Thank you.
Hello, lovely.
Today we have a very special episode because we have a very special guest on our podcast.
He's my favorite person and I admire all his work.
Luke Thompson from Luke's English podcast, ladies and gents.
Hello, Luke.
Hello.
Wow.
I'm your favorite person.
Yes, you are.
I wonder how many people you know.
I don't know uh, but anyway, that's very nice of you.
Hello, thanks for inviting me onto your podcast.
Welcome to the podcast.
Uh, did i pronounce your name correctly, luke?
Yeah yeah, that's great.
Yeah, because normally it's luck or it's look.
I've had rook before.
I've no idea what that is, rook.
But no, Luke, yeah, you got it right.
Look, tell us, do you call yourself a podcaster, a podcaster master, an English teacher?
I wouldn't say I'm a master podcaster, although I might.
I jokingly refer to myself as that on my website, as a Jedi podmaster, I think.
But no, I'm just a podcaster.
I think the order is, these days, it's podcaster first, then teacher, and then stand-up comedian.
I think it's in that order.
So yes, these days, since I do more podcasting than actual teaching now, i think that comes first.
Yeah, but do you have any classes at the moment?
Yeah yeah, i teach some classes at the british council in paris, in paris, and so it's.
It's Very weird time though, because our school has recently opened up its doors again, and so we've got students in classrooms, but people are sort of having to distance from each other.
I'm wearing a mask while I'm teaching.
Some teachers are going around with big visors, plastic visors on.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like Darth Vader's walking around with a you know, with like you know, it's very weird time indeed for teaching.
It's like teaching meets Star Wars with a sort of zombie element thrown in there too.
But yeah, so I still teach normal classes as well as podcasting.
And how long have you been into podcasting?
Oh, I mean as a general podcast enthusiast.
Oh, I don't know, since I first got like my first computer and got online, and probably around 2004, I think, is when I discovered it.
The Ricky Gervais podcast, I think, was the first thing I listened to.
But then I started doing mine in 2009.
So that's kind of when I got the bug and started doing it myself.
So it's been over, what, over 11 years now?
Oh my God.
Wow.
Yeah.
So look, because you've been into this language learning podcasting for ages, so we're going to be talking about how to get the most out of a language learning podcast.
So basically, as a language learner, what can you do to boost your English while listening to podcasts and how to use podcasts?
Is it true that we can improve our English just with podcasts?
Yes, it is possible to.
It's impossible.
It's possible to improve your English with podcasts.
I don't know if it's if podcasts can be the only thing.
I think that I don't know.
It depends, because language learning to an extent is a bit of a mystery and you do get certain cases where people seem to just learn the language through one very specific exposure to it.
But I wouldn't say it's the only thing you need to do.
And I've never said that that's the only thing you need to do, but I think it can be hugely helpful and beneficial to your English.
And the difference between, for example, a learner of English that I might meet in one of my classes who listens to podcasts to improve their English, and a learner of English who doesn't.
I mean, there's usually a huge difference between the two.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah, I've noticed that in the many years I've been teaching and I've been teaching for about 20 years now.
You know, you meet some students who just seem to fit the right profile of the kind of person, who's going to take the right approach, has the right attitude, has the right level of initiative to succeed in language learning.
And i don't know if it's a coincidence, but they tend to be the ones who do things like listen to podcasts for learners of english, listen to podcasts not for learners of english.
They're reading books in english.
They're watching tv series in english, with and without English subtitles.
Those are the sorts of people who seem to do well.
Whereas the people who've just kind of drifted into the language school because their parents expected them to do it and who think that basically just by being there in the room they will somehow learn English by osmosis.
Yeah, it's like this magic, you know, happening in the background.
It's a language.
It's not a virus.
You don't catch it just by being in the same room.
You do have to apply yourself to it.
But anyway, so...
I suppose using podcasts as part of your learning English process is an extremely good idea.
And I've got probably two ways to talk about it.
So the first way is just the fact that podcasts are, by their nature, very engaging and quite what's the word for it fun.
They're fun.
They're fun, very personal and quite intimate as well, because you listen to them usually on headphones.
You don't tend to gather around with other people and listen to a podcast.
You normally listen to them when you're on your own doing things.
And so, as a result, it's just a voice in your head which can become a very personal, intimate kind of thing, which is great obviously, for learning English, because the more personal, the more meaningful, emotional even it can be, the more engaging it is.
And as a result, the language is more likely to stick in those cases.
So that's one argument that just podcasts are just very motivating.
The second thing is that if you're listening to podcasts like yours, for example, or mine or one of the other podcasts out there for learners of English, there's loads of metacognitive strategies that you can learn.
Metacognitive strategies?
That's a posh word.
Do I get bonus points for saying metacognitive strategies?
Yes, you have an Oscar for using metacognitive strategies.
Sounds good, doesn't it?
Listen, listeners, slip that one into your next conversation.
Metacognitive strategies.
Do you know what I'm talking about when I say metacognitive strategies?
Tell us.
Tell the world.
It's quite a posh term for... ways of approaching language learning.
So not just language learning, but the ways in which you look at language learning from outside.
So you kind of look at the way that you do it and approach different strategies for doing it.
So it's not just language learning.
It's like... looking at how you language learn.
And these podcasts are full of advice.
You've got lots of people publishing episodes with all the advice they can possibly give.
There are no secrets.
Even though you see YouTube videos with the 10 secrets for learning English, there aren't any secrets.
People are podcasting all of their knowledge.
They're publishing all their knowledge in textbooks.
All the knowledge is being devoted to training courses and courses. the industry itself.
So, you know, there's so much stuff that you can learn about learning as well from these things.
Learning about learning.
Yeah.
But...
Then we get into this area of sort of directly learning the language through podcasts.
So it kind of gets down to active and passive language.
Yeah, so active and passive learning or active and passive listening.
Can I be a passive listener, an active listener, both?
Or on Monday, I'm a passive listener.
On Tuesday, I'm an active listener.
I combine these two.
I'm a passive, active learner, listener.
We throw these words around like passive listener and active listener and stuff.
And you know honestly when these things are said, I think most of us think passive listener basically means lazy bastard who just lies down on the sofa listening and doesn't do anything else.
They're just like, you know, whatever.
Yeah, and passive listeners.
They listen to a podcast while driving or while washing the dishes, I don't know, washing their hands, their face.
But however, like passive listening is better than no listening, right?
Oh, yes.
Absolutely.
Absolutely right.
So it's a bit like, hmm, let's think of a drink-based analogy.
Now, this is a terrible analogy already.
No, it won't work.
I was going to say that passive listening is like water.
It's like the basic sort of daily thing that you need just to keep you hydrated.
No, it doesn't work at all, this analogy.
Podcasts are like your daily routine, right?
Yes, it's very easy to fit them into your daily study routine.
Yeah, like they should be your daily routine.
You get up and you start listening to a podcast.
You know, you do your chores.
You listen to a podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
You go and record a podcast.
And that is my daily routine.
I get up after all the business of getting my daughter to school and all that stuff is done.
I listen to podcasts on the way back, walking home from my daughter's school.
And then I...
Go in, go upstairs, stop listening to a podcast, start preparing a podcast.
Then I have lunch.
Then I record a podcast.
Then I go and do some housework and listen to it.
So basically, yes, just living and breathing podcast.
Anyway, so the point about active and passive listening, what do we actually mean?
But what about active listeners?
If I'm an active listener, what do I do?
So basically, I listen to a podcast while driving, right?
It's my daily routine.
But if I'm an active listener, what do I do?
Okay, so basically, as an active listener, to qualify as an active listener, you just, in my opinion, need to just do anything above and beyond just listening and following it.
So that could even include, as a bare minimum, just making a conscious note of of certain bits of language as you hear it right.
Just a little, just noticing, which is actually a small step that can make a huge difference.
Oh, I quite like that phrase.
Did you like that?
Sounds like a good advertising slogan.
A small step can make a huge difference.
Anyway.
So just noticing, trying to be engaged not only with what's being said but how it's being said, at a bare minimum.
Make your brain work while listening.
Yes.
Yeah, that's right.
Try, if possible, to make your brain work.
I know it's difficult.
So, as well as all of the advantages, the you know, the language acquisition and the familiarity that you get from just regularly listening, a lot that it you know.
All that stuff you know language acquisition theory and Stephen Krashen and you know all that sort of thing.
Using an active approach is basically where you make choices to do, yeah, more than just listen.
So I've got some ideas here.
I've got some things that you can do to directly work on your speaking using a podcast as a resource.
So the podcast is not just something you listen to, but it's a tool that you start to use in different ways to work on your speaking, in this case.
OK, so the first thing is obviously, some of these things are quite common sense.
But still, first one is listen and repeat.
Now, I've also noted down the phrase shadowing here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what do we understand by shadowing?
What is it?
And do you think it works?
What do you reckon?
I reckon shadowing, which is basically you repeat everything the speaker says simultaneously, like you say it at the same time, it's by far the most effective way of boosting your English.
Because you know what I do?
I switch on your podcast.
I listen to your podcast and I shadow your podcast.
I've shadowed many of your episodes.
So have you really?
But how do you know what I'm going to say next?
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
You're like, I listen to you and I repeat everything you say, the way you say it.
And especially, you know if I run a webinar in English or a presentation in English, so I need this warm up, you know.
So, like 10 minutes before.
I go to Lux English Podcast app and then I switch it on and I start shadowing.
Yep.
This is my warm-up routine.
That is actually an excellent idea as well.
Warming up before you have to do your your whatever English language communication act.
If you warm up in advance, it's a very good idea.
So I was wondering about shadowing, but it's interesting that you give it such good feedback.
And obviously, you're an extremely successful language learner yourself.
Oh, thank you.
So, you know, well, yes.
But...
Thank you.
Well, thank you, Mr. Thompson, with these compliments.
You're spoiling us.
Shadowing has incredible results.
And it's tiring because you do make the efforts and you repeat everything after the speaker.
And five minutes later, basically, you're tired.
Yeah, well, good.
That's actually a very good sign.
The more tired you are, it means basically the more brain work you've had to do.
But yes, repeating... after someone is extremely good work because it's, yes, it's basically forcing you to do many things at the same time.
So obviously the motor skills of getting your mouth and throat tongue, lips and everything to make the right noises, but also processing language.
You're processing language at an extremely high rate, where you're basically understanding, computing and then reproducing what you're hearing which yeah, is like sort of fast-tracking language into your head.
Um, i was wondering about shadowing versus just listen and repeat.
So shadowing is exactly as you said as the person's talking, you're trying to repeat what they say as they go along, whereas listen and repeat is where you You pause the podcast after a certain utterance and you try to repeat what you've heard and maybe even skip back and sort of go again and again.
I was wondering if that would be more useful, because it's a way of sort of stopping the flow and then repeating.
But I mean, you know, so I guess it's... whatever works for you.
Shadowing has been effective for you.
I've heard some people say that they think it's less effective and that stopping and then repeating is more effective.
But anyway, essentially it's about playing with repeating what you're hearing in one way or another.
I think that if you are at the very beginning of your English journey and you are at a lower level, Like listen stop, repeat after the speaker.
But when you just like upper intermediate or you have the confidence, you can just like play it and repeat after the speaker, which is also great for your pronunciation, for this you know intonation patterns, pauses.
When you make a pause, you know like maintaining the flow.
Right right, right.
What else do i have?
I've got uh transcribing, so that's making transcripts of the whole episode.
No, not the whole episode.
No way, it's too long, especially if it's my episodes.
No, you can just transcribe bits.
So it could be... I mean, it doesn't even have to be a podcast.
It could be anything, really.
But you just pick a bit that maybe you like or you find interesting and you try and write it down word for word.
Probably about two minutes worth is enough.
Just write it down word for word.
Now, what you really need to make this work is you need to get the answers.
So you need to be doing maybe something that's already got a transcription.
So it could be the first five minutes of one of my episodes, or it could be episodes of a TV show where you have the subtitles, or any audio with a transcript.
You try to transcribe it and then you check to see what you've heard.
And then also you can turn it up a bit more by doing a bit of And speaking while you're doing your transcribing too.
So you're kind of combining a bit of writing listening, vocab grammar with some pronunciation and speaking in there too.
I've got just this kind of formula, listen, repeat, record, compare.
Okay, listen, repeat, record, compare.
So that's where you just listen to a little section of audio, you repeat it, then you record yourself saying it and then you compare your recording with the original and you kind of reflect on how you produce the English compared to, for example, how I do Wow.
So listen repeat record, compare.
What do you think about that as a language, as an English learner yourself?
This is super active.
Yeah, I think it does work.
Yeah, like transcribing the episodes, like recording, but recording what?
Recording yourself um, saying what i've said on a podcast, so if it's maybe a paragraph and you've done some listen and repeat with that paragraph, you then record yourself saying the paragraph, or maybe the the opening minutes of one of my episodes, trying to copy my intonation and all that stuff, And then you compare that recording that you've made of your voice with the original one.
And you try to notice any things.
I mean, that can be a bit tough because we don't like to hear our own voices usually.
So that can be a bit tough, but I think it's worth doing it.
I wonder why Maria, it is that, although these sort of techniques exist and they're known and people share them and stuff, why doesn't absolutely everybody do this?
Because people are lazy.
It's okay that we're lazy and we just enjoy driving our car, listening to a podcast, do nothing and just hoping for this magic to happen.
Like you know, I get up and I'm an advanced learner of English, you know because, like this is super.
This is how you go from a passive listener to an active listener.
You know listen repeat record, compare.
But this is your work.
Like you are putting the effort.
And unfortunately, not all people are hardworking and have the time, for example.
Yeah.
Some of the very successful language learners I know tend to be very sort of obsessive, compulsive about it.
They're obsessed with it.
They just can't stop working.
They're getting up at the crack of dawn in order to start working on their language learning routines and they just think about language learning constantly, and they're very competitive.
But not all of us are like that.
Some of us are just more like oh, i think i'll just stick on a podcast while i'm making some toast.
Yeah, it's like that's my ambition for the next five minutes eat bread and not be bored.
But again, why not?
This is their way.
This is somebody else's way.
Why not?
But we know that the things we're talking about do work if you put yourself into them.
I've got other things as well.
So a podcast could just kind of inspire you to talk, to produce English yourself.
I've talked in the past about...
The importance of writing English regularly, maybe even every day, and in the form of a diary, just so that you're putting English down.
You're expressing yourself in English on paper, finding a voice.
But similarly, you could try to do the same thing with speaking.
It's just socially a bit more weird to essentially do is to speak out loud to yourself.
Writing a diary fine, so society says that's fine.
But speaking aloud on your own is considered to be a bit weird.
So there's a social block for why people might not do that.
But talking to yourself can actually be quite useful.
Absolutely yeah, I totally agree with you.
You should speak to yourself out loud and also it could be useful to read the transcripts out loud.
Yes.
Reading out loud.
Yeah.
Transcripts, right?
Transcripts.
Because when you're reading a transcript, you have to be like hello, you're listening to Luke's English podcast today.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And otherwise you'd be like, hello, today you're listening to that.
You have to make it sound like me.
What else did I write down here?
So talking to yourself, you could do your own podcast.
You can imagine that you've got your own podcast in English and you just do it.
You don't even have to record it.
You just pretend in the shower or something like that.
Then I've got you know just the usual things about vocab, like noting down vocab and example sentences, testing yourself, repeating the examples, doing it regularly.
Or alternatively, you could just sign up to Luke's English Podcast Premium, where I do most of that for you, of course.
Yeah.
Little plug there for my premium service.
Yeah.
I'm your premium subscriber.
Are you a premium Lepster?
Absolutely.
I'm a premium Lepster.
That's brilliant.
Yay, nice one.
I've just recorded a premium episode today.
It'll be published later.
So, what else?
What about vocabulary?
Do you think it's a good idea to choose my favorite words from the podcast, the words that I want to remember first, that I can learn and use in my everyday life?
Or should I learn all the words?
No, you can't learn them all.
There's too many.
Don't try to eat an elephant.
How do you eat an elephant?
You eat it one spoon at a time.
So you can't eat the entire thing in one go.
Don't try to be a completist.
It's difficult because some of us just are sort of feel like we're designed that way to just cover absolutely every single angle.
It's like when i play a computer game.
Right, when i play a computer game, i go into the level and i just explore every single corner of that level to make sure i haven't missed any secret little things.
Similarly, when people are learning a language, they come across a text or something and they feel like they've got to understand every single word, one by one.
They've got to cover 360 degrees of it.
Cover it all before they move on, just in case they've missed something.
But no, you don't have to do it like that.
You should do it in a more natural, organic way.
Like you said, pick out your favourite words, or at least words that you feel like somehow are important to you, know what's being said or whatever, and just like, or words that you notice coming up again and again, or words that seem to elicit a certain reaction, or just generally uh, just try to notice.
It's hard to notice words that you don't use because you don't hear them.
So you've got to try to push yourself to actually try to identify what these other sounds are.
That's going on, and investigating them.
You've got to be like a text detective.
If you discover something new, you've got to hunt it down.
You've got to try and Google it.
How do they spell that?
And you've got to try and check various ways of spelling it until you finally find the word and hunt it.
You've got it.
Bang.
You move on.
So...
Yes, I've got other ideas.
Just recording yourself talking, not just repeating, but making up your own responses to podcast episodes.
And yeah, like you said, reading out transcripts out loud too.
Or often I have notes for my episodes.
You could just go through the notes and just...
Use my notes as the basis for your own version of the episode I did.
You know?
And then you could compare that to the original recording.
There's lots of stuff that you can do.
But at the bare minimum...
It's just really trying to notice language as you're listening, trying to really engage with what you're listening to.
And thirdly, repeating what you're hearing as well and trying to push yourself there.
At the minimum, that's probably what you should be doing.
And that's probably a very good idea.
Yes, perfect.
Yeah, like a perfect recipe.
Yay.
I hope so.
If it becomes your habit, if you kind of, if you get used to it, you kind of do it like on a daily basis.
And yeah, you'll just see how advanced you're becoming.
Yeah.
So what's your story then?
Like, let's say 10 years ago, what was your English like?
Oh, 10 years.
Oh, where was I 10 years ago?
No, my English was okay.
Lost in the wilderness until you discovered my podcast.
Yeah, because I've been teaching English for, gosh, I don't even remember how long.
But still, I feel that I need to improve certain things.
I need to work on my English.
I need to listen to something every day.
And then I found your podcast and I really enjoyed like the topics.
I enjoyed the format.
I enjoy how you say certain things with your not posh, but British accent.
Yes.
Do you enjoy my Russian accent?
Yes.
Yeah, but your accent's not especially strong.
No?
No, not really.
Some of our listeners, actually, one listener made a comment, oh, horrible Russian accent.
And then I wrote to Rory, you know, Rory, stop using horrible Russian accent.
Rory is from Scotland.
I think those sorts of attitudes are pretty, well, I don't agree with that kind of thing.
I mean, some people are very sensitive and intolerant to different accents and people seem to be very easily triggered by accents.
I'm not in that category.
For me, I like accents.
I like the variety of accents and I like the fact I would promote the fact that in English, accent variety is definitely a strength and it's also an advantage for learners of English, because you realise that Ultimately, you don't need to learn to speak exactly like me, for example, that there's no hierarchy here.
You just have to try and get into the club.
OK, so it's not like you've got to get up to the top table.
You just get into the club and everyone's in and having a party.
And the club is basically all these different versions of English.
So there's like, even in England you've got people who speak like me, people who speak with different regional accents, regional accents from other countries.
And if we all understand each other, then that's great.
It's just variety. and interesting different sounds, but we all understand each other.
And within what's considered to be the native English speaker world.
In that world of speakers of English as a first language, there's a massive variety of accents.
Even just...
You know, in some very small areas of the UK, there's a huge variety of accents.
So variety in accents is not a problem.
And it's part of who you are.
And as long as it doesn't stop... people understanding you, that's the main thing.
So if you sound a bit Russian, or if you sound a bit French, or if you sound a bit Japanese or whatever, that's alright.
You should be proud of it.
I sound a bit English.
A bit, yes.
Yeah, I mean, compared to an American or Canadian or Irish person or Australian or something.
I sound English to them and that's because I am.
So if you're Russian and you sound Russian, that's all right.
It would be weird if you were Russian and you sounded English unless, of course, you wanted to be a spy.
In which case, you know well, you'd need to take my special English for Spies course to prepare you for that.
Yeah, we need to create a special podcast.
I'm joking, of course, everybody.
Is there an accent that you personally, you don't understand?
An accent that I don't understand?
No, not really.
I've been asked that question before, but it's not an accent I don't understand, but an individual.
So it's very rare that I speak to people in English and don't understand them.
But there was a fisherman off the south coast of Ireland that I met once.
He took my brother and my dad and me on a trip on a little boat to an island and we couldn't understand a thing he said.
He was speaking English, but we couldn't understand any of it.
So you see, dear listener, even native English speakers can't understand each other sometimes.
Sometimes.
It's not very often.
But, I mean, it depends.
I mean, I think that I just happen to, you know, really be paying attention to all the different versions of English and I love to try and copy them and stuff.
But whereas many other people are less familiar.
And so, for example, American TV audiences are often not prepared to hear accents from Ireland or the UK.
You know, Colin Farrell, the actor.
He's Irish, actually.
And he was interviewed on American TV once and they had to subtitle him because they couldn't understand what he was saying, even though he was speaking English.
So you know, for the Americans, they can't understand some accents just because they don't get exposed to them very much.
But no, I don't find there are any accents that I can't understand, except very sort of extremely rural places, like some Scottish farmer in the Highlands or something like that maybe.
But otherwise, no, I'm OK.
What about you?
Do you find certain accents tricky?
What about Rory?
Do you actually understand Rory?
I understand Rory, yes, but I've been to Ireland and I understand what you mean.
It was Dublin and we went on this ghost tour and the guide would tell us these interesting stories about ghosts.
I had no idea what he was saying.
He was Irish, yeah, seriously.
I wanted to understand and then like, no, I lost it.
If you're not familiar with the different accents yeah, you will be definitely shocked and caught out.
Like, yeah, I can imagine Irish or Northern Irish.
It can be very difficult, yeah.
Welsh.
Yeah, that's why Welsh yeah, you've got to try and hear all the different accents as much as possible.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
I think we should kind of wrap up.
Thanks very much for inviting me.
It's been interesting to discuss this.
Yeah, thank you so much.
So we've discussed useful, like effective tips, like listen, repeat and shadowing, right?
So we've discussed that trend.
What did we discuss?
Transcripts.
We've discussed transcripts and your super formula listen repeat record, compare and some other useful tips.
So, dear listener, you can just listen to us again talking through different life hacks and strategies and then choose one two, three or four which is good for you.
Yeah, i would say so.
Noticing uh repeating, transcribing yeah, give it a try, just try some of these things, see if, see if they work for you.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
Hello, listeners.
It's very nice to talk to you.
And Maria and guys, you know, you're doing a great job.
Good luck with the podcast.
Good luck with your English, everyone.
I hope you absolutely smash the IELTS test.
You'll go in.
The next time you do it, you'll go in and you'll come out of the test and other people will be going in and you'll just say to them no need to go in.
I destroyed it.
The IELTS doesn't exist anymore.
I actually smashed it.
Woohoo!
Thank you.
