connection or Bluetooth to transfer a PDF from your friend to...
from your friend...
transfer a PDF to your friend rather than sending it by email.
You can just talk directly to someone by direct neural transfer.
Let's move on, move on, move on.
A flood of information surged into Jose's mind.
Surg means quickly rushed in.
To surge means to move in quickly.
Also it could be a noun, a surge, are a sudden rush of something, an electrical surge, water surged into the boat and suddenly he was aware of all the nuances of the English language.
Nuances are small subtle details.
If you know all of the nuances of English then you know all the specific subtle little details, rules, meanings, words and you know them in a very detailed way.
You know all the subtle nuances of the language.
It was overwhelming, like whoa this is a bit too much!
Like that time Barry tried to explain the rules of snooker after they drunk seven pints of Guinness, so overwhelming is too much, too much information, and it's confusing.
Snooker as you may know because it's popular in other places too, but it is a British game, I think it's originally British I think, involving using a long wooden cue to hit balls around a large table with pockets in the corners and the sides.
That's the sound it makes, the satisfying sound of playing a game of snooker.
Ah it's a lovely sound isn't it?
The rules are quite complicated in snooker.
You know it's more complicated than playing a game of pool which is that smaller version that you find in pubs and stuff where you know you just just have to pot the balls with the stripes or the balls with the with the with the spots on it.
It's an American game.
It's more simple. Snooker is a lot more complicated.
You've got red balls, you've got a yellow ball, a brown ball, a green ball, a blue ball, a pink ball and a black ball.
And you've got to pot them in a certain order and there are specific rules.
It's not as complicated as cricket, but it's a bit complicated.
So if someone tried to explain the rules of snooker to you after you'd drunk seven pints of Guinness, it might be a bit overwhelming.
Like, hold on, I don't know what's going on.
What are you talking about?
Plus, Jose hadn't actually given his consent for any of this.
So the aliens were doing all these things to him, but they never actually asked him if it was okay.
He never gave his consent.
To give your consent means to give your permission or agreement that something can happen, especially something that involves possible risks to you.
So you have to give your consent to doctors before they do surgery.
If a child goes on a school trip the parents have to give their consent.
So the aliens seem to be experimenting on Jose.
They've abducted him and they're sharing all their knowledge with him and taking all his knowledge as well, and apparently probing him as well, which is very suspicious, but he didn't give him any permission for this.
He didn't give them consent to do any of these things.
In normal circumstances that might be considered to be some sort of crime, depending on the circumstances.
Another reason why we should send space commandos to track down the Xillara.
Liam Neeson needs to be fired out into space in order to hunt down the Xillara and find them and blow up their spaceship.
However, as the minutes passed, Jose felt his understanding of English deep into an extraordinary level.
He could speak, read, understand and write English with impeccable precision.
Precision is the quality of being precise, meaning exact, specific, accurate and careful.
Surgeons doing an operation on someone's heart need a lot of precision for obvious reasons, so they don't whoops, slip and oh, whoops, oh dear, you know, they need to be very precise, they need a lot of precision.
Impeccable precision means perfect with no mistakes at all, okay?
Yes. Days turned into weeks and the discomfort of his initial abduction war off.
So to wear off it means it becomes less strong in its effect, the effects gradually disappear.
Common collocations with wear off include pain.
Pain wears off. I broke my leg but after I took the painkillers, the pain wore off.
Drugs or medication can wear off, but when the painkillers wore off, the pain came back.
Excitement can wear off.
When I was a child, I used to get so excited on Christmas Day and I'd be so excited we'd open our presents but then eventually the excitement wore off, and the next day I would be left feeling with a sense of sadness or emptiness, as the excitement of Christmas eventually wore off.
So the effects of something can wear off, the effects of alcohol can wear off.
Discomfort can wear off.
Okay, let's move on.
So he tells them some jokes.
Right, the first one is difficult to explain.
What did the Spanish firemen call his two sons?
How am I going to explain this one?
Let's just take it bit by bit and I will dissect the joke.
What did the Spanish firemen call his two sons?
We're thinking, no idea.
Spanish firemen? A fireman is a fire fighter, someone who, if there's a fire, they come and try and put the fire out with water.
A fireman. What did the Spanish fireman call his two sons?
You think… I don't know.
The Zillaro, of course, don't understand the whole concept of jokes, and they try to answer the question.
They're like, well, we understand that Martin and Matteo are common Spanish names.
And Jose's like, no, no, no, you don't understand.
The Spanish fireman called his two sons, Jose and Hose B.
So, Jose is a common Spanish name Jose, I'm probably pronouncing it wrong, but Jose sounds in English like Hose A.
Hose. So, right, Jose is the first name, the second son was called Hose B.
So it sounds like the fireman called his two children hose A and hose B.
A hose is a thing that a fireman uses to fight a fire.
It's like a big tube full of water and they use it to shoot water at the fire.
You have a hose in your garden which you use to put water on the garden, right?
That's a hose. He called his two sons hose A and hose B.
Oh dear, I'm not going to waste more time trying to explain that.
Either you get it or you don't get it.
But I'm sorry if you don't get it.
Let's move on. The next joke is maybe you're like the Zillara and you just no reaction at all.
What? What is this earth humor?
Jose then told them another another joke.
First of all, actually that the aliens look at him with their heads cocked to one side.
If your head, if you cock your head to one side you change the angle of your head meaning you make it lean to one side as if you don't really understand something.
So if you're looking at someone who you think might be a little bit strange you might cock your head to one side, are you okay?
You're a bit weird aren't you?
What is this strange joke?
Hmmm? Hmmm? Like that, too much word play said Jose, word play is when you play with words, maybe making rhymes or using double meanings with words to create other meanings.
A lot of jokes or puns involve word play.
Word play or puns can be difficult to understand if it's not your first language, depending on the pun, of course.
A Spanish fireman called his two sons, Jose, and the next name, Jose B., oh I see." Oh I see, Hose B because he's a fireman.
Hose, it means... It's not Hose the name, but Hose A and Hose B because he's a fireman right?
Mmm not the best joke ever.
I get it, but... Next one is what do you call a Spanish guy who's lost his car, Carlos.
Right. I mean I don't even need to explain that one which probably who makes it a much better joke.
Jose says, Spanish guy lost his car.
What's his name, said Jose.
With his eyebrows raised.
When your eyebrows are raised, if you have eyebrows, I do have eyebrows.
I promise. I promise.
I do. It's just the hair on my eyebrows is quite, what's the word for it?
Fair and not exactly that thick.
So I promise I do have eyebrows every now and again on YouTube people, right.
We're helping to your eyebrows.
Do shave your eyebrows off?
I don't know why people would write that.
What's the purpose of writing that?
Like, of course I didn't shave off my eyebrows.
Stupid question. Anyway, to raise your eyebrows is when you make your eyebrows go up with that a certain look on your face, a sort of surprised look or a look of expectation.
Spanish guy lost his car.
What's his name? What do you think?
You raise your eyebrows to create that open expression on your face as if to show that you are expecting an answer.
What do you think? But the aliens didn't respond.
Carlos. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Very funny. The Zillara taught Jose about their advanced technology and interstellar navigation.
Interstellar means between stars or through space.
So, they taught him all about this.
And he taught them about his Spanish culture and gave them a Paella recipe.
He thought it was a pretty fair trade.
A fair trade is a good exchange where two things have equal value, or a pretty good deal for him.
I'll give you a recipe for Paella.
You tell me all about interstellar navigation.
Pretty good deal. Fair trade.
He, he was pretty sure he would never use interstellar navigation unless he decided to start an intergalactic uber service.
Intergalactic means between galaxies.
Interstellar between stars.
Intergalactic between galaxies.
Intergalactic. Planetary.
Planetary. Intergalactic.
Another dimension. Another dimension.
Sorry, that's for the Beastie Boys fans out there.
Despite their differences and the fact they had basically kidnapped him, Jose found himself growing fond of his captors.
If you're fond of something, he means you like it.
You have warm feelings towards it.
I quite like these aliens.
Okay, they're, you know, they don't seem to have emotions and they keep probing me but other than that, they're all right really, aren't they?
I'm quite fond of them.
I'm going to miss them.
To be fond of something, your captors.
A captor is someone who's holding someone captive.
So kidnappers, abductors, The Zillara captured Jose and then they are his captors.
It seems that Jose has Stockholm syndrome where kidnapping victims actually develop a relationship with or an attachment to their kidnappers.
So he's grown fond of his captors but should he really...he appreciates their wisdom.
Wisdom means they have a lot of knowledge about the world.
They're very wise. They promised they would send him back with his new knowledge intact.
If something is intact it means it's in one piece and it's not damaged, it's in its original state.
Other examples of intact.
Our house was burned down but ironically we found the toaster on the floor, intact.
Another example, it's hard to come out of a scandal with your reputation intact.
My undefeated record as a boxer is still intact.
Did you know about me that I have an undefeated record as a boxer?
I've never ever been defeated or knocked out in a boxing match to this day.
In my boxing record it is intact.
Never been defeated, never been knocked out in a boxing match. I have also never actually had a boxing match or indeed, any experience of boxing at all, but I do have a 100 % undefeated record, which is still intact to this day.
What else? Jose was sent back to Earth, back to his garage.
The sun was rising now, casting a golden glow over the familiar surroundings.
Your surroundings are the things which surround you.
The place where you are, in this case it's the streets, houses, trees of his local area.
That is his surroundings.
Familiar surroundings.
The enhanced clarity.
The whole experience felt like a dream but the enhanced clarity of his thoughts and speech told him otherwise.
If something tells you otherwise it means it shows you that things are different.
otherwise, meaning, not like a dream.
OK, so it felt like a dream, but then my enhanced speech, Told Me Otherwise, means told me that it was not the case.
His brain was positively fizzing with brand new advanced English vocabulary.
Fizzing is like when you open a can of fizzy pop, like a famous cola -brand, like a Pepsi.
Pepsi, no one ever mentions Pepsi.
I'm going to mention Pepsi.
If you open a can of Pepsi, why you would do that, I don't know.
But anyway, does anyone actually drink it?
How do Pepsi make any money?
I don't understand.
And then you listen to the can.
It's fizzing, right?
right? Why did I sound like Liam Neeson?
It's full of activity!
He's very serious isn't he?
Liam Neeson in those films. The thing if he opened a can of Pepsi, he'd say this Pepsi is full of activity, can you hear it fizzing?
Maybe that's why his daughter desperately wanted to go to Europe and get away from him.
Anyway, because he's so boring.
Anyway his brain was positively fizzing with brand new advanced English vocabulary so so much advanced English vocabulary it was like a freshly opened can of Pepsi full of English vocabulary which is no doubt how your brain feels at the end of listening to this an episode like this it's just like wow my brain feels like a freshly opened can of Pepsi if you got this far into the episode leave that as a comment you could mention a popular soft drink brand and say that your brain feels exactly like a freshly opened can of 7 -up Pepsi, or some other brand that you would like to advertise for some reason,
don't advertise them.
This episode is not sponsored by Pepsi at all.
In fact I would go as far as to say, Pepsi's disgusting isn't it?
And in fact all of those soft fizzy drinks, they're all disgusting and horrible.
Have a cup of tea or just a glass of water just drink water this episode is sponsored by water drink water every day in fact that reminds me I need to drink some water I didn't have my normal water break during the episode here we go water consumed I've got coffee which I didn't finish here we go right let's wrap up this episode.
Jose finally got his working visa and Indefinite Leave to Remain.
Indefinite Leave to Remain is a status that you can get from the British government that means you have the right to stay in the country permanently.
It's called Indefinite Leave to Remain.
It's indefinite because there's no end to it.
If you apply for residence and are accepted, You might be given a status like this you can find out more at www .gov .uk slash browse slash visas dash immigration.
Trying to be useful.
He even started his own podcast, blah blah blah blah blah, his incredible anecdotes captivated readers to captivate people, hold their attention so they can't stop listening or reading a bit like you right now with this episode.
I've captivated your attention.
He never saw the Zalara again but he thought about them sometimes.
He cherished his time with the aliens, meaning he held it very precisely.
Like Gollum with the ring, my precious, hmm.
Oh, I love it so much. He cherished his time with the aliens like that was a wonderful time.
I just had a fantastic time with the aliens maybe not like Gollum with the Ring because that's got such sinister overtones but if you just had a lovely ring that you really liked you would certainly cherish it oh I love this ring and I'm never going to give it to anyone because it was my birthday present but it's a lovely ring isn't it?
Every time Jose made Paella he couldn't help but chuckle to chuckle is to laugh a If you can't help but do something, it means you can't help doing it, meaning you just always do it and you can't stop yourself doing it.
I can't help but smile when I think of the time we spent together.
He couldn't help but chuckle.
Every time he made Paella, there he is making his Paella and he goes, those aliens, I wonder how they're doing.
I wonder if they ever learn to make Paella and why did they have to probe me so much?
I've never explained the word probe.
It's been sort of a weird undercurrent subtext through the story, right?
I don't know if you noticed that.
The fact that the - at various times the aliens did experiments on him and they probed him.
To probe means to send something deep into something.
Now, you might send a probe into space.
A deep space probe would be a small spaceship that would go out into space and it would send back information to Earth a deep space probe going out into deep space sending back information.
aliens, apparently according to some accounts of alien abductions, the aliens will probe humans.
They send, they their abductees, maybe in the bum.
I don't know. But that's probing, sending things inside the human body in order to gather information.
They did have to give him a new pair of trousers because these other trousers got damaged during one of their experiments.
So I don't know how they were probing him.
It's probably best not to talk about it, but anyway, that's what probing means.
Ye, it's probably best not to talk about it.
I hope Jose's alright.
If you've ever been abducted by aliens and you got probed, then I don't know, there may be a service that you can contact if you've been affected by any of those issues.
I'm being very glib and stupid about that, sorry.
Well, that is the end of this ridiculous episode.
It became quite ridiculous, didn't it?
That's all right. A bit of fun.
I hope you enjoyed that story.
Leave your comments in the comment section.
How's your brain right now?
Let us know in the comment section.
Thank you for listening to this episode and I will speak to you next time, but for now, it's just time to say goodbye.
Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
rate. Thanks for listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information, visit TeacherLuke .co .uk.
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