Hello, everybody. How's it going? My name is Alina, and I'm your study guide writer, Discord moderator, and small group conversation class leader here at Q-Lips.
And today I'm going to host this community update episode for you.
And you probably know that normally we do it together with Andrew, but I'm flying solo today, so please bear with me.
It's my first time doing it on my own, so I hope it goes well.
So if you're a regular listener of Q-Lips, you probably will know that we normally talk about our monthly challenges here in these community update episodes.
And I'm definitely going to do that. No worries.
But before I get there, I would like to talk just real quick about our meetup, Q-Lips meetup. that we had in Prague in July.
Jesus, it feels like it's been ages, but it literally just happened last month and it was an incredible experience.
Just absolutely wonderful event. And I was buzzing for a whole week or two after.
I would just like to say a quick thank you to everybody who joined our meetup.
So we had Marky who really, really helped us a lot.
Thank you so much, Marky, for being a great host. for helping us organize it and helping us you know to kind of navigate and just showing us around.
Also, we had Birgit, we had Manfred, both from Germany.
We had Lidmila and Katharina and we had Jin and Mun join us as well.
And we will definitely share a picture. I made sure to take a picture of all of us.
We had lovely chats. We spent about six hours just like talking and laughing.
And the best part of it was that everybody was able to understand absolutely everything, at least I hope.
They did. But I really enjoyed how everybody was so respectful.
Anytime somebody was trying to tell a story or share something...
Everyone else was very quiet, you know, listening attentively, asking questions.
So it was a very comfortable environment.
It was extremely fun to meet some people in person.
So since then, That event went so well, I thought, hmm, maybe we should just organize another one.
And it just so happens that I'm going to Germany in October this year and I thought for a second and yeah, Andrew and I both agreed that it would be a great idea to organize another Q-Lips meetup. on October 18th, which is Saturday in Hamburg, because I'm going to be flying back home from Hamburg.
So we will definitely provide all the details a little bit later, but for now, all the listeners from Germany...
You can start packing your bags. I really hope to see as many of you as possible.
And of course, everyone else who lives in Europe, maybe some neighboring countries, You're all welcome to join.
I mean, everybody's welcome to join, really.
It doesn't matter where you live. But realistically, I'm guessing that people who live in Europe are more likely to be able to join So that's going to be fun.
I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait.
I'm so excited. I hope to see you there.
So let's talk about our September challenge now and the theme for this challenge is work.
Basically what's gonna happen is you're gonna get some questions that are work-related, and they could be about different work situations, like an interview, maybe dress code, maybe some taboo topics that you can't discuss with your co-workers, stuff like that.
So the idea behind this challenge is actually that it's a bit of a recap challenge.
So what I was thinking is that, you know, you can of course just answer the questions, right?
Just like the way you want to. whatever first comes to mind.
But if you really, really want to work and train your skills here, what I suggest... in preparation to doing this challenge is to review some previous challenges that we did before. because we actually covered some really good topics there.
For instance, just a couple months ago, we had a challenge where we learn to express our opinion politely, to agree, to disagree, to list our arguments.
So you can definitely use that. And then we also studied a few grammar topics like past simple and present perfect.
We covered some phrasal verbs, some adjectives, some expressions with the verb get, And you can definitely, I'm absolutely sure you can definitely use some of those.
So in order to find, in case you didn't participate in those challenges, which is totally fine, like you don't have to, You can be totally new to this whole thing.
They can be easily found in our monthly challenge channel on Discord. which you can find the link to in the description for this episode.
We'll definitely leave the link there. But if you go to the pinned messages, because I made sure to pin every single challenge that we had, So if you go to pinned messages, you can find all the previous challenges, but especially if you have participated in those, it should definitely be easier for you because you hopefully still remember some of those things.
So like I said, a bit of a recap and a good opportunity to review everything we studied before.
But if you haven't participated in those challenges, it's like a bonus opportunity for you, I guess, to learn some extra things as well as you are taking part in this challenge.
Another important thing I need to mention about this challenge is that you will get a task not every day, but every other day, every second day.
So you will have a bit of time maybe to go back, look at the responses the other people are sending, maybe respond to somebody, comment, agree, disagree.
Whichever you prefer, you can just be a silent viewer.
But yes, every other day. no pressure, you can always come back.
For example, if you missed a couple of days, you can always just do two or three on the same day.
I personally would recommend to take it one day at a time, of course.
But look, we're all busy. We have busy lives, work, families.
So realistically, you know. Whichever you go with is going to be great, as long as you participate, as long as you take time. and put some effort into it.
So the challenge is completely free. As always, we never charge anything for participation in these challenges and if you complete every single task of this challenge, you will receive a certificate. at the end of the challenge.
But for that, you have to really do every single assignment, every single task.
I will be checking... very thoroughly for that, as I usually do.
But that is personally my favorite part of the challenge because I get to reward you for your hard work.
So how do you complete these tasks? How do you complete these assignments?
You have a choice. As always, you can send your responses as text messages, But I definitely recommend that you use voice messages because you get some speaking practice.
You get listening practice, right? If you listen to the... other voice messages.
But even if you're feeling a little bit shy, you don't want to send your messages, I would still recommend that you, if you send a text, for instance, write, I would still recommend that you record it just for yourself.
You know, it's still going to be good practice.
You can just listen back to it, you know, check everything.
Maybe you will be able to hear some mistakes you're making.
Practice your pronunciation. You know, it's always good.
It's, yeah. It never hurts to practice all the different skills.
And this is a great chance for you to you know, practice not just writing and reading and, you know, maybe just answering questions in English.
Of course, it's still great practice, right?
If you send your... text messages, responding to questions, but it's definitely going to be better for you if you try and maybe, you know, at least send a few voice messages.
And if you have any questions about how to do it, you know where to find me, I'm in Discord.
Feel free to ask questions. I will guide you through. any problems you might have.
So no worries about that. Plus, we also have some very experienced regulars who've been participating in our challenges. for over a year now, because we've been having them for over a year actually.
So yeah, you have a choice, but maybe challenge yourself a little bit.
That's definitely something I would encourage you to do for sure as a teacher.
So that is everything you need to know now.
I hope to see you participating in our September challenge.
Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon.
Bye.
