Do you want to learn English?
Well, in this video you're going to learn English with the comprehensible input method.
All you need to do is watch, listen and learn new vocabulary.
So as you can see, I'm walking down the streets of Basingstoke.
To be honest, there is not really much to see.
It's very quiet.
It's very quiet.
It's the middle of the day on a Tuesday.
As always when I go and film, we have perfect weather, as always, with cloudy skies and cold temperatures and boring weather.
So let's take a look at the map here.
What have we got?
Okay, so we are here.
We are here and this is london street.
Right here.
There's a lot of shops up here on london street.
I think where we're going to go is we are going to go to this park up here.
See, there's a kind of park there on Church Street and also I assume that if we go on Church Street we will be able to find a church somewhere on Church Street and really that's it.
I don't know if there's many interesting things to see here in basic stoke, but i'm going to walk up london street, i'm going to take a right on church street and i'm going to walk towards this park and we'll check out what this park is like and also let's see if we can find a church on church street, because usually on church street you can find a church eventually.
So there we go.
It says church street.
So we have found the street we need.
We're going to turn right and we're going to look for that park.
I think that's the park over there in the distance.
So apparently this statue is called the the blue coat boy the blue coat boy.
Let's take a look at what it says on this plaque here.
This is a plaque okay, but what does it say on the plaque?
It says the statue marks the site of Basingstoke's blue coat score, and so I guess the blue coat score was here from 1959 until 1879.
Down here it says the statue was erected in 1994 by the Basingstoke Heritage Society.
So when it says the statue was erected, it means it was put up.
They put the statue here at that time.
Anyway, we're still on church street, so i think if we go in this direction over there, we should reach the park and the church, as that is what i'm looking for.
So guys, we have found the road called church square and, would you believe it?
There's a church right next to it.
What did i tell you?
Everywhere you go, every town, you will always find a church, especially if it's called Church Street.
If you find a street called Church Street Look for the church.
So this church has this kind of checkered pattern.
Can you see it's got a checkered pattern with these little squares all over it?
I've right at the top that flag up there.
I'm just going to zoom in a little bit for you.
That is the flag of England right there, flying right at the top of the church.
That is the flag of St.
George and the flag of England right there.
So I'm in the church now.
So you can see they have said that it's okay for me to film inside the church today.
So let's take a look around.
See we have these big columns up here.
These big columns and the ceiling.
The ceiling is very high.
See, it's a very high ceiling right there.
When you do visit a church like this, it's important to be respectful.
Keep your voice down.
Don't talk too loudly and just respect it because a lot of people come here.
At the top there, you can see the image of Jesus.
That's the image of Jesus Christ up there.
Here we have a stained glass window.
You can see it looks really nice actually.
In every church you go to you have these big stained glass windows with these like colorful images on them.
And it's quite cool, these big ones.
As you can see, it's a fairly modern church.
There are some screens around.
You know, not every church has this kind of modern stuff in it.
This one is kind of kitted out, for it's kitted out for all kinds of things on the stage here.
This is the stage and you can see there's a keyboard right there and there's a drum kit as well.
Right there there's a drum kit.
So obviously sometimes they must have performances here.
So it's more kind of modern kind of church.
And behind the the drum kit over there we have another stained glass window, probably the biggest one, the most impressive one right there.
You can see all the patterns on that stained glass window is very impressive.
That's very impressive that.
So let's walk through here.
Let's just go underneath this archway see there's a little archway right here.
Let's go through here into this smaller room and there's another stained glass window up there.
Another stained glass window there, Another one there.
Okay, let's come out of here, back through the archway there.
There's that checkered pattern again.
See all up this wall, there's this checkered pattern.
Let's go through the archway again.
Of course, if you come here, you can give now.
So you can tap to donate.
So you can tap your card to donate £20 here to the church, to the Basingstoke Church, if you want here.
So I'm just gonna actually what's your name, Hazel?
So I'm just gonna sit down with Hazel here.
Hazel works at the, the church here, and she said she wouldn't mind being in the video, so would you say this is a really popular church, get lots of people coming here to the, the Basingstoke church, And before three years ago, before that, it was a very traditional church.
There was just a few people that came and then a different team came in and it's come to life, basically.
Right, okay.
So that's why we've got a really full church.
All right, so how many people do you think would come here to your most popular service?
How many people do you think would be here?
At least 300 would come in here when this is full.
And when we had the carol services.
We had to have three carol services in December and there was over a thousand people who came to those.
Okay, okay.
So would you say that you get people here from all walks of life here do you get a vast diversity of different people here.
Yes, we do, yes.
There is a diversity of of background in the sense of which jobs they might do.
We've got doctors, we've got people that are have very simple jobs like care-taking or something like that.
And they're all mixed together and it doesn't matter what anybody does.
It's like a real feeling of oneness, but there's also a diversity of nationality right, which is lovely.
You know, there's Indians, there's people from Africa.
I'm getting to know two African girls that are here and, because I've visited Africa a few times, we're trying to work out.
We've been to the same place okay um, So that's lovely as well.
So that diversity is, I would say, part of the ethos.
And what about the age groups?
Is it mostly older people or do you get some young people here as well?
That's a good question.
For the 11, which is the contemporary service.
It is jam packed full of young people and young families.
Very, very lively.
And so little children, you see them running around and everything.
And then here on a Monday, there is a youth cafe and there's about 200 coming in for that.
So what kind of age would they be?
They would be 16 to 18.
Okay, 16 to 18.
And what about people in their 20s?
Because I would imagine probably that would be the age group with the least number of people, if I had to guess.
Is that true or no?
No, I would say it's a very, very good and wide cross-section of ages.
Okay.
Nice.
That's really interesting.
I think that's probably it.
So thank you, Hazel, for being in the video today.
Real pleasure.
All the very best to all of you who are wanting to learn more English.
There you go.
Thank you very much.
Hazel, can you say go to englishsponge.com?
Go to englishsponge.com.
There you go.
Thank you, Hazel.
So I just had a nice conversation with Hazel from the church of Basingstoke, Basingstoke Church, and she was very kind to me.
She gave me a cup of tea to enjoy and we had a quick chat.
So yeah, now let's go to the park.
Now they told me that the park is in this direction somewhere.
So we're gonna walk this way.
Guys, did you know that learning English this way, through comprehensible input, in the long run will lead to better pronunciation?
Okay, because if you learn English through listening, you're going to be hearing all the new vocabulary that you learn and your pronunciation is going to end up being better than somebody else who used more traditional methods to learn English, or somebody else who learned all of their vocabulary by reading instead of listening.
By learning through listening, you're actually going to get much better pronunciation and a much more natural way of speaking English, compared to most people who use more traditional methods to learn.
On our website englishspongecom, you can listen to English at all levels so you can learn all the vocabulary that you need through listening to videos at each level.
You may start at the more beginner videos and you can go up between each level and you're listening to English.
You're getting a feel for how the language flows and how it is spoken naturally, and you can get all the way up to the B2 upper intermediate level on our website, and so we have designed this for you to learn English, all of English, through comprehensible input.
So be sure to take a look, because I think it's very, very good.
You can go to the topics filter and choose what kind of topic you're interested in and then watch videos on that, so that you can learn English while listening to things that you actually enjoy.
Learning English does not have to be really hard and a big grind.
You can actually watch things that you enjoy watching.
And that's why we made English Sponge.
If you've watched a few of these videos, these street videos, you may be beginning to notice that a lot of towns in the UK are quite similar.
Like every town that you go to will have similar things in it.
They will tend to have a church, They will tend to have the same kind of shops.
Most towns will have a high street with the similar shops in each town.
So if you keep watching these videos you will begin to see a kind of pattern and like that, a lot of towns in the UK are really quite similar.
As for safety in the UK, I think generally you can walk around a normal town like Basingstoke and you feel pretty safe, like generally speaking.
You don't have to be watching your surroundings all the time.
You are fairly safe when you come to an English town.
Of course you still need to have some common sense.
There are criminals, of course, wherever you go, but generally speaking, you when you walk around, you feel pretty safe and you feel pretty comfortable as you walk around most english towns.
Well guys, it looks like we have finally reached the park.
So we're here in the park.
It's very windy.
There are gusts of wind blowing everywhere.
There's strong gusts of wind blowing in my face right now.
We have a little log.
See this?
This is a log.
This is called a log.
And I'm just gonna toss the log now.
Here we go. with my left hand.
So I just tossed the log.
So that's a log.
But these are twigs.
See this?
This is a twig.
Now that's a log.
But this is a twig.
And there are twigs all over the floor.
But this here is a big log.
Because a log is bigger than A twig.
A twig is a small stick.
A log is a big stick.
Now the right side here, this is for walking.
So that's why I'm walking on the right side.
But this side here on the left, that is a cycle path.
So this is a cycle path.
So only cyclists can ride here.
If you are on foot like me, I'm on foot today.
I need to stay on the right side.
This is where people who are on foot can go.
But on the left, this is a cycle path and it's only for cyclists.
Now near to the town of Basingstoke, there is a small little place which is called Old Basing.
Old Basing was the place where one time, a long time ago, hundreds of years ago I think, in the year 700 or something like that, there was a great battle between Alfred the Great and the Vikings.
The Vikings had invaded Britain and they had invaded most of the country and it was only the kingdom of Wessex that still had not been invaded.
There was a great battle between King Alfred against the Vikings.
In that particular battle, King Alfred lost, But after many, many battles with the Vikings, finally King Alfred actually beat the Vikings and kicked them out of England and kicked them out of Britain.
And so that was a big event of British history that changed the course of the UK basically.
And that battle happened about 20 minutes from here in Basingstoke.
So yeah, just a bit of British history for you guys.
Okay, we have entered a shopping mall.
This is Sports Direct here and it's just a good place to get sports gear, gym gear really cheaply.
Let's go inside.
Different kinds of footballs here that you can get.
Pink ones, white ones, yellow ones.
Different footballs and you can get pumps football pumps as well so you use the pump to pump the football.
Here pumps cost 450.
We've got some shorts here, a selection of shorts that you can buy.
You can buy two pairs of shorts for 13 pounds, so i could buy this pair of shorts and this pair of shorts for 13 pounds, or i could buy one pair for eight pounds.
It's a good deal.
Here we have some trousers here.
This is the small size, medium, large, extra large.
See, extra, extra large there.
And so these are trousers.
And we have another deal.
You can get two pairs of trousers for £30 there.
And it says mix and match.
What does that mean, mix and match?
It means I could buy one of these pairs the blue ones and one of the brown ones right, and I could get the deal for two for 30 pounds.
I can mix and match the different colors of trousers.
That's what it means to mix and match.
Here we have a selection of caps, a selection of caps here.
This is a New York NY, New York cap.
This cap has 50 off.
So it was $19.99.
Now it's $9.99.
So that is a 50% discount on this cap here.
Which of these caps would you like to buy?
Would you like the Nike cap with the Nike tick?
Or would you prefer the Adidas cap with the Adidas logo?
Now, if you look at this rack, this is a clothes rack.
See, here you get really big deals.
It is 70 off, big deals on this rack here.
This is a big sale probably because they're trying to get rid of these clothes, so they put them on a big discount, because they're trying to get rid of all the clothes on this rack.
Here each of the clothes are on hangers, so we have a hanger here.
This is a clothes hanger.
This is for ages seven to eight and it hangs by the hook.
This is the hook here.
So this t-shirt hangs by this hook on the clothes hanger.
Okay, let's leave the shop now.
This place is called Basingstoke Wellness.
What does that mean?
What is Basingstoke Wellness?
What does wellness mean?
Wellness really means about being well.
Like really what it means is being healthy.
So it's a place you can go to sort of have things that will help with your health, right?
That's what wellness means.
It's talking about health and being healthy.
You can see here they have a brochure available.
It says, please take one up here.
Let's take one out so we can find out more about the Basingstoke Wellness Centre.
So there's a beauty salon, there's a skin clinic and you can get laser hair removal.
So it's all about being well, being healthy.
Over there we have a nail salon.
Over there you can get your nails done.
Right, if you go there, you can get your nails done.
Personally, it's not really my kind of place.
I think my nails are pretty good.
What do you think?
So, here you can see, there's a barbers here.
This is the house of hansen barbers.
What can you get?
You can get a regular haircut for £15.
Seniors get a discount.
See, the senior discount is £12.
So it's £3 cheaper if you're a senior.
If you're an older person, you can get your beard cut here.
It costs more.
It costs £10 more to get your beard as well.
And yeah.
So if you want to get your hair cut, here is a barber's, a barber's that you can go to to get your hair cut.
Okay guys, I hope you've enjoyed watching me go around Basingstoke today and teach you English vocabulary using comprehensible input.
If you do like these kind of videos, be sure to check out this playlist right here.
This is our B1 intermediate playlist.
I'm sure you'll find lots of good stuff there.
Anyway, thank you for watching and I will see you in the next video.
