Do you want to learn English the natural way?
Well, in this video, you're going to learn English with the comprehensible input method.
All you need to do is just watch, listen and you will learn new English vocabulary.
Today we're in the village of Goring Now.
Goring only has about 3000 people living here but, as you can see, the village is on the river Thames.
This is the river Thames, and if you keep walking in that direction, you will eventually get to London.
Anyway, let's go and have a wander around the small village of Goring.
Let's go right now.
It's actually about 1pm on a Tuesday, so it's no surprise that it's basically empty.
There's basically not a soul in sight, basically not a soul in sight around these parts anyway.
It's basically empty because it's in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, so i get the pleasure to walk around here by myself, with nobody else here.
It's pretty cool.
So we're more going into the town of goring now.
Over there is a real estate agents, so if you're interested in buying a house, you can go there and spend all of your savings on a really expensive house at the real estate agents.
Over there is goring food and wine.
So if you like food and if you like wine, well, here's the perfect place for you, I guess.
As you can see, we have the classic British post box, the Royal Mail, the classic post box used in the UK.
And you can see it's from the Royal Mail, and the Royal Mail is the postal service in the UK.
It's what we all use to send our letters and our packages and our parcels.
We use the Royal Mail.
This sign up here says To Let.
Well, if you've ever wondered what To Let means, it means that you can rent this place.
It means it's available for someone to rent.
That's what to let means.
So if you see a sign that says to let, it means that this place can be rented right now.
So now you know.
Up here we have the arcade.
So in the arcade you will get lots of different kinds of things.
This is a cafe over here.
To the left we have cards and toys.
Then we have a barber's over there to get your hair cut.
If you want to get your hair cut, you can go to this barber's.
Here we have an art store.
And over there we have a pilates place where you can do pilates if you want and yoga.
Pilates and yoga.
Thank you.
This pub over here is called the Catherine Will, and it's about 350 years old.
This building here was built in like the 1700s, something like that.
And you can tell by looking at it that it's an old building.
But yeah, it's about 300 or 350 years old.
This, this pub here, which is quite amazing.
And over here on the other side of the road, we have a library.
It's just a little library for this town and you can go and get books to read from this library.
It looks like it's closed right now.
There's a sign hanging on the front of the door saying that it's closed.
But yeah, there's a little local library here in Goring.
Now I believe if we walk down here, we're going to find a church.
I believe looks like this is a footpath in this direction, so the church should be at the end of this footpath somewhere, I assume.
Let's take a look at this sign.
The sign says, why doesn't someone cut the grass?
It's because the church has chosen to allow space for wildlife as well as people.
So the reason they haven't cut the grass here in this church yard is because they want to allow the wildlife in the area to live here as well.
So having tall grass helps the wildlife, i suppose.
See, they haven't cut the grass because I guess this helps the wildlife right.
So they've let the grass grow long.
They've let it grow really long for the wildlife.
Okay, it looks like we're approaching the church now.
As you can see, we are in the graveyard right now and there are lots of gravestones around this.
Here is a war memorial.
We have lots of poppies here.
This is a wreath poppy wreath.
Actually it's just made of plastic, but they look like poppies, so you can see that down there we have the dates 1914 to 1918.
This is that.
These are the dates for world war one.
But around here We have the dates 1939 to 1945 and those are the dates for World War II, And here we can find the names of lots of soldiers who passed away during one of the world wars.
Here, As usual, we have a notice board outside the church.
Some information about events that are happening inside this church.
And here is an advert for an event for little children.
It's called Little Lights.
It's for preschool.
It's a free preschool group.
Looks like it's on Wednesdays at 10.30 a.m.
So this is an event for preschool children.
So three or four years old probably.
So it looks like there's nobody here because, although it seems like nobody's here, if the door is unlocked, it probably means that somebody is here somewhere.
If I had to guess, I would say the vicar is probably on the premises somewhere.
The vicar is probably here.
Around somewhere, so I will keep my voice down.
And with churches you always get this echo in the room, this nice echo.
You hear that?
I'm stamping my foot on the floor, and you get this nice echo in the room.
Sounds good.
We have this nice thing which looks like a kind of golden eagle.
See, it's a really nice golden eagle with a beak, with a golden beak.
So the golden eagle has a golden beak as well.
And we have a nice stained glass window over here.
If I was more educated, I could tell you exactly what the images in these stained glass windows were showing.
But sadly, I'm not educated enough to explain what is being shown on these windows.
Would you like to live in a house like this, in a little cottage?
You can see this is called the mill cottage.
Would you like to live in a cottage like this, crossing over the river thames now?
So Goring is a small town which is on the River Thames.
So yes, this is the River Thames right here.
And this river will go all the way to London.
But if you want to go to London, you need to go in that direction.
If you keep going in that direction down there, you will end up in London.
So just keep following that river and you will get to London eventually.
If we walk past here, we go into the town of Streatley.
So it's kind of Goring and Streatley are very close together.
So past this way is Streatley, but back over this bridge, that is Goring in that direction.
See, there's the sign for Goring.
So there's Streatley.
And there's Goring.
Hence the name of the station being Goring and Streetly.
Goring and Streetly are right next to each other.
Hence the name Goring and Streetly.
Hence the name of the train station being Goring and Streetly.
So we're heading back over the bridge, back away from Streatley, back into the town of Gorin.
Unfortunately, it is actually quite a busy road this one, even though the views are very nice.
Right, the views are very pleasant.
There's actually a lot of cars that go up and down this road.
Let's go for a little walk by the River Thames now.
If I had to describe the village of Goring in one word, it would definitely be peaceful.
It's a very peaceful place.
It's definitely a big change of pace.
It's a change of pace from London.
It's a big change of pace from the hustle and bustle of London.
In London you get people rushing around.
People in London are rushed off their feet, rushing around trying to go to work, trying to make money and there are sirens and noise and chaos.
But here in Goring it's very relaxing.
You could even use the word tranquil to describe Goring, I think.
We have some signs over here.
This one says caution, slippery surface when wet.
It means that when it rains, the surface can be very slippery, right?
And that you might slip over just like this man here.
You might slip over because it's a slippery surface.
This is very important for elderly people.
You know they need to be careful when there's a slippery surface, because they might hurt themselves.
Down here is another sign.
This sign says, no fishing. from the 15th of March to the 31st of October.
So you're not allowed to fish here between those dates.
Why?
I don't know.
I have no clue why.
But that's what the sign says.
Over here, there's another sign.
This sign says Goring Visitor Mooring.
You're probably wondering, what does mooring mean?
Well, this boat here is moored.
This is a moored boat.
It's kind of like parked, like a car is parked.
The boat is moored.
And there are some more moored boats up here.
You can see that this one.
There's a rope down here.
Now the rope is wrapped around this thing here and then the rope is attached to the boat over there.
The rope is tied around that thing there.
So the rope is tied to the boat and then it's wrapped around this thing and also the rope is quite taut.
Yeah, it's quite a taut rope there.
It's not loose, it doesn't sag.
There's no sag in this rope.
It's very taut right, there's not much sag in it.
The same is true with this boat over here.
This boat is called the snapdragon there and it's got a rope wrapped around this thing here and the rope is taut.
Yes, there's no sag in the in the rope.
If the rope had sag in it then it would be loose.
You know there would be extra rope, but this is taut, which means like it's tight, it's completely tight and there's no sag in the rope.
I think you'll agree with me when i say that the views here are very picturesque.
These views are incredibly picturesque here.
They could almost be on a postcard or something, right?
It's almost like the perfect picture here.
It's very picturesque.
The scenery around here is very picturesque.
Now actually, if you keep walking in that direction, you will eventually reach London, and there is a path.
There's a path here that goes all the way to London.
The problem is it will take about 30 hours to get there.
So probably not what I'm going to do today.
It will probably take 30 hours of total walking time and probably about three to five days of walking.
But if you were slightly insane, you could maybe decide to walk all the way to London from Goring if you really felt the need to do that.
The thing with learning English with comprehensible input is that if you focus on listening during the beginner and intermediate stages and you focus on just acquiring lots of new words, lots of new vocabulary,
This is a good way to do it because you will end up with really good pronunciation.
You see, when you learn new vocabulary by listening, you learn the correct pronunciation and even the correct stressed syllable.
For example, if you take a word like development just a random word off the top of my head development in this case, the stress on this word needs to go on the second syllable.
You need to say development like this
However, if you learned this word by reading it on the page, you would not know actually where the stressed syllable goes.
And you might accidentally put the stressed syllable on the first syllable and you might say development, or you might put it on the third syllable and say development, or maybe you would put it on the fourth syllable and say development like that.
But if instead, you learn new vocabulary through a process of listening to hundreds of hours of english before you start focusing on speaking, then you're gonna feel like yeah, the word development is supposed to be pronounced like that development, and that will feel correct to you.
If you haven't heard that word, if you haven't done lots of listening, then it's possible that you will put the stressed syllable in the wrong place.
And you may do this with lots of different words.
If you like to read in your head a lot, then it's quite possible that you will not pronounce them correctly in the end, which is why, at English Sponge, we recommend a heavy focus on listening during the beginner and intermediate stages.
You listen.
You acquire words through the process of listening so that you get the correct pronunciation and, for example, the correct stressed syllable in each word.
At English Sponge, we believe that if people learn English through the process that we offer on EnglishSpongecom, they will end up sounding very natural and with good pronunciation, whereas when people follow the traditional method of learning English, which is doing lots of speaking, reading and writing, even as a beginner, we believe that people end up with pronunciation issues because of this, because they haven't focused on listening to the correct pronunciation in the beginning.
So that is just one more reason to learn English through the comprehensible input method.
And if you do like learning English with comprehensible input, on EnglishSpongecom.
We have nearly 600 videos right now at all levels.
And the website will track your time, will track how long you've been listening for, and lots of other good stuff.
Okay guys, that's the end of this video.
I hope you've enjoyed watching me walk around the village of Gorin.
I hope you've enjoyed watching me wander around, stroll around this village here in southern England.
If you do like this kind of video where i walk around a village specifically, as opposed to a town or a city, check out this video where i walk around the village of dorchester on thames, a village with only about a thousand people living there.
Thanks for watching guys, and i'll see you in the next one bye.