737. A Summer Ramble 2 (Late August 2021)

okay we've started i have hit record on the audio and i've hit record on the video so we are rolling hello there hello listeners how are you how are you doing today very nice to be talking to you again the podcast is back after a slightly short break it's shorter than i expected i thought that um i might not be able to record podcasts for much longer if you listened to or watched my other recent rambling episode episode number 730 three um i said that uh the podcast might be disrupted by various things but anyway right here right now i am able to do this so hello nice to be back video viewers hello as well um it's very nice to be talking to you okay so let's get started properly and hello and welcome back to the podcast this is episode number 735 and it's just a rambling episode which means it's just me talking to you about various things including whatever comes into my head while i'm recording uh but specifically this time i am going to talk about these things being back from holiday and getting back into the podcast zone comments about my audio listeners and my video viewers on youtube because it seems at the moment my audience is divided slightly into two categories there's the audio listeners that's most people who who um consume my podcast they do it in the traditional way by listening to the audio episodes and then i've got a fairly sort of new audience on youtube i say new i've had my youtube channel for well it's like the same amount of time as the podcast basically since 2009 but the youtube audience is odd like some i feel like i've got some new people who only consume the podcast on youtube and that's because they've been uh attracted by certain videos i made recently like story episodes like the mountain and stuff like that and so that episode went quite viral and it got a lot more views than my normal youtube stuff does and so i feel like new people have arrived like what's this i will subscribe to this youtube channel so those people seem to be a bit different to uh the audio listeners anyway i'll talk about that everyone's welcome of course you're all uh more than welcome to listen to this or watch this content in any way you like but anyway two different parts two different oh it's confusing audio listeners and video viewers it's not that confusing it's fine i'm going to talk about some news about moving flat and moving into my new pod room and as you can see uh the move hasn't started yet i say as you can see if you're listening to the audio version obviously you can't see that unless you just unless you have some weird sort of psychic uh ability to to see uh me it's called a camera it's called youtube it's not a psychic ability anyway if you're watching you can see that the the move hasn't started i haven't moved to the new room yet and so the podcast hasn't been disrupted yet um i'm going to talk about some common questions from the youtube comment comments section i said that i've got various new people who have discovered my channel on youtube and they all seem to be asking the same questions questions that i've answered many many many times in audio episodes but i'll just kind of bang bang bang fly through some of those common questions from new youtube subscribers i'm going to talk about charlie watts a little bit uh the drummer from the rolling stones who passed away yesterday he died yesterday it's a very sad moment for fans of you know rock and roll music or just music fans fans of the rolling stones uh charlie watts was a sort of really really important person in british music and he died yesterday and it's it's sad and i felt like i should talk about charlie watts a little bit i'd like to talk about him and just pay tribute to him in some way and maybe just tell you a few things about him that you i don't know that you didn't know we'll see i'll talk about charlie watts um and the rolling stones uh and i'm going to share a couple of comments from the comments section including one very motivational email that i got from a long term listener and then just whatever else occurs to me as we record this and as i said as well as being available as a normal episode of the audio podcast this is also available on youtube with some text on the screen the notes and scripts that i'm reading from you can see on the screen so you can read along with me and you can spot certain phrases and spelling and things like that and by the way if you are watching on youtube and i feel like i'm going too quickly i'm flying through things too quickly you can always pause this you know and check the screen if you feel you didn't understand something or you found a new word or phrase you could always you know you could always pause the screen whenever i move the text up right whenever i move the text up and you see a fresh couple of paragraphs of text you could always pause the video and read this the text and understand it and then listen to me saying it you know you've got the pause button you can use it it can be a valuable tool all right so yes by the way you can always pause this and check the screen if you feel you didn't understand something or you found a new word or phrase audio listeners don't worry i mean you could pause and rewind most podcast apps have a little skip back button that you can use to skip back a few seconds if you want to hear something again if you feel a bit lost there's nothing wrong with just skipping back a bit to go back uh you know a few minutes just to listen again if you end up being lost so you know use these tools audio listeners skip back sometimes if you want pause take a break continue later you know video viewers if there's text on the screen you could pause read the text unpause skip back you know all those things can help um so yes i am reading from a script or from from notes uh in this episode uh in this episode i'm reading from a script which i wrote last night i wrote most of this last night i don't normally read from a pre-written script when i do these rambles a ramble is just when i just talk um about various things and go in different directions that's what i call a ramble so i don't normally read from a pre-written script when i do these rambles but this time is different i wrote most of this script last night when it wasn't really the right time to record a podcast um to do a podcast recording but i still consider this to be a rambling episode because i just rambled with my fingers last night when i typed this and now i'm just reading out the text ramble that i created yesterday so it still counts as a rambling episode as far as i'm concerned and of course i can just deviate from the script or notes whenever i want okay so stick with me and i hope you enjoy listening to my words as they flow out like endless rain into a paper cup a cup which you can then take and drink from metaphorically of course was that a beatles lyric reference yes that was a reference to a beatles song lyric words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup from um across the universe by the beatles that might have come up in um the episode about beetle song lyrics with anthony rotuno i hope you enjoyed that episode lots of little phrases and things in that one so yes drink my english that's basically what i'm saying okay i hope you know what i mean so i'm in the podcast zone this is and this is what i wrote last night so imagine i wrote this last night in my living room downstairs so here's here's what i wrote so i'm sitting here in front of the computer my wife is lying across the sofa watching a french tv show on her phone and she's under a nice sheepskin blanket that we have so she is feeling very cozy i've just made her a cup of mint tea and i've tucked her feet into a blanket because i'm such a great guy and a really wonderful husband because that's what you've got to do you see as a husband you have to do nice things like that you've got to make tea for your wife you've got to tuck her feet into a blanket so they don't get cold and plenty of other things it's not just that there's like loads of other stuff you have to do too which you know it's it's not an obligation it shouldn't feel like an obligation it's more just like you know things you do to be in marriage okay am i gonna go off on a ramble about being married and stuff no this isn't the time anyway so my wife is comfortably installed on the sofa the child is in bed asleep and despite the madness that's going on in the world outside in general this is a little moment of peace and quiet it feels strange to be reading out what i wrote yesterday as if it's happening now but you know that's just what i'm doing so now i'm sitting with my computer on my lap but i'm pretty much in the podcast zone right now meaning that i'm thinking of ideas for the podcast considering what i've been doing and what i should do next i know i should be able to record tomorrow as the little one is going to her french grandparents for a few days and my wife has work to do so tomorrow is podcast day say tomorrow that's actually today in real time but i'm in the podcast zone now because i'm thinking about podcast ideas and things to record tomorrow i'm just writing down my thoughts on my computer as they come into my head i'm trying to write everything i'm trying to write down everything i'm thinking in order to make sure this is actually a rambling episode i'm rambling everything down in text form here and i'm trying to make it sound like i'm actually speaking normally and not reading from a text that's quite difficult to read from a text but not to make it sound like you're not reading from a text as if you you know to make it sound like you're just speaking the thoughts that are going through your head that's quite difficult you've got to be an actor haven't you to do that's what actors do anyway so what i'll have to do tomorrow that's actually today is record this but make it sound like i'm just saying all of it off the top of my head i don't know listeners what do you think does it sound like i'm speaking off the top of my head or does it sound like i'm reading from a script i mean it's you know parts of it are scripted other parts are not so it will be difficult for you to tell which parts i'm reading and which parts i'm just saying without reading this is complicated isn't it am i making this unnecessarily complicated probably anyway get back to the script also i might just go off on a tangent at any point that's where you just start talking about something else i might go off on a tangent and deviate from the script if something occurs to me if like i get an idea or something or if just a thought comes into my head so i might go off on a tangent in fact what i'm gonna do is the actually the word for word script for this is going to stop soon and i'm just going to write down some basic notes and then expand on them as i talk into the microphone tomorrow which is actually today yeah so tomorrow is now yeah so are we actually in the past the present or the future at this moment i don't know i think i might have just invented time travel somehow with a podcast these words are from yesterday but i'm reading them now and you're going to listen to them in the future so we somehow compressed the past the present and the future bam into one podcast um uh let's just say that in podcasts land time is a sort of flexible thing a bit like a jelly or something okay yeah in lapland time is is jelly which might explain why my episodes are quite long sometimes because time flexes and wobbles and stretches what are you talking about luke none of this makes any sense sorry can you get to real content please is this just an introduction no this isn't just an introduction this is the real content so if you're thinking when's the introduction going to end it's never going to end this entire episode is just one long introduction and maybe there'll be like one minute of actual content at the end but it's just one big introduction okay i say that for the people who get uptight when they feel like the episode hasn't properly started okay because they're like the introduction's going on too long just think of it like there are no introductions okay that when the podcast starts that's it sometimes these rambling episodes feel a bit weird because i don't know what i'm talking about i'm just talking shite anyway so um i do at the moment i do have other episodes i would like to do you know i've been away on holiday three weeks off there are other episodes that i do actually have to do and and and to be honest to be honest while i was away on holiday over the last three weeks or so i was i was actually itching to get back to podcasting i had i had i had lots of ideas popping into my head which i couldn't quite hold on to and as i didn't get the chance to write them down they've all just disappeared into the ether little ideas comments stories that occurred to me at various moments like when i'm in the shower you know just oh that would be good i must do that on the podcast maybe i should talk about that just those little moments but as soon as the showers finished dried my self off got myself dressed and everything and gone downstairs and sort of life continues those ideas just gone uh so like moments when i'm in the shower but which i instantly forgot so i was i was quite keen to do some recording again after being away just to satisfy the compulsive podcasting side of me it seems that after doing this habitually for 12 years um it's hard for me not to do it if i sort of don't podcast for a while my brain gets full of like podcast um speaking just fills up my head and it's got to come out so that's what i'm doing just just i'm afraid i don't know if it even means much i'm not really getting making any really solid points here it's just i've got to get a load of words out there's a word traffic jam in my head and they've all got to come out okay get all the words out and then get back to normal podcasting so anyway i was i was quite keen to do some recording again after being away just to satisfy the compulsive podcasting side of me the holiday was fantastic by the way and one of the best ones that we've had for ages i'll tell you about it a bit later in this episode so those other episodes i could be doing right now so i do have a to-do list with other episodes that i do have to get done first and foremost i do have to continue premium series 31 parts four five and six premium listeners you'll know i did one two and p 31 parts one two and three um and uploaded those and um so four five and six need to be done um so p31 is all about learning english from my mum so you can learn english from my mum as we look at phrases which came up in our conversation in episode 717 learn them properly with loads of examples and and also there's the chance to do plenty of listen and repeat pronunciation work with me so you don't just learn new language but learn how to produce it too so i need to continue uh that premium series and i'll be getting on to that soon i've also i think i'm gonna do part four of that war of the world story um the conclusion i asked at the end you know shall i do a fourth part to this are you interested in that and i i had enough uh responses from people saying yes please please do another part of this story um so i think i will do that um i'll need to prepare it you know i need to choose which extracts i read out um but i yeah i would like to do a part four just to kind of conclude the story um so that's something i'd like to do also i've got like unfinished episodes series that i finished that i unfinished series of episodes like for example the series which is called 88 english expressions that will confuse everyone remember that i did part 1 and 2 um ages ago maybe two years ago and then i was like i'm going to do part three but i just never did it and i just it's there it's kind of par part partially prepared not i didn't finish preparing it and so i didn't record it so i need to finish that off it's very unsatisf must have made some of you feel very uncomfortable like where's part three it must be completed so i've got to do that i'd like to do more stories like the mountain the one that i did recently that seemed to be popular especially on youtube i'd like to read from more texts or books i'm very interested in just doing that just like taking a text like there's so many things i could do um but one of them is just like take a text so it could be anything even just a newspaper article or whatever and just read it and then break it down for language there's lots of different types of text i could use for an episode like that there's an episode with the thompsons that's my family my mum my dad my brother which i recorded when i was in england on holiday i did manage to record the four of us together so i've got that i just need to edit it together and put it all together just audio uh but that's an episode that i need to work on so that's coming soon so fans of my family should be happy because there's a family episode coming soon also i need to do some invitations i need to invite some other podcasters and english teachers onto this podcast especially people who've invited me onto their podcasts recently so those are some episodes i need to do also the edinburgh fringe is basically well it's nearly finished but the top 10 jokes from edinburgh fringe 2021 have been published online chortle.co.uk published an article with a list of 10 popular jokes from the comedy festival in edinburgh this year so i like to do episodes where i tell those jokes and then break them down explain them and dissect the frog as as we say so i need to do uh the 2021 top 10 jokes from edinburgh fringe and i have a big list of other ideas which i'm slowly working my way through but i think before i do those ones and perhaps some others i'd like to just do this rambling episode with you these rambling episodes are where i just talk to you directly and move from topic to topic almost making it up as i go along so just keep up with me follow along and let the words flow through you like the force in star wars feel the english feel the english let it flow through you be the english you can imagine sort of blue lasers and star wars and the matrix type stuff like oh feel be be one with the with the living english and listen with me as i chat to you about various things okay so audio listeners and video viewers just want to talk about audio listeners and video viewers and basically luke's english podcast video viewers hello youtube people hello if you've recently discovered me on youtube i just want to say thanks for joining it's nice to have you on board but i did want to say that luke's english podcast is actually mainly an audio podcast with some stuff on youtube too so most people listening to this the vast majority of people listening to my words right now are listening to my podcast on their phone probably with headphones on using a podcasting app of some sort probably the native apple podcasts app on the iphone or something or something like spotify or another podcasting app or perhaps you're listening on the um the famous luke's english podcast app so the point is that most people listen to the audio version of this and i'm saying this now because i'm also recording a video version of this on youtube and i feel like youtube is a pretty different audience all the other platforms that's like different ways to listen to the audio podcast are sort of united in one sort of group that's the audio leapsters and they are the thing about the audio lipsters is that they're more ninja-ish i mean that they don't you know they don't write comments as often they are more stealthy i don't know who they are i don't know where they are they're just numbers in my statistics but it it's it's more difficult for them to leave comments because there isn't one sim you know convenient place to leave comments if you're an audio listener so they tend to be more like ninjas right um listening in the shadows never actually replying to me just sort of like silently listening and then when they and they're just maybe leaving a comment sometimes and then returning to the shadows again slipping away uh into the shadows where they continue listening so audio listeners are more ninja-ish but they're they're perhaps a bit more sort of solid reliable dependable and loyal listening to every episode maybe listening from the beginning to the end a bit more um consistently than the youtube viewers but i don't know i mean i don't mean to have a pop at the video lobsters i don't mean to criticize the video leopsters on youtube and suggest that they are unreliable or or somehow disloyal or something that's not what i'm suggesting but i'm suggesting i feel the audio listeners are then that's the majority of my audience and it's they are the sort of stalwarts of uh of my podcast audience and then um uh but yes but then there's the the youtube audience which is a sort of an emerging audience over time and certainly has grown recently because of certain recent viral uh videos that i did i mean i say viral they weren't that viral like one of them got it's had nearly 400 000 views which is you know good it's great i mean proper viral videos get like millions and millions of course but um anyway compared to most of my content um like the mountain and the umbrella man those two stories those those have you know received a lot more views on youtube than normal so um the video leopsters on youtube they they seem to have they seem to be a slightly different type of lepster i feel like youtube lepsters are less ninja-ish because obviously when you're on youtube the comment section is right there so it's much easier to write comments and the culture of youtube is to write comments so youtube les lepsters are less ninja-ish because there are many more comments on my youtube uh videos than on the website or anywhere else also youtube lobsters hello again seem to be less aware of the back catalogue of episodes that i've done and i get a lot of people who've never heard the podcast before which i know is shocking like how is that possible there's anyone left on earth that hasn't listened to this podcast but i seem to get more youtube people on youtube who would like wow i've just discovered this and they're asking me lots of sort of basic questions that i've answered many many times before but the thing about youtube is that it has enormous potential to go viral in fact in a way publishing stuff on youtube it's like swimming in the deep ocean and you could catch a current and get into some very deep water i mean in a good way is that metaphor working i don't know but anyway i mean most episodes on youtube right most of my stuff on youtube gets less attention than the audio versions right but then some videos go viral as they get picked up by the algorithm on youtube which is probably responding to the way that people interact with your video right and i and i guess that um the algorithm the algorithm the sort of ai that youtube uses to filter their videos and promote videos that algorithm sort of picks up on um videos which are popular so i i'm not sure how the algorithm on youtube works but i guess that it's videos which are getting certain number of views certain levels of audience retention likes and and comments and attention if when people are clicking on on the video when they see it if that happens enough then youtube kind of decides okay this video is popular uh let's promote it even more and then suddenly it kind of gets promoted more and more and more and that's how these videos pick up more and more views so um this is this is probably a way to uh always present the best content on on the platform right so a couple of my recent videos went a bit viral i mean not a lot but a bit which was nice and so i think i've gained new audience but only on youtube so youtube lipsters here right hello let me have a quick word with you for a moment all right so really this is an audio podcast that's also got a youtube channel and recently i've been uploading more to it but really this is still mainly an audio show and i have a big archive of audio episodes on my website and in my app right i've been doing this for 12 years and there's loads of stuff it's you'll find quite a lot of the archive on youtube but not all of it there's a large gap where a large gap of audio episodes i still haven't made available on youtube so not all the episodes are available on youtube and they're not all on apple podcasts either because apple podcast has a limit to the number of episodes that will show up in its list and if you scroll down through the episodes on apple podcasts on your phone you'll find that at the bottom it sort of stops i don't know maybe 100 or 200 episodes or something like that so not all the episodes are on apple podcasts either [Music] but they are all there on my website with episode pages for each and every single one of them and those episode pages often contain either a script that i'm reading from or notes that i'm reading from or language notes or something and also audio download links where you can download the audio file for each episode so you know i just wanted to say youtube lepsters uh hello and welcome to my channel don't forget to like and subscribe and smash that like uh button and click the bell icon and all those things um but also check out my website and check out my episode archive there should we have a quick look come on let's have a quick look then i'm going to go to my website now video viewers can see here's my website it looks like it was made in 2012 and that's probably because it was maybe 2013 it looks a bit old-fashioned but it does the job okay and so if you click on episodes in the um in the menu there then you will be taken to the page the full episode archive with all the episodes i have ever done and there's over 700 of them and you just scroll all the way down through all of them now you might think this is a bit too much for i don't know where to start but you could do you know that you could do searches so there's the control control f or i think it's control nine um on a on a pc i use a mac so i it's actually command f so if you want an episode about that features something about pronunciation for example you could search for pronunciation and that will highlight all of the times the word pronunciation is included in my archive so you can see episode 695 was it was a conversation with emma from pronunciation with emma and we talk about accents improving your pronunciation and stuff uh other mentions of the word pronunciation episode 682 i talk about differences between standard english pronunciation and regional or colloquial accents actually let's go from the old episodes first episode 14 was about british and american pronunciation episode 20 was about a sort of a funny viral video of an american woman doing a really bad british accent number 104 144 is not on youtube that's called the chaos of english pronunciation and that's me reading through that famous poem that nobody can read because it contains all the most difficult to pronounce words in the english language and i try to read it for you it's even difficult for me but it does contain lots of words that no one really uses anymore but anyway that's an interesting one from a pronunciation point of view episode 224 is all about verb tenses and connected speech and looking at the pronunciation of different types of grammar right like how do you actually pronounce different verb tenses with weak forms and connected speech and stuff so there you go that's just a way that you can look through my episode archive go to the archive on my website and if you're on a mac do command f and then type a word that you're interested in and you can see if i've done an episode about that or if i've mentioned that topic um on the podcast um okay i think on a on a pc it's ctrl f isn't it to do a search like that anyway there you go explore the episode archive um okay most people listen to my podcast using an app on their phone and they listen when they are probably doing something else like walking around driving and if that's the case please be careful if you're listening to this while driving uh they listen while doing housework doing exercise or just simply while breathing so listening to the audio version on your phone seems to be the normal way to do it if you listen using a podcast app on your phone and you need to stop listening for whatever reason for example you're driving to work and you've reached your workplace and you need to stop listening just stop listening and the app will remember where you stopped and then you can carry on from that point later so you don't have to listen to an episode in one single go so if you're thinking luke your episodes are an hour long but my drive or my commute to work is only 30 minutes long this is not the podcast for me well try try pausing and then continuing on your way home hmm that's a good idea uh the majority of my audience listened to the audio version of this and i've been doing the audio podcast for over 12 years now and i have a big back catalog of episodes and i've talked about lots of different things over the years including some things i'm sure that you would like to hear so check out the episode archive for the older episodes and use a cert use the search function on your computer to search for you know keywords um you know like stories or certain guests or whatever it could be a good way to filter your way through the archive uh the luke's english podcast app i have to say something about the luke's english podcast app for iphone users now my app actually disappeared from the apple app store for a couple of days and this is because i had a payment issue with apple when you have an app when you have an app on the apple app store how many times did i say the word app in that sentence when you have an app on the apple app store three was the answer when you have an app on the apple app store you you need to have an apple developer account it's pretty complicated but you need a special account and you actually have to pay a certain amount every year to have the app on the app store [Music] google the google play store is totally free and much easier but with apple things are more complicated and at this point i know that some committed android users are going well yes luke this is why uh you know you shouldn't be using a iphone only losers use iphones and the app uh the the app store is rubbish and apple are you know it's a totally closed system but with android it's much more open you should have an android phone i know people say that sort of thing all the time don't they but um anyway um maybe i should get an android but you know the the reason i've got an iphone one of the reasons is that my wife's got an iphone and it's a bit like that moment in pulp fiction when uh samuel l jackson's character says um you know i i i eat meat sometimes but i'm mostly a vegetarian i don't eat burgers very much anymore because i'm because my my girlfriends are vegetarian and that kind of makes me a vegetarian too [Music] is a tasty burger vincent you ever had a big kahuna burger one bite they're real tasty well if you like burgers give em a try sometime me i can't usually get them because my girlfriend's a vegetarian which pretty much makes me a vegetarian but i do love the taste of a good burger similarly my wife uses an iphone and so i kind of have to use an iphone too so the point is my app disappeared from the apple app store for a few days because i had a payment issue uh with my apple developer program and stuff and when it when i've sorted the issue out and the app came back to the app store all my ratings and all my reviews for the app had all gone and that's three years worth of ratings and reviews and you know as you probably know ratings and reviews are really important because when people find your app in the app store or when the app is recommended to people they check the reviews they check how many stars it's got they check their little comments and stuff all of that stuff's gone so i don't even know if if my app is my app might not be promoted on the app store it might sort of be a bit invisible unless you search for it specifically and when you do search for it you might not see any reviews so um could you do me a favor can you do me a favor no obligation of course but if you use an iphone and you've downloaded the app and you like it could you give the app a rating and a review that would be great if you could do that because it helps to reinstate the app um it makes it more visible and it helps to sort of um reassure people who are thinking of downloading it um it helps to reassure people that it's the real thing and that it's good and that people are happy with it i know the app is not perfect by the way if you ever use the app and you have some problems with it like episodes don't load or whatever make sure that you've updated the app okay that's really important sometimes updates happen and if you're using the old unupdated version it can bug it can have some bugs so make sure the app has been fully updated and that you've closed the app and refreshed it and all that stuff and it should work without any problems for the most part the app is reliable and it works it just you just have to make sure it's updated you have to make sure you've got enough uh storage space on your phone and those sorts of things but anyway if you're an iphone user and uh you have um the app then uh please do give me a rating and a review um because you know i lost all my other ratings and reviews um you might be thinking luke this is all very interesting and everything but how was your holiday uh well the holiday was great um so i spent about three weeks so basically i'm not going to tell you the entire thing no need to go into full detail like i have in the past but basically we got lucky with the weather and we had a really lovely time where did you go luke we went to england yeah nice holiday in england and you i don't know if you can tell by looking at me if you're looking at the video i don't know if you can tell but i i did get a suntan i promise i did we've been back for about two days and um so it's been sort of two days that i haven't been exposed to the sun like i was before and so my tan is probably completely gone now and i probably look like a pale pasty extra from the walking dead already uh but i did get a suntan i promise uh and yes it is possible to get a suntan in england in in august okay i know what you think um it's cloudy it rains all the time lol and english food's disgusting huh yeah well it is possible to get to get us a suntan in england um so yeah lovely time stayed with my parents for a while it was nice to see them i haven't we hadn't seen them for a long time you know and so it was nice to be there um and um enjoy the english countryside and lovely english sunshine we went camping um and it was great the weather was good we were lucky um so yeah that's it that's all i'm gonna say but it was we had a lovely lovely time another question you might be thinking is this what about moving to your new flat and moving to a new pod room luke you said before that uh the podcast would be disrupted we thought that there would be no podcast for a while because you said everything was going to be taken down and you're going you were going to move to a new flat and that there will be no podcasts while you were moving well building work is is still being done in the new flat they're removing all the walls and building new walls we're basically redesigning the entire flat to try and make the best use of the very small space that we're going to have it's going to be a very small place but hopefully we are designing it all in a clever way to maximize the space as much as possible so that means knocking all the walls down and actually even like taking up the floor and totally redesigning everything i think the downstairs neighbors will probably want to murder us i think they probably want to kill us because they literally the guys working in the flat have been drilling concrete from the floor like drilling the floor like that and hammering and smashing things with with hammers and stuff so i think the neighbors will they will they will kill us i think they will i think they're going to come into the flat in the in the middle of the night and just murder all of us all three of us uh so if there are no more podcasts ever it's because the neighbors downstairs um strangled me in my sleep or or or you know poisoned us or something if you are my downstairs neighbors in the new flat and somehow you listen to this i'm really sorry i really am i'm terribly sorry about the noise we have um made sure the work is done within the legal hours for work you know from i think it's from nine or ten in the morning till a certain time in the evening my wife knows the workers know no no work at the weekends but you know sorry about the noise okay uh but we will invite you for a for a glass of champagne does that make up for it anyway um so the the building works being done on the new place we're not ready to move yet that's you know it's all happening a bit later than expected but probably next month or something that's when everything's going to be moved and that's when everything is going to be turned upside down until we move in [Music] also i told you in a previous episode that i was going to be moving my pod room to a different place that i've that we are actually buying a little room um in parisian buildings it's quite common to have rooms at the top of um of the buildings and they used they they're rooms that used to be used by the servants in the days when most buildings had servants living in them the servants would live in these little rooms at the top of the building and these days those little rooms obviously still exist but they're used often for storage or for very small studio apartments for students and stuff like that and also some people buy them and turn them into office spaces and that's what i'm going to do so we are buying a room that is about five or six meters squared it's very small it's basically a cupboard and that's going to be my pod room or pod cupboard and it's got a window in it for some natural light and it's quite a good shape so i will be fitting a desk and some shelves and then it will be the official new pod room but um i probably won't get the keys to the new pod room until september and then i'll move in there and yes i'll need to get electricity and internet connected there and to fit a desk and some shelves and then it will be the official new pod room um here are some common questions since going viral on youtube i'm gonna try and answer these questions as quickly and succinctly as possible these are questions that people have people who've recently discovered my content on youtube these are questions that they're asking me in the comments section um questions which long-term listeners will know the answers to so long-term listeners i'm sorry i'm gonna say some things that you already know but um you know that's all right i hope you don't mind um so i'm gonna try and answer these questions as quickly and succinctly as possible without rambling at all in fact so in this rambling episode here is a section with no rambling hmm i hope that's clear so yes this is a rambling episode with a bit where there's no rambling so okay anyway no rambling here let's just get straight to the point and keep it simple and try and answer these questions common questions from youtube i might take this section of the video and upload it as a separate video right so so that the new youtube people can kind of get to know me a little bit so comment common questions from youtube so where are you from okay so i'm from i'll give you the very basic sort of life story but i'm not going to go on about it so um born and grew up the first nine or so years of my life in west london basically so i lived the first nine years of my life in west london then my dad got a job in the midlands so we all moved uh to the midlands and uh lived in an area called the west midlands um a little village a tiny little village in the countryside um outside birmingham sort of between birmingham and coventry in the countryside there so lived there for about 10 years until when i was about 19 years old i went to live in liverpool where i studied at university and i studied for three years in liverpool and then i stayed in liverpool for an extra year so i lived there for four years in total check out the maths three plus one that's four isn't it so i lived in liverpool for four years and then moved back to the midlands again and then i moved to japan and lived in japan for two years and then after that i came and lived in london again for ages like 10 years or something and then in 2012 i moved to france which is where i live i live in paris with my wife and my daughter so where are you from basically i'm from um west london and the west midlands right so a combination of the two my accent is basically standard received pronunciation maybe with a few regional um inflections you might hear a bit of midlands in there sometimes sometimes i might go a little bit more midlands and it starts to sound a bit a bit more like i'm from from you know the midlands you know it starts it comes through a little bit more sometimes and that was a bit much i'm pushing it a bit much bit a bit there but um basically receive pronunciation without many regional um inflections okay right can you do an episode about xyz can you do an episode about this topic this is a common question people requesting episodes as i said before check the episode archive on my website there's a chance i've already talked about the thing that you would like me to talk about so go to the archive and as i said do a control f search for the keywords you're interested in okay next how can i learn english by listening to your podcast this is a very big question i've talked about this before let me give you a sort of short version so this podcast can really help you a lot with your english but it's not the only thing you should do it's also important to read a lot so find texts which are not too tricky books articles whatever it is but texts which are not too tricky for you texts which use fairly modern english and which you actually want to read and read them study a bit so use grammar vocabulary and pronunciation teaching materials of any kind and work with them or when you find new language when you're reading or listening check those things in an online dictionary and look through the definitions and examples and pronunciation and synonyms and stuff so study a bit as well studying is not the only thing but it helps you've got to mix up absorbing english consuming english exposing yourself to english studying english and then using english so do lots of speaking if you can ideally find someone to have meaningful conversations with perhaps a teacher or a language partner who can give you some little corrections and encouragement but use english speak it speak it speak it speak it the five s's speaking speaking speaking speaking and speaking and write on a regular basis too if you can so practice writing different types of texts or just write a diary every day in which you express your thoughts in english you know you've got to express yourself in english regularly in order to find your voice there isn't just one thing there isn't just one method that is the only method right you've got to try and do lots of different things a lot of exposure so input but also output as well uh sort of focused study and less focused study meaning just exposing yourself to english or just uh just talking and just trying to express yourself that's kind of less focused and then the more focused stuff where you do uh pronunciation drills and work specifically on individual sounds and words and sentences grammar stuff exploring vocabulary and and trying to remember it and use it so a mix of these different things input output and focus study and fun as well just spending time with the language if you enjoy it so yes learning english is about learning how to do something not just learning how to understand something and we generally get better at things by trying to do them again and again so so listen and read a lot and try to speak and write a lot too that's quite general that's quite general advice but there it is for more specific advice on how to use the podcast to improve your english you could listen to these episodes episode 174 and episode 568. okay search the app on your phone or search the uh episode archive for those episodes they have some more specific tips next question should i listen to the episodes in order so should i listen to episodes one two three four five six and so on or should i you know listen to them in any order should i listen to the new ones first or should i listen to the old ones well it's up to you really you can just listen to all the new ones as they come out but if you really want to learn from me properly then i would suggest listening from episode one meaning start with episode one and go through them in chronological order that's a good idea if you um if you if you really want to learn from me properly and you haven't um you haven't listened to all my back catalogue certainly if you are a lower level learner the first 50-ish episodes are probably a bit easier to understand and they have more specific language teaching objectives so it would be a good idea to start with them right if you are a lower level person and you want to have a more systematic process of learning yeah go start with episode one and go through it uh chronologically and the idea is that eventually you just kind of get into just listening to me and then you know just carry on and make it a habit but equally if you just find my episodes fun and interesting you can listen to them in any order you like be aware though multi-part episodes should be heard in order so if it's part one part two part three obviously you should listen to part one first then part two part three and i i say that because recently i've done some multi-part series um and they haven't been listened to in in the right order it seems for example let's have a look at my youtube channel okay so okay so recently i did episodes 734-736 that was the war of the worlds part one part two and part three so the weird thing is this part one on youtube has 29 000 views pretty good part 2 has got 7.2 000 views and part three has got 11 000 views now i understand you know it's actually complicated it's maybe people just didn't like part one that's why the other two parts have got lower numbers but when you when when i tell you about the audio numbers you'll be you may be surprised so it doesn't necessarily mean that people just didn't like it and they chose not to listen to part two it could be that part one is what's being promoted uh in the recommended videos and parts two and three are not being promoted so fewer people are clicking on them but the weird thing is that part one has got like this many views thirty thousand ish part but then part two has fewer views than part three so more people have listened to part three than part two now maybe again this is that people are clicking on part three they're discovering that one first they're clicking on it then they're realizing it's part three and then they are sort of unclicking and going to part one i don't know but it's strange isn't it that in terms of the number of listeners in terms of numbers of listens it's part one then part three then part two huh what's going on there listen to them in chronological order but then when i look at my um when i look at my stats on uh the audio side of things part three has got like a lot more listens than parts two and part one so is is that just because people just automatically listen to the most recent episode first i don't know i don't know what it is but um it's weird it might not just be human decision making it might just be the way that the episodes are presented to people on different platforms that sort of influences the way that they listen but anyway if there's a multi-part series listen to part one first then part two and then part three uh yes okay so that's the multi multi-part episodes uh and also the other thing is that there might be little private jokes and references from earlier episodes which you might might not understand like the dreaded russian joke so it might be worth listening to episodes in chronological order in order to like pick up the different references and different things so that you understand me more and more and better and better as you go through but really you can listen to them in any order you want uh the main thing is if you i just want you to enjoy spending time listening to the podcast and just do it in whatever way you like next question can you do more story episodes yes i am planning to do more story episodes there you go uh can you do episodes about grammar vocabulary and pronunciation yes uh if i do them all the time but actually i focus on that stuff in the premium subscription so consider signing up to luke's english podcast premium for loads of episodes where i focus specifically on grammar vocab and pronunciation and if you want to sign up to luke's english podcast premium just go to uh what's the address again do you remember i do of course i'm just seeing if you do teacherloop.co.uk premium info that's the best uh way to get started really and it tells you the things you need to know about the premium subscription and just how cheap it is i mean it's very affordable um uh you know we're talking like just a just a few dollars a month to get access to all of it and there's over a hundred episodes audio and video episodes pdfs to download and and everything um and it's you know it's as little as three dollars a month um which is very reasonable of me i don't don't you think um next question can you feature and then insert name here again so this is people who want more episodes with certain guests and um the most popular guests would be amber and paul my dad my brother um and so on and actually um check the archive again a lot of my guests have been on the podcast before especially favorites like amber and paul and my family so check the archive if you if there's a guest that you like check the archive you might find them uh in previous episodes next one can you do video episodes every time well no not every time for various reasons which i won't go into now because it might bore you i can't do videos every time but i will try to do them as often as possible and i'm you know i'm starting to develop a system which is where i do videos um and i have text on the screen at the same time i'm sort of recording my screen and recording my face at the same time and then putting it all together in a composite sort of youtube video thing takes a lot longer but i'm trying to get into the habit of doing that it's weird when i've got a camera looking at me while i'm recording the episodes it makes me feel a bit self-conscious i wonder if it affects the style of podcasting um it it to an extent it blocks my my mind it's strange when i'm being looked at my thought process doesn't quite flow as as easily as normal so i'm i'm videoing myself as often as possible just to try and get used to it so that i can start to get more and more comfortable and i can get to the sort of comfortable place where i normally record the audio podcasts i might abandon video i might because if it limits my ability to think clearly while i'm recording then that's not good we'll see it's an ongoing experiment doing videos of these podcasts but i'm going to try and continue doing them let me know what you think listeners audio listeners how is it when you listen to an audio episode that's also got a video does it feel different to you does it feel different at all give me your feedback do you think it's all right is do you like this format video viewers similarly give me your feedback give me your comments uh what do you think of the this format the one that i'm using right now in this episode uh what do you think of it i'm not promising i can do all the things you want me to do because i can't please all the people all the time but i'll give it a shot next question is there a transcript for this episode lots of people ask about transcripts naturally because transcripts are very useful well you know i will say this again go to my website you'll find a lot of stuff there teacherloop.co.uk and in the menu click on transcripts and then you will find another link there that says episodes with transcripts and that's a link sorry that's a list of all the episodes that have transcripts okay and click on them you'll find the transcripts on my website otherwise you can go to the episode archive again and just check you know go to the archive click on an episode like for example i'm randomly in my episode archive and i'm looking at episode 225 which was an episode of film club those are episodes where i talk about a specific film and the film i talked about in episode 225 was taken the liam neeson film and um i felt compelled to talk about taken and the the the taken speech i don't know who you are i don't know what you want if you're looking for ransom i can tell you i don't have money you know that whole thing and i talked a lot about the film taken in quite a lot of detail and some of that's got a transcript there are some notes bits of script for that a script for the classic uh speech from taken and i did a rant about it anyway you'll find some text there not a full transcript but quite a lot so the point being check uh the episode archive check the pages for each episode you might find script or notes there also the transcript collaboration there's a huge library of transcripts which have been made by listeners to this podcast some of them have been proof read by other listeners with a with a very high level of english but you'll find various transcripts made by the collaboration project made by learners of english and those transcripts um some of them are not proofread so they don't they might not be fully accurate but you'll be surprised a lot of the proofread transcripts are very accurate and could be useful and as well there's the youtube channel and uh almost all of my videos have automatic subtitles switched on sometimes my videos just don't that the automatic subtitles just won't switch on and people say can you put please add automatic subtitles why haven't you added automatic subtitles i always add automatic subtitles but sometimes for some reason youtube just sort of says nah sorry not possible and it just doesn't make them available i don't know why but i always add them so for most of the videos you will see automatic subtitles and uh the the automatic subtitles are pretty good they're not perfect but they're they're pretty good so that might be useful for you as well otherwise you could just learn to live without subtitles don't rely on subtitles too much you do need to learn to hear the spoken version of english without the aid of the written version although subtitles and scripts can also be a great resource and you can use them in various ways so you should do a bit of both but don't be over reliant on subtitles i know how helpful and great they are but try listening without okay you'd be surprised you can do it it's just a question of getting used to it um another common question is i can understand you really well luke but i can't understand other native speakers or i can't understand films when i watch them the thing about films and tv shows are i've said this many times before films and tv shows can be very difficult to understand okay sometimes the audio is not clear there's lots of music sound effects mumbling dialogue naturalistic stuff it's a visual medium so the films focus on the visual storytelling often and the the the dialogue can be very difficult to hear and it's difficult for me to hear sometimes uh dialogue i don't always catch every single line it can be quite difficult to understand films and tv series so they are not your benchmark for being able to listen to things um they can be very difficult uh whereas this um i'm an english teacher i don't speak particularly slowly but i do try to be clear in my communication okay and i talk directly to you and that is naturally going to be easier to understand also the sound quality is probably quite clear i hope it is and all of that makes it easier for you to understand so um you know it's natural that you can understand me better because i just am perhaps focusing more effort on communicating with you specifically i'm just yeah i'm not i don't speak really slowly i'm not patronizing you um hmm also speaking to when native speakers speak they don't they might speak very very uh is it quickly they might connect all their words together in ways that you're not familiar with they might use idioms and other phrases or references to things you don't know about they might speak with accents that you are less familiar with because naturally learners of english probably are less familiar with certain regional accents in the uk just because they haven't heard them very much and so all those things can be can make it very difficult so yes it is normal that you understand me better than you understand other native speakers but it's actually very it's still very healthy for your english to listen to me because um you know having exposure to english that you can understand quite clearly is actually very good for you you also need to become familiar with other accents and and listening to english in less than perfect circumstances you do need to do that too but it's sort of you know a balance learning english i think it's all about a mix and a balance of doing lots of different things okay recent appearances on other people's podcasts i just want to mention this again i just want to give a shout out to some other podcasters so in the last episode the last rambling episode i mentioned the level up english podcast with michael lavers he interviewed me fairly recently and we talked about you know learning english doing podcasts uh my learning of french so check it out uh if you want to if you want to you know listen to that interview with me the level up english podcast there's also stories of language learners uh podcast um and you can find that where you get your podcasts and uh there's an uh episode with me charles who does that uh podcast interviewed me and we talked about various things it was very nice so you could listen to those if you want and then since i talked about those two i was also interviewed on several other podcasts too so i was interviewed on one which is called something like english small world podcast or english little world podcast i say something like because the podcast is actually it's made in taiwan and uh the title of the podcast is in chinese if i just look at pocket casts on my computer uh this is it um so video viewer audio listeners hello i'm actually showing on the video screen um i'm trying to show on the video screen the uh the podcast i'm talking about so it's you can see that it's all written in in chinese characters but it translates as pretty much english small world podcast uh by apex language consulting and training in taiwan could also be described as the apex podcast apex language podcast how are you going to find it i'm not sure um actually you could search for this apexenglishpodcast.podbean.com apexenglishpodcast.podbean.com i'm gonna write that apex english podcast dot pod bean dot com uh okay and uh that's really it was a really interesting podcast it was really nice to be invited on that and uh two guys from taiwan who do podcasts for learners of english they talk about a great variety of topics there's a mix of chinese being spoken and english it's mostly english with a few little bits of assistance in chinese um but um i was invited on there with michael lavers so the two of us were guests on the podcast at the same time we recorded two episodes the first one what's the first one about hold on a minute let me see first one was about the business of podcasting so michael and i talked about the process that we go through when making our podcasts and you know sort of uh lifting the lid on making podcasts and stuff and then the second episode we did was about how to better understand british english and we talked about different british english accents differences between british english and american english and stuff like that so there's that and also i was invited on the clark and miller english podcast that's a podcast run by an english teacher called gabriel miller the clark and miller english podcast and i talked to gabriel about english comedy british comedy which as you may know is one of my favorite subjects so we talked about the ins and outs of humor in english and the humor sort of the pragmatics of of of using humor in communication in british english and also british comedy shows and our favorite shows and sort of why those shows can be very difficult using those shows as english as an english teacher and so on so you could listen to the clark and miller english podcast and uh um my episode with gabriel is on there sort of fairly recently just scroll down through his episode archive and you'll see the episode with me okay charlie watts um oh we've been going for an hour and 15 minutes so i need to wrap this up fairly quickly how much stuff do i have okay so i've got this and then i've got a couple of messages from listeners and then we're going to be done i could ramble on about charlie watts for ages i'll try and keep it brief charlie watts was the drummer in the rolling stones okay the drummer from the rolling stones let's just quickly google charlie watts hold on a minute and uh charlie sadly died yesterday um mm-hmm let me just see what i can find here okay this this will this will do i think so look at the guardians page here rolling stones drummer charlie watts dies aged 80. the musician's publicist says he died peacefully in a london hospital surrounded by his family he was the calm brilliant eye of the rolling stones rock and roll story so okay what can i say about charlie watts well i mean i'm a drummer i've got some drumsticks here just in case just in case you you didn't believe me look i have drumsticks so i must be a drummer right but i'm a drummer and i've played drums for a long time and certainly charlie watts is one of those drummers that was a big influence and the thing about charlie watts is that well okay so this is a big deal because obviously he was the founding member of the rolling stones a founding member of the rolling stones actually he didn't join at this it wasn't there from the very beginning as far as i know he joined a little bit later but before they really became successful and it was a case of i think when charlie joined the group they really found their formula and um then they were able to really make a success of themselves but um charlie watts was an absolutely integral part of the rolling stones sound and the absolute backbone of this their whole sound and um you know i've read keith richards book and he talks in very very in that book he talks in very very positive terms about charlie watson about how important he is to uh the whole sound of the group uh solid backbeat that's one of the things about the rolling stones is that they are a dance band they were like an r b group the beatles in terms of their music very varied lots of different types of music it's all about the song writing and the personalities as you know i'm a huge beatles fan i'm also a big rolling stones fan uh but they it's a different kettle of fish um they're a different type of band they're more of a dance band it's the sort of band that you can dance to right and a big part of that was charlie what's his drumming style now charlie actually was was a jazz musician as well and i think he had a jazz band too so he was a very competent musician but in the rolling stones he played a very minimal style and the thing about his drumming that the the thing about his drum style this is actually a very small detail that makes a very big difference now most drummers um will play four uh beats to the bar with their right hand on this on the hi-hat like that and then the back beat on the snare dad like that and probably one and three with the uh with the base pedal right but that hi-hat is always going one two three four t-t-t-t now what charlie watts did is he actually lifted his hand off the hi-hat when he played the snare drum instead of going he's lifting his hand off when he's left he's lifting up his right hand when his left hand goes down so you get di right that's it's hard for me to explain that just with my voice video viewers can see me doing it right lifting the right hand off the head the hi-hat when playing the snare now the the difference is that that really accentuates that snare and it kind of gives space to that bam snare sound just gives that extra bit of space and in making funky dance music sometimes it's all about creating little spaces in the rhythm right that's what kind of creates the groove and charlie watts was just a master of doing that just playing only the right notes at the right moment and creating little spaces he would also do that thing that drummers do when they lift the hi-hat up so the hi-hat is basically two symbols that the on top of each other kind of thing and you you have a pedal and using your left foot if you're right-handed you'd normally use the left foot you can open the hi-hats and close them which creates you can make different sounds so normally with the hi-hats closed it goes like that when you open the hi-hats a bit you can get that kind of sounds like you would get in sort of heavy punk rock kind of thing and you can as you open and close the hi-hat so you can get a slightly different sound a tighter sound a more loose sound but also you can do these things where you hit the hi-hat and immediately close it and that creates that kind of sound like you get in classic drum beats you know that sound and so charlie watts would use that sound as well sometimes very sparingly i don't know i can't really do it justice but he just had a very unique style very minimal style and as a person i understand that he was a lovely guy a gentleman he was very stylish he was always very well dressed in very smart suits very sharply dressed he was a family man and kind of managed to maintain a a successful long-lasting marriage and a fairly normal family life despite being in this crazy rock and roll band which is quite quite an achievement i think so basically what this means is that the fact that charlie watts has died obviously we're sad because we're not going to get any more of his music but also it could be potentially the end of the rolling stones because i mean they're capable of continuing of course mick and keith and um ronnie um obviously could continue but it might never be the same again without that unique style of drumming that charlie watts brought and the way that charlie and keith would lock in together especially we're never going to get that again and this is very it's a very sad sad time for music lovers because that unique thing that recipe that the rolling stones had it's just it's never going to be the same again i'm interested to see what the stones do but i wouldn't be surprised if they if they stopped now i wouldn't be surprised so it's a sad time for rolling stones fans but this occurred to me yesterday right when i was thinking about this this occurred to me so the rolling stones stones rolling stones no the rolling stones seem to be missing a drummer and a bass player right and you know i hear that ringo starr and paul mccartney are available right and ringo starr's a drummer paul mccartney is a bass player the bass player by the way in the rolling stones retired sort of years ago they've got a new bass player but and he's great but you could say that the rolling stones are missing a drummer and a bass player and ringo starr and paul mccartney might be available um so imagine if they formed a kind of beatles rolling stones super group at the very end of their careers wouldn't that be brilliant paul on base ringo on drums um mick on vocals ronnie and um keith on guitars some kind of amazing rolling stone super group beatles combination but of course nobody could replace the people who are gone like charlie watts and and john lennon and george harrison but still it would be fun for the four it's not four is it it's five with ronnie five remaining guys to get together and perform i i doubt it would happen but i actually i think that they would be an amazing band but there'd probably be ego you know ego struggles between uh mick jagger and paul mccartney for stage limelight i imagine that's my door hold on i've got to go and answer the door back in a minute [Music] too late i think i got there too late the person's gone probably the postman who kind of rings once two seconds rings again two seconds and disappears i think keith and paul are pretty keith and paul are pretty tight and ringo is friendly with everyone and still drumming so there you go the rolling beatles can you imagine i hope that it happens i don't think it will but i don't think there's any suggestion that's going to happen but it's just a sort of weird little dream of mine that the rolling stones and the beatles could somehow combine to create the rolling beetles uh the beetle stones okay we're nearly done i just want to say this remember the the wispolep competition right remember that that was that was actually awesome right listening to um listeners tell their stories meeting some amazing listeners and you know we had some great episodes that came out of that well i got a a while ago i mean whisper lep is is done and dusted now but um i wanted to read this out so i got this message a while ago this is from leo from brazil who didn't make it to the last 16. so leo was one of the competitors leo appears at about two hours and 24 minutes into the wispolep one video do you know what that video is if i go onto my youtube channel and find it i actually created a video with all of the um competition entries from the people who didn't get into the last 16 and i made a video relationship to survive okay this is it that's me and i'm just listening to that part of that video leo um this is on youtube by the way there are time codes for every single person and if we go down to leo from ita leo from italy is it this is leo from brazil it's leo from brazil okay to hear from leonardo from brazil so this this is his original entry hi master luke here is one more ninja lobster leaving the shadows and i decided to come because i'm concerned with you yes with you your family and all your lobsters but first let me introduce myself my name is leonardo i'm from brazil and i have followed your storyline and your podcasts these last six years i've identified myself a lot with their character because we have similar histories of life we were born in the 70s we have older brothers we are skeptical and believers in science we watched star wars played video game and drank a lot in the beginning of adulthood i have to stop that there right because i'm not going to play the whole thing but i do want to read the um uh the message that leo sent me right the point is there were so many people who sent great recordings and who didn't get through to the last 16 right this is one of the points i want to make and i want to share this message from leo because it is a very real example of someone who has connected the learning of english to their personal life in a very human way which means making mistakes acknowledging motivational issues and finally coming to terms with the fact that they have to take responsibility for learning and the end result is great i i was you know um it was a pity that i couldn't share more of these stories uh but i keep coming back to some people because i feel like there are still worthy things uh things that are still worth sharing so this is obviously a written sorry this is an excellently written email that obviously just came out of leo without him planning it and rewriting it i think he just wrote it all in one go what do i mean by that i think there are what i mean by that i suppose is that there are some little mistakes in here which i will correct as we go so leo has done really well with his english and uh as have let me say that sentence again leo has done really well with his english as have so many other lepsters and this is what he wrote and i just wanted to share it i'll correct things as we go so leo from brazil leo said i had so much fun during this competition even though i didn't pass the first round let me tell you something i've been meaning to write it for a long time you know i need to be frank i was so happy and volunteerous to participate so that pretty sure that volunteers isn't a word in english maybe it maybe it is but uh it's not one that i think is used often so to be i know what that means you you want to volunteer it's like keen i think keane is probably a better word let's say i was so happy and keen to participate participate it's got p-a-r-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-e i was so happy and keen to participate that when i recorded my pitch i wasn't thinking about what i should have said but only how to say it meaning very slowly and clearly my thought was i want everyone to understand me because i guess that there are different types of lobsters people have just started and people have been listening for years i know exactly how you feel leo every time i switch on my recorder and start recording i think oh should i be grading my english there will be a lot of people listening to this who've got fairly lower you know i've got a lower level maybe new listeners i don't want to alienate them so i know what you mean you've got to decide do you speak slowly and clearly and make everything very very simple or do you just kind of speak more naturally and just kind of use phrases that pop into your head and stuff even though it might be difficult for certain learners so i know what you meant leo that i think leo decided to speak in the slower and more careful way so that most listeners would understand him so let me continue leo's message so i decided to speak that way i guess the result was that i made myself sound like a robot i don't want to be too hard on myself but knowing that there is always room for progress helps me on the journey it tells me that i could be working even harder on my english while at the same time having fun i love this language and when i was younger it was so frustrating and tiring you know the vibe you know the vibe luke because you're learning french and you need it in a way or another meaning you need it in one way or another as a non-native speaker i knew as a child that i had to learn english sooner or later i was only nine years it was only nine years ago that i started to want to learn it and did i start then of course not nah too easy let's just procrastinate for another five or six years so okay as a child he knew he had to learn it and then nine years ago he decided he wanted to learn it but he still didn't start doing doing it then because as a human being of course he procrastinated for another few years let's continue and so as the story goes in 2016 in november i swear maybe he wrote this to me in november it's quite possible god it's been nearly a year i've been meaning to read this out in november i 2016 i started googling learn english online on youtube and other websites but i wasn't satisfied i was looking for something that wasn't boring or slow paced i desired something interesting and alive that could help me defeat my tendency of quitting on learning the language help me defeat my tendency to quit it's actually your tendency to do something and it's your tendency to quit and then after quit you can just have an ing to quit doing something so i desired something interesting and alive that could help me defeat my tendency to quit learning the language why because english represented this scary monster in my head and i had more worries than solutions at the time so i felt the need to challenge myself and as a beginner your podcast seemed quite advanced and not doable i thought i couldn't possibly succeed in understanding everything that was being said episode after episode so leo was a bit intimidated by now he needed a challenge right that's it and he decided that my podcast was probably a little bit too difficult for him so he but despite that he started to listen and he was sure that he wouldn't be able to understand everything and then continues leo at a certain point i don't know when or how it just clicked i think around episode 60 or 70 i suddenly realized i was understanding everything on the podcast at that point after years of procrastination failures and half attempts of learning half attempts at learning the language i felt like that's it i got it finally now let me just tell you that i was aware of how much work i still needed and need now but believe me i cracked the code i finally unlocked this thing i got this that's how i felt but i need to add that although i had finally found the resource i was looking for i wasn't disciplined enough for self-studying and i and i already knew very good books like raymond murphy and colleagues but as you said so many times that i couldn't possibly remember you need to take responsibility for the learning process responsibility doesn't have an a in it it's it's uh respond s-i-b-i-l-i-t-y yes that's right you it's true ultimately we all have to take our own responsibility for the learning process it's true leo says i really liked episode 686 you and christian from kangaroo english said a very important thing sometimes people think that when one wants to learn a language he or she simply needs to take lessons from a teacher saying okay i'm here just fill me up with english let's fill me up f-i-l-l not feel me up don't feel me up get your hands off me don't feel me up no fill me up with english so to speak but if that was the case how much easier things would be so it's true people do have that attitude don't they leo that people sit themselves down in a classroom or in front of a teacher and go right i paid my money now fill me up with english go um but it's not as simple as that that doesn't work leo says there is that film with keanu reeves what's its name what was it name oh yeah johnny mnemonic from 1995 in which they put data inside his brain and he has to carry it as a courier uh i believe do you know that film ladies and gentlemen johnny mnemonic happened came out about four years before the matrix keanu reeves is a guy and they put loads of data in his head and he has to just like remember it and carry it like he's like a sort of usb storage device whoa i was about to say his acting is maybe on a par with a usb storage device but that wouldn't be fair because we all love keanu reeves anyway the point is says leo it doesn't work like that like johnny mnemonic um us learners we are the ones that need to do the hard work guided by our teachers in the lepsters case by you of course you're the one who unlocks all of this i followed a lot of advice that you gave and let me tell you thank you they worked wonders should be it worked wonders because advice isn't it not are they advice is uncountable it's it i followed a lot of advice you gave me and let me tell you thank you it worked wonders so yeah eighty percent of what i know comes from here from luke's english podcast wow but there is also something i love doing as much as possible and that's creating my own learning bubble where i'm immersed in the language as much as possible your podcast is a great way to do that you definitely re revolutionized my english app um my english apprehension acquisition you mean because apprehension is not the white not the right word here leo apprehension is when you're not sure about something if your app apprehension is is when you worry about the future or have you have a fear that something unpleasant is going to happen that's not the word you you need comprehension maybe comprehension hmm comprehension acquisition and assimilation comprehension is when you understand right acquisition is when you pick up english and assimilation is when um you sort of absorb english or it's sort of english feeds in and becomes part of your your your english that you use okay so um apparently luke's english podcast revolutionized leo's understanding and ability to pick up and and incorporate uh english into his uh into his um vocabulary and speaking and so on and so i'm thankful for that not only the language but your culture too i remember episode 100 of luke's english podcast going to the pub wow so many years ago that's right it is it's like 10 years ago maybe and that's how it felt in this journey sitting in a pub with a friend chatting about so many things um that was the classroom and episode 99 the rotary sushi bar of english where you pick up all the different portions of english that's right that was a rambling episode one of the very early rambling episodes episode 99 the rotary sushi bar of english and i kind of got this idea that my podcast could be like a rotary sushi bar you know those sushi bars where the little plates of sushi come past you on a conveyor belt that's a bit like this podcast the english is just coming past like that and you can just pick bits of english up as you go you don't have to get all of it a lot of it just you let it go you can't possibly eat it all but just pick off little bits as they come past things that you fancy oh that's a bit nice bit of english i'll have that so it's like that yeah um and leo says okay so let's wrap this up shall we yes leo let's do that because it's true for this episode as well i need to wrap this up uh thank you for all of this i had and i'm having so much fun with luke's english podcast and knowing that so many people are part of this community is a strong reminder that in the end we're all from lepland we all share this passion for the language and as our teacher said many times it's all about connection not perfection i need to say that is not my phrase okay that that's not that's a quote from the girls from all is english the all is english podcast um that's theirs okay that is their catchphrase and whenever i say it's all about connection not perfection i always make a point of saying as the girls from all is english always say so i'm quoting them because they're right about that it's true it is about connection not perfection it's about using language to to make connections with people and not just focusing on achieving some sort of utopian idea of perfection and not using english to communicate it's like you know basically the the point i'm making is some students they think i need to learn learn learn learn to english and then when i'm ready then i will start communicating but that's not the right way to do it you have to be communicating in order to improve you're never going to get proper competent english unless you're actually using it and practicing your communication with it so it's not something you study in a book for for years and then now i can speak english no you have to learn it by doing it and leo adds at the end p.s let me do let me do it at least once what he says i'm certainly rushing to get to the next episode but leo that doesn't work it doesn't work for you leo because you're not russian you're brazilian so you can't say i'm rushing to listen to the next episode because you're not russian you're brazilian you see see how the joke works everybody it only works if you are russian then you can say i'm russian to do something otherwise it's like i'm i get the idea leo okay it and i appreciate the uh appreciate the effort what i appreciate the reference and here i am now explaining the russian joke again you you did it leo you did it to me uh and then leo says but anyway until then bye bye bye bye bye bye bye all the best leo well that's a nice email leo it took me bloody ages to read it out on the podcast but i did it in the end um i think the email speaks for itself i don't need to say much more about it there's just one more email that i got i can't remember when i got this but um i've got a message for for hamad hamad hello is your name hamad this might be a message for you so this is a message from hamad's wife i think it's hamad's wife yes so it goes like this hi luke i hope you're doing great in these kovid 19 times doing all right one of your very dedicated listeners is hamad my husband who annoyingly keeps listening to your podcasts in the bathroom while showering even when he's changing his clothes uh okay um one of your dedicated listeners is hamad my husband who annoyingly keeps listening to your podcasts in the bathroom while showering even when he's changing his clothes okay it's a nice thought for me there imagine hamad a grown man removing his clothes washing himself all over and spending time in the bathroom doing who knows what with his clothes off all the while listening to me talking to him listening to my voice okay i'm not sure how i feel about that um aisha hamad's wife continues she says he keeps waking me up from my sleep during his morning rituals and she's put rituals in inverted commas like speech marks he keeps waking me up from my sleep during his during his morning rituals what are his morning rituals what does this involve this is a bit odd or anytime he goes to the bathroom to do anything like really anything uh okay this is a bit odd i'm thinking what hamad keeps going into the bathroom to do anything and while he's doing there sometimes with his clothes off he is listening to my podcast the whole time probably too loudly aisha says please let him know i sent you this message and pl and tell him to please stop listening to your podcast in the bathroom sincerely a concerned yet disturbed wife aisha thank you sent from my iphone all right so hamad hamad mate look your wife aisha has reached out to me okay hamad this is an intervention okay you need to stop listening to my podcast in the bathroom stop doing weird unknown things in the bathroom while you're listening to this the main thing i mean you know you can do whatever you want in the bathroom and you can listen to my podcast while you're doing it if you want that's not the issue the issue is that you're disturbing aisha because that i think you're listening to the podcast too loudly and it's waking her up i don't know maybe the bathroom is like next to the bedroom or something and you know she's like sleeping soundly and then she hears you're listening to luke's english podcast for more information visit did you know you're listening she's getting that and she can't sleep so hamad just a little word of warning lower the volume in the bathroom okay or get some headphones and listen you know get out the shower dry yourself off listen on headphones you don't want to make aisha angry i don't know what she will do don't push her too far okay okay all right well that's it that's the end of this episode listeners if you listen or if you know anyone who listens to the podcast in a weird place let me know i'm always curious to know uh the context in which you're listening to this podcast um yeah if you think that you listen to the podcast in a in a in an original way please let me know it would be interesting to to find out uh if there are people listening while flying planes and things like that i'm always curious about that so let me know but that's the end of this episode it's been super duper long thank you for listening all the way to the end i'm not gonna do a song this time because i'm not ready so apologies for the music fans um okay maybe next time this has been a long long episode thanks for sticking with this all the way to the end well done well done guys special round of applause for being in a super duper extra super special listener thank you for listening thank you for watching um don't forget to um you know subscribe on youtube if you're watching this on youtube youtube and you're not subscribed subscribe now and uh leave a positive review for the app on the app store if you would uh just because that's going to help sort of you know i need all those reviews again i'm going to stop talking now it's been a pleasure i'll speak to you again next time but for now it's time to say goodbye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye

Channel: Luke's English Podcast

Views: 36,693

Keywords: learn, learning, english, lesson, lessons, luke, podcast, luke's, vocabulary, native, speaker, interviews, listening, pronunciation, british, accent, london

Id: 2UH-8QHaKwQ

Length: 103min 54sec (6234 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021