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You're listening to Luke's English podcast.
For more information, visit teacheloup.co.uk.
Hello listeners, hello video viewers.
Welcome back to the podcast.
It's 2024, it's January, 2024.
And this is my first episode of the year.
Of course, I have to begin by wishing you
a very happy new year.
So here we go, happy new year.
I hope that you celebrated and had a nice time.
For some of you listening to this,
you don't celebrate new year at the same time as I do.
So in that case, happy new year when it happens.
Happy old year.
Right, if that's you.
If you haven't celebrated new year yet, happy old year.
But for the rest of you, happy new year.
And yes, this is my first episode of the year.
And we're going to start in just a moment.
If you're watching the video version of this,
you will see some text on the screen.
I've changed the color of the display a little bit.
Try, I'm trying to make it easier for you to read.
That's the idea.
If you are listening to the audio version of this episode,
then you will find a PDF link in the description.
And I'm going to say that again in a minute.
Okay, because I've pretty much written this in advance.
And I'm going to say that in a minute as well.
So it's time to start reading from the PDF.
It's time to start reading from my text that I wrote before.
Okay, so here we go.
Let's start doing that now.
Okay, all right then.
Let's do that.
Happy new year, everyone.
This is my first episode of 2024.
And let's get serious for a moment.
Because actually, the purpose of this one
is to help you consider where you are with your English.
Because that's what this is all about, isn't it?
Yes, to encourage you to reflect on your learning of English in 2023.
And to approach 2024 with the right mindset.
And also give you loads of advice and tips
for how to keep improving your English with this podcast.
And in plenty of other ways.
This episode has mostly been written out in advance.
So I'm reading from a script on this one.
Okay, you'll find the PDF script on the page for this episode on my website.
And there is a link in the description wherever you're listening to this.
Do you link in the description?
Do you know what that means?
Some people don't know what that means.
You're thinking what's the description?
Sometimes it's called the description or the show notes.
That's just the text that you find associated with the episode
that you're listening to.
If you're on YouTube, just look down.
And I think you click something that says show more.
And you can see the notes that are written there,
like a summary of the episode.
And you can put links in there.
That's on YouTube.
If you're listening in a podcast app,
you should find the show notes or episode description.
And that's where you'll find the link for the PDF for this episode.
Okay, let me just cough for a second.
Excuse me.
So you can just download the PDF free.
And I'm not even going to ask you for your email address
and then send you loads of emails tempting you to buy my online course,
which is only available for a limited period of time
for mysterious reasons that aren't fully explained.
Right, so don't worry, I'm not going to do that.
You can just download the PDF directly,
like in the old days of the internet.
These days, if someone lets you download something,
like a PDF normally, they're like,
but give me your email address, you have to enter your email address
and I'll send you the link.
And then I will send you tons of cleverly written emails
to encourage you to buy something.
And why not?
Why not?
People have got to make their living somehow.
This is the way things work these days.
But anyway, in this particular case,
you can just download the PDF without having to enter your email address.
Maybe one day when I have an online course,
maybe then I'll ask for your email to download a PDF
and then maybe I'll email you later and say,
hey, hey, it's Luke, do you remember the thing?
Yeah, it was good, wasn't it?
Do you want to buy my online course?
Maybe that'll happen one day, but not today.
Anyway, by the way, if you prefer rambling episodes
with no script, just hang on, okay,
because I'll be doing one of them
after I've done this episode, okay?
Not today because I'm on a tight time schedule
and I'm gonna have to leave in an hour and a half.
Will this episode be less than an hour and a half?
I hope so, that's the plan anyway, but we'll see.
But yeah, so the plan is to do a rambling episode,
which, sorry, the plan is to do this episode now,
which is fully planned and scripted
and then just do something totally spontaneous
in the next episode.
So if you like the more spontaneous off the cuff episodes,
then that's coming soon.
So yes, there is a new year rambling episode coming soon.
Also, there'll be a premium episode coming soon
for premium subscribers,
focusing on some of the language I use in this episode.
Okay, so premium subscribers watch out for some of the words
and phrases which are highlighted
in a lurid green color on the PDF.
Those bits of vocabulary will come up
in a premium episode too.
If you're not a premium subscriber,
then you can still notice those highlighted phrases.
And you can think, hmm, okay, there's a bit of vocab.
Lurid, for example, the word lurid, a lurid green color.
But a vocab there for me to notice.
So if you're not a premium subscriber,
you can still notice those highlighted phrases
and just consider how much you're missing out.
By not being a premium subscriber,
and of course, if you just can't stand missing out on the magic,
then you could become a premium subscriber.
Or maybe if you just want more information about it,
just go to teacherlook.co.uk slash premium info.
That's where you get more info about LEP premium.
By the way, I chose that lurid green color
so that it will also show up
if you print the PDF in black and white.
Okay, also it's a way of subtly reminding you
to keep noticing vocabulary.
It's, you can't really miss it
if it's highlighted in a bright green color.
Also, I have various other episodes in the pipeline,
which I recorded late last year,
and they are coming to over the next few weeks,
including a couple of Amber and Paul episodes,
an episode with Lindsay from Alley is English,
one with my friend who works at UNESCO and some others.
So just bear with me, they are coming as well.
As usual, I just have so many episodes to publish
and things I want to say,
I'd love to just publish new episodes
like every few days to be honest,
but I don't want to overload you completely.
I know that some of you might be happy for me to do that.
You might think, yes, please do.
New episodes every couple of days, yes,
that would be wonderful.
But really podcasting wisdom and general life wisdom
says that I shouldn't do that, right?
First of all, there would just be too many episodes,
and most people wouldn't really be able to keep up,
and they'd probably like, oh, I can't keep up with this.
And also, it would exhaust me, wouldn't it?
That's not a very wise idea.
And the hard drive on my laptop would fill up almost instantly.
Anyway, so this episode, what's this episode going to be?
Let's get started.
First of all, I want to welcome new listeners.
Hello, if you're a new listener,
because a lot of people will have decided to start listening
to a podcast in English this year.
So hello, if that's you.
So welcome.
And also, I want to remind old listeners who I am,
just in case, because you're so old,
your memory doesn't work anymore.
I mean old listeners, I mean, people who've been listening
to the podcast for a long time,
but old listeners too, as well, you know?
So I want to welcome new listeners and remind old listeners
who I am and what this is all about.
Now, a lot of people will be turning over a new leaf
and trying to make a fresh start with their English
at this time of year.
Is that you?
Have you made a new year's resolution
to improve your English this year?
Maybe you've decided to listen to podcasts in English.
And here you are.
Or maybe you're already a regular listener
and you're happy to be back in Lepland
with this new episode.
In any case, welcome and welcome back.
It's good to be doing the first episode of the show in 2024.
Here's some information for new listeners
and old listeners too, whose memory isn't what it once was.
Did you catch that?
Here's some information about
Luke's English podcast for new listeners
and old listeners too, whose memory it wasn't,
wfff, I can't even say that.
Can you say that?
Some information about Luke's English podcast for new listeners
and old listeners too, whose memory isn't what it once was.
Meaning that for old listeners,
their memory is not what it used to be.
It's not as good as it was before, anyway.
So, hello.
Forgive me for stating the obvious here,
but I'm Luke Thompson
and I'm the host of this podcast
that you're listening to right now,
which is called Luke's English podcast.
It's a podcast for learners of English.
I'm Luke, hence the title of the show Luke's English podcast.
Yes, I am very original and creative
and I worked very hard to come up with that name.
In my episodes, I talk about all kinds of stuff
and help you learn English.
All you have to do is listen.
Although, if you want, there are plenty of other ways
you can use my episodes to work on your English.
I'll mention some of those things later.
I talk about different topics, chat with different guests,
tell stories, just ramble about what's on my mind,
give advice for learning English.
Talk about British culture because I'm from the UK,
right, I'm from England.
I talk about British culture, such as music, films
and comedy, I explain jokes
and generally give you something to listen to
in English on a regular basis.
This is an award-winning podcast, by the way.
Also, I was nominated for a British Council
Elton Award a few years ago.
And I have a very loyal, enthusiastic
and lovely audience who are affectionately called
The Lebsters.
That's Lepp LEP, Luke's English podcast,
they're lebsters, yeah.
There's also other names for listeners.
If you're a person who just listens to my podcast,
but you never leave a comment, you never get in touch with me,
you don't do anything, you just hide in the shadows
and just listen, then you are a ninja, okay?
And if you're someone who listens all the way through
to the end of an episode, but you don't survive,
right, if you perish during the listening process,
then you are a skeleton.
But hopefully you're not skeletons, right?
That's the point where they're that, you know,
most of you, if you are, hopefully,
if you listen all the way through to the end that you survive,
right?
And then you can let me know, you can say,
I've got to the end, Luke, I'm not a skeleton.
That's what that means.
If someone says I'm not a skeleton,
it means that they listened all the way through
to the very end of the episode and they survived.
You see, because it's possible to survive.
I know it's like 90 minutes long, I can't listen to that.
Well, you can, you really can and you will be fine.
Don't worry, you won't, you'll make it to the end.
Okay.
I'm an English teacher from England,
from West London and the West Midlands.
And you might be thinking, how are you from two places
at the same time?
What is this like quantum, quantum theory?
I don't know.
Well, yeah, I lived in West London
and I've lived in the West Midlands.
I've been teaching English for nearly 25 years now.
I first taught in Japan many years ago.
Have I ever mentioned that by the way
that I used to live in Japan?
Have I ever said that on the podcast?
By the way, remember, you get a point every time I say that.
Every time I say that I used to live in Japan,
you get one point.
Then I taught in London for a long time
at various language schools in iconic places
like Oxford Street, Covent Garden, Waterloo, Holland Park
and Hammersmith, yeah, Hammersmith,
that iconic place in London.
And these days I live and work in Paris.
Yes, the one in France.
I went to university in Liverpool a long, long time ago
and graduated with a degree in media and cultural studies,
which means that I'm very good at watching movies.
I have Celter and Delta qualifications
in the English language, sorry, not in the English language.
I've got Celter and Delta qualifications
in English language teaching to adults.
So I don't worry, you're in safe hands here.
Okay, you can trust me.
I'm fully qualified.
I am a professional.
I have a particular set of skills,
which I've developed over a very long career.
Okay.
As well as being an English teacher,
I'm also a stand-up comedian,
which you must have realised already
because you can't have failed to notice
how funny and witty I am.
I do stand-up, which means I go on stage.
I stand up on stage in front of audiences
and make them laugh usually, hopefully,
with hilarious jokes and stories and things
and it always works really, really well
and everyone in the room laughs so much
and so hard that they'd actually die
and then they can never tell anyone else how funny I am,
which is why I don't have my own Netflix special.
I've been doing stand-up on a semi-professional basis
for about 15 years, roughly the same length of time
as this podcast, but not as consistently as this,
I have to say.
Most of the time these days,
I perform at comedy shows in Paris in the evenings sometimes
in English to audiences of ex-pats,
English-speaking ex-pats.
That's ex-pats is basically another word for it,
immigrant, right?
Just someone who's moved to another country,
but if you move to France from England, you're an ex-pat.
If you move to France from Africa,
then apparently you're an immigrant.
I know, I don't get it, but anyway,
I do shows to English-speaking people
or even non-English-speaking people,
anyone who comes to the show,
but often it's sort of tourists, ex-pats at local Parisians.
If you want to hear me talking about my stand-up comedy,
you can check out my recent appearance
on the Stolaroid Stories podcast.
The episode was called The Art of Making People Laugh
with Luke Thompson from Luke's English podcast,
and you'll find the link on the PDF.
Hold on a minute.
Hold on a second.
All right, let me just have that link.
There it is.
Okay, now, I've been doing this podcast for about 15 years now.
Not this episode, I mean, it might feel like it already,
but no, generally, I've been doing the podcast
for about 15 years.
The show's had over 150 million downloads in total,
which is mind-blowing.
Broom.
It's listened to by people all over the world.
And yeah, I'm actually very famous,
but nobody knows who I am.
Does that make sense?
No, it doesn't.
But somehow it is still true that I'm famous,
but no one knows me.
I don't know.
But if I got all my listeners together in one place,
right, if I gathered them all,
then I'd be able to fill a few football stadiums,
right, with them.
But that's never gonna happen, is it?
And I'm not even very good at football,
so it wouldn't be a very good idea anyway.
Would it? No.
There are audio versions and video versions
of this podcast, okay?
Got it?
Audio version, video version.
You can get the audio version in podcast apps.
And you can get the video on YouTube.
Now let me just explain that to the,
let me start that sentence again.
Let me explain that to the uninitiated, okay?
Let me just explain what I just said to the uninitiated,
people who have not been initiated
into the ways of podcast apps and YouTube videos and stuff.
Now just a note here.
Remember, remember I said the words
in phrases highlighted in green.
That was one of them, the uninitiated.
Right, get the PDF from the episode page on my website
or in the description, and you can see those highlighted bits.
I'll add them all in a list
at the end of the episode as well,
because I'm nice, you're welcome.
I'll explain them in a premium episode coming soon
to help you remember them and also use them
and pronounce them, okay?
So you can listen to the audio podcast
in any podcast app on your phone.
And this is the way that most people listen to my episodes.
For example, using Apple podcasts,
which is the most popular one.
Also Spotify, Pocket Casts, and so on.
Now I imagine that people do something like this, right?
Is this you?
So this is what I think people do.
They get up in the morning.
Now I think most people get up in the morning.
If you don't get up in the morning,
you might be dead, you might wanna check that.
Okay, just make sure that you're still alive
or you're just sleepy, I don't know.
Anyway, most people get up in the morning, stretch,
uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, have a shower, right?
Maybe you don't, maybe you don't.
You don't have to, it's okay.
Some people prefer to have a shower in the evening.
That's a whole other question, Luke,
that's a whole other topic of conversation.
Shower in the morning, shower before you go to bed,
which one, which one's best?
Anyway, people get up in the morning, they stretch,
they wash, they question their life choices,
they eat breakfast, maybe they get the kids ready for school,
they go to work or college or something.
And at some point, they get their phone out,
put their headphones on, open up their podcast app of choice,
right, look at their list of podcast subscriptions,
tap on Luke's English podcast
and start listening to a new episode
or continue listening to the one they started the day before
or the day before that or something.
All right, that's what I think most people do.
Other people might just stay at home because, well,
what's the point of leaving the house really, you know,
and maybe get their phone out, connect it to their Bluetooth
speaker or something and listen to my podcast
and maybe do something really exciting like housework
or something like that or maybe they,
maybe if you got one of those smart speakers,
you can say, hey, Alexa, play the latest episode
of Luke's English podcast.
And Alexa, go, you know, Alexa does it, I don't know.
So that's how to listen to my episodes
on a podcast app on your phone.
If you're already initiated into the world of podcasting,
that all might strike you as being very obvious.
But you'd be surprised at the number of people
who don't understand what podcasts are,
how they work or even how the word podcast
is spelled or indeed pronounced.
Lot of people don't know.
Podcast, all right, got it?
Podcast.
Podcast, not postcard or podcast.
I've said all these things before, but, you know,
people just keep getting it wrong.
So I've got to go through it again.
Now, I understand, it's all I understand.
It can be a tricky word actually, right?
It can genuinely be a tricky word.
It's a relatively new word.
And in terms of pronunciation, podcast,
there are a couple of tricky consonant clusters
in there, right? Podcast, right?
Consonant clusters, like the bit where the D,
the D and combined, D-c.
Podcast, right the D-part, that bit,
and where the S and T combine, st.
Podcast.
It's actually tricky stuff.
Podcast.
Try it again. Podcast.
Podcast, podcast.
Not postcast.
Podcast, okay?
Not podcast either.
Well, it's not so bad if you're saying podcast.
That's all right, but it's actually podcast.
Podcast, okay?
Luke's English podcast.
Not Lux, not Lux English podcast.
Not Luck.
That's not my name.
I'm not Mr. Luck.
Well, look.
I've heard those jokes a million times.
Look, it's Luke.
No, no, just stop, okay?
Luke's English podcast.
Now, the word podcast, did you know this?
The word podcast is actually a combination.
It's a port Montau word.
Portmanteau.
It's a combination word of the word broadcast
and the word iPod.
Because it's a broadcast on your iPod, a podcast, right?
It's a kind of audio broadcast, like a radio show, right?
So that's a broadcast.
Radio is broadcasted.
Biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy,
right? Radio signals are broadcasted.
So radio is broadcasted through radio signals
from a radio tower thing, right?
The radio waves are sent out or broadcasted
into the air and picked up by your radio.
But with a podcast, the audio is sent out via the internet
and you get it and put it on your iPod,
although nobody actually uses iPods anymore.
It's all mobile phones now, isn't it?
So podcast, it might as well be called a phone cast
because I broadcast my show to your phone.
It's not a phone call because that's not how it works, is it?
I don't just, right, I'm going to do in your episode.
I think I'll just call everyone one by one.
I don't just call you and start talking.
Hello, yeah, if you've got an hour and a half, yeah, okay, right.
Well, this is episode 863, you're ready.
No, that's not how it works.
I don't just call you and start talking.
I could do that if I had your number,
but that would be a very inefficient way of doing this.
If I had to call you all one by one
and say this to each person, I called again and again.
No, no, thank goodness, that's not how it works.
It's not a phone call and it's not a phone cast,
even though you listen on your phone,
unless you listen on your computer on my website or something,
or you actually do listen on an iPod
because you're still using one.
If you are still using an iPod, leave a comment in the description
somewhere to say that you're still using an iPod.
So anyway, it's not a phone cast, it's a podcast.
All right, now that should be clear.
If you don't know how to subscribe to the audio podcast,
just download a podcast app on your phone.
They're completely free.
That's podcast apps, not phones,
phones are expensive.
I recommend Pocket Casts.
Just go ahead and download Pocket Casts
free from the app store on your phone, install it,
then open it, then search for Luke's English podcast,
not Lux English podcast.
Luke's English podcast, then tap subscribe or add,
or whatever the equivalent is in your language to subscribe.
And my show will be saved in your list of subscriptions
and you'll always be able to go back to the app
to listen to my latest episodes when they are published
and the entire back catalog and your life will improve
just a little bit, certainly a step in the right direction anyway.
Switch on notifications on your phone
and your phone will tell you when I've published a new episode.
Happy days.
One of the advantages of listening to the audio podcast
on your phone is that you can do other things
while you listen and people tell me
that they listen while traveling, working out in the gym,
doing housework, running or walking in the countryside,
driving and even at work or school
when they should be doing something else.
I expect some people listen while doing incredible things
like flying planes, recovering from a general anesthetic
after having surgery or operating the safety systems
of a nuclear power station.
This is the wonderful thing you can multitask
while listening to a podcast on a podcast app.
I also publish video versions of these episodes on YouTube.
And it's usually the same content as the audio versions
but often the audio versions have even more content
because sometimes I ramble a bit at the beginning
and end of episodes and in the middle, to be honest.
And those bits don't always end up in the video versions.
Okay, so if you want all of it,
then the audio podcast is where you can go,
but yes, you can also catch most of what I'm doing on YouTube.
My YouTube channel has nearly has one million subscribers now
which I find incredible really.
Not all my episodes get a million views of course
except the ones called Learn English with a Short Story
which are particularly popular on the platform.
The advantages of the video versions are that you can see me
while I speak.
Do you consider that to be an advantage?
I don't know, I don't know if it is,
but apparently some people think so.
You can see my body language, facial expressions
and the movements of my mouth.
For the more visually oriented people,
that is a good thing.
There are also automatic subtitles on YouTube
which are getting better all the time.
And I often show text on the screen while I record
so you can read and listen at the same time.
That text is usually also available on my website
for the audio listeners.
But again, the video versions often have less content
than the audio versions and you do have to basically stay
looking at the screen the entire time, don't you?
Whereas with the audio episodes,
you can just put your headphones in,
put your phone in your pocket and just do something else
like fishing or taking your dog for a walk
or if you prefer dogging and taking your fish for a walk.
I mean, it's your life, you can do what you want, can't you?
My episodes can be quite long,
but this shouldn't be a problem, really.
Whoever said it was a problem.
Okay, no one.
Anyway, it shouldn't be an issue
because you can just pause the episode whenever you want
and then do something else.
And when you return to your podcast app
and indeed YouTube, if you're signed in,
just pause, do something else, come back
and find that episode again.
The app will remember where you stopped
and you can continue from that point.
YouTube does exactly the same thing
if you're signed into it with your Google account.
These things are clever, these apps,
Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocketcasts and so on.
They will remember where you stopped.
You don't have to start again from the beginning,
you can just carry on from the point where you stopped.
Another reason I like Pocketcasts
is because when you pause, it backs up a few moments.
It kind of goes back a few moments
and lets you listen to the last few seconds
before you're carrying on.
So it kind of puts you back in the right moment.
So you can just chill out about the whole,
your episodes should be 28 minutes long,
no more, no less, Luke, thing.
You can just relax about that now.
Just listen to 28 minutes, then stop.
Then listen to another 28 minutes the next time, you see?
So long episodes aren't really an issue
because you can listen to as much as you like,
stop and do something else,
then carry on where you stopped before.
But look, I know having said that,
I do try to keep the length of my episodes under control.
Okay, I don't want them to be too long.
I don't want to do excessively long episodes.
It just happens.
But the fact is I just have,
I just have,
what have I written here?
The fact is I just have that I want to say,
and I find it hard, I have stuff.
I just have stuff that I want to say,
and I find it hard to shut up,
so I need all that time.
That's all right, it's okay, isn't it?
Now for me, these episodes, right?
These episodes of my podcast are similar
to English lessons that I do at school,
except obviously in English lessons,
there's a lot more teaching involved.
It's not just me talking, that wouldn't be good.
But in terms of the length, right?
It's similar to kind of English lessons.
That's what I've done always in my career.
Lessons in the classroom are usually
at least 90 minutes long, often more,
English lessons in a language school
are very rarely less than one hour long.
So it's a similar story with my episodes.
That's kind of how I feel about it.
Also, I have a premium subscription.
Have I mentioned that before?
I don't think I have, have I?
No, I haven't.
I definitely haven't mentioned the premium subscription.
Hey, everyone, I have a premium subscription.
It's called Luke Singlish Podcast Premium.
Forgive me for mentioning it again.
It's just that the modest amount of money
that I make from it helps me to feed
to starving children and one wife and to heat our home,
which otherwise would be cold.
And it allows me to buy microphones and guitars
and things, all essential purchases, of course.
Anyway, Luke Singlish Podcast Premium costs
just $4 a month, which is the price of like a nice coffee,
right, a tall coffee from Starbucks or something,
or from a hipster cafe once a month.
And, you know, and the price has the price,
has the price gone up with in line with inflation,
has the price gone up?
No, it hasn't.
Starbucks have raised the price of their bizarrely named
coffees.
The fuel you put in your car is more expensive
than it used to be, but Luke Singlish Podcast
remains the same despite all those things.
And it also, LEP Premium gives you the access
to extra episodes, which focus on teaching you
vocab, grammar and pronunciation.
It's not just bonus extra, it's not just like
outtakes and offcuts.
It's actually fully realized content for teaching you stuff.
So my podcast has two branches, the free episodes
and the premium episodes, the free episodes.
This is what I described before me talking alone
or with guests about things, which I hope you will just
find interesting and entertaining to listen to
as part of your effort to get plenty of English
into your brain, via your ears.
The free episodes are the ones which are available free
in audio podcast format or YouTube video format.
The premium episodes, extra episodes published every month
and also available in a podcast app on your phone.
When you sign up, you can add the premium episodes
to your podcast app.
Last year, I published over 30 premium episodes,
so that's two or three episodes per month.
This is not just bonus content or outtakes or something.
These are carefully prepared and thought through lessons
in which I help you build your English.
All the information about my premium subscription
is on my website at teachelook.co.uk slash premium info.
Forgive me for promoting myself,
but I do have to put food on the table.
The main difference between the two branches
is that the free episodes are all about input, right?
Just giving you just things to listen to.
And the premium ones are much more about teaching you directly.
In the free episodes like this one today,
I want to give you something to listen to in English,
which is made for you, which is entertaining,
interesting and authentic to help you listen more,
listen for longer periods and listen long term,
because that's very good for your English.
Sometimes I ramble and just share my thoughts
with you in a kind of stream of consciousness way.
Sometimes I talk with guests, including my friends and family
and other people who I hope will have interesting things
to say on the show.
I talk about a variety of topics, I tell stories and so on.
In the premium episodes, I tend to focus on teaching you things,
and this usually means vocabulary,
explaining, highlighting, demonstrating, clarifying words
and phrases, showing you how words and phrases
are actually used in sentences with collocations
and other little important details.
I also deal with grammar sometimes
and pronunciation every time,
mainly giving you something to use for listen and repeat practice,
so you can regularly repeat after me,
but also giving you insights into the pronunciation system
in English in various ways.
So the focus is on teaching you language bit by bit
in the premium side, on the premium side.
Sometimes these two branches cross over,
and I end up doing premium type stuff on the free podcast,
so explaining vocabulary in short story episodes, for example,
or doing free podcast stuff in premium episodes
that would probably be rambling episodes or short story episodes.
And as a basic foundation, I want you to remember
that I've been teaching English for most of my adult life now,
and so it's deeply ingrained in me,
and in fact, I couldn't really stop teaching English
even if I tried.
And so even when I'm just talking to you, I'm still teaching you.
There's always that intention there
to help you notice language, to engage with this language,
to aid you somehow.
So even when I'm just talking with seemingly no focus,
there is a focus.
Ha ha ha.
Like he's unfocused.
Ah, no, no, I'm not.
There is a focus and a method in the background,
which is to help you connect with English as it is spoken.
English as a living language, and English, which is a medium
for making connections with people,
and for expressing yourself.
OK, I'm going to sort of move on from this bit in a minute.
I'm always attempting to reach out to you
through the things I say and sort of grab you
and just shove English straight into your ears,
but in a nice way.
Also, I just love doing this podcast,
and hopefully my enthusiasm will kind of rub off on you,
and will encourage you in your journey.
I could continue to rambulon about this kind of stuff
for ages, about the benefits of listening
to English podcasts, long term.
But I've done that plenty of times before.
Just have a look back at my episode, archive,
and see what you can see.
By the way, I wrote most of this, the stuff that I'm saying here.
I wrote most of this over the last few days
of the school holidays.
It's Friday today.
It's the last day of the school holidays.
Everyone goes back to work and school on Monday.
Here in France, we've had two weeks.
And that this last week, we've been at home.
The first week, we were in England at my parents' place.
And but then this last week, I've been at home.
And I've mostly been looking after our baby, son,
he's six months old.
So I've just been doing a lot of carrying him, lifting him up,
wiping his face and his t-shirt or his sweater,
just cleaning him up, feeding him, putting food in
and cleaning up the mess that happens afterwards.
Trying to make him sleep, playing with him,
just gazing at how adora, just gazing at him
and just wondering how adorable, thinking about how cute he is.
And stuff like that, I've been doing a lot of that.
But then in moments, when I was able to, for example,
when my baby's son was asleep, or when my wife took the kids
for a routine checkup at the doctor,
and I had some time to write down some thoughts,
which had been building up in my head during the Christmas
holiday, that's when I wrote these ideas down,
and have edited them and added to them a bit since then.
So this is all stuff I wrote previously.
So finally, let's get onto the subject, which
was written in the title of this episode.
Maybe I should rename the episode, welcome back to LEP,
slash you and your English in 2023 and 2024.
I think I'll probably rename it that to account for all
of that extra stuff I've just said at the top of the episode
or the first half.
So you and your English in 2023 and 2024.
Now I'm going to talk about you and your English over the last 12
months and into the fourth coming 12 months.
Usually in the new year period, I do some kind of new year
episode.
And so I've been thinking, what can I say to my audience
that will put them in the right mental space to help them
learn English with my podcast in 2024?
What inspiring words of wisdom can I impart?
What sage-like advice can I give?
And after I lowered my expectations from myself
and realized that I wasn't some sort of mystical guru,
I just started writing.
And this is what came out.
Listen carefully and hopefully, hopefully, not hopefully,
that's not how you pronounce that.
It's hopefully, hopefully, you will get swept up
in what I'm saying and the outcome will be that you'll get
a renewed sense of positivity and possibility
for your English this year.
Or maybe you'll just have a nice relaxing sleep.
I don't know.
Hopefully it'll be good for you either way.
Just be careful, please, if you're driving
or operating heavy machinery while listening to this.
Remember, there's a PDF for all of this.
We know.
You've said it a hundred times.
You can download it from my website.
Just click the link in the show notes.
OK.
So it's the new year period.
This is a time when we look back and survey the year
that we've just completed.
And then look forward to the fourth coming 12 months
and consider how we're going to spend that time.
And I invite you to do that with me here in this episode.
This is a podcast for learners of English.
Did you?
Yeah, you know.
So we're going to focus on English, of course.
In this episode, I want to encourage you
and help you to take stock of your English learning
at this moment in time.
First, let's look back and consider the last 12 months
and your English.
So over the last 12 months, here are some questions.
Over the last 12 months, what kind of progress
have you made in your English?
What has worked for you?
What have you done that has had a positive impact
on your English?
What were some of the positive experiences and moments
that you had in 2023?
What about negative experiences, too?
What can you learn from them?
Little grammar pause, stop, grammar time.
Now note that I said over the last 12 months there
and then I used present perfect tense.
Over the last 12 months, what progress have you made?
Did you notice that?
If I had said in 2023, instead of over the last few months,
if I'd used the time expression in 2023,
then it would be past simple, right?
In 2023, what progress did you make or what worked for you?
This is just because over the last 12 months
is an unfinished time period.
You see, it includes now.
Over the last 12 months means from 12 months ago,
up until now, so it's connected to now.
So that's why we can use present perfect tense
with that time expression, because we're talking about
an unfinished time period or a period that's connected to now.
You see, what have you done in 2023?
No, what did you do in 2023?
But what have you done over the last few months?
That's OK.
For more details about present perfect,
in fact, everything you ever wanted to know,
then listen to Premium Series 12, P12.
That's a premium episode.
Did I mention my premium subscription again?
Did I?
I did.
OK.
So those questions again over the last 12 months,
what kind of progress have you made in your English?
What has worked for you?
What have you done that's had a positive impact on your English?
What were some positive experiences that you had?
What about negative experiences?
And what can you learn from them?
OK?
All right.
So perhaps you, thinking about those questions,
perhaps you have no clear sense of what you've done
or whether it's been positive or negative.
You're just like, er, bugh, don't know, really Luke.
You know, if that's the case, if you're thinking,
I don't know, actually.
Now, that probably means that, A, you haven't really
done much with English.
And this doesn't just mean studying in the traditional way,
but just using English either in a productive way
by speaking or writing or a receptive way
by reading or listening.
That just means that there hasn't really
been much English in your life for the past 12 months.
It could mean that.
Or B, you're just not very mindful.
You're not being very mindful about your relationship
with English or the things you do in relation to your English.
Perhaps you're not really aware of the ways
that you're learning this language.
You listen to my episodes.
You do other things in English sometimes,
but you don't really reflect on it all
in an objective way or an academic way.
That might be the case.
If you just don't really know answers to those questions
I gave you before.
To be honest, I doubt that you fit the description.
I just mentioned, I think most of my audience
are pretty aware of their English.
And in fact, maybe you are very conscious of it
and take quite a meta-cognitive approach to it.
Oh, that's a nice word, isn't it?
Maybe you do take a, maybe you have
all these meta-cognitive strategies.
Maybe you're constantly analyzing and strategizing
the way that you learn English,
kind of looking at it objectively
and applying different methods.
Maybe you're doing that.
In any case, this now is a moment when I invite you
to be mindful about your English.
Okay, just to think about it.
Maybe you feel like you haven't really noticed
a significant improvement in your English recently,
which is a very common feeling.
Is that you?
Are you waiting for some kind of breakthrough moment?
Do you feel like you're on a long plateau?
Do you feel like you made significant progress a while ago?
But nothing has happened more recently.
Is that you?
Or maybe not?
Maybe you're currently really excited
because you've discovered new abilities,
new English powers, like a superhero
in the first half of their superhero origin movie
or something like, with these new English powers,
I could become a superhero.
I could become what?
Fluent man or woman, fluent person.
I don't know.
But it's very common to get stuck
in the so-called intermediate plateau.
And if that is the case for you,
then I will say these things.
Don't give up.
Don't stop.
Keep going.
The progress might not be obvious to you,
but it's probably still happening
and will be revealed later.
You just have to be willing to stick with it.
Sometimes you get stuck in a rut or stuck in a routine
and it feels like you're going over the same ground
and you're not climbing to the top of any mountains
or getting any significant feelings of reward,
like moments of triumph or glory.
But that's okay.
You can't have those moments all the time.
Sometimes they are few and far between.
Sometimes those breakthrough moments in language learning
or those meaningful moments of magic are rare.
But keep going.
Sometimes there is a lot of progress being made
but it's under the surface and you just don't notice it.
Language learning can be a weird thing.
It can be hard to see it happening.
It can be invisible, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.
With English, you have to put in a lot of hours.
You have to absorb a lot of language
and you have to do plenty of practice.
Spending a lot of time on it is necessary.
And so you have to see the bigger picture.
Imagine it like a long journey.
There might be times on that journey
where you climb to very high points
like the top of a hill or mountain
and you get a clear dramatic sense of achievement.
But at other times,
you have to travel along a long flat plain
and it can feel like you're not really moving at all.
But keep going.
You're making progress, but you might not be aware of it.
It's not all going to be moments of glory
and sometimes your progress is not fully visible to you
but it is happening.
You also have to fail quite a lot.
You've got to get things wrong a lot
before you come back and get them right.
This can make you feel disheartened
as if you just keep making mistakes.
But keep going.
Don't stop.
This is all part of the process.
People don't improve their language learning
because they give up.
The people who don't improve,
they don't improve because they give up.
So keep listening.
Keep doing whatever you're doing.
Stay in the game.
Keep your English alive in 2024
and there will come a time or a moment
when the time you've spent with it
will pay off somehow.
At the very least,
you're understanding everything I'm saying, right?
You're understanding this, aren't you?
Yes.
I think so.
You're understanding me
and you're also noticing
that I'm using certain phrases and expressions,
aren't you?
Have you been paying attention to that stuff?
As I said before,
I will sum them up for you later.
Not all of them, but a lot of them.
I'm talking about some of the little phrases I've just used.
You know, the ones which are highlighted
in that lurid green color on the PDF
like breakthrough moments
or few and far between or disheartened.
I'll sum up,
I'll sum them up later.
Help you properly understand them,
remember them and pronounce them too
in a premium episode.
So you're noticing those things.
You're hearing them, aren't you?
It's all going in.
That's all fuel or food for your English, you know.
And the more you're exposed to English
as a living thing like this,
the better your position is
as a learner of English.
The better prepared you will be
for the moments when you have to open your mouth
and produce the language
or when you're on the spot
and you're in conversation with someone
and you have to understand
what's coming out of their mouth
and then you're suddenly having to respond
and these bits of English come to you
seemingly from nowhere.
Right?
Has that happened to you?
Just like you'll just be talking
and suddenly where did these phrases coming from?
These structures, where is this coming from?
And these bits of English come to you from nowhere.
Well, that's all thanks to the fact
that you've been keeping your English alive
and at the very least listening to this podcast,
other podcasts are available
and keeping your ears open.
If you feel stuck at the intermediate plateau,
keep going, keep the faith,
realize there is progress being made
but you might not notice it every day,
keep your chin up.
But also consider shaking things up a bit,
adopting some new habits maybe
and perhaps give yourself a challenge,
maybe some kind of speaking challenge
or just change the kinds of practice that you're doing
or perhaps add a bit of discipline
into your routines with some other little exercises
you could do.
I'll mention some ideas for that later in this episode.
So what have you been doing with your English?
What have you been doing?
Now, bear in mind that in language learning
anything is probably better than nothing, right?
So even if the only thing you've been doing in English
is to listen to podcasts sometimes,
watch some stuff in English
or occasionally speak it when the need arises,
then find that's still good.
It's better than nothing.
Also, if you've been listening to all of my episodes,
I must say that that puts you in a select group
of extremely special people, okay?
Not everyone listens to podcasts in English, you know.
So if you're in public right now,
if you're just now in public or on the bus
or something, have a look around, right?
Have a look around, just have a look
at some of the other people you can see,
just people living their lives.
Have a look around how many of these other people
that you can see around you,
how many of them listen to Luke's English podcast,
do you think?
Or any other podcasts for that matter in English?
Yeah, not that many.
Some of these just normal people.
What are they doing with themselves?
Yeah, but not you, no, you're one of the special ones.
You're part of that elite group of people
who have access to this exclusive
and slightly secret world,
the world of learning English podcasts.
You're one of the ones who not only knows
what a podcast is,
but also how to pronounce it,
how to spell it,
and also how to listen to it regularly.
Anyway, listening to podcasts is definitely good for your English,
even if it is the only thing you do,
but I recommend doing more than just listening.
I've said it before and I'll say it again,
this podcast is best consumed
as part of a balanced diet,
which means that it works best
if you're doing listening and other things.
Now, perhaps the worst things for your English,
well, probably the worst thing for your English
would be to chop your head off, right?
It's got to be the worst thing.
But so, so, obviously, except for that,
with your head still attached to your body,
I think probably the worst things for your English are things like this.
So, A, doing absolutely nothing in English at all, of course,
and B, getting into a negative mindset,
in which you tell yourself that your English is no good,
or that you just can't do it, or that you're just one of those people
who just simply doesn't have what it takes to use this language effectively.
Never mind those negative thoughts.
They will not help.
They will not help you learn a language.
So, try not to say those things to yourself.
Give yourself a break in 2024.
Everyone is naturally able to learn a language.
So, you just have to maintain some good habits,
a positive mental attitude,
a sense of enjoyment,
and perhaps a sense of drive as well to push things further
and to kind of force you to do things
that you might not be doing, you know,
if you're feeling a bit lazy or something.
So, you have to have the habits, the attitude, and the drive.
So, what have you been doing in English?
What has worked for you?
Right? Can you recognize the things that have A,
helped you to make progress,
B, caused you to feel good about your English?
What have been those things?
Helped you make progress, have there been any moments
where you've felt like you've made a step
in the right direction,
any things that you've been doing?
What have made you feel good about your English, too?
How can you put your best foot forwards
and repeat some of the successes of the last year
and build on them
and generally move in the right direction
towards growth, progress, and prosperity in your English,
but in your life, too,
because it's all part of the same thing.
So, let's try to maintain a positive cycle in 2024,
where one good thing causes you to feel a bit more positive
about your English,
leading to a growing sense of confidence,
which causes you to step outside your comfort zone
a little bit more easily,
and do something else with a bit more success,
which again feeds into your positivity
and sense of achievement,
and this continues in a generally upward trajectory.
Let's take a quick break here.
Let's take a little break.
Little break.
Okay, I'm going to have a glass of water, a cup of water.
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OK, back I'm hydrated.
Maybe you are too.
Let's continue.
So to keep this simple, again, let's consider these questions.
What have been the good moments in your English learning
over the last 12 months?
What were those situations?
What exactly did you do?
What happened?
What caused you to feel an improvement in your English
and the way you feel about your English?
Can you repeat those successes and build on them
in the coming months?
And if there were negative things, experiences or feelings
in relation to your English, how can you learn from them?
To demonstrate this a bit, let me reflect
on my learning of French, which admittedly,
I have not been engaging with properly.
OK, and there you see my somewhat negative attitude
towards my relationship with French,
revealing the frankly unhealthy condition
of my French language learning.
I mean, I've just been talking about trying to think positively,
but I really need to take this advice too,
because my own narrative in my head about me and my French,
it always goes negative.
Just there, instantly I mention my French,
and I'm like, oh, you know, it's very unhealthy, you know,
do do do.
You know, I really need to try and turn that round.
I've talked about this before as well.
But anyway, let me reflect on my French here
and consider my answers, like my answers,
to the questions which I have above.
Here are some notes, now, which I'll expand on.
So in terms of experiences that I've had that were good,
that were positive.
So recently, my wife and I attended a cooking class.
OK, it was just before Christmas, and my wife,
who's very lovely and thoughtful,
decided it would be a good idea and fun thing for us to do
to attend a cooking class.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
She wasn't going, oh, my God, I live with an English man.
I need to help him learn how to cook.
No, actually, I do cook quite a lot,
and she is very complimentary about my cooking.
Thank you very much.
But no, she said, because there's a place in the centre of Paris
called Italy.
Not Italy.
I don't want to confuse you if you don't know geography.
Well, wait a minute, what?
Italy's in the centre of Paris.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Italy is a country in Europe.
France is another country,
and Paris is the capital city of that country.
And in Paris, there is a place called Italy.
It's spelled E-A-T-A-L-Y.
Right?
Not Italy, Italy.
See what they've done.
It's a place with lots of restaurants and food shops.
It's like an Italian food centre.
It's amazing.
Right?
High five, if you know about Italy.
High five.
They've got them in Italy as well, surprisingly enough.
And so Italy, it's a place where you can go to eat Italian food.
It's not Italy, Italy, you see?
Clever name, isn't it?
So it was in Italy, and it was a cooking class in the evening
with about maybe 10 other people.
And we learned how to make a delicious truffle risotto.
Oh.
Mmm.
Absolutely delicious.
Yeah.
So we learned that was a fantastic experience.
It really was.
So there was a table, a big table in the middle.
We had a chef, French chef, who specialised in cooking Italian food.
I don't know Italian.
How do you feel about that?
A French chef specialising Italian food?
You're thinking, this is fantastic.
What could be wrong with that?
Nothing.
It's not football.
It's not football.
It's not teams.
It's food.
Just everyone can eat anything and cook anything.
It's fine, isn't it?
Anyway, so big table in the middle, loads of cooking stations,
cookers, hot plates, sinks, chopping boards,
like really nice sharp kitchen knives, all the right equipment.
Aprons, we all put these nice aprons on.
It was a very professional, lovely environment to practice cooking.
The chef served us all this lovely Italian prosecco.
So we're drinking prosecco.
We're chopping up onions and shallots and stuff like that
and chopping up garlic and frying and cooking up a broth.
And everyone's standing around this big table.
The chef does his introduction.
Of course, it's all in French.
Now often in those sorts of situations, those social situations,
I feel kind of anxious.
I get a lot of anxiety in those situations when it's all in French
because I'm struggling to understand what's going on.
It's funny.
My French is weird because sometimes I feel like I understand French
with the Jedi mind trick.
I just don't really know how I understand it
because I don't feel like I know that much vocabulary
and I feel like I don't really have that much grammar.
If I was to do grammar exercises in terms of structuring a sentence
and knowing all of the different past forms and all the conjugations
and stuff, I'm really not good at that
because I haven't been disciplined.
There was a time when I used to do that.
I used to have got a big book of conjugations
and I used to go through the exercises
and I used to do it in an app in my spare time.
But I found it so incredibly boring and also fruitless.
I'm just such a bad example of all the things I just said.
And I'm an example.
What's that joke?
That joke that I've done on the podcast, which is like,
you're not completely useless.
Don't worry, you're not completely useless.
You can always serve as a bad example.
So that's what's going on here, I suppose.
My French is kind of, you know, here's not what you shouldn't do.
Anyway, so I'm normally quite anxious, but I just decided.
So this is one of the things that I, one good thing is that
I've made up my mind when I went into the room.
I said, right, no, I'm going to be fine, okay?
I'm just deciding to go with this and enjoy this.
This is an evening for us and I'm just going to really enjoy this
and I'm really going to enjoy interacting in French.
I don't care if I'm crapped if I make a mistake.
It's going to be a nice, congenial, friendly atmosphere.
It's just going to be fun.
So that was good.
So positive, I went in with a positive intention.
So the chef was talking, now I sort of understood,
I understand a lot of what people say,
but I just don't know how I understand it
because I couldn't write it all down correctly.
But so that's why I say I understand just
why the Jedi mind trick.
I just somehow follow the gist of what people are saying.
And then he asked everyone to introduce themselves.
So luckily I was not first, you know,
I wasn't the first person, but we went,
we went around the table, people introduced themselves.
There were maybe five or six people before me.
And at that point I was like, right, okay,
prepare, mentally prepare self-loop.
They were all introducing themselves, themselves.
They were introducing themselves
and I was practicing literally running through
what I was going to say in my head, you know,
Bonjour, je suis Luke, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
actually, bonsoir, not Bonjour.
And you know, J'ai viendu en guleter,
mais j'ai beat EC in blah, blah, blah,
all this kind of stuff.
Sounds so basic.
It was actually quite good.
I did better than I just did now.
And I noticed little things as well.
I noticed that when they introduced themselves,
they all said, moi, je suis, blah, blah, blah.
I think that's what it was.
Hold on, I need to make a little correction there.
So no, they weren't saying, moi, je suis,
and then the name, like moi, je suis Luke.
They weren't saying that.
In fact, it was moi, c'est Luke.
Like for example, moi, c'est Julia, moi, c'est Florian,
moi, c'est Lod, moi, c'est Marie.
Now in English, that is me, it's, and then the name,
like me, it's Luke, which, you know,
is kind of, it strikes me as being a bit odd, you know,
if I look at it from the point of view of English,
in English, we would say, you know, I'm Luke, right?
Or my name is Luke.
Hi, everyone, my name's Luke.
Hi, everyone, I'm Luke.
But in French, they were, if I translate it directly,
they were saying, me, it's Luke, right?
Like me, it's Julian, me, it's Lod, me, it's Mary, right?
Moi, c'est, Lod, moi, c'est Marie.
And that was interesting,
because that's definitely not what, you know,
we all get taught at school or anything like that.
But that is actually how French people
introduce themselves.
So they were all saying that moi, c'est Richard,
you know, me, it's Richard.
Now that does seem a bit strange or seem to be strange,
but I thought to myself, they're a men.
I mean, I've noticed this stuff before.
I mean, you might be thinking, Luke,
introduction's really, that's so basic,
that's like lesson number one.
I know it is, but still in the real world,
even basic things like that can actually be rather complex
when you actually, you know,
when you're dealing with the way people actually do it
in the real world, you know?
So I made note of it.
I made a mental note of like, ah, ah, yeah.
Because normally, maybe I would just be saying,
for sure, just sweet Luke or Jean-Mappelle Luke,
I'm Luke, my name is Luke, right?
I'm called Luke, but I was like, no,
I'm definitely gonna copy what they're doing,
even though it doesn't come naturally to me,
I'm gonna do what they do.
And that's exactly what I did.
So I copied them all, right?
I copied what they said, and I prepared myself in advance,
right?
Vosoires, wa c'est Luke, and then I continued.
And it all came out quite well.
I was actually quite surprised with myself,
and quite happy.
Because as we were going, as they were going around,
introducing themselves, saying a few things about themselves,
I was like, running it through in my head,
you know, working out what I was gonna say.
The rough translation was, hi, I'm Luke.
I think I tried to make some sort of,
I tried to allude at making a bit of a joke,
like I'm from England,
so I thought it would be a good idea
to learn how to cook, you know?
But I actually did quite well.
I was happy with my performance in English,
not that it was a performance, but I mean,
happy in it, happy with my performance,
as if I was a footballer who'd been happy with his performance.
I think I played quite well, you know?
So Luke, how do you feel about your performance today
at the cooking class in French?
Well, obviously, you know, I've gone out there
and I've, you know, I've tried to be positive,
you know, I've just sort of like done my best.
And at the end of the day, you know,
I'm pretty pleased with the performance.
I think the results speak for themselves.
So I was like, I felt like a football player
who was pleased with his performance,
basically at the end of it, because I had gone in there
with a positive frame of mind.
And I'd noticed the actual things that people were saying
and I was copying them.
And that was that.
So that was the little experience that I had there
at the cooking class, which was a positive one for my French.
I even said at the end, you know,
just sweet puff four of for say,
you know, I'm not very strong in French, sorry if I don't understand.
And the chef was very nice, he was like, oh, well, you know,
you're French, no, no, your French is very good.
And they're all like, oh, no, no, you're really good.
And the chef was like, oh, no, no, your French is much better
than my English.
And I was there going, I'm not sure about that.
We'll see if we actually have to engage in a conversation
crumbling down.
But anyway, the good things were,
I had the positive attitude going in.
I decided to just make a success of it
and not worry and enjoy myself.
The Prosecco, the sparkling wine,
probably helped to be honest.
Also, I noticed what the other people were saying
and I copied them.
And I prepared things in advance.
Okay.
So let me just, so that's, you know, that was good.
That was a really positive experience.
And those are the things I'm taking away from that.
So the good things, I listened to what the others said
and I copied them.
I prepared myself in advance in my head.
I decided to just enjoy the moment.
I went out of my comfort zone.
I will remember the little things I noticed and used.
So that's the cooking experience.
Another thing, another thing in answer to the questions
I gave you before is this reading graphic novels.
And I've said this before, right?
Graphic novels, these are, you know, comic books,
but for grownups, we call them graphic novels in English.
I love graphic novels in French and there are so many.
And this has been a really good thing in French for me.
I finished the series called La Hab du Future,
the Arab of the Future, I think.
I've been reading one about the story
of the making of the film Star Wars,
a really interesting sort of kind of biography of George Lucas
and the making of Star Wars.
Really cool, like great artwork and really interesting,
especially for me as someone who's interested in that.
I've been reading one about an Indonesian woman
who lives in France and observes funny, cultural differences,
one about crime and police in Baltimore,
which I found really difficult to follow.
One about a journalist's trip to North Korea and more.
What I love about graphic novels is that you can read direct speech,
right? There's just a speech bubble.
And you can see directly what the person is saying,
rather than in books, sometimes it's sort of in indirect speech,
but it's much more like direct spoken English, but written.
There's awesome artwork and the pictures definitely help
to support my understanding, which is really important.
I get a sense of achievement from actually finishing the books.
I have found something that I actually really enjoy doing in French here.
Now I don't know why, but a lot of things turn me off.
I find social interactions in French to be extremely painful a lot of the time.
I know it's kind of sad, but it's true.
And a lot of the other things just don't, I don't know,
like watching French TV shows.
It's, yeah, I've watched quite a few, but it's not necessarily the thing
that grabs me and I don't really know why.
But graphic novels are something that work for me,
and so that's good.
Also, I can go at my own speed.
Unlike TV shows which are harder to keep up with.
I tend to just read and read, and unfortunately I sort of skip over the phrases
which I don't understand or don't know how to pronounce.
And so I should actually stop and check those things, note them down,
right, in a notebook or something, and try to use them myself.
So that's something I could be doing more comments on this kind of thing later.
Also, there's no audio though, so I can't actually hear the pronunciation.
Other things I could do is I should try reading other things like
magazine articles or books, not just graphic novels.
I did buy a book called High Fidelity by Nick Hornby,
one of my favourite novels in English.
I bought that in French, but I just couldn't get into the habit of reading it.
And I think that's because I have quite bad reading habits actually,
even in English.
What happens is I'll read a book, and it relaxes me so much that I actually want to fall asleep,
because it's all nice and cozy and relaxing.
So I don't, I'm not a great reader in English anyway,
even though I absolutely adore books.
And when I get into the habit of it, I really, I really love getting into a good book,
but anyway, so other things I can do is just open my ears and just listen to people around me.
Now this really means getting out of my bubble, because to an extent I live in a bubble,
you know, I go out of my home, I put my headphones on,
I'm listening to podcasts in English, I listen to music, I'm just sort of in my own bubble.
I need to get out of that bubble really, and just notice the French which people are using around me.
Being part of conversations when lots of people talking,
when lots of people are talking, can be very overwhelming and exhausting.
It's all too much for me, and I just become kind of cut off from the French I'm hearing after a while.
As I've said before, I feel like I'm watching a game of tennis.
And after a while, I just can't see the ball anymore.
So I'm there, like at a dinner party or in a cafe with other people,
and I'm just like trying to keep up watching the game of tennis,
and then wait a minute, I've lost the ball, the ball's invisible,
I don't know what's going on anymore.
So, you know, being a bit more gregarious and outgoing would be good.
I should stop avoiding social interactions, take out my headphones, and be a bit more present.
Also, don't beat myself up, don't care so much, just enjoy it, lower my expectations for myself.
Take the pressure off my shoulders a bit.
There are millions of other things I could be doing to improve my French.
But again, I need to stop sort of bothering myself about that stuff.
But I'll perhaps I'll mention some of those things later.
But you know what, part of what holds me back with my French is this sense of pressure
that I should be a master language learner because I'm a professional language teacher.
I put a lot of pressure on myself, and as a result, I have a bad relationship with French,
and I often avoid it and avoid learning it.
You heard me talk about this in the episode with Fabio from last year,
Episode 850 called any language you want, also the one with Rian and Carter.
So, yeah, I know this has become a therapy session now.
But because I make it my business to help people learn a language,
and I do know a lot of methods, and have so much like pedagogy spinning around inside my head,
and that is connected to job-related and career-related pressure.
Because of all that, I am extremely aware of all the things I'm not doing in my learning of French.
I carry all of that on my shoulders, and it causes me to feel quite ashamed of my language learning,
and shame doesn't help.
It just kills that outgoing, curious, risk-taking, adventurous side that you need to encourage in yourself,
because that is so important in language learning.
It also kills the motivation you need to push through things like slightly boring or unexcited,
and exciting language practice exercises you can do, which require discipline.
All right, everyone. You're in the middle of a reflective therapy session here,
where I'm talking about my French, but I'm using this as a case study.
There are also other reasons for my lack of progress, including the fact that a lot of people just switched to English,
when they speak to me.
I am actually more capable of having meaningful conversations in English than in French.
I can't really speak French at home with my wife, because our relationship is based in English and more.
As I've said before, my French is not that great in my opinion, but my excuses are improving all the time.
So, you know, I shouldn't be making excuses. I should just take my own responsibility for myself.
Anyway, I would like to take all that pressure off my shoulders,
and just come to this a bit more fresh as if I have no idea that I'm climbing a big mountain or something.
I'm just going for a nice, great walk in the countryside, and I'm enjoying the view.
That's the outlook I want to have.
Okay, I had to take a little break there because I ran out of time, and had to go and meet my wife.
It's been three hours, actually, and I'm now back in my podcasting room to continue to finish this episode off.
If you're watching the video version of this, then you've probably noticed that I've got a baby strapped to my chest.
You can just see the very top of his head.
If you're listening to the audio version and you think, I'm going to rush over to the video version and see the face of Luke's child.
I think you can only see the top of his head.
Just to explain, do you need me to explain? I don't know, but I'm going to do it anyway.
This morning, my wife was looking after our son.
This is my son who is with me here to record this final part of this episode.
My wife was looking after him this morning.
Our daughter was at a drawing class with a couple of her friends this morning as well.
The plan was that I would do this episode finish and then go and meet them all to have lunch.
Then I would take the boy back and look after him this afternoon, having already recorded my podcast stuff in the morning.
It didn't work out like that, of course, and I ran after time.
I had to go and meet them all.
We all had lunch together in Italy again.
We keep going there all the time because we like it so much.
I'm full of pizza and I've got this little baby boy strapped to my chest.
He's going to join me.
My wife has taken our daughter and a couple of her friends to the cinema this afternoon.
Let's finish this off, shall we?
Let's see if I can manage to finish recording this episode without him getting a bit too excited or something.
He was asleep until about five minutes ago.
I came in here thinking, he's asleep on the metro on the way here.
He was asleep.
I was thinking this is fine.
He'll just be asleep and I'll be able to do the recording.
I'll be able to finish it off.
I came in here, sat down, bang, instantly awake like that.
He's okay.
He's not moving around too much at the moment.
Let's see if we can finish this off.
Audio listeners, he might be able to hear him breathing.
That stuff, right mate?
He's been very good.
He's a good podcast companion.
I was talking about my French right and using it as a case study for basically considering ways in which we can work on our languages this year.
Let's see.
Here are some things that I can improve, I think.
Maybe these are ideas that you can take with you as well.
First of all, attitude, and I've just talked about that.
Basically, I need to take it easy on myself.
Also, just to have the little things, for example, I could keep a vocabulary or grammar notebook.
This could just be a notebook, a little notebook that I have to have near me when I'm reading a graphic novel or something like that.
Maybe just a notebook that I can keep in my pocket that I can just quickly note down ideas or on my phone, you know.
I could just note down or jot down any little things which I notice and would like to remember.
This could be just little phrases, little bits of grammar or structures that keep coming up, little reminders of pronunciation.
These can just be little, maybe those things that I notice in graphic novels and I don't really know exactly how to pronounce them or I don't know exactly what they mean.
I just kind of skim through because I want to follow the story.
Those are the things I could stop and just kind of investigate those things a little bit and note them down.
Think about how they're pronounced and maybe try and use them a little bit.
Just by bit, this is how you can build your vocabulary which improves your fluency and your confidence and stuff.
But also it just means that you end up mapping out the language little bit by little bit.
It's a bit like when you play a computer game. If you play Grand Theft Auto, you start the game.
You've got the whole map but most of it is hidden from you. Most of it's like in the dark when you look at the map.
And when you visit those places, those places become visible when you check the map.
So you slowly uncover the entire map as you play the game, as you discover different areas and you little by little you eat into the map revealing it as you go.
And in a way, my French is kind of like a map like that but only little patches.
I've only visited little patches and so I'm only little, only little patches are visible to me when I look at the language as a whole.
Does that make sense? So by keeping a vocab notebook, I can help myself to uncover more of that map and get to know the area.
And that makes it so much easier to then go and visit those places later when you need to when you need to speak.
Like for example, I was just thinking on the way back here, I was thinking, you know, I talked about just being able to introduce myself to a group of people in French as if it was a victory, which I mean it kind of was.
But even that is just, I think back and I think that's just so basic, isn't it? Having to introduce yourself is not, that's like lesson one.
You might think that, but I mean in the real world, you know, when you're living in a country where that language is spoken, even something like just introducing yourself in a party or something can seem like, you know, some are just more complicated than it is in the textbooks.
And there are so many different factors that come in different sort of unexpected things that kind of come in. My son's just looking up at me, like that, hello mate, you alright?
Yeah.
But then I was thinking, but it's to give you a better idea of my French, there are just like so many things that I don't really know how to say.
For example, I was just thinking, what was it? I'm not supposed to stand here. Am I supposed to stand here? Like this is just like an example of a bit of French that I don't really know how to say.
Am I supposed to stand here? Am I allowed to stand here? Sorry, were you standing here already? Was this place supposed to be for me? You know, just things like that? Are we supposed to be sitting here?
Those sorts of phrases are just like, I really don't know how to put that in French. I've got work to do. I've got work to do basically, but a notebook can help just a note down or jot down any little things which I notice and would like to remember little phrases, little bits of grammar, as I said.
So I can check an online French dictionary or even chat GPT or other online tools like Google Translate or deep L translator. Now online translators can be extremely useful tools. Just don't use them to cheat.
I mean, don't just use them to, don't just write, if you've got an email to write, don't just write it all in your first language and then just translate it into English and then just send it.
You know, don't do that. You can do that. You can actually learn from the translated version. You can look at it and go, what are the things I was trying to write and see them and then make a mental note of them and use them later.
You know, so you can use online translators as a tool. Just don't use them to be lazy. You know, use them to help you learn.
I could check my notebook later and remind myself of what I noted down. Son is just looking up at me smiling at me like that. Hello, cutie pie. Hello.
I could practice by testing myself, right? So looking at my notebook, I can just maybe cover up some of the words with my thumb and just see if I can remember them and then reveal the words, maybe even reveal them letter by letter by removing my thumb bit by bit.
So it helps me just to jog my memory, right? Reading things out loud and then running them through Google translate to hear them said to hear them spoken in order to check my pronunciation.
So that's not just translating. You know, that's not just making Google translate say the French I'm learning, but you know, making it say those things in order for me to hear the pronunciation, right?
So I can just say a little quick, quick way of how is this pronounced? How is this word or sentence pronounced? Just get Google translate to say it for you because there's a little like a sort of speaker icon.
You can just put some text in in either language and click the speaker icon and it will say that line for you.
I could just devote 10 minutes a day to doing some reading or listening in French and then investigating the language I notice with my notebook.
And these are things you could do too. I could try to convert listening to speaking and reading to writing, which means repeat some of the things I've heard and write down some of the things I've read.
Okay. And again, chat GPT can help with the writing just ask it to correct you and perhaps explain your errors.
And of course, other chat bots are available. It's an I only mentioned chat GPT here in case you can't find or can't afford a human teacher, right?
And then lastly, you know, you me, we could consider taking some one to one lessons with a human being perhaps on I talky.
And you know, it's a lot of time management is necessary. I have to sort out my time management for this all my time is is used up at the moment, but you know, I should make time.
Here are some questions for you at this point. So what do you think of the things I just said? I mean, did it make you think of your situation at all?
Maybe it just made you think of me and my language learning. Maybe you're just distracted by the fact that my my son is kind of on the podcast today.
But maybe what did it make you think to be honest, I don't really want you to analyze and diagnose my language learning situation. I'm not looking for advice or help with my French rights.
I'm just using it as a little example, but did it encourage you to reflect on your English. Now, I strongly suspect that your English is better than my French.
So your concerns might be a bit different to mine. You're probably looking for ways to get. Yeah, do you agree he does.
You're probably looking for ways to get out of the intermediate plateau. Always of progressing to a very proficient level of English.
Okay, I'm standing up now video views. You can't see me anymore because I'm standing up. This is this is mad. You can't see my face. You can just see me bouncing up and down.
I'll see if I can fix that in a second. You're probably looking for ways to get out of the intermediate plateau. Right. Always of progressing to a very proficient level of English.
I have people with a pretty wide variety of English levels listening to this from pretty low level people who only just manage to follow what I'm saying.
You know, you have my respect to non-native speakers who are really advanced and even teach English as a living and who just enjoy listening to another teacher do his thing.
I want to maintain their level and keep their English alive and fresh and you have my respect too. So I have a whole wide range of different people with different language levels listening to this.
Anyway, with my own example as a case study, I gave some suggestions there of little ways to work on your language learning beyond just listening to this podcast.
Maybe that can give you some inspiration or ideas, but really the main thing I want to get across to you here is the importance of having a positive relationship with the language you're learning.
So for me and my French, the things I will hold in mind are a, the positive experience I had at the cooking class and b, the comfort and enjoyment I experience from reading graphic novels in French.
And at this point, I would just like to say, hey, hey you, hey you, yes you, the one listening, leave a comment.
I have something to ask you, please comment on this episode. Spread some positivity in the comments section.
I want to encourage you to give any positive comment that you can right now.
This will be good for you as it will help you realise something positive about your English and will give you a little bit of writing practice,
but it will also be good for everyone else because it can help to create a good vibe and also can give people some inspiration and general support in their English learning.
So what positive experiences have you had in English? What do you love about learning English? What little methods, exercises or resources have helped you with your English?
And what have you enjoyed in English lately? You can leave your thoughts in the comments section.
Okay, so I'm now going to give a summary of the stuff I've just said because, right, sometimes I worry that I'm too wordy, right, that I kind of go on and on.
And the main core message of what I'm saying gets watered down by the slightly long-winded way in which I put things.
It's probably fine and I just worry too much about these things or something.
But anyway, I want this episode to be clear. So I've asked chat GPT to summarise the things I said to you.
I entered the text which I wrote on my sofa a couple of days ago for the last few days and which I have read to you and I asked it to summarise that text for me.
And this is what it wrote.
Here is what it said. This is a summary of the main points I've tried to make. Okay, so this is chat GPT speaking now.
Do you know what I'm talking to my son? Do you know what chat GPT is? It's AI.
I'm sure you're going to know all about it as you grow up. Anyway, so this is AI speaking now.
The text you provided is an extensive reflection on English language learning and personal experiences related to language acquisition.
The author encourages listeners to assess their progress over the past year, emphasising the importance of reflective practice and mindfulness in language learning.
The piece delves into various aspects.
Number one, looking back.
Encouraging individuals to consider their progress in English over the past year.
Reflecting on what has worked positively, identifying experiences that have impacted learning and acknowledging both positive and negative moments.
Number two, acknowledging learning challenges. Addressing the common feeling of being stuck in the intermediate plateau.
And offering encouragement to persist despite feeling stagnant.
Emphasising that progress may not always be immediately visible but is still happening.
Number three, adopting a positive attitude. Encouraging a positive mindset.
Emphasising that failures and setbacks are part of the learning process.
Highlighting the importance of perseverance and staying committed to learning.
And number four, suggestions for improvement.
Offering personal experiences with learning French and outlining strategies for improvement.
Such as keeping a vocab or grammar notebook.
Practicing reading and listening and exploring speaking opportunities.
And number five, the importance of enjoying the learning process.
Stressing the significance of enjoying the journey of learning a language and removing self-imposed pressure to achieve perfection.
Number six, encouragement for sharing experiences.
Inviting listeners to share positive experiences, effective learning methods and resources in English.
And then finally, number seven, future goals.
Posing questions about how individuals want to spend the next 12 months.
Emphasising the value of enjoying time spent learning English.
And expressing enthusiasm for continuing the podcast journey.
Overall, says chat GPT.
The text serves as a reflective guide.
Encouraging learners to consider their language learning journeys.
Embrace challenges, find joy in the process.
And engage with the learning community by sharing experiences and positive energy.
All right. Now you might...
I don't know what you think about AI and chat bots and stuff, but...
Sometimes listeners on YouTube post AI written summaries of my episodes in the comments section.
I don't know if you've ever seen that. Have you ever been on YouTube and had a look through comments of different videos and used sometimes see like summaries of the video with...
With time stamps.
Which... And those summaries have been written by AI.
You can do that. You can go on to different AI platforms, enter the URL of a YouTube video, and it will give you a summary with time stamps.
And sometimes people add those AI written summaries in the comments section.
And to be honest, they're usually a bit wrong.
For example, the AI seems confused by moments of humour or comedy in my episodes.
Or by funny little conversational tangents.
And doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between those tangential moments and the main topic of the episode.
And so its summaries are a bit kind of off the mark.
I'm talking specifically about Tammy AI here.
Tammy AI, which is the AI that does this, right?
I don't know if it uses the same engine as chat GPT.
Anyway, that... So Tammy AI is often kind of wrong in its summaries, as I said.
But that summary, which chat GPT just gave me for this episode, is good and I'm happy with it.
And by the way, I'm not relying on chat GPT here overusing it or becoming dependent on it.
And I say that because I think some people out there are a bit wary of chat GPT.
Ooh, no. And they see it as... They see any use of it as being a kind of a slippery slope to overreliance on it.
And therefore, a sort of slipping of standards.
But I think that AI... First of all, it's not going away, right?
There's no way that it's going away. It's here and it's probably here to stay.
And I think that AI can be used sparingly and to good effect.
And that summary that I just read from is an example of that.
It came up with that summary in seconds.
I read it, I checked it, and decided to use it.
So that's just an example of when AI is useful, I think.
Speaking challenges, and we're near the end of the episode here.
So I said before that I would give you some ideas for speaking and writing challenges.
So here are some things that you can do to work on your productive skills in English.
So, you're listening? He's listening.
Good. You're a very good listener, aren't you?
Okay. You do need to work on your speaking skills, though.
I'm talking to my baby again here.
Listening, excellent.
Speaking, we're working on that, aren't we? We'll get there. It takes time.
It takes time, you know. It does. It takes a long time.
So much listening, just listening, listening, listening.
And then you've got to make a load of noises, right?
Just any noise. And eventually you refine it slowly,
even though you make loads of mistakes. And then eventually you'll get there, right?
It's a long journey, you know?
I can speak like this now, but it's taking me 46 years to get to this stage.
Yeah, so don't worry.
Anyway, working on your speaking listeners.
You're just going to have people to talk to in English.
And you can just have these long conversations.
Practice expressing yourself for long periods until you're really tired.
And then you go to bed. And that night you fall asleep with your mind whizzing
and worrying with English words.
Have you ever had that experience? That's good.
That's really great where you spend the day in English.
You're like, trying to carry on, speaking, speaking English around you
and you're trying to keep up with them. And you go to bed and you've got English words and phrases
spinning around in your head. And then you wake up in the morning and then you've got to carry on.
You know, it keeps going. There's never any downtime.
And you really learn a lot then and you really learn to speak then in that situation.
But unfortunately, that's not always possible, is it?
You know, especially if you live wherever you live and you don't have English speakers around you and stuff.
So for so many of you out there, you don't have this opportunity.
So what can you do? Well, it's difficult, isn't it?
It's difficult to... I don't have the perfect solution.
You've just got to try and do what you can.
I think it's possible to improve your English. You just need to be a bit inventive
and try and experiment and try all sorts of different options until you find something that sort of
kind of replicates actually being surrounded by native speakers.
So you could try joining a community of English speakers online.
And the first one that comes to mind would be Stenic's community.
Stenic, Lucas from Stenic's English podcast. He's got a discord server called the Achievers Chamber,
which is a place where you can practice speaking with other learners of English who have a similar level to you.
He's got a kind of benchmark level. It's a minimum B2 level to enter that.
But you can find out the details on his website, teachersdenic.com.
And then you just click on Achievers Chamber to find out the details.
Or you can go to italky.com and you should use my link because it will give you a $10 discount.
TeacherLuke.co.uk slash talk to go to italky.
And you can go there and you can find a person there to talk to or a teacher to have lessons with.
And there are teachers from all over the world, including from the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, USA, and so on.
You know, native speakers, but also like highly qualified teachers who are not native speakers.
You don't have to speak to native speakers, you know, that's kind of a misconception.
It doesn't have to be native speakers. You know, you can definitely learn English from non-native speakers.
In fact, there's a strong argument to say that non-native speakers can be the best people to talk to, the best teachers,
because they've done it themselves and they know exactly what you're going through.
And they can guide you step by step, you know. So it doesn't really matter.
You know, but anyway, I talk you. There's a wide range of different people there who you can like take conversation classes or lessons with.
Now, you have to pay for this, of course. And sometimes it can take time to find the right teacher or conversation partner for you.
But it can be an effective way to find someone for speaking practice with feedback and also lessons for specific purposes.
And as I said before, if you use my link, you can get a $10 voucher when you buy some lessons on I talk.
TeacherLuke.co.uk slash talk. Okay. You could also enroll in language classes in a language school near you, like the British Council or whatever you have in your area.
You know, that's just old school stuff going into a classroom with a teacher and other learners and doing it that way.
So, yeah, like the British Council, you'll probably find that the BC offer courses, which include lessons on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and all that stuff.
You might not find specific classes only for speaking and feedback, though.
But you'll have to check the British Council's website for more information.
See if they have a teaching centre near you and what services they offer. They also have online courses, by the way.
So, that's Britishcounsel.org slash English slash adults.
But even if you can't access English speakers or teachers for conversations and language practice and language feedback, you can still find ways to practice your speaking on your own.
You just have to think outside the box a little bit and be prepared to do something that seems a bit unconventional, like speaking to yourself, for example.
Now, don't worry, it doesn't mean you're weird or strange. And if someone overhears you, like, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-
And then you'll just have to make them listen to Luke's English podcast. And then they'll become lepsters and my evil plan
will finally come to fruition. This is how I will spread my influence around the world, person by person, until eventually I will take over the world and then
free ice cream for everyone.
Talk to yourself. So try it, just try talking to yourself out loud in English.
Now there are many things you can talk about or try to do. You might want to consider the sorts of talking that you will have to do, you know, in normal social situations and try to replicate that.
Right? But in any case, simply the act of attempting to express yourself out loud in English. I think it is good practice.
When you get stuck and you realize you don't know how to say something you want to say, you can just go to Google Translate again or other
translators which are available like deep L, for example, and just write what you want to say in your language and then translate it into English.
This is when, so you're sort of, you're sort of, you're speaking to yourself, you're saying, okay, so the weather's pretty nice. Maybe I should go outside, go to the shops.
Do I need anything from the shops? I think we need some bananas, don't we? Yeah, do we do we do we do we need milk? Never know if we need milk. No one ever knows if they need do we need. I can't remember. I'll just get some milk anyway.
But then I need to get that. What's that? What do we call it? I don't know. Google translate.
Okay, almond powder, almond powder. Wait, it's not almond, but no, no, almond powder. Okay. Right, you see.
So you can just do that. You can also press the audio button to hear how to pronounce it. Now as I said before, this is not cheating. It's using Google Translate as a tool.
And you might think that Google Translate is a bad thing. Do you?
It's cheating. It's lazy. It's bad for your English or it's unreliable or Google don't pay taxes. I don't know what you're thinking, but as a tool, it's actually pretty good.
As long as it's not the only thing you're working with. And I've said it, you know, I'm going to say it again. There's also chat GPT with the Google Chrome extension voice control for chat GPT, which allows you to just ask questions to chat GPT to and get it to translate things for you and listen to it. Say its responses. Right. So that's how you can kind of speak to it.
You can control things like speaking speed and different accents. Now it's no replacement for speaking to an actual human, but if you see it as a tool for certain kinds of controlled practice, it can be pretty useful, especially for error correction.
That's chat GPT with the Google Chrome extension voice control for chat GPT.
So consider using things like Google translate or chat GPT as tools to help you practice on your own.
All right. You're right mate. Have this. Have this. There you go. I've just put his little dummy in his mouth. He's going to be a little bit more comfortable now.
Got anything to say.
It's like, oh, you're talking too much to this episode too long. When's it going to stop? Okay. I get the idea. I know. I know. It won't be long. Okay.
So if you don't know what to talk about, here are some ideas. So you could do a commentary. So that's just give a commentary of all the things you're doing while you're doing them.
So I'm standing here. I've got my baby son strapped to my chest with the baby carrier and oh, my back's hurting a little bit.
But I'm doing an episode of my podcast. So I have to I have to finish this because if I don't finish this today, it's going to there's I've got I'm busy for the next few days and then it will take ages and I need to get this episode done and published so I can move on to the next one.
So we've got to just get through this, you know, just give a commentary on what you're doing. Second thing is you could do a commentary in the past. So that's while you're doing things talk about them as if they happened in the past.
So I spoke on the podcast and then or like I so I had a shower and then I brushed my teeth and then I did up my the buttons on my shirt. You know, while you're doing you talk about them as if they were in the past.
And that's that's to practice, you know, putting everything in the in past forms. Right. Because you've got to make sure that you practice doing that like those ED endings, those irregular verbs or whatever shadowing as well. Right. You all know about this. Don't you? So you can listen to a short audio clip or video in English and try to imitate the speakers pronunciation.
And repeat the sentences or phrases immediately after hearing them or even at exactly the same time that you hear them, which sounds weird, but it can work. So I think that's a very important thing.
So I think that's the only thing that's a lot of time to practice. So I think that's the only thing that's a lot of time to practice.
So I think that's the only thing that's a lot of time to practice. So I think that's the only thing that's a lot of time to practice.
Just teach your Luke.co.uk slash premium info. Yeah, you got she get that URL. I'll take that as a yes. It's like, yeah, I've got it. I'm already a subscriber Luke. No worries.
Number four, record yourself. You could pick a topic or a short passage, maybe a topic from a podcast episode or a passage from an episode with a transcript like a story episode. You could read one of those stories.
Read it aloud and record your voice. Then listen to the recording and analyze your pronunciation, intonation, and fluency, especially if there's another recording that you can compare it to.
Take note of areas that you could improve.
Number five, if you could do a monologue or ramble challenge. So choose a topic or an object around you and just talk about it for a few minutes as if you're giving a presentation. Maybe you could sell it, right? So for example,
okay, well, I've got here a microphone. It's a hand held microphone. The sort of thing that a singer would use during a concert. And I've had this microphone for a quite a long time, but I never use it. It's bait by a company called blue. This is a blue encore 100 handheld dynamic microphone. I mean, obviously I'm talking about microphones. And obviously I know about microphones, but you could choose something else that you know about.
I just happen to know about this. And I never use it. So I'm planning to sell it. Okay. So by the way, if you want to buy this microphone, then just make me an offer. Okay, make me an offer for this microphone. I think I, I caught, I spent about 100 pounds on this.
When I originally bought it, it's virtually flawless. It has no scratches or damage on it at all. It's hardly ever been used. You can see me actually using this microphone in some episodes. For example, there's the episode we're called being a tourist with Paul Taylor. And Paul, I think uses this microphone during the recording of that episode. And a number of other iconic episodes from the back catalog were recorded with this microphone. But these days, I don't really use it very much.
Because of handling noise, it just on a podcast like this, you can hear it. You can hear my hand on the microphone a bit too much. Right. That's why I don't use it. But if you want to buy it, you can just make me an offer, make me an offer I can't refuse. And we could do business. You know, just talk to me.
So anyway, you could just talk about an object that you're trying to sell or describe. You can discuss its features, its uses, its history, or any related information. Number six, you could do a role play, act out conversations between different characters or personas.
If someone knocking on the wall, someone knocking on the wall, the floor or the ceiling, I don't know. But I mean, I don't think that's me. I think that's just someone. I'm going to hammer a nail in the wall.
I think it's someone putting up a picture or something. They're not. Then it's not someone telling me to stop talking. Unless it is, maybe my neighbor's like that. That's enough Luke. Now.
It's been it's been at least two hours now this episode. This is getting ridiculous.
Okay. All right. All right. All right. You get the idea though, everyone, right?
Describe and explain, describe an object, debate with yourself, storytelling, you know.
Sing along, karaoke, sing along to songs, read aloud, read out books, mix and match. There's lots of things you can do.
I mean, I could go on. I really could go on. If you want to read more about writing challenges as well. And I wrote some good stuff about writing challenges here.
You could read that on the PDF. Okay. There's there's more here, including asking chat GPT to give you a writing task.
And then you do that and chat. I've given you a prompt, which you can use.
Right. The prompt could be this. Can you give me a short writing task to help me practice my English?
I'd like to write a business email. Can you give me some feedback on my writing and also provide me with an example answer for your task.
And chat GPT will do it like that. And it will give you feedback to your responses.
For example, what did I write? I gave a sort of an example, bad answer to his task.
So the chat GPT gave me a task. The task was this. Okay, where is it?
So here's the scenario. You work for a software company and you need to email a client regarding a delay in delivering a project.
The client has been eagerly anticipating the completion of the project and is expecting it by the end of the month.
Craft an email to notify the client about the delay, explain the reasons behind it and reassure them about a revised timeline.
So you would write your email, send it into chat GPT after its response and it will give you feedback on it.
Also, it gives you a sample answer, which you can use as a template.
But I wanted to test it. So I gave a really bad answer.
Here's my really bad answer to that task. Sorry, mate, but I ain't done that thing you wanted because shit got intense and I had to stay at home.
Sorry about that. Can you give me some more time though and it'll get done proper in it, bruv. All right, boss.
That was my email and here's the feedback that chat GPT gave me and I have to say it showed great restraint here.
Because if one of my students had given me this work, then I wouldn't have been quite so professional in my feedback.
But chat GPT said your message has a casual tone, which may not be suitable for a professional business email to maintain a more formal and professional approach, consider the following revised version.
So it basically just said the whole tone of your email is wrong. It's far too casual and then it kind of gave me an example answer which would be much better.
Now if you wrote a more fully formed email, it might give you more specific feedback. Okay.
So that brings us to the end of the episode.
All right, there we go. That's the end of the episode.
I trust that you have not turned into a skeleton with headphones on. But you know, let me know. Right?
I send a comment in, write a comment in the comments section saying, thanks, Luke, I'm not a skeleton.
And everyone else will be confused because they didn't listen to the whole episode.
But anyway, well done for getting to the end. I trust that you have not turned into a skeleton with headphones on.
Do let me know that you're still breathing and that you found this episode to be useful. Okay.
Now what about that vocabulary highlighted in that lurid green color on the PDF?
And as I said before, I will devote a premium episode to this vocabulary.
So you'll need to be a premium subscriber to get that. Did I mention my premium subscription at all during this episode?
Did I? I don't know. Not sure I did.
Anyway, you can get the information at teacherlug.co.uk slash premium info.
But here is a list of all those highlighted expressions for your reference.
Did you notice this vocabulary in the episode? So we've got words and phrases like highlighted in lurid green, turning over a new leaf.
Hence, hence the title of the show, the uninitiated to strike you as being obvious to rub off on you,
inspiring words of wisdom to impart, sage like advice to lower your expectations, to get swept up in what I'm saying,
a renewed sense of positivity and possibility to survey the year that you've just completed,
the forthcoming 12 months to take stock of your English. I don't know.
Actually, to be mindful about your relationship with English, you're not really aware of the ways that you're looking for.
You're aware of the ways that you're learning English, to be aware of something, to be mindful about something,
to be aware of something, to reflect on something, to fit a description, metacognitive, analyzing, strategizing,
a breakthrough moment, a plateau, to stick with it, to get stuck in a rut, to go over the same ground,
feelings of reward, moments of triumphal glory, they're far a few between, to put in a lot of hours, to see the bigger picture.
Along journey, rather than a trip, what's the difference between a trip, a journey, and travel?
Along flat plain, to feel disheartened, to pay off the more blah, blah, blah, the better.
So the more you're exposed to it, the better your position is, to be on the spot, to keep the faith, to keep your chin up,
to shake things up, to adopt new habits, when the need arises, a select group of people, best consumed as part of a balanced diet,
a negative mindset, to have what it takes, a positive mental attitude, a sense of drive, to put your best foot forwards,
to build on something, upward trajectory, to reflect on something, to expand on something,
graphic novels, to be out of your bubble, to get cut off from something, to be gregarious, to be outgoing,
to beat yourself up, to hold yourself back, or if something holds you back, to push through something,
to take it easy on yourself, to note down or jot down something, to diagnose something, to strongly suspect something,
to be worthy, to get watered down, to be long-winded, to delve into something,
to be off the mark, a slippery slope, to be used sparingly, or to be used to good effect,
whizzing and whirring, and to come to fruition.
That is the end of the episode. Okay, everyone? Well done, you made it to the end,
and I hope that you enjoyed the episode. All right, you okay?
Oh no mate, you're still awake. How are you doing down there? I'm talking to my little baby son,
who has been very, very good. Such a good boy. Well done. Very proud.
Okay, what about you guys? How are you? I think I'm going to stop the episode now,
because otherwise it will get so long that no one will, that new listeners will look at the length,
they'll think, no way, I can't do it. That's one of the reasons why I've got this slight hang-up
about the length of these episodes, is because I know that new listeners probably find that to be very daunting.
So for that reason, I'm going to stop here. And as I said before, probably the next episode will be a rambling one,
where I'll just talk about a whole bunch of other things that I wanted to talk about,
which aren't really anything to do with learning English. Okay, good, nice one.
Thank you very much. If you enjoyed the episode, like, subscribe, you know, comment, share with your friends,
and all that sort of thing. Have a lovely day, morning, afternoon, evening or night.
And I will speak to you in the next episode of this podcast. But for now, that's it.
Okay, so all that remains to be said is, good bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English podcast.
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