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Hello listeners, this is episode number 853 and I just wanted to say a couple of things pre-jingle here.
First of all, it was very nice to read comments in response to the previous episode of this podcast, which was all about how it feels to be blind and how we talk about disability in English.
It was very nice to read lots and lots of comments from people, including comments from other blind people or partially sighted people who wrote about their experiences in the comments section, which was really cool.
It was really good to get those responses, and I'm glad that people enjoyed the episode.
It was really sort of an interesting one for me to make as well to explore that particular subject on the podcast.
Now, premium subscribers, have you noticed I published...
The first three parts of a new premium series, that's P54, which is called Being a Good Listener.
I've published the first three parts of that series.
So if you are a premium subscriber, you should see them in your episode list.
P54, parts one, two and three.
The series is called How to Be a Good Listener.
Basically, what I do in this premium series is first of all go through an article which is all about how to be an interesting person and how that relates to being a good listener and being a good communicator.
Now, normally in premium episodes, I focus on teaching vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation, right?
The sort of systems... of English.
But being good at English is more than just using the right word at the right time in the right form, clearly pronounced.
It's more than the mechanics of it.
There's also a lot of other stuff, a lot of psychology, and a lot of mindset.
And Stuff that goes into what makes you a good communicator, right?
Communicative competence.
And it relates to your attitude, and it relates to things like self-awareness and body language and all sorts of other things as well.
And that's what I'm delving into in P54.
A lot of psychology self-awareness, emotional intelligence and other considerations that we really should think about when becoming a good communicator.
In this case, the focus being on being a good listener.
What makes you one of those people that other people feel comfortable around, that other people feel that they want to talk to and that you are easy to talk to.
Okay, how can you be one of those people?
What are the important foundations to have in place to be a good communicator?
This is the sort of stuff I'm exploring in Premium Series 54.
There is vocabulary as well, and I go through lots of Nice bits of vocab that come out of the article that we read.
There's pronunciation practice as well, using your voice with stress rhythm, intonation and the rest of it.
So that's all in premium series 54 and premium subscribers.
You can see those episodes there in your list.
If you're not a premium subscriber and you want to get those episodes, it's very simple.
You just sign up, you add the episodes to your favourite podcast app and then you can listen to them.
There are PDF links, so there are PDFs with every episode, and also video versions too.
To get all that stuff, just go to teacherluke.co.uk slash premium.
Okay?
Alright.
That's enough from this preamble.
Let's get into the episode properly, and here is the jingle.
You're listening to Luke's English Podcast.
Hello listeners, welcome to this new episode.
How are you doing?
I hope you're doing fine.
I've literally just come into my pod room and just sat down.
Haven't even had time to make myself a cup of tea, just because it's just one of those mornings where I've been rushing around doing this and that.
And so time is in short supply this morning.
So anyway, I've just sat down and now I'm going to record a quick introduction to to the episode that you're going to listen to.
So this is going to be one of those episodes where I chat to someone I've never actually met before.
And I'm actually recording this introduction before the conversation.
So I'm about to speak to my guest in just a few minutes, actually.
That's why I'm in a bit of a rush.
I want to record this introduction before the conversation.
I and then record the introduction afterwards, but not this time.
I just decided I wanted to do it in kind of chronological order this time.
So in a moment, I'm going to talk to Rhiannon Carter, who is an English teacher from the UK.
She was a guest on Zdenek's podcast, actually, and he recommended her as a guest.
So he recommended that I could talk to her and So let's meet Rhiannon.
I'm pretty much going to just go with the flow on this one.
I've decided that the idea for this episode is that you can just listen to me getting to know someone and letting the conversation take its course.
I've decided to let this one just sort of happen naturally.
And the fact that I don't know Rhiannon, we haven't met before.
Obviously, the aim, I suppose, of the conversation if conversations do have aims, I suppose conversations Depends on the conversation, doesn't it?
Some conversations have a specific purpose.
But often...
You know, when we just meet someone and get to know them, the conversation can kind of go anywhere.
So I suppose really the purpose or aim of this conversation that you're going to listen to is, you know, it's a getting to know someone conversation.
Okay.
So...
Rather than you having to keep up with a conversation between two people who know each other really well already and have a lot of shared context and background together like, for example, if I have my brother on the podcast or one of my friends, this time you will be getting to know my guest pretty much at the same time as me.
Now, I do know some things about her.
She's an English teacher.
She's from the UK somewhere.
She has some opinions about how English should and shouldn't be taught.
She focuses quite a lot of attention on having the right mindset when learning English.
And she likes DIY.
That's do it yourself.
That means like making shelves and building things in your own home.
She likes DIY.
And that's pretty much it, actually.
OK, so join me now as I get to know Rhiannon.
Or is it Rhiannon?
I'm not sure.
We'll find out and we'll see where the conversation takes us.
OK, so let's go.
We're going.
We're started.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Hello.
Rhiannon.
Rhiannon or Rhiannon?
What's the right way to say your name?
It depends.
If you are my mother and angry, then it's Rhiannon.
But if you're just neutral, then it's Rhiannon.
Oh, your mother says Rhiannon.
Rhiannon.
With a stress.
She's Welsh?
She's very Welsh.
Yes.
She's very Welsh.
Yeah.
She's been living in England for like 40 years and she's still the Welshest person you'll ever meet.
Really?
Which part of Wales does she come from?
She comes from Merthyr Tydfil.
Do you know anything about it?
I don't, except that I know it's very Welsh.
It's very Welsh.
Anyone who does know anything about it always reacts with, oh.
Really?
Is it in North Wales?
No, it's in the Valleys.
Okay.
And it doesn't have the best reputation.
It's better now, but it used to be like lots of drugs, lots of violence, not many jobs.
And that's where my mum comes from.
So yet another sort of fairly poverty stricken hard town in England or in England.
In England and Wales.
Exactly.
In the UK.
Yeah.
We have a few of those places like that.
We do.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So you're, I mean, you know, you're English though, right?
You were born in England, were you?
I was born in England.
Yeah.
My dad's English.
I was...
It's funny that you bring this up so soon, because I was watching the rugby on the weekend, because it's the World Cup.
And I was watching Wales and Wales got kicked out.
And I was watching Ireland and Ireland got kicked out.
And I was watching England and England got kicked out.
Did England get kicked out?
No, England survived.
Oh, no, but I was supporting the other team.
That was what happened.
I was disappointed with the results.
I remember that much.
Yeah, France got kicked out, but England survived.
Much to everyone's disappointment, apparently.
Yeah.
Yeah, my partner is Scottish and we were watching it and we were just watching the England match.
And there's just something I've come around to England football teams.
But the England rugby team, I just they just fill me with like a rage that I was.
I was raised and I was raised to feel this way.
My mom has brought me up to hate the English rugby team.
And my partner feels the same from a Scottish perspective.
And we were just saying, like gosh, how unfortunate for English people to not have another identity to go with.
Because I have a very English accent.
People think I'm English.
I'm fine with being English.
I would probably say British.
But I can kind of hide behind Welsh.
And I can hide behind having lived in Scotland my whole adult life.
And my partner can obviously, she's not English at all.
So she can hide behind Scottish.
And we were like, how unfortunate.
Yeah.
But for these English supporters in the crowd, how unfortunate that they have to support England, that they have no other options.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, we can't like.
Yeah, we can't hide anywhere else or go into, you know, can't be like.
Yeah, actually I'm from.
I think my granddad is.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, yeah, that's right.
So what is it about when you see the England rugby team doing what they do?
What is it that fills you with so much contempt?
Can I say contempt?
Oh, contempt.
Yeah, perfect word.
It's the white.
Why are they wearing a white strip for a game in which you get down on the ground and in the mud?
To me it just seems arrogant and i've and i was speaking to someone about it a couple of weeks ago watching another match and they were like, oh no, i think it just looks so pristine, i think it looks really nice, i think it kind of you know, pops on the field and i was like well, that's a stupid opinion.
Yeah yeah yeah, it's true, it's kind of funny.
They look, they all go out and they're all sort of proud with their chests all puffed up in their lovely clean white clothes, and then they just roll around on the floor or get covered in mud.
So yeah, what was the thinking?
Who designed that they should?
But why doesn't?
Why is there no rugby team with a brown strip, maybe just blurring in, like blending in completely to the field?
Perhaps not.
That must be the answer.
Perhaps not.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
So you said you've lived in, so wait, your mum's Welsh, your dad's English.
Correct.
But you said you've lived in Scotland for most of your adult life, most of your life?
That's correct, yeah.
Is that where you are now?
Are you in Scotland now?
I'm in Edinburgh.
I am joining you from Edinburgh.
Very nice.
Okay.
How's Edinburgh this morning?
It is so grey.
Before getting on this call, I was trying to set up the light and there is no light.
I have every single light in my kitchen on at the moment and it is still really grey and dark because it is a very overcast day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, is that typical then?
Is that typical weather?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was really bright yesterday.
If we'd had this cool yesterday, I would be bathed in sunlight right now.
But no, it's pretty typical for this time of year to be very grey.
Okay.
So what brought you to Scotland then?
I mean, were you raised in England or raised in... I was raised in England.
I grew up in a town, a city called Exeter in the southwest.
And then at 18, I came to the University of Edinburgh.
And so I was here for four years, and then I did go to Spain for two years, where I started teaching English.
But when I came back to the UK, this was the city that I came back to.
And I've been here ever since.
I see.
Okay.
So university in Edinburgh, what did you do?
I studied theology.
Oh, wow.
Right?
Yeah.
Theology.
Theology, like the one about God.
Yeah.
How do you define theology?
The study of, I mean, the study of God, if you take it from its kind of Greek theosology.
Within a British context and I guess as well a North American context.
Theology without any specifics, you know, any nuances, is Christian theology.
And so a lot of it's looking at the sort of internal logic of that religion and that belief system, which as a non-Christian was quite fun.
It was...
Did you say logic?
Sorry.
Yeah.
The sort of like, you know, you have to obviously presume a certain amount of things.
You have to go in and presume that God exists, which I didn't believe.
But but I didn't mind putting that hat on.
It was just like a philosophy exercise.
Um, so you have to presume that God exists, although you don't have to presume in what way, that obviously there's lots of disagreement within within Christian Christianity and Christian theologians.
Um, And then you sort of work out okay.
Well, for example, like Christology would be the study of Christ.
And it's like okay well, in what way?
If we're claiming that Christ is both God and the Son of God, how does that work?
And theologians over the last 2,000 years have kind of come up with like... almost mathematical formulas but with words of sort of well he's he's like this and and if you say that he's not then actually you've committed this heresy and if you say this then you've committed that heresy and we have to toe this line it's really interesting yeah but much for me at least it was much more of just a thought exercise um for four years that i really enjoyed um rather than any kind of getting to a truth which some of the people on my course were trying to do Really, some people were religious.
Some people were believers, searching for a deeper sense of what God was.
And they came out of the four years with a better idea of that, did they?
Did they feel closer to God sort of thing at the end?
I think it sort of depended on the type of belief that they had.
There were a good number of people on our program who were from more of an evangelical bent.
And those people, generally speaking, were quite challenged throughout the course because a lot of our lecturers and professors did have a personal belief that they were academics at heart.
They were challenging things.
They were really rigorous.
And that doesn't necessarily match with an evangelical approach.
It certainly wasn't coming at it from a religious perspective.
It was coming at it from an academic perspective.
And then there were people like me who went in atheist, had a little dabble, where I was like, wait a minute, this is quite interesting.
So there was about a 18 month period where I went to church sort of semi-regularly here in the city and then sort of lost it afterwards.
I was like oh, that was fun, but it turns out it wasn't actually real for me.
Anyway, that experience wasn't real for me.
Yeah okay, so what?
What would a degree in a four-year degree, a bachelor's degree?
Uh, it was an MA, but the Scottish one.
So an undergraduate undergraduate master's, Okay.
What would that lead you to do then?
What was your decision-making process?
Why did you choose to do theology at AMA level?
Yeah.
I think I saw it completely on a line with a degree like history, philosophy, English literature.
The sort of degree where And I think this is a difference that the UK has versus perhaps a lot of European countries that I'm familiar with where a degree is kind of proof that you've been thinking to a certain level and therefore is kind of I don't know, maybe I'm not expressing it right, but no, I know, but you can, you can kind of do anything.
So like, if I think about, like my core friendship group from that degree course, we've got two lawyers, we've got a consultant, we've got someone who went back to train as a nurse, we've got someone who is a specialist in like, wine um so, she does something with wine?
Um yeah, Drinks it.
It drinks it copiously by the looks of things.
We've got teachers.
We've got someone who works for the civil service.
Like it's just a degree that then sort of gets you into other stuff.
I do have a couple of friends who are in ministry.
So they took it that in that direction.
In ministry.
In ministry.
So a really good friend of mine is a minister in the Church of Scotland um, and has his little parish up north and lives this like weird little kind of itv sunday drama existence of like bake sales and internal you know factions between the old lady who doesn't want this to happen and the old lady who does want this to happen.
It's really fun.
And lots of tea and cake.
So much tea and cake, amazing.
And does he have a?
Does he?
He or she does?
Uh he, does he have a bicycle?
He doesn't, but that's because he lives so close to the church.
It's like opposite the church.
It's just so cute.
The whole thing is very, very picturesque.
Right.
So I guess yeah, what you were saying there is that you decided that yeah, a degree in theology is a degree you know and it means that you've gone through like four years of academia and emerged on the other side.
And you sort of yeah, had that rigorous academic experience there which is first of all sort of nourishing, just intellectually and as a person, but also for potential employers.
It means that you've got a certain level of like you know determination and you can complete different, you can work.
You could do research.
You could read.
You could write.
You can finish something to completion.
You've been through an academic process.
To an extent, it doesn't matter exactly what the subject was.
It's more the act of doing it and the process of doing it that counts.
What did you actually do then?
You went to university at 18.
You left at 22.
Check out the maths.
What did you do then when you were 22 and you left university?
Did you decide, right, I know exactly what I'm going to do and now I'm going to do it?
What happened?
Oh my gosh, no, not at all.
In retrospect it looks like I had a plan because I started teaching English and lo and behold, 10 years later here I am still within that field.
Um, but at the time it was a, I don't know what I want to do.
Maybe I'll go and get myself to spend some time in Spain.
I'd studied Spanish in school and I really wanted to keep that up.
Um, and yeah, So I ran off to Spain.
Was that an immediate thing?
Because you got your degree results in like August of that year.
Yeah, the July.
And how long did it take you to sort of get yourself off to Spain?
So the previous summer, so the summer before my final year, I had worked in a summer school in Belgium.
And I went back after I graduated to do that again.
So it was about seven or eight weeks in a boarding school in the middle of the Ardennes forest.
Blissful in many ways.
Absolutely terrible from an English teaching perspective.
The standard was so low.
Wait.
So, all right.
This is your summer job near the end of your degree.
Yes.
And you spent the summer at this school, this boarding school in the Arden Forest in Belgium.
Yes.
Working as an English teacher with young learners?
Yeah, teenagers.
Teenagers.
And so the blissful part was what?
The environment?
The Ardennes Forest.
Yeah, exactly.
And some of my colleagues and we went out for walks, like the nearest...
And none of us had a car.
One or two of us had a car.
So it was walking everywhere.
And there was this like path through the forest that would take you to like the nearest town with a shop which was about a 50 minute walk away.
So you know, if you wanted a pizza or you wanted to go and get a beer, we would have to all walk to this little town.
And it was gorgeous and there were sunsets and it was lovely.
And I remember one day a friend of mine who was working there as well.
We woke up at six o'clock in the morning.
It was a Sunday and we met on the fire escape and we went out for this walk that lasted like six hours and we saw red squirrels and it was just really, really beautiful.
So that side of things was absolutely blissful.
The teaching itself was, you know, standard standard summer school fair.
Can you give me a flavor of what?
What you said it was not good right um, what was it that was not good about it?
Can you give me an example?
I mean, none of us were trained.
So the the advert, the job advert, explicitly looked for people who were studying at university, people with no teaching experience.
The only people with teaching experience were people who had taught there the previous summer, for example.
They had their own methodology.
Yeah. which was like split into like five minute sections.
So in your hour class, the first five minutes you like revive, I can't even remember.
I did this for three summers and it never stuck cause it never made any sense.
Um, but like you know, the first five minutes you have to do this, and then the next five minutes you have to do that.
And then maybe there'll be like a 15 minute section in the middle where you kind of got into something and it there were lots of um, I wonder.
I'd be interested to know sort of how it grew out.
Like, I think there was an influence with like the audio lingual method.
Um, but that was sort of at their adult school.
We had a sort of watered down version of what was already probably slightly problematic, and it just, Oh God, it was terrible.
It was so bad.
I imagine the five minute thing as well is the logic there is.
Well, they're teenagers, so you've got to move on to something different every five minutes, otherwise they will just explode or something.
I think so.
I think that was the risk.
Yeah.
Actual teenage explosion.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So you'd had some experience of teaching at summer schools.
So then at the end of university, yeah, you finished, you got your result.
What did you get?
2-1?
Got 2-1.
First?
Got 2-1.
Yeah.
Decent.
Yeah.
I was a bit disappointed.
I was a bit disappointed.
My dissertation had two markers and I got a 58 and a 78.
The two markers... Wait a minute.
What?
Oh, two markers, two people marking your dissertation.
Yeah.
And one of them gave me a 58, which is a 2-2.
I mean, it's not terrible, but it's not what I was hoping for.
And the other person gave me a 78, which is very firmly into the range of a first.
Wow.
Right?
Totally different.
Yes.
And to this day, I don't know how they made that decision.
But I got the average of a 68.
And that was the same as I got overall, which was fine, but a bit disappointing.
So two points below a first, isn't it?
Yeah.
Above 70 is the territory of a first, I understand.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
Did that sting?
Did that hurt then?
It did sting, especially because a lot of my friends got firsts.
And I was like, oh, I'm the stupid one.
As good as character building.
Character building, sure.
Okay, so after the devastation of not getting a first.
The heartbreak, yeah.
The heartbreak.
Yeah.
So you immediately thought, right, Spain.
I'm going to just escape to Spain.
Yeah.
What was it you were thinking?
Sunshine?
Is that what you were looking for after four years in Edinburgh?
You're like, I think it's time.
I think it's time.
Let's see if I can generate a tan from this skin.
After two years, I could not.
Yeah.
I was not made for the Spanish sunshine.
It turned out that Edinburgh was where I was supposed to be after all, but it took me two years to work that out.
Um, but no, I went to Seville and I just wanted to live in Spain and eat tapas and speak a bit of Spanish and teach some English, and I think I ticked those boxes.
I did that yeah, and you learned the Spanish language, you mastered it.
Yeah, I know, but I've never been, I've never been a perfectionist.
I've always.
I've never well, or perhaps if I have had the the kind of little perfectionist sort of you know, like a little bit of that.
I've never had the follow through.
So I've had to learn to like let go of any perfectionist tendencies.
And so I think, to sort of master a language, to like get really, really accurate at it, you really have to care.
And I've never cared.
I'm just like, you understand me.
I understand you.
I had a girlfriend for a while who was Spanish and she was quite.
I mean, our communication was absolutely fine, but she was quite rude about my Spanish.
She would correct me.
She would kind of say like, oh, you still sound like this.
She was lovely.
We didn't last.
But I just I couldn't generate caring.
I was like, did you understand what I said?
Right.
Well, then let's move on.
I couldn't I couldn't care that I used the wrong form of the verb or the wrong preposition.
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
The drive, the motivation that's required to really push a language all the way through to the high level of fluency and accuracy.
Yeah, it requires a lot of motivation and push and so on.
Yeah, okay.
So, all right, after Spain, came back, back to Edinburgh.
Like, right, I want it to be colder, please, and less sunshine.
I want larger portions of food, not just like little portions on small plates.
I want one big plate.
And if it could be deep fried, that would be great.
Yeah, really?
Deep fried.
Yeah, of course, because in Scotland, yeah, deep fried food.
Is that real?
Deep fried food?
Like deep fried Mars bars?
Yeah, it's delicious.
It's real.
It's amazing.
I mean, I wouldn't eat a whole one, but I've shared it with like two or three people.
And that's absolutely amazing.
It's from a town called Stonehaven, which is where my girlfriend's from.
So yeah, deep fried Mars bar, delicious.
So how often would you have a deep fried Mars bar?
How often does the average Scottish person eat a Stonehaven, if that's the word?
How often does a resident of Stonehaven eat a deep fried Mars bar?
Probably like once every five years.
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Yeah, it's not like a daily thing or anything.
Because that's the thing that if people learn that the deep fried Mars bar is real and that they're bought and sold in certain parts of the country, that people will then assume that it's like a sort of daily thing.
And I wouldn't want to spread misinformation about uh, you know, deep fried mars bars and and spread uh stereotypes.
So it's more of a like a yeah, once in once every five years yeah, you get really drunk and you're like, i really want a deep fried mars bar, and that's how it works.
But i think, even though the individual scots or tourists are probably not doing these things very often, you go into any chippy, like any fish and chip shop, and you've got your kind of battered haddock or your battered hot uh, cod.
You've got i'm just gonna adjust because i can't hear myself speak there.
We go, that's so much.
Go for it.
Um, so you've got your battered cod, you've got your battered haddock.
You've maybe got like a fried sausage, which is quite common in England as well.
Like, you know, your jumbo sausage, deep fried.
But then you'll also get a deep fried slice of pizza or you'll get a deep fried burger.
And it's all lined up behind the glass when you walk in.
And it is like, I mean, they do commit to it.
And I presume they wouldn't commit to that if...
People weren't buying it, right?
So presumably people do go in and have a deep fried or like a lawn sausage, which is the sausage meat, but in a square.
Oh, yeah.
Have you come across that?
And that's deep fried.
No, I haven't seen that.
It doesn't have to be deep fried.
It has to be fried.
It doesn't have to be deep fried.
But it can be battered and deep fried as well.
I wonder if my listeners are understanding well A, anything we're saying and B, this stuff about deep fried mars bars.
So, deep fried listeners i guess you know what a lot of people are listening to this going yeah, we've got it luke.
Yeah, move on, move on.
Yeah maybe, but i'm like no no, this is the thing i'm going to explain.
English podcast.
We've got some vocabulary.
We must understand it.
This specific thing is what we have to explain.
So, deep fried.
So, yeah, this is how fish and chips is made.
Certainly the fish.
So if we just quickly explain fish and chips, you get a piece of fish, cod normally, or haddock.
It's kind of white fish, a big fillet of fish.
And it's covered in batter, which is made from flour and, is it eggs?
I think it's just water maybe.
Flour and water?
Flour and water.
I think sometimes beer.
And beer, yes.
Beer batter.
It's best when there's some beer in there.
And so this fillet of fish is rolled and covered in this batter.
It's a bit like tempura, right?
For those people who know what that is too.
I'm not going to now explain tempura.
So tempura is... I'll leave that to the Japanese podcasts.
But anyway, so the fish has been covered in this batter and then it's deep fried.
And it comes out and it's all golden.
It's all crunchy.
And then on the inside, there's like lovely cooked, a cooked fillet of fish on the inside.
And it's juicy and delicious and just wonderful.
And just in case that wasn't unhealthy enough, you have to eat it with a huge portion of large chunky chips with salt on them.
And those chips have been deep fried as well.
They have.
And salt and probably some vinegar malt vinegar to give that a little extra tang, and some and some ketchup or other sauces are available.
I'm unable to tell from your tone, luke.
Are you judging this?
Because I love it.
But I suppose what I'm doing is in describing it with that slightly ironic tone, I'm trying to incorporate the other perspectives on this.
Because some people will be listening to that, horrified at the idea and think it's unhealthy and disgusting.
It is.
Yeah, it is.
Well, it's not disgusting, but it depends.
It depends on your point of view.
But you know a lot of people out there.
It'll just confirm what they think about English food or British food being terrible and all that stuff.
And, you know, that sort of bores me a little bit, that attitude.
But, yeah, I'm not judging it, but I am trying to explain the concept of fish and chips.
You know, with the understanding that some people probably think it's not good.
So you know I'm just incorporating every All things in moderation, right?
Yeah, fish and chips are my birthday meal, especially if my birthday falls midweek, where we're not necessarily going to do anything.
To celebrate kind of majorly, my partner and i will walk down to new haven, which is a little part of edinburgh to the north, right on the coast, and there's this amazing fish and chip shop and every time we've been the queue is like at least 40, 50 minutes and you just stand outside and the sun's going down over the water and you've got your little seagulls but they're not too aggressive here, they're just kind of making a nice little background noise and you've got your boats and maybe the tide is in and they're all rocking, maybe the tide is out and they're all sat on the mud and it's just really nice.
It's lovely.
Yeah, that's wonderful.
Yeah, we don't eat fish and chips all the time, but you know you could do it once a week.
But even that seems to be quite a lot.
So every now and then, maybe on a Friday after work, you're just like let's have fish and chips and you go and get a takeaway, bring it home all wrapped in paper, open it out, sit in front of the TV yum yum, yum.
Brilliant.
Yeah, amazing.
Okay, so then at some point you thought, right, this is it, I'm going to be an English teacher.
Did you, or what?
Yeah, so I had...
When I was in Spain, the question was still looming over me.
Like, what am I going to do with my life?
I really enjoyed teaching English, but I was a little bit unlucky.
My job was fine, but the language school that I had just happened to find a job in and I wasn't applying for a September start where I might have had a few more options.
I was applying in November.
Lots of positions were already full.
The school I went to was, as I say, it was fine.
The teaching was fine.
This is where, sorry?
In Seville.
This is in Seville in Spain.
All right.
Yeah.
And, but it didn't have either a culture or individuals within that culture who were particularly excited about it.
There were two older people who had been teaching for 30 years.
But even they sort of seemed a little bit kind of maybe a bit sort of done with it.
They're like, I'm just going to do the same thing I did last year.
I'm going to do the same thing I did last year.
And then of the sort of younger people in maybe 20s and 30s, one was there because their partner was Spanish and they were like well, I need a way to work and live in Spain.
Another...
I think actually had exactly the same story.
It was two with Spanish partners.
The other one has actually gone on.
I think, like me, to kind of get a lot more excited about it later.
But at that time was sort of, I'm just living in Spain and I'm in my 20s and I'm having a good time.
And I never really got a sense for...
Like what English teaching could be as a career, as people who actually, you know, want to learn about it and get good at it.
But then, the summer before I decided to move back to the UK for good, I worked in a language school in Exeter.
So I was back living with my parents and working at a language school there.
And they were really fussy.
They had really strict kind of criteria.
You were supposed to be 25.
I was 24.
But you were supposed to be the youngest teachers were 25.
Because I think their assumption there was that we're not getting the kind of the gap year type teachers.
People who have a couple of years experience underneath them.
About 70 had either either a Delta or a master's in TESOL or at least like a PGCE or some kind of other teacher training certificate to a pretty high level.
And the DOS was doing her master's in TESOL at the time and was really interested in like staff room dynamics and how to bring the best out of your staff through the staff room.
DOS, everyone, by the way, DOS, that's Director of Studies.
It's like the sort of teaching manager.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So I just, I was surrounded by people who were really taking it seriously.
And I, for example, hadn't really had much experience at that point teaching pronunciations.
The IPA chart, for example, was like, oh my God, what is that?
And my assistant DOS, the ADOS, took me aside and was like, why don't we work on this this summer?
Like, I'll come and do some co-teaching with you.
So he came into my classroom and he led some classes and then sort of let me lead some classes, but he was still there.
He like gave me some tips on on how to teach.
And like it was just such a different environment of professionals.
I suddenly for the first time, even though I'd been teaching for almost three years at that point.
That was the first experience I had where I saw English language teaching as a professional job.
And that kind of sparked something.
And then a few years later, I did my Delta because I was like, yeah, no, I'm committed to this.
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How was it doing the Delta compared to the CELTA?
So, again, listeners, some people will know.
I've talked about it before.
CELTA, sort of the entry-level proper qualification that you take to become an English teacher.
Certificate in English language teaching to adults.
Other certificates are available, but CELTA is, like you know, the sort of, as I said, generally considered to be the sort of respected one, I suppose.
Yeah.
There's Trinity as well that offers a similar... Yeah, CERT, TESOL, yeah.
Yeah, but CELTA is a Cambridge one.
And then after that, when you're really serious about teaching and if you're not just on your gap year, as you said, and you want to do this properly and seriously, you do the DELTA, which is the diploma or, in fact, higher diploma in English language teaching to adults.
And it's much more challenging.
Much more challenging.
So...
Yeah, I mean, I found them both pretty hard because I did Zelta with zero experience of teaching.
I think that makes a big difference.
I did Delta about, was it five years later, which is like just a whole other big step up.
But so how was it for you?
Did you find Delta to be harder than Zelta?
Yeah, I did.
Because I'd already, by the time I did my CELTA, I already had two summers at a summer camp under my belt.
And even though I didn't have that much, I didn't have the knowledge that necessarily that they were testing me on or like the lesson planning, which is a big part of the CELTA.
I did have experience in a classroom.
So that didn't scare me.
Kind of standing up in front of people, sort of. um generally structuring a lesson delivering instructions that's that sort of thing didn't really phase me there were still things to learn but I wasn't starting from zero um So I didn't really... I found the CELTA very intense.
It's four weeks.
You know you are doing a lot of work, like every night when you've left the school that you're practicing in.
You know you're going home you're writing assignments, you're doing all of that.
I found it intense, but I didn't find it particularly hard.
I did very well in it.
That was sort of easy.
The DELTA was much, much harder, but the DELTA also was...
It was much more academic.
It wasn't as academic as perhaps if I'd done a master's in TESOL or something like that.
But you were still expected to read, you know the odd journal article.
You know kind of there were books involved, whereas the CELTA kind of hadn't really had that.
It was sort of just input from the tutors.
Yeah, because you have to do, as well as preparing lessons, which you get sort of observed teaching and then graded and stuff, you have to do these academic assignments about the language point that you're going to be teaching.
So, for example, if you've chosen to do a lesson about grammar and you're teaching sort of conditional structures to a group of intermediate students, you've got to write an entire essay about the grammar of conditionals and about all the possible problems that students can have with it and like go into quite a lot of depth, sort of into the linguistics of it.
Um, and then you've got to write a lesson plan, a very very, very detailed lesson plan, which is all completely every almost every second of the lesson has to be justified and explained in terms of the interactions and the your reasons for choosing that and the materials you're using and all that stuff.
And then you have to actually teach the lesson and it's horrible because there's someone staring at you tapping away on a laptop while you're there, sort of sweating in front of the students, desperately trying to make this lesson plan that you spent weeks or a week writing to actually make it work in a classroom with some humans.
And as well as that you've got to do all your other assignments about different teaching methodologies.
And then there's an extended assignment where you dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.
It's like, oh, my goodness.
It's really, really tough.
Yeah.
So it's that's pretty hard work.
Yeah.
Did you do yours like over a three month period or like while working part time?
I worked part-time and did it at the same time.
So I can't remember how long mine was, but I started in the dead of winter.
I remember this.
It's sort of the legend of my delta.
I did it a long time ago.
So I did mine in 2006.
And so it's sort of in my memory.
I don't really, you know, I just remember it with things like the weather at the time and sort of what the last day was like and stuff.
I just remember the very beginning.
It was the dead of winter.
I remember leaving the very first session and it was dark and cold.
And I kind of came home with my coat and a bag full of notes.
Questioning your life decisions.
Just like, oh, my God, what am I doing?
You know, but I put it off for a while.
Some of my friends had done the Delta and they'd reported back about how horrible and difficult it was and they'd scared me.
And I'd be like, no, I'm not ready.
I'm not ready.
And then, you know, eventually I decided I'd do it.
So I had sort of mentally prepared myself.
And and cleared a lot of space in my life.
You know, I was in a band at the time and I'd actually I left the band.
I mean, it was time to leave the band anyway.
It wasn't working.
But, you know, I'd sort of cleared space in my life.
And I just remember walking home from the first session where they had really instilled upon us the importance of focusing and working hard, and it's like this is, you know, you can't do anything else for the next few months, it's just this.
And so I just remember walking home on my own.
It was dark and cold and just sort of like okay, this is it, I'm gonna.
I'm gonna hunker down for the next few months and just focus on this and then at the other end, after a lot of horrible difficult, stressful experiences and some failures and some successes and stuff coming out at the other end, the day of the final exam and we finished the exam, all the other you know candidates, Mm-hmm.
We'd all kind of got to know each other and made friends with each other and built friendships and relationships and stuff.
And we all emerged from the exam and it was like I think it was the end of May or maybe it was June and it was a hot day and we were in London and we went to the pub and we stayed there for the rest of the day.
And there's like photographs, you know, of us sort of like sitting around in various states with different you know, with like pint glasses around and stuff.
So, you know, Yeah.
Yeah.
It was it was a it was a real life experience, a real life event.
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah.
Definitely a big deal.
So did that did did did you learn a lot then doing the Delta?
Did it change you as a teacher?
Yeah, it did.
But in ways that I think looking back, I find really hard to identify.
Like I know that like so much changed, but I did mine slightly differently to yours.
I did mine over 18 months.
So I did module one, which took about three months, and then there's three months off, module two three months on three months off, and then module three three months on three months off, and and so I was really slowly internalizing all of this information.
It was very easy to kind of synthesize it with the work that I was doing, because I was teaching full-time and and so I couldn't.
And in May I'm teaching like this, but it was so long.
And obviously your teaching changes over 18 months.
Anyway, you know, you sort of you grow and you learn new things or you just get interested in a particular like style of teaching or a particular activity.
And then you sort of forget the ones you were using before.
Um, so it's really hard to identify and like put my finger on exactly what changed.
Um, But it did.
It was profound.
I think just the part in my identity as a teacher became a lot more solidified.
I felt like I knew what I was talking about.
I was an expert.
Still, you know, an expert only six years into her career.
But nonetheless, I had some sort of foundation for what I was doing.
Whereas I think even with the CELTA there was a sense that I was in a pretend industry doing a pretend job.
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
So do you have a sort of what do you like to do as a teacher?
What kind of teacher do you want to be?
Or what kind of teacher do you think of yourself as well?
I don't think of myself as a teacher anymore.
Um, about two years ago, i made the shift to becoming a language coach.
Um, i'm in the middle.
In the in the middle is entirely wrong.
I started two weeks ago.
I'm at the beginning of a certificate in coaching with the university of cambridge, so okay, so tell me, what's the difference then, between teaching and coaching?
Oh my gosh, you've just given me the title for my assignment this term.
So let me tell you in January.
No, I think for me, the big difference is that a core tenet of coaching is that it's non-directive.
So I'm not, I don't have the information.
I don't have the answer for my clients.
Um, which means that we, we can't really focus on, on language.
I don't want to focus on language.
Um, and we can't using the techniques that I use.
Instead, we're focusing a lot more on the emotional side of using another language, or living in another language or working in another language.
So with my clients.
They're all advanced or above and they will come to me usually with.
I've been to a few teachers.
They all tell me they can't help me.
Or I've done some courses, but it's all just like vocabulary and I.
Or I've tried preparing for the proficiency exam, but I passed that exam and I didn't really see a change in my life.
I'm still really nervous when I have to speak up in meetings or I'm still really anxious.
You know, every time I speak I'm just so aware that I have an accent and that narrative in my head is really really loud.
And so we work on that side of things, rather than how can we get you using them conditional more fluently or whatever?
So that's, that's what I do.
And it's what I've been doing for the past couple of years.
And, as I say, the certificate course I'm hoping will give me a couple more tools and also deepen my understanding of of why it is that the work I do works.
Cause I've seen the results, but I'm like, I think it might've been magic.
I just, we just raised the topic of anxiety and suddenly they felt less anxious.
So, you know, it's kind of going into that and I'm studying that a bit more.
But that thing that you said there, where you know learners or people are coming to you and saying that I still feel anxious and I still have these sort of intrusive thoughts about my English and stuff.
I'm sure that speaks to many of my listeners, actually.
I'm sure that many people sort of relate to that quite strongly.
So what would you tell one of my listeners then, who kind of pricked up their ears when they heard you say that?
That's me.
What can we tell our learners then in that situation?
I mean, difficult question, obviously, because I think so much of the work I do is listening.
And so it's letting people get to their own answers about what the problem is and how to move forward.
And so...
I guess the question is quite hard to answer without actually going.
Okay, let's bring on a listener.
And here we have, just here with me, here's Jean-Pierre.
Exactly, exactly.
But I think there are a couple of sort of features or common features that a lot of my clients bring to at least our initial sessions.
A lot of it is a really, really high level of perfectionism that sometimes comes out in other parts of their lives as well.
They will know that about themselves, but often seems to be really linked to language.
And I think it comes from the education system, right?
It comes from answers being right or wrong in your homework.
And it comes from you writing this beautiful story for your teacher about you know, your day out at the beach and the response being a red pen rather than what a wonderful story.
It sounds like you had a really good day.
I really felt, you know, I could feel the wind in my hair when I was reading it.
I think that...
That aspect of our education system just teaches people that English is something to be gotten right or gotten wrong.
And in reality, that doesn't really play much of a role when it comes to building relationships with other people through English or communicating an idea through English.
Yeah, to a certain extent, getting things right is helpful, but there's so many other things that come into it that I believe are more helpful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how do we define what makes language right or wrong or an act of communication right or wrong?
It's really surely it's a question of whether it does the thing that it was intended to do.
For example, if you tell someone a story and they feel the wind in their hair, then it was good.
It was right.
Exactly.
Did they laugh at the bit you wanted to be funny?
Great.
Well, good.
Yeah.
Yeah, even if maybe that verb in that conditional structure wasn't in the past form, even though you were talking about a hypothetical thing.
If everyone understood the story and felt something, then surely that's considered a success.
That's not to say that... we should just completely drop the idea of accuracy in grammar.
But, you know, we should maybe re-evaluate what successful communication really means.
It's not only or first and foremost accurate grammar.
It's about the impact and the consequence of the thing that you've said or written.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
That's very interesting.
Yeah.
It's interesting what you say about, like, it's not that we can drop it.
Because I think...
Like in my work, we do drop it.
I do not talk about language at all.
There is like the option I kind of say on my website, like it does include like an optional sort of language feedback sheet, and I might be taking notes.
But for about 90% of my clients, I make a decision very early on that that would not be beneficial.
I guess it depends.
It depends, doesn't it, on the person.
And you said that most of your clients are at a certain level already.
In some cases it might be necessary for people to work on their accuracy, because people are misunderstanding, or because their writing or their speaking is a little incoherent, because there isn't quite the level of control needed to be able to express the things they want to say.
Like, for example, for me in French.
I don't have that level of grammatical or linguistic control to be able to do, let's say, do stand-up in French.
I just don't have the.
The structures are not available to me and I can't manipulate the language and make A connect to B to connect to C to get my ideas out.
So I need to work on the structure.
I can't just be like given a pep talk and thrown out on stage and be expected to, like you know, get laughs because I don't have the grammar and the depth of vocabulary at my disposal.
But what I would need, I suppose, is the coaching to help me realise, to give me the confidence to actually start doing it, to start using the language, and not to to let it go, to let the rest of it go.
Like, after a certain amount of time, after a certain amount of work, you've put the work and the time in and then it's a question of like, letting it go.
It's like star wars you must, you know, you must.
What is it?
What's yo?
What does he?
What does yoda say?
You don't know, you've never watched star wars, maybe 20 years ago.
Well, i think yoda at one point says you must unlearn what you have learned.
He says in that voice, in that voice exactly wow, very deep.
Wow, star wars is so deep, isn't it?
It's not really, but it sounds like it sometimes.
But yeah, you must unlearn what you have learned, which is kind of true.
I think the stand-up example is interesting for two reasons.
I think one because, I mean, I don't know what your French is like and I don't speak French enough to be able to judge it.
But there is also a point in which you do have to start before you're ready, right?
You do have to start doing this down.
Even if it's like just to a pal in your living room, just to be like, I need to start practicing.
I need to start thinking about this rhythm of this performance, long before I'm actually ready to go out on stage with it.
So I think with a lot of my clients it's that idea of getting them ready to start before they're ready.
Feeling like that's a possibility.
Like, yeah, you're going to mess it up.
So what?
Do what you can do and see what happens.
And then I think the other side of it is that stand up is perhaps one of a very, very small number of contexts in which actually your language and the vocabulary choice and the timing and the intonation and the delivery really is core to what you do.
And there are potential, like I was speaking to a client recently who's head of communication for a company and she was like it's communication.
Like I have to be able to communicate.
I was like, no, but you're not the copywriter.
You're not the person who actually puts the words to the ideas.
You're the strategist, you're the networker, you're talking to shareholders like that.
The skills that you need?
Yeah, of course you need to be able to communicate effectively, but you know, we've been talking for 12 sessions.
I know you can do that.
I'm not worried about it, but you don't need to be perfect because but perhaps a copywriter.
That's really interesting, though.
I don't know the client, don't know the situation, but just what you just said is that she said I work in communication.
I have to be able to communicate.
That sort of gives you an insight into the kind of shame that she might feel because she works in the communication industry.
Yeah.
She feels like there is a certain standard that she has to have in her communication.
Even though, exactly as you say, she's not the copywriter.
She's not the one who's writing the advertising copy or the press release or whatever it is that's being written.
That is actually the end product of that communications company.
But yeah, it's interesting the way that these sort of criteria that we judge ourselves by can feed into that sense of shame.
Like for me, using myself as an example and my French, the fact that I'm an English teacher, the fact I'm a language teacher and I've got 20 years of experience of language teaching and I've got these qualifications and I have quite a lot of understanding of what it takes to learn a language and in fact I'm I'm someone who's always going on about learning a language and helping other people to do it and saying you know, these are things you could do.
And, you know, like a lot, like loads.
And so that also feeds into that sense of I'm a language teacher.
You know, I teach people English.
I should be able to speak French really well.
You know, so it's interesting that those those things, those are.
Those things shouldn't be part of my thinking process.
Those aren't things that are actually going to help me learn French.
Those are just things that sort of help to make me feel bad about my French.
They actually prevent me from learning French, weirdly enough.
Yeah.
I work a lot with English language teachers, non-native English language teachers.
And that is the thing.
It's like, well, of course, other people don't have to be perfect, but I'm an English teacher.
I have to be perfect.
There's a sort of an extra level of like forgiveness towards their students, flexibility towards other learners, other speakers.
But as soon as it's applied to them, they're like, no, no, no, no, no.
There is a condition to my experience that means I have to be perfect.
And yeah, it is.
It's a shame that they often bring to students their their what, our conversations, our coaching conversations.
They, they're really ashamed of not knowing all the words or all the idioms or, you know, occasionally making a grammar mistake and and what sort of?
To me, really cements how important the work I do is and why this aspect of English language learning, or language learning generally, is so important, is that it is not It's.
This doubt isn't only among, for example, the English teachers, who do actually still make quite a lot of mistakes.
It's also the English teachers or the English learners who are freaking amazing.
The people who like, come out with idioms where I'm like I'm just going to have to Google that because I've never heard that before.
You know, there are people who there are people who I've worked with who speak English more advanced and I use, you know, inverted commas there, because I have a lot of thoughts about what more advanced means.
But they use more advanced language more fluently than I do and I consider myself pretty articulate and they are still holding on to these like I'm not good enough.
Oh no, I don't know that language.
It means everything I do know is somehow invalid.
So I do think that I mean what I do is almost like a, like an emergency fix.
Like you've been through the education system, these are your scars.
Let's try and patch them up.
But I think that English language teaching generally and a change I would love to see over the coming kind of decades, would be a shift to taking that more into account from the beginning.
Helping learners understand that yeah, we're preparing for an exam, for example, and in the exam, this is the criteria that you need to hit.
But that isn't real life.
You don't need to worry about this stuff outside.
This is the context of this exam.
And just helping people understand that a little bit more.
I think that would do a world of good, in my humble opinion.
Yeah, the idea that the English training part you're doing things and you're trying to push your English to a level which actually in the real world you might not need to employ.
Similar to if you're doing sort of I don't know training in the gym, you're trying to get fit and someone's throwing a really heavy ball at you.
And you're trying to catch it and it's bumping up, bumping off your body a bit, and you're dealing with your, you know, developing your core muscles and stuff, because someone keeps throwing a heavy ball at you.
But no one's going to throw a big heavy ball at you.
You know you're not going to finish your gym session.
Go outside and then someone like oi and throw a huge, heavy ball at you.
Yeah.
Similarly, you're having to do these grammar exercises in your English lesson and you're trying to get them all right.
But no one's going to go out and test your grammar in the real world.
It's very interesting, the mindset whole idea.
Okay, very good.
And you, you, these days you have, I mean, you're on Instagram and I mean, you have a podcast, but it's, it's on pause or it's... I think it might be on permanent pause.
Really?
Permanent pause.
Yeah.
It was, yes, this is my podcast, Deep Talk.
And it's.
I mean, I think the philosophy isn't a million miles away from the philosophy of this podcast, right?
Like there that when you google english language podcast, obviously you come up first but then you get to you do yeah, which i?
I was uh researching for a podcast i'm about to.
I'm in the process of like designing with a with a friend um, and i was looking for podcast artwork and just kind of look at like what are the other examples, and then i saw you at like the top of all the lists.
I was like oh god, i'm gonna be a guest in a, Putting this podcast aside.
Most of the podcasts you see are like on grammar or on vocabulary, you know, like a 15 minute lesson or a 15 minute.
I don't know.
Maybe that's not your experience, but that seems to be what comes up in the list when you search like English learning or something.
Sure.
Yeah.
And I was interested in creating something different.
So it was called Deep Talk.
And each week I would have a guest a different guest come on to talk about something which they either had like professional experience of, or personal experience of, or had, you know, read significantly about um, and it was really interesting.
We talked about loads of stuff.
I'm really proud of the conversations that that we had.
There were 33 episodes before i decided i was trying to get to 35 because i thought there was a round number and i thought oh, what's the point?
I'm done Sure, sure.
But the episodes are all still there.
It's called Deep Talk.
People can go and check them out.
And Instagram.
Yeah, you just post sort of different thoughts and reflections on, you know, a lot of the things we've talked about.
People can check you out.
How do people find you generally online to check out some of your work and stuff?
Instagram's the big one.
So yeah, RhiannonELT.
I've got a new one, RhiannonELT.coaching.
And that's because my old Instagram was like crickets, so i was like this is boring, let's just get a new one, the crickets.
You have to explain that.
Oh yeah, crickets.
If you get crickets on something, it's just like silence, no response um, no engagement, and my just the sound of crickets in the background, which i wish it was a sound effect.
I can't do.
I wish i could do it, because that kind of The sound of just crickets on a summer's day.
Crickets are those little insects that are in the grass.
And I guess they're rubbing their legs together or something and they make that noise in the background.
So crickets essentially mean silence.
Just the sound of the insects.
So quiet that you can hear the crickets right right yeah, so I was just getting a little bit annoyed with Instagram.
I find I really struggle with um, the I guess I mean the marketing side of my business at all.
Um, but social media was driving me crazy for the past like eight months so I was like oh, just start a new one Rhiannon, I'm still doing the old one, but I'm kind of doing them both at the same time.
Um, but it was just to.
I have ADHD and I needed a dopamine hit, so I'm just gonna start a new Instagram, Sure.
Yeah.
Oh, Instagram.
I've got an Instagram account, but I've got one post on it from about four years ago.
I just never, ever use it.
And so every now and then people write to me.
It's like, why aren't you on Instagram?
Do Instagram.
I did have a look for you and I couldn't see you.
Yeah, no, I need to sort that out.
But there just aren't enough hours in the day, are there?
Oh my gosh, no.
Yeah, it's almost like a full-time job just dealing with Instagram.
It is, it can be.
And as a person who is promoting your services, i.e. your services are the job, the services are the bit I get paid for, you're up against full-time content creators.
Yeah, who create content, and that's what they do.
I'm like well, if i'm fighting against them, i'm just gonna lose.
I can't be bothered, i'll.
If i've got something to say, i'll say it.
But my strategy in the last few months has been that if i've got something to say, i'll say it, and if i've got anything to say, i'll post a picture of my breakfast and then we'll move on.
But some of my listeners might want to work with you, Rhiannon.
I hope they do.
Yeah.
What should they do if they want to?
Go to your website?
Yeah, my website.
So there you will get all the information about how to work with me one-to-one, which is, if you are an English language learner.
Probably the easiest way to do it.
If you're an English language teacher, I do have a group program that will be starting in January or February.
But the one to one.
You've got a couple of different options and all of that information is on is on my website.
So I'll send you the link, Luke, and you can you can share that with.
I'll put the link in the description, everybody.
OK, so you'll be able to check it out.
All right, cool.
Brilliant.
So Edinburgh then.
Yeah, back to Edinburgh.
Here you are.
You're back in your room in Edinburgh.
Is it still grey and overcast?
Of course it is.
It's ever so slightly brighter, but we're still looking at like bright clouds.
We're not looking at blue skies.
You know, here I am in Paris, you know, and it's exactly the same.
Just bright clouds.
Yeah.
So it's not that different, you know.
No.
What's the temperature like?
Have you guys had the, like, winter dip?
We've been freezing this week.
Oh, yeah.
Winter dip.
Winter dip.
The temperature has dipped and we've had to change coats.
So we've had a coat change.
Changed duvets yet?
Not changed duvets yet, but there has been a definite coat change.
Nice.
There has been one mention of heating.
Ooh.
Are you, like, resilient?
Are you, like, absolutely, we are not turning it on until November or December or...?
Yeah, we try and keep the heating until as late as possible.
Yeah.
But we'll see who crumbles first.
I'm sure it's going to be my wife.
Are you stronger?
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm English and I've also lived, you know, I'm from the Midlands in England, which is, you know, a few degrees north of Paris where my wife is from.
Yeah.
And so naturally, being a sort of you know, being a continental person, she is much more sensitive to the temperature.
Yeah.
And so she actually unbelievably, she has a hot water bottle even on a warm sunny day, which is just unthinkable to me.
I think she just likes the feeling of it on her back.
But yeah, she's definitely going to be the one switching the heating on first.
Whereas I'm like, no, we will soldier on.
Only when you can see your breath will we switch one heater on.
Just cups of tea.
Just have more cups of tea.
That's the solution to everything.
Yeah.
I mean, cups of tea and hot water bottles, they will get you far.
They will get you far.
We are renovating a flat, which I think you know, because you listened to my interview with Stenek.
And for two winters, we did not have any heating.
Oh, really?
Yeah, we had our radiators removed because we were going to be redoing all the floors.
But we took ages to redo all the floors.
And then we took ages to actually find radiators because we've gone for it.
You can just see it.
Like these beautiful black cast iron column radiators, which cost us like almost as much as the house cost.
And they are so heavy.
We had to pay like specialist movers to get like straps.
Four men lifted one radiator up the stairs.
They're so heavy.
Which so many considerations that you don't think about.
But because of that, we had two winters without radiators, without any heating at all in Edinburgh.
Our flat has double glazing, but that's it.
Like everything else.
I mean, there's terrible insulation.
The houses here.
We live like when it's hot, it gets really hot.
And when it's cold, it gets really cold.
And there isn't really a way of dealing with it.
So I feel grateful for even having the option of radiators, but we haven't put them on yet.
We haven't put them on.
How did you survive for two years in Edinburgh, in Scotland?
Just as a reminder to everyone.
Scotland.
Scotland, for goodness sake.
How did you survive without radiators?
So listeners, a bit of vocab, radiators.
I think you've probably worked it out.
Some of you know.
The things that get hot in your home and that heat the home, right?
Radiators, we call them.
And you've got these new ones.
They're cast iron, big, heavy, beautiful ones and probably very good, effective.
They're pretty good.
Really effective, yeah.
Hit the home very well.
Radiators.
You also mentioned double glazing.
Double glazing is your windows.
When you have two panes of glass on the windows with a bit of air between the two panes of glass and it insulates.
Really important for insulating your home against noise, but also to keep the heat in, to keep the warmth in.
So, all right.
So how did you actually survive in your Edinburgh home for two winters with no central heating, no radiators?
What did you do?
We were really cold a lot of the time.
I mean hot water bottles, cups of tea, like five pairs of socks slippers, living your life just like under blankets.
We knitted quite a lot.
I knitted.
I knitted two blankets just with like wool that I had left over from some project a few years ago.
And we did buy.
We eventually bought like I think it's called like a space heater or something like a little kind of portable plug in heater.
But that we only had one.
So we had to like, pick a room.
We're gonna live our life in this room today and we'll bring the heater with us.
And you know, like things like after you've um i'm pointing towards my oven, over to my right, you know, after you've had the oven on, instead of closing the door, you just leave it open so that that heat, if it's while the oven's cooling down, it might as well come into the kitchen um, little things like that.
Yeah, it was uncomfortable.
Conclusion uncomfortable.
I used to live in Japan and they've got some pretty kind of nice ways of heating.
So in some Japanese homes, which are a bit more traditional, they wouldn't have central heating.
And instead, in the winter, you will have a kind of like a gas heater or some other kind of fire heater in a little hole in the ground in your living room.
So there's a kind of a interesting I don't know what it's called, but there's a sort of hole in the ground in the living room and you can sit on the floor and put your legs down into it.
Oh, that sounds lovely.
So it's like wood or carpeted or there's tatami or something inside it.
Yeah.
And in there is like a kind of a gas heater and on top of that gas heater is a table.
And then around the table is a skirt and you sit on the floor with your legs inside the hole with a skirt over your lap.
And then it's just like this lovely hot sort of thing that you sit in and you sit around the table and you can eat.
And sometimes there's like a kind of a bit on the top of the table where there's a cooker as well.
And so, like the cooker, the heater, the seat, the all of it sort of combines to keep you nice and warm and cozy.
How does it feel when you stand up, though?
Cold.
Yeah.
But that's the thing.
You just stay inside the nice, cozy thing, you know.
And yeah.
OK.
Well, all right.
Cool.
Good.
I'm glad that you got heating.
That's good.
Keep yourself nice and warm.
Very nice to talk to you, Rhiannon.
And you, Luke.
Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nice to get to know you.
And right, have a nice rest of the day.
Yeah.
And you.
Thank you.
All right.
So that was nice.
It was nice to meet Rhiannon.
I hope you enjoyed meeting her too.
As usual, at this point my thinking is oh, that must have been a difficult conversation for my listeners to follow, just because it was all happening at natural speed.
But you know, that's kind of the method, I suppose, or the philosophy of this podcast is that I do present you with these conversations which have been unfiltered or ungraded for their level.
Hopefully, the little moments when...
I interjected and clarified things or slowed things down that may have helped you.
But anyway uh, let me know in the comments section, as usual.
Um, you know how that was for you, but it was nice to meet Rhiannon and um, you know she's uh uh, she's got interesting things to say about uh uh, English teaching and also just that, the mindset stuff, the uh.
The importance of having a positive outlook and recognising, perhaps the things that might be limiting you as a speaker of English, and working through those things in order to boost your confidence.
Yeah, so RhiannonELT.com.
Rhiannonelt.com is her website.
Let me just make sure I've got that right.
R-H-I-A-N-N-O-N-E-L-T.com.
Rhiannonelt.com.
All right?
If you want to find out more.
But that was a nice conversation.
I think in terms of speaking to someone for the first time, that was good.
I think we got on pretty well.
I think we hit it off quite well.
And it was, you know, we have a few things in common, being English teachers and stuff like that.
Interesting degree that she did in theology.
Very interesting stuff.
Interesting choice.
You know, it's always interesting to meet someone who's chosen to do something a bit more original um, rather than just the usual standard degrees that people do, just because it's going to give them a specific career path.
Um yeah anyway, i'm going to stop now because i need to go and eat lunch.
You know food, you know sustenance, you know what.
Of course, you know what food is.
Am i going to eat a deep fried mars bar at this point?
I don't know.
Do you know what a Mars bar is?
I was thinking that during this conversation.
Something like that, which is so obvious to me and to Rhiannon, a Mars bar.
I wonder if you caught that.
What is a Mars bar?
Many of you will be like, yeah, fine, Mars bar.
I know what a Mars bar is, but there's definitely going to be some people going.
Yeah, I was thinking that too, Luke.
What is a Mars bar?
What are you saying?
Mars bar, it's a chocolate bar. called Mars.
Yeah, named after the planet Mars.
You know, our neighbouring planet.
You know, the planets.
You've got the sun.
Not a planet, obviously, it's the sun.
Mercury, Venus, Earth.
That's this one.
Then Mars.
Right, so Mars.
A Mars bar.
It's a chocolate bar called Mars.
Do you have them in your country?
No.
Some chocolate bars are definitely international.
You just have them everywhere, like Kit Kats.
Everyone knows Kit Kats.
But are Mars bars international?
I don't know.
Snickers, I think that's pretty international.
Twix, I think is known around the world.
Mars bar, it must be known everywhere.
Are Mars bars internationally famous?
You can let me know.
Have you ever eaten a Mars bar?
Do you have Mars bars in your country?
What do you call a Mars bar where you're from?
In France, Mars.
I think it's something like Mars.
I'm probably getting that horribly wrong.
So the pronunciation will probably be a little bit different.
So how do you say Mars bar in your country?
I don't have a Mars bar here to show you, but I think you know.
It's a black wrapper, kind of red and gold writing, Mars, inside the Mars bar.
It's chocolate.
So it's chocolate on the outside.
I think it's nougat.
Is it nougat or is it truffle?
What they call truffle, a kind of sugary, truffly stuff.
And caramel.
Hold on.
Mars bar.
I need to check now.
Wikipedia.
Mars, commonly known as Mars Bar, is the name of two varieties of chocolate bar, two produced by Mars Incorporated.
It was first manufactured in 1932 in Slough in England.
It's English.
Come on!
Um...
The bar consists of caramel and nougat coated with milk chocolate.
So it is nougat.
An American version of the Mars bar was produced, which had nougat and toasted almonds.
Nuts.
Almonds.
Not almonds.
Almonds. covered in milk chocolate.
Later, caramel was added to the recipe as well.
The American version was discontinued in 2002 and then revived in a slightly different form the following year under the name of Snickers Almond.
Anyway, never mind that American version.
The Mars bar, the original English one, you know it, right?
Black wrapper, red writing with gold around the edge.
Mars...
Okay, everyone's like, yes, we know what a flipping Mars bar is, Luke.
Anyway, a deep fried Mars bar is yeah, where someone in Scotland takes a Mars bar and throws it into the deep fat fryer and it fries like you do with your fish and chips.
And then you fish it out and you cut it open.
And inside, of course, the chocolate's all melted and stuff.
Actually, the Mars bar gets put in the batter first.
You roll the Mars bar in batter first, like with fish and chips, like I described earlier.
And then that gets put into the oil.
And I guess the batter does provide a certain amount of insulation.
There's that word insulation again.
The batter does provide a certain amount of insulation against the, against the boiling hot oil, so that the Mars bar on the inside does melt, but it doesn't completely.
You know, it doesn't melt too much so that it's still fairly sort of edible.
There's still some consistency to it when it's fished out and cut open.
The chocolate is melting.
The nougat, the caramel, is melting on the inside.
But it's still got some structure to it, so you can still enjoy eating it.
Yeah, so that's a deep-fried Mars bar.
A kind of Scottish speciality, you could say.
All right.
There you go.
That's the end of this.
So as I was saying, I need to stop now because I need to go and eat.
Not a deep fried Mars bar, but just normal food.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
I will speak to you soon, okay?
But for now, it's time to say goodbye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
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