Hello everybody, and welcome back to another edition of the Qloops Community Update.
This is our episode for May 20, 25, and as always I am joined by our Discord Moderator, Alina, Hey Alina, how's it going?
Andrew, it's going pretty good.
How are you doing? I'm doing awesome, and Alina, I was quite shocked to realize that it's already May, Like I can't believe how fast time flies, you know there's that saying time flies when you have fun.
And I guess we're having a lot of fun here with our monthly challenges because the first four have flown by and it's time for us to introduce a new challenge to everyone.
And Elina, you've whipped up a good one.
You've created a good one for me and we're gonna share that with everyone in this episode.
But before we do that we have a little bit business to attend to or going to share with you guys are really really kind and nice review that's one of our queue -lops members.
Tetsu shared with the community on our Discord server.
So we'll read that message in just a moment and then Alina we have to do probably the funnest part of this episode.
We'll save the best for last. We are going to select the winner of the March Challenge.
What we do guys is we put all of the people who have completed one of our monthly challenges onto a spinning wheel and we're going to spin the wheel and select somebody and one lucky finisher.
I guess is the best word I could use.
One lucky finisher will win a Qlips Swag bag.
We're gonna send you Qlips Top bag and a handwritten note from me.
And maybe some Qlips stickers and some other little goodies if I can think of some nice little things to send.
So we'll do that at the end of the episode in Elina.
Do you remember how many people completed the March challenge?
Mm hm. I do. It's 34 people, which is an absolute record. We've never had so many.
So I was really proud.
I was really happy to see how many of you guys made it all the way to the end.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, we had so many people finish the March challenge and yeah, so 34 finisher finishers, amazing.
All right, but Alina first. I guess we should get to Ted Su's review because it was really kind, really nice and we wanted just to share it with all of the listeners out there.
So let me just open it.
Okay, so Ted Su wrote, thank you very much Andrew Alina and the Qlips team members.
I first came across Qlips in 2023 while studying for the IELTS exam.
And I immediately got into it.
However, I hesitated to become a member at first because I tend to get bored of things easily, so I challenged myself.
I would join if I could keep listening for months.
It turned out to be a piece of cake thanks to the diverse topics, clear audio quality, and perfect episode length.
Since then, I've been making full use of the transcripts, the fluency files and the group speaking sessions for about a year.
Honestly, I should have become a Q -Lib's member much earlier.
Thank you again to the Q -Lib's team.
I truly appreciate all your hard work.
Q -Lib's is my lifelong friend now.
Uh, very kind. I love that.
It's a great way to end the review, right?
whoops is my lifelong friend now.
So, Tetsu, thank you so much, that's really, really heartwarming to read that and we appreciate that you are a member of our community.
It's great to have you, study and learn English with us and just hang out with us all the time on the Discord community as well.
Thank you everybody for leaving all your reviews.
Like we really do get, you know, so happy every time we see someone like this, that somebody is benefiting so much. And you know, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So guys if you would like to get a shoutout in an upcoming Qlips episode as well, feel free to leave us a review.
You could do it really anywhere and we'll try our best to find it and feature it in an upcoming episode.
You could do it on the Apple Music page for us, our Spotify, YouTube, Instagram.
Qlips Discord community, really anywhere is okay.
And hopefully you can be featured an upcoming Q -loops episode.
But for today we will just say thank you to Tetzu.
Alright, Alina, with that being said, let's get into the Challenge for May, and I will let you do the honours.
You're the mastermind behind the Challenge so...
Over to you. Could you please introduce us and tell us what it's all about.
Absolutely, so this one I feel like has been requested by so many people and I hope that it's gonna be very helpful for as many learners as possible because this one is kind of a grammar one.
I know grammar is something that you know causes like mixed feelings, some people don't like it, some people love it, but we're gonna try and make it as fun as possible as engaging as possible, and the topic is uh present perfect versus past simple.
And hopefully that means something to you right now that I was saying it.
But if it doesn't, you should really join because we are going to have Andrew here record a very, very good, you know, explanation video.
And if you've ever seen Andrew's videos before, you know, he's good at this.
So it's all going to be clear once you watch it.
So yes, but if you do, you probably do.
You know, we learners always go and like, you know, remember all these grammar names that native speakers don't even know, to be honest because they don't need to.
But these two tenses probably are the most, you know, confusing and complicated ones in my experience as an English teacher and as a learner as well.
I do remember having quite a difficult time trying to wrap my head around like, what's the difference?
When do I use present perfect?
Because obviously, in our native languages, we don't have anything like this.
So the whole concept is completely foreign.
So I feel like in this challenge, we will definitely, you know, focus on, first of all, trying to grasp what it's all about.
You know, why we need these two Tenses and why it's so important to use one, you know, and some certain situations and the other one in other situations.
Because it actually is important, it can change the meaning, you know, in some situations.
So yeah, and of course, we're going to go over a bunch of examples, you know, contexts and stuff like that.
gonna practice as much as possible.
If you have any questions we're gonna talk, you know, and discuss, and hopefully clarify everything all the doubts.
And as a bonus, we'll get to go over the irregular verbs, and I hope you know what it is.
And yeah, it's something that we all struggle with a lot, and Andro was just telling me there that even native speakers find it you know quite challenging sometimes.
You're regular verbs.
Yeah there are some obscure verbs maybe ones that we don't use every day that are irregular and sometimes even native speakers.
We get a little bit confused when we have to use them in the past tense or the present perfect.
Like I was giving the example of the verb swim sometimes you know we'll be like oh is it I have swam or I like a swamp, and really at the end of the day, it's not super, super important just if you're having a conversation because if I say to Alina, I've swam in the river or I've swam in the river, like she's gonna know what I'm talking about in both situations, but of course we wanna be as accurate as possible, but I guess the moral of the story, guys, is that sometimes even native speakers make mistakes with these verbs.
So, we'll cover as many of the irregulars we can in this monthly challenge and yeah I love that Alina that we're going to focus for may on the two different past tenses in English, the simple past tense and the present perfect, which is a tense that we use that sort of connects the past and the present, but we won't break down all of the grammar rules and details in this video, but as Alina mentioned now I have some Molina has given me a challenge for this month.
Sorry. I'm going to hopefully short and simple explanation in a video that will break down and explain to you guys what some of the differences are between these two for forms and how to use them so that your English will sound natural and clear and understandable.
so, actually, Elena, I think that is the first day of the challenge is to watch the video.
Is that correct? Oh, yes.
It makes most sense to introduce it as a first task.
And people say that it's an easy one.
But to be honest with you, it's really not.
Because if some of this information is new to you, you should really sit down, make some notes, make sure you're listening, no distractions, I would recommend because for the rest of the month you would really need to use.
It would come back to that video, possibly even every day.
Do not neglect it, please.
This one is important.
It sets the stage for the whole rest of the month in the whole remaining part of the challenge.
Exactly. So we should mention just in case anybody is new and hasn't done one of our challenges before that it's completely free for anyone.
So whether you're a Q -lips member or not you're welcome to participate in the challenge and Alina could you just remind everybody how they can participate in the challenge?
Sure. So all you need to do is just head onto Discord and there's this channel there monthly challenge that's the name of the channel.
And if you have trouble finding it just feel free to ask, you know, pretty much anyone but me of course.
on, you know, in any channel really you can just tag me or yeah if you're lost but usually you know it's not so hard to find it most people have been able to find it in the past. So you know all you have to do is just wait until the first day of you know first of me basically when I post the challenge, I do always try to make sure you know I put it in the announcements as well, so that everybody is notified and informed so you won't miss it and yeah And then you just go ahead and send in the message.
And if you're not sure again, you know, exactly how to go about it, you could take a quick look like if you just scroll, you know, a little bit and see what the others have been doing because it's pretty much all the same, right?
The format doesn't change much from challenge to challenge.
So you can always see, even if you head over there, right now, you know, it's possibly, you know, I'm not really sure when this will be released, but it's probably not there just yet.
So you could take a quick look at, you know, what's happening there right now, So that you have an idea basically, sure what to expect for the next challenge?
That's okay. So, free for everyone to join on our Discord server, the link to join the discord server will be in the description for this episode.
So just click that link and join the server and you can participate.
And the challenge isn't every day guys.
That would be a pretty big commitment.
So instead of doing it every day, it's every seconds day.
We know that so many of out there are busy with your professional lives and personal lives.
And so are we. So we get it.
And so you don't have to do the challenge every day, but there is a task to do every second day.
And if you want to work on your writing skills, you can write a message to complete the task if you'd rather work on your speaking skills, feel free to record an audio message and upload that to the server.
And either one is okay and fine by us.
And yeah, if you complete the challenge Alina is going to make you a wonderful completion certificate.
Try to collect them all.
I think I've got them so far all of them.
So I'm trying to fill my, but this year you do, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So far so good.
I don't know. I have to like fill a photo album with all of my certificates or something.
And then as we said, one lucky finisher will also get a kulop swag bag package.
Elena, should we choose last month's winner now, or is there anything else that we add?
Are we okay to spin the wheel?
I feel like we have covered pretty much everything.
Oh the important information.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, to the fun part, we're gonna spin the wheel.
We have like Alita mentioned, we have a record -breaking number of finishers for guys this is for the March challenge.
We're always kind of one month behind schedule, just the way things work out here.
We have to make the video before the challenge starts.
So it means we're one month behind, but let's select for March. So let me get this set up here.
Well, I'm so excited right now.
I mean I can put you on the spot, I'm gonna ask you what is an idiomatic experiment we could use for this kind of situation?
Do you have any that come to mind?
When you're really anticipating something...
something? Oh that's a good question, nothing comes to mind.
How about this one?
I'm waiting with baited breath.
Have you heard that one before?
Okay, yeah. Waiting with baited birth means to be like really nervous and anticipating something.
So yeah, me too. I'm waiting with baited breath.
So Alina, let's do it.
I'm gonna shuffle all of the participants here.
We need to do a first name.
We don't play favorites here at QLips.
Everything is according to the rules.
We've got a big spin and the winner of the March challenge looks like it's going to be Amid is the winner Amazing, so yeah then I'll prepare and send out the Q -loops swag bag.
Congratulations, amazing, and yeah, you are the next winner.
All right. Yeah, so guys, I hope you can be next.
I hope your name can be selected next.
Gotta just keep trying and completion.
Doing the challenges and trying and yeah, and maybe it could be you for the next month.
All right, well Elena, I'm excited for this challenge, and I hope everyone out there will be as well.
So anything else that we need to to cover before we sign off that I'm forgetting.
I'm not sure. I think we did pretty well.
Yeah. Yeah. I mentioned everything important.
We nailed it. That's a challenge.
I told you. All right.
Well, we're gonna sign off then.
Thank you everybody for listening all the way to the end.
And please participate in the May challenge.
It really does make our community a place with with you when you are participating in it.
So yeah head on over to our discord and do it just do it.
Okay Alina, thank you so much. We'll talk to you next month.
Okay? Thank you Andrew.
Talk to you later. Bye.
Bye guys.
