P35 StoryTime: Learn English with Stories (free LEP Premium Sample) THE BEAR STORY

hello listeners how are you welcome back to the podcast the title of this episode is p35 story time learn english with stories brackets lep premium sample close brackets number one the bear story it's a ridiculously long title i will explain it in a moment there's a pdf for this which is a full transcript check the episode description in your podcast player click the link and you can open it and read along with me or just read it later also there's a video version with text on the screen so you can follow along with me while i read i'll try not to go too quickly so you can keep up this could be a long episode you've heard me say that before this could be a long episode it might be worth watching or listening to this in several sessions or just see if you can stick with me for the whole thing so the title again p35 story time colon learn english with stories open brackets lep premium sample close brackets number one the bear story so let me explain this when episodes have a p at the start it actually means that they are premium episodes so this is a premium episode but this time i'm uploading it as a free episode for everybody the idea is that with this episode i'm giving you a sample of what happens in episodes of luke's english podcast premium just to give you a flavor of lep premium maybe to entice you to sign up just a little bit i want to take this opportunity actually to say that lep premium is now available on a cast plus which means that you can get my premium episodes in any normal podcast app it's available now you probably heard me mention this change in episode 776 i told you to wait before signing up to lep premium well now you can do it all the premium episodes are there they're ready and you can sign up now and get started if you want it's open now did you get the message everyone it's open now just click the link in the description where it says sign up to lep premium here just click that link or just go to teacherloop.co.uk premium to get started and if you want more information about all of this just go to teacher luke dot co dot uk premium info that's where you get all of the information about the premium subscription including the incredibly reasonable pricing how to get the premium videos premium pdfs with transcripts and worksheets what usually happens in episodes of luke's english podcast premium and more information teacher luke dot co dot uk premium info most of the premium episodes are vocabulary reviews focusing on language which has come up naturally in episodes of the free podcast usually i pick out target language from an episode for example a conversation with my dad and then i focus on reminding you of specif reminding you of specific phrases you heard but might not have fully understood uh fully noticed or understood i use my particular set of teaching skills because i have a particular set of skills i use my particular set of teaching skills to help you understand and remember those bits of language while also expanding things and showing you all sorts of other related vocabulary like synonyms and collocations and then i test your memory and use of that language and finally i give you a chance to practice pronouncing the language by repeating after me so that's what you usually get in episodes of luke's english podcast premium and i've done a lot of episodes like that so far there are currently about 150 episodes of the premium subscription with transcripts and worksheets and everything but with this episode i'm giving you a free preview of a slightly different series which i'm going to publish in the premium subscription over the next few months so this is just a little taste of what's coming to lep premium now this isn't just an advert an advertisement for the premium subscription i mean it is a little bit but i'm also going to tell you a story i'm going to teach you some language from the story and also i'm going to demonstrate a learning method which you can use to improve your english by yourself okay so story time the series i'm talking about is called story time that's what i've decided to call it if you're a premium subscriber you'll have heard me mention this lots of times i've been talking about doing it for ages for like several years like our story i've been working on story time episodes well here it is finally story time is a collection of short stories with accompanying pdfs which i will use to help you improve your english in various ways i'll demonstrate it here in this episode so this episode is going to include some details of my storytelling technique which is a method of improving your english with stories uh a story told by me about a bear a time when i had an encounter with a bear if you don't understand what that means i'll explain it so a story told by by me with a full transcript available and again check the links in the description to download the pdfs you don't need to give your email address or anything you can just get the pdf straight away none of that email stuff then language exercises focusing on grammar vocabulary and prepositions in the story that will be included and there will be some listen and repeat pronunciation drills to practice actually saying the lines from the story just like me so you can work on your pronunciation and accent as well and we're aiming to do all of that in just one single episode here i wonder if we'll manage it it might be necessary to publish the pronunciation part in another episode or at least maybe we can do the first part of the pronunciation and finish it off in a second episode which is what i would normally do in luke's english podcast premium in fact uh and future episodes of story time in luke's english podcast premium will contain a story plus grammar and vocab exercises and a pronunciation section just like this one if you want to sign up i'm going to tell you again if you want to sign up to lep premium to get the other episodes in the series when they arrive plus all the premium content so far click the link in the show notes or go to teacherloop.co.uk premium all right okay right let's let's i'm not going to be selling to you anymore not that there's anything wrong with that anyway let's talk about stories and learning english okay so stories are great for learning english we know this don't we stories are a very compelling resource for learning languages everyone knows this it's just a question of finding the right stories with the right level of support from a teacher reading them or listening to them and probably applying some kind of study technique stories are very immersive and have been effective ways of communicating ideas for thousands of years right apparently stories work well because when we listen to them or read them we're able to put ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist of that story not literally i mean you just put yourself in someone else's shoes it's just an expression it doesn't mean that you what luke what you mean we have to like take our shoes off no that's not necessary it's just an expression to put yourself in someone else's shoes is kind of like put yourself in their position see the world through their eyes and one of the reasons why stories are so effective is that when we listen to them or read them somehow we are able to kind of put ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist of the story and we kind of experience things with them it's almost like experiencing the events for ourselves and this makes stories very vivid and personal and that's exactly why they're so great for language learning it seems that we really learn language and remember vocabulary and structures when we absorb them in a very vivid personal and captivating way hopefully the fact that the stories in this series are my own true stories should help that process especially if you've been listening to me for a while and you've got to know me now that'll also help also we use stories socially a lot to share ideas and communicate concepts and feelings and humans have been doing this for many many years humans have i don't know if animals have i don't know maybe maybe when birds are singing they're like telling each other stories i don't know but anyway humans people we've been using stories socially a lot to share ideas and communication communicate concepts and feelings we've been doing this for years oral storytelling the spoken word is a tradition that goes back way beyond the history of the written word it's kind of part of our dna now to learn and communicate through spoken stories narratives are important us humans we like narratives they are meaningful to us narratives have always been the most effective vehicle for communicating ideas think of the way various concepts have been handed down from generation to generation through stories how we are so touched and mesmerized by movies and books and how the world's religions have narratives at their center so you know the point is that stories are just really important and this is all part of why stories can be a good way of learning a language there are different types of narrative there are big ones like the stories in the bible or the myths and legends that we know and there are smaller more personal ones like anecdotes about our lives that we share with people when we meet them everyone knows that salespeople or presenters who use stories or some kind of narrative technique always manage to get more success this is also true of presentations like the presentations you do at work okay the best ted talks for example seem to tell an emotional story as well as informing you of their subject it seems to be the way to capture the attention of people as well as to kind of tell them some sort of story with you know events and feelings and experiences it's very important to be able to tell stories in english you need to be able to explain things that have happened to you in your life we all need anecdotes for social situations like gatherings where you're trying to make friends with people or establish meaningful connections with them that could be a party or a work event or a conference or something we tell people stories about ourselves in order to make connections now the most obvious example of a story we have to tell is the narrative of your own life people will always ask you about yourself and you need to be able to explain who you are where you come from why you chose to do the thing you're doing right now uh or you need to be able to explain the story of your professional career and how you did this and then this and then that and so on so that's like those moments when you have to describe your cv in a job interview that's storytelling too also being able to tell anecdotes is very important for social life being entertaining interesting funny and charming right we all need those stories about ourselves that we can share with people in terms of language this all relates to using the right verb tenses using natural pronunciation with emphasis sentence stress and pausing and all the vocabulary that you need to tell vivid engaging and descriptive narratives in the right style so i've been thinking about all of this and also i've noticed that my storytelling episodes of my podcast are often the most popular which is no surprise so i thought i had to do more story based content on my podcast it's obvious to me it's what people need it's what people like and it's what i like doing too i do enjoy telling stories either adventure stories stories in books stories for my daughter at bedtime stories about my life funny stories on stage in stand up stories about history stories about the beatles i just love stories so what i'm presenting to you here with this new series for lep premium which i'm calling story time is a way to help you learn english with my stories and also to give you the chance to practice telling stories in english in various contexts and to develop your own particular set of english skills in the process and i do have a specific technique for doing this it involves stories with transcripts stories with transcripts so let me tell you about the importance of transcripts so when you have a short text with a transcript and the text is a personal story from the point of view of the storyteller then you get the recipe for some great english learning resources the transcript on its own isn't quite enough you also need the audio the reason for this is so you can hear the spoken word this is how you develop your oral english listening and speaking skills and this is important because you can't just learn english on paper you need to learn how to do english and that that means speaking the transcript is there to support this mainly because it really helps in english to connect the spoken version to the written version the two things are quite different the way words are written isn't the same as the way they are spoken so if you just work on the written word you're missing a lot you're missing how those words are spoken i mean this is one of those things that you realize isn't it when you're trying to deal with english you you realize wait a minute this what's the connection between the spelling and the pronunciation it's so confusing so yeah that's that's true so you do have to kind of work with the two you've got to sort of bridge the gap between the spoken word and the written word and get to know both versions so the advantage of having a transcript is that you can easily examine the language that you've heard by looking at the script but also when you listen and repeat you can check that what you're hearing and saying are the right thing and in this way you can shadow my pronunciation for example you can practice grammar actively and pick up new vocabulary and connect the written version of english to the spoken version of english all right and with my story time episodes you'll get a story from me with a script plus loads of other practice exercises and comments from me and pronunciation practice too so i'll support you along the way right so it's time to talk about that specific technique for learning english with stories that i mentioned before this is the technique you could use with my story time episodes it's a step-by-step approach now it's not revolutionary i'm not claiming to be coming up with brand new secret ideas here that no one's ever revealed before but if you're looking for some specific techniques for learning english on your own with my material then here's how i think you should do it so it's i'm calling it luke's storytelling technique essentially this can be boiled down to this all right did that make sense is that a good sentence this can be boiled down to this what do you mean actually on my in my transcript it said essentially it can be boiled down to this so i just misread it oh god so the storytelling technique can be boiled down to this meaning it can be essentially reduced to this like when you take uh some food some sauce and you boil it down to the sort of essential um sort of the main part it could be reduced to this i'm going to show you there are more details in each step as i will explain in a few minutes but first to keep it simple it goes like this right so let me just try and put this all on one page so we've got essentially input controlled practice and then output right i told you it's not revolutionary it's it's not about coming up with a revolutionary new technique it's about coming up with something that you can just follow step by step and something that you will actually do doesn't often you don't need a revolution in your language learning you just need to do something and do it regularly so let me break it down so input in this you would what you do is you listen once so listen to my story once and you can read the transcript and check any unknown language i'll go into more detail about how you can do that in a moment then you've got so let's just listen and enjoy the story hopefully and then you could check the script just to maybe read it too because sometimes once you've heard something you miss certain things because it can be harder to catch things when you're listening because it all flies past you but when you're reading you can take time you can go at your own speed you can actually see the words and phrases so you listen and then you read and you might want to check some unknown language and then there's the kind of controlled practice section this is where you you you listen and repeat now actually the pronunciation stage would probably be probably come later but in the control practice section you have listen and repeat which is where you chunk the sentences i'll explain that in a bit but it's essentially breaking up the sentences into pieces and pronouncing those pieces um with pauses in between so there's the pronunciation practice it's kind of like shadowing but it's not exactly the same because it involves hearing a piece of english and then repeating it after me and then hearing the next piece and repeating that just simple listen and repeat pronunciation drills then there's language study which is where you kind of get into some of the grammar and vocabulary and work with the language a bit and then output this is where after you've you've worked on the language in a controlled way you've worked on the story in a controlled way in the output section you try to tell my story in your own words so you try and retell my story and then you could think of a similar experience that you've had and try and tell your own story to personalize it okay now i'm going to go into detail about those steps in just a second so you could consider that to be a cycle because after the output section you can listen to you can listen to my story again one more time starting the process again it's always good to repeat and you'll find that when you after you've been through that process when you listen to the story again without reading the script you just listen you'll suddenly realize that you understand every single thing so the steps in detail so the input part listen to me telling the story and just try to understand it all and and enjoy it hopefully this should be the fun part then you go through the script and you investigate any words or phrases that you don't know and when i say investigate i mean this basically when you come across a word or phrase that you don't know first of all you try to guess what it means so you actually try to guess which is an important skill to develop like guessing the meaning of unknown words so you try to guess what it means using the grammatical context and the meaning context around the word or phrase now to be honest like guessing the meaning of unknown words and developing that skill that is a whole other podcast for another time we could go into that in a lot more detail and go through step by step the process of doing it but essentially it's come up with when you see a word you just stop for a moment and just consider the context the meaning context and the grammatical context as well because that can help helps if you identify if it's a a noun a verb or adjective you know what part of speech it is and stuff all those things can help you sort of narrow down the meaning but then you use a good online dictionary to help this is where you actually get the the definition now online dictionaries good ones you know use them because there are whole teams of professionals whose job it is to try to help you understand these words so they're there there's like people working really hard mapping out the entire language and giving you all the information you need to know so i recommend there's a few different dictionaries you can use but my favorites are the oxford dictionary for learners of english the collins english dictionary or the cambridge dictionary for learners of english other dictionaries are available there's the longman dictionary of contemporary english i think it's called there's the macmillan dictionary oxford cambridge collins longman um macmillan these are sort of my five dictionaries that i use and they're all they all have free dictionaries available online just through a browser other dictionaries are available sometimes it's a good idea to cross check the different definitions um all right and also don't just look for the definitions you've got to look for the examples and there's lots of other information that dictionaries can give you including the phonetic transcriptions there's often a button where you can hear a person say the word so you can actually hear the pronunciation again examples maybe information about how how common the word is dictionaries are amazing um i might clarify these expressions after i tell you each story so in some cases i will actually go through some words but in any case it's always good to learn ways to research new words yourself so you don't need to rely on someone else to do it i could do a whole episode on how to use dictionaries to help with your vocabulary they are full of useful information beyond just the definitions of words that's another story another episode for another time right itchy nose i've got an itchy nose oh controlled practice is the next step so next you would use the memory tests on the pdfs for my premium episodes to check and practice your grammar and vocabulary there should be three tests per story so a grammar test usually for verb forms a vocabulary test for words and phrases and a prepositions test and this tests a range of language systems which are often overlooked but which are vitally important such as fixed phrases phrasal verbs or collocations which need prepositions these are those slippery aspects of english which often make the difference between intermediate and advanced levels and beyond i mean there's many ways to break language down and it often it can help to just focus on certain certain little aspects and it's just like the way in okay next once you've checked unknown words and tested your grammar and vocabulary and kind of like delved into the language a bit listen again and try to repeat the lines after me this is the pronunciation practice i'll give you pronunciation drills to make this easier and as i said before i will demonstrate this in the second half of this episode when i actually tell you my story about the bear and i'll do i'll show you all the things i'm talking about so yeah listen and repeat i'll give you pronunciation drills to make this easier repeat each line so specifically repeat each line without looking at the script just try to repeat what you hear okay and this will make you focus on the way things are pronounced then you can check the script to see if you were saying the same words as me what people often will do is they will when they're doing listen and repeat they want to see the words they want to be able to see the sentences but what happens then is your brain starts to decode that your brain i mean act that can be useful listening and reading at the same time definitely can be useful but what i'm encouraging you to do is first your first encounter with the language the as you try to repeat it should be the oral version so it forces you to focus on the way the words and phrases and sentences actually sound not and you don't get distracted by the way they look um i'm going to make that point again in my pronunciation drills i normally give you the chance to repeat each line a couple of times but if you like you can use the skip back button that most podcast apps will have skip back if you want to repeat more than twice so try to copy my intonation my rhythm how i pronounce vowel sounds consonant sounds and combinations of consonants and watch out for how i link words together maybe the most important thing though the most important thing is to notice the stress or emphasis in each line certain words or certain syllables in each line will carry more stress than others this marks the rhythm of the sentences right and english is a stress-timed language which means that some syllables get more emphasis than others and the syllables without the stress or emphasis might get squashed so things like little words or parts of words don't get fully pronounced they have weak forms that's a bit complex to understand maybe but at least try to notice the sentence stress or rhythm of the sentence and copy it i will demonstrate that uh in the i'll demonstrate that in a moment so try to say the lines also try to say the lines as i present them to you as one word in some cases again when you look at a sentence when you read it there are spaces between the words but when you hear someone say those sentences they don't put spaces where you see them the spaces come in different places for example if i say try to say the lines as one word in some cases now there was really just one pause there after i said word try to say the lines as one word in some cases right and there's another pause next so try to say the lines as one word in some cases without pauses between each word you see when i do pronunciation practice i will break sentences into chunks or pieces these pieces are pronounced with no spaces between each word the words are all linked together the pauses come between each chunk i'll give you examples of this when we get to the pronunciation drills later in this episode i'll give you full examples so you can you can listen listen to me say each line repeat them like me skip back if you want repeat it again and again and again check the script to make sure you're saying the right words but don't always look at the script when repeating instead what you could do is you could just literally hold your hand in front of the line in front of the words listen and repeat without looking at the script then you reveal the script to check you're saying the words that are written okay so just to say that again so you'll see the pronunciation drills and they'll be presented on the pdf but you listen to me and don't look at the script either look away and listen or hold your hand over the sentence or hold a piece of paper or something over over it so that you don't see it and then just listen and try to repeat and then reveal and reveal the sentence you go ah right oh i see and that way you can compare any differences between how the line is written and how you expect how you expect it to be said how i actually say it and how you say it so compare the differences between how the line is written how you expect it to be said and how it how i actually say it and how you say it try to copy me not copy the script say it like i say it not how it looks english writing and speaking are different if you want to focus on your speaking skills pay attention to how words are spoken but make sure you know how they are spelled too obviously in english there are many accents this is another point people from different places say the same words differently i'm from england and so i have an english accent that's just another point i mean you know essentially this again this disparity between the spoken word and the written word the english is written the same more or less with except with slight spelling differences between american and british english but pretty much we write it in the same way but there's a huge variety of different ways that those words and sentences are pronounced around the world so you know you might think oh god which accent shall i choose you just choose the one that you feel like you should have just feel like the choose the one you want the most important thing is that you're intelligible that people understand you and stress rhythm intonation pausing and emphasis all those things are really important for intelligibility so intelligibility is the thing we should focus on the most that's basically being clear okay here's an example of what i mean by chunking sentences so if we do one chunk per line we can break up the story into the right sections paul in fact i'm look i'm actually doing it now if we do one chunk per line we can break up the story into the right sections pause in the right places add emphasis to the right words and generally make sure we are telling the story in the correct way which i think should be very helpful and beneficial so i i just did it then now that was that's actually one sentence what i just said there that's one sentence broken up into chunks each chunk can be pronounced with all the words linked you pause between each line so for example if we do one chunk per line we can break up the story let me say that again we can break up the story into the right sections okay let's just do that again if we do one chunk per line we can break up the story into the right sections so you see i just did it if we do one chunk per line so that's one that's one two three four five six seven words but they're all linked up together if we do one chunk per line if i slow it down maybe you can see the way the words all run together if we do one chunk per line pause we can break up the story into the r sometimes i get it wrong too it's all part of the fun we can break up the story into the right sections okay if you're looking at the pdf with me or if you look if you're looking at the video version of this you can see that i've kind of used some visuals to to make it clear which words are the stressed words in the sentence or in the line and how they're all joined together and also some words are pronounced with weak forms like we can break up the story so can that little modal verb there is pronounced with a weak form because it's not one of the stressed words so it gets squashed we can break up the story not we can break up the story but we can break up the story okay into the right sections into the right the right see the becomes small because it's not one of the stressed words or one of the stressed syllables so it's also possible to change the text that i present to you in the pdf to highlight which words or syllables are stressed any weak forms and maybe where and how the words are linked in various ways the thing about linking is called connected speech there's various ways in which words are connected together again that's a whole other podcast for another time i have done that i've done episodes about connected speech in the past just check my episode archive for the words connected speech i think i've got one particular episode all about it the episode archive you just go to teacherloop.co.uk episodes so you can see how i've done that like used i've highlighted words and things you can see how i've done that to the two example lines above as i showed you we could also include phonemic transcriptions of each line because you know you might be thinking wait a minute there's no connection between the written word and the spoken word ah this is so confusing well the phonemic transcription is the thing that will help you there okay because actually the phonemic transcription is is a written version of exactly how the thing is pronounced in in this case in my accent as i'm going to show you so we could also include phonemic transcriptions of each line to show what they really look like phonetically so if we go back to that if we do one chunk per line we if we do let's let's just make let's just make those a bit bigger there oops if we do one chunk per line right i'm just making some of those a bit bigger okay so if you're looking at the pdf you'll see a phonemic transcription of that chunk if we do one chunk per line now if you look at it if you look at the phonemic transcription that is actually how you phonetically spell that chunk if we do one chunk per line now obviously i think for most of you if you haven't learned the phonemic script you'll look at that and you'll be like oh my god what's that that just that looks like gobbledygook it looks like another language yeah i know you maybe you don't really want to have to learn the phonemic script but you should it's it would be a good idea because it can help you decode english pronunciation and that could be very useful i don't always use phonemic script because i just find that most of my learners most of my listeners viewers students in my classes they haven't learned the phonemic script and then you end up you have to spend ages learning the script and they're often there isn't time so i mean it would be a good idea if you had the time to to work on the phonemic script and you can how would you do it i mean you just have to go maybe if you go to bbc learning english pronunciation that can help or if you download there's a british council app uh british council pronunciation app he says googling it that's it sounds right it's called sounds right which is basically the phonemic script and it's interactive you can press each phoneme and it it makes the sound so you know exactly um how how all those sounds are pronounced anyway again that's another story for another time the phonemic script then the next line was we can break up the story into the right sections and we can see the phonemic version of that we can break up the story we can break up the story into the right sections right there you go so the phonemic script can be very useful if you if you are willing to take the time so i'm not going to do the full phonemic transcriptions i'm not going to do that with the rest of that sentence now though because i want to keep moving but often in premium episodes i do focus on some of those specific pronunciation features while doing pronunciation practice i'll talk a little bit more about the phonemic script in a moment okay so next you could print the script and then go through it again with a pen you know a pen is don't you marking where they're where where there should be pauses so you get the script of the story and you just kind of go through it with a pen and mark where there should be pauses marking which words are emphasized marking how they're emphasized for example if if you're going up if you're going down and so on marking how bits are linked together noting how some words or phrases sound compared to how they're written i want to encourage you to try to do those things yourself i will help you but the best way for you to learn is to sort of take a bit of responsibility for yourself and try to you know realize that you can do these things you can investigate the language get in there and try and work out what's going on and hopefully the things i'm telling you will will help you understand how to do that it would help a lot as i said if you use the phonemic script as well on the pdf version of this you can see the phonemic chart for the for british rp english there it is um if you're looking at the video i'm showing it to you now okay let me go back to the script i was reading where was i on the pdf version you can see the phonemics chart for british rp english which is basically the accent i have obviously other accents are available and my position on accents is i love all accents it's one of my favorite things i love english in different accents i also love as a comedian or just as someone who likes to have fun i like to play with accents if it's appropriate but i like to try and copy different accents and accents are wonderful and they're beautiful i love listening to people speaking in different accents and obviously you know feel free to just pick an accent uh pick the one you want i mean i speak like this so this is the action i have and normally the phonemic script as you see it in dictionaries is based on my accent there it is now this is the so the the diagram that i showed you the phonemic script this is the one from adrian underhill's website by the way adrian underhill wrote a great book about pronunciation which is called sound foundations i think i've got it somewhere where is it uh where is sound foundations i've got it on my shelf somewhere uh i can't locate it at this moment never mind where is it anyway i've got a copy of that book somewhere sound foundations by adrian underhill it's a great book but maybe that's for the english teachers pronunciation and phonetics is a great and useful subject and definitely would be a good episode for another time but i've done some stuff i've done some stuff about phonetics in the premium section the point is learning the phonemic script can help you to decode english words and if you learn all the symbols and sounds it can help you with your pronunciation that's another episode for another time there's the phonemic script if you're checking the pdf and uh the video for this um it looks confusing there is a logic to it the the it's it's in three sections basically um the the top left section these are single vowel sounds the top right section these are double vowel sounds or diphthongs and then you've got consonant sounds at the bottom the if i read through the sounds from top left going to the right we have e e e right those four sounds and you notice if you can see me doing this that my mouth goes from wide sort of like the the position of my lips go start wide and goes forward where the lips are brought together in a sort of a like little circle like a pout so that shows the way that the lips go from wide to sort of gathered together and if i go from the top left down we go we have e e a and you see that in that direction my jaw is going down this is kind of interesting because it shows you that the different mouth positions when we're pronouncing vowels either your your lips are wide like in the e sound e or your lips are get like um pulled in together like a pout like in the uh or and oh words sounds i mean and also the jaw so either the jaw is low or or higher so it's like up and down jaw wide and and uh narrow lip position these are the sort of position movement so i'll go through them again e e e this is fun isn't it folks i've made this joke before if you're listening to me if you've got this playing on a speaker or something and i'm going people be like wait what are you listening to if you've got this playing on your bluetooth speaker in your home and people are like what what is what what uh ooh ah uh um i could go through the rest of this but basically these are all double ones ear a and so on and then the consonant sounds now do you notice actually that these are in pairs they're all pronounced in the same way same lip position tongue position the difference is that the second one here ba in this case is pronounced with your voice uh first one has no voice second one is the same thing but with the voice same thing here and pronounced in the same way but the d sound has the voice and doesn't ch and and and then others as well anyway right there is some logic to that diagram it's very interesting when you get into it uh adrian underhill sound foundations so let me just say this again the full script of this episode including the story which i'm going to start in a minute and all the exercises are available as a pdf download in two versions one for your phone with large letters and one to be read on paper or on your computer with normal letter size check the links in the description to download them you don't have to enter your email address or anything that you just literally click the link it takes you straight to the pdf i'm not going to try and get your email address and send you emails and stuff um unless you sign up to lep premium and then sometimes i might send you an email say hi here's some new content all right anyway again this is what you always get in episodes of lep premium all the pdfs and stuff not you don't get videos every time but whenever i whenever i can do it i do it uh and then we got the output section remember we were in a process my storytelling technique the output section try to tell the story in your own words without the script right so this is where you you've been working the script on the screen or if you've printed it on paper if you don't care about the environment or if you're gonna keep them forever you're not just going to throw them away anyway so you've you've been working on it and then you put all the script away and you just you've been working with my story a few for a while repeating after me working on the language now you just go okay all right let's try and tell luke's story and you try and tell the story in your own words without the script you've become pretty familiar with the story now so try to say it out loud without the script it doesn't matter if you change some details you could record yourself doing this and review it later or you could do it with a friend and so when you do that it could be like this your friend is the teacher and has the script and you try to tell the story while your friend gives you a few clues to help you remember what comes next or gives you a little corrections if necessary okay so that's if you do it with your friend so you kind of like your friends like okay go and you go okay so i was uh in the forest and i was walking along and suddenly uh you know suddenly um a bear a bear um uh attacked me and um and it it pulled my head off no no no pulled pulled pull it pulled my head off that's not the actual story but it's just an example you could do that with a friend where your friend's the teacher and you're the learner and then you swap you become the teacher and your friend becomes the learner or you do it on your own and you switch between the roles you're trying to tell the story and then uh and then you have a quick look at the script put your glasses on remind you and then okay and then you carry on try to make your telling of the story interesting don't just recite it like a robot i was walking in the forest and suddenly i saw a bear and i was terrified you say with a dead look in your eyes no no try and put some feeling into it as well imagine you're trying to entertain people so i was walking through the forest it was really dark and i was completely lost and my phone was my phone had run out of batteries i couldn't listen to luke's english podcast and then i heard a noise and i thought oh my god what is that what's that noise and then i got eaten by a bear you know put some feeling into it basically tell my story in your own words either the same as mine or change it a little bit if you want then you could write the story and then compare your written version to the script again it doesn't have to be exactly the same but my version can be a sort of guide or benchmark for you when you write your version next consider changing the point of view when you retell my story either orally or in writing you could change the point of view you could tell the story in the first person so i did this i did that or the second person you did this you did that or the third person luke did this luke did that now when you're using past tenses this isn't so tricky because the conjugation is pretty much the same thank god for english conjugation being kind of simple i you know you did i did they did she did it did it just did all the time or okay maybe some of those irregular verbs are more difficult but it's not really i went you went he went she went they went it went it's just so much easier than some languages i'm not saying english is easy because it's difficult in other ways but anyway like try using different uh perspectives as i said when you're using past tenses this isn't so tricky but in other tenses it it does force you to remember things like adding uh s or e s on the end of verbs and so on and that could be tricky because it can also it sometimes adds a syllable you know so just little things which can make a big difference it's all forcing you to practice doing things correctly okay then tell your own try to tell your own story in speaking and or in writing so do you have a similar experience you can describe have you ever been eaten by a bear if you have how did you what happened maybe you could rewrite my story completely the main thing is be creative here and come up with your own story and tell it either on paper or out loud even if it is just into your phone or if you've got a teddy bear just tell the story to the teddy bear hopefully that teddy bear won't eat you and here you can just go go a bit crazy if you want and let your imagination run wild you could you could correct all the grammar and stuff later if you're writing it or recording it just like have fun in the final in this final creative section here and then later you can come back and sort of like go into grammar mode and or whatever it is pronunciation mode and try and correct yourself and then finally listen to my story one more time and enjoy the fact that you now understand every single detail so essentially the process is input practice output it's not a new idea input listen to the episode notice the language practice do my tests and my listen and repeat pronunciation drills and check the script output try to tell your own story so it could be a retelling of mine or and and or a completely new story based on a similar experience you've had or fiction just make up a work of fiction don't be con don't feel you have to be constrained by reality you're just practicing language so you can do that with every single story i publish and you'll see that over time you'll make a huge it let me start that sentence again sometimes english is difficult for me too sometimes why did i sound like barack obama then sometimes english is difficult for me too you can do that process with every single story i publish and you'll see that over time it'll make a huge difference to your english okay a lot of this is about practice time and repetition just doing it once will be good but you'll get the best results by doing it again and again when a story time episode arrives in lep premium you can go through the process and just follow my instructions in the episode and on the pdf sometimes i tell stories in the free podcast too and there might be transcripts or automatic subtitles on youtube that can help you but in the premium episodes i do my best to give you all the support you need in a convenient way if you use the memory tests in the pdf and you do all the listen and repeat drills it will make all the difference so many skills are involved with this kind of work there's listening there's grammar there's vocabulary there's pronunciation there's memory now i'm not saying this technique is the the be-all and end-all of learning obviously other things are important like speaking practice with a person engaging in conversation this is also vital but using my materials and methods can definitely make a big difference i know this because people who've listened to my podcast and applied these sorts of things as well as just listening that they've they've i've talked to them they've told me first-hand evidence that it's made a big difference go back to the wispolep series why i should be on luke's english podcast that i did last year listen to the interviewees and in many cases they were doing all of these sorts of things and it made a big difference okay so you are absolutely bound to learn vocabulary grammar and pronunciation like this all you need to do is do it with every episode all you need to do is just make sure you don't stop just keep it up every time this is maybe the difficult thing right like actually doing it make it a habit listen to the audio follow my instructions and do the exercises i present to you it's all about long-term regular practice make it a habit to go through my process with every story time episode that i publish in this series and also go back into the back catalogue of premium episodes listen to them and use the pdf worksheets they're not all story episodes but they are still full of language teaching focusing on english which has come up in my in natural conversations on my podcast so you can do all of that but if this sounds like too much work and you don't like the idea of me giving you homework and you just think oh i can't i'm too busy i can't be bothered then right if that's the case then don't worry about it if you if you really prefer you can just sit back and listen to the stories for entertainment without doing any other work it's up to you i mean that will also help that is another technique just chill relax press play and enjoy ah time to just listen and not do anything else that's fine as well but if you are really serious about this and you want to get the maximum benefit from my episodes then you'll follow my technique there it is i've made it clear i've spelled it out for you now it's up to you right so my stories then and i'm going to tell you that bear story told you long episode but that's all right free this one as well so my stories i've been i've been searching my memory right i've been trying to look going through my memory of thinking right i need stories so i've been searching my memory my creativity moments from my life in order to produce stories for this project most of these stories will come from my own life but i also might include other stories i've found elsewhere too sometimes i'll use anecdotes that i've told on the podcast before but presented this time with scripts and worksheets so yeah i might tell the story of how i met dave groll one more time so you can expect a range of different stories about different things mostly from my life experience but also i'll be picking stories from elsewhere things are found online stories about other things and so on and it's not by the way i said that you know i'll tell some stories i've told before there are plenty of new things as well i've tried to write lots of news stories that you've never heard before too but in any case you can expect story time episodes to arrive in lep premium over the next few months summer will be a busy period for me but i'll be doing my best to provide episodes for you on a regular basis now i could stop here we've been going for about an hour i could stop here but i thought i would share one of my stories i promised it i better deliver it there's no need to stop now let's let's carry on i thought i would share one of my stories now and give you a demonstration of what story time episodes will involve so the story i'm going to share here is called a close encounter with a bear so before you listen let me just explain a couple of things so an encounter an encounter a close encounter so this is the word that we use to describe when you meet an animal without expecting to this is this is one of the meanings of encounters when you sort of meet something or come across something without expecting to normally a living thing you might encount it could be a person but normally you meet a person or bump into a person you might encounter a celebrity but you would encounter an animal you might have an encounter with an alien there's a movie called close encounters of the third kind a steven spielberg film which is all about aliens it's a great film so anyway let's just say the word encounter is when you just when you meet an animal without expecting to for people would probably say to bump into someone for example i bumped into paul mccartney the other day yeah i was in a shop and he happened to be standing in front of me in the queue so you know we had a bit of a chat and i'm going around to his place tomorrow for dinner which is nice there's a little story there in fact a mini story i don't know how many words that was but anyway so we use the word encounter when you meet an animal because you don't really we don't really meet animals you know we don't really meet animals like hello how do you do oh you're a bear how nice pleasure to meet you always nice to meet a bear please don't rip my arm off yeah can i have my hand back now please thank you so we don't actually meet animals we we encounter them and because it's often unexpected right so an encounter with a bear so this is the story of when i had an unexpected encounter with a bear i told the story once quite briefly in an old episode from the archive to be specific it was luke's english podcast number 292. called the california road trip part 5. long-term listeners do you remember that so i did briefly touch on that story then but here is the story presented in more detail in luke's english podcast premium or at least a free sample of it so can you follow specifically what happened how i felt and why i felt that way so basically just try and follow the story we'll do some language practice exercises after i've told you the story or at least i'll show them to you they'll be available in the pdf so you can do them in your own time as well so remember all of this is transcribed on the pdf for this episode just check the show notes it's there there's the pdf for the worksheet pdf in in in large text for the phone open on your phone and there's also a pdf for the story just the script of the story there's no need to give your email address or anything you can just get it easily just like with every premium episode there's also a pdf as i've said this already it's also a pdf with just the story transcript and none of these other notes so so you can jump straight to the story so here we go we got there the story so my close encounter with a bear here we go so let me tell you about a time when i had a close encounter with a bear this happened on my honeymoon in 2015. my wife and i decided to do a tour of california over about two and a half weeks i insisted that our tour include a visit to yosemite national park which is a huge wilderness area surrounding a canyon and is home to some of the most famous rock formations mountains and cliff tops in the world i don't know if you've heard of it or been there it's a fantastic place yosemite national park in california trees and mountains and stuff so my wife wasn't entirely sure about this as it involved camping in the forest and she's not very outdoorsy in the end i convinced her i made sure we had plenty of mosquito repellent including those smelly anti-mosquito bracelets that you can get you know those you wear them around your wrist and they're supposed to keep the mosquitoes away i don't really know if they work but i thought that if they made my wife feel a bit more comfortable they'd be worth bringing so the park is in a valley in the middle of a large area of mountain and forest it's a great place for hiking sightseeing and climbing but the area is also home to plenty of wildlife including bears which stay up in the mountains during the day and descend into the valley at night in search of food they're usually attracted by the smells of people cooking at the campsites and the rubbish that people leave out and this can be a problem so when you enter the camping area there are loads of signs everywhere warning you of the danger of bears the signs all say these things very clearly the bears have a super strong sense of smell so their noses are something like eight times more sense more sensitive than a dog's okay they are extremely curious they will investigate anything that smells like food and that includes your rubbish and also your cosmetics and bathroom products and stuff if you get trapped in a corner with a bear if you block its exit or it has young cubs nearby those bears can be extremely dangerous so you have to put any food or any products that smell including shampoo soap etc into special heavy duty metal boxes or bear boxes these can be locked and unlocked with a large handle that the bears can't operate because they're not quite as clever as humans in most cases i mean i suppose it depends on the humans anyway after our first day in the canyon we retired for the evening made sure everything was in the bear box and we laid down on our camping mattress in our tent to sleep we were in what is called a semi-permanent tent so it had three walls made of brick and then just two canvas curtains at the front which opened out into the forest directly in front of these curtains were some seats a campfire pit and the bear box the curtains were held closed by a couple of little strings that was all that stood between us in our tent in our camping bed and the forest outside okay lying on our camping mattress lying down on our camping mattress we could hear the sounds of nature around us and the occasional sound of some people moving around and talking nearby eventually we fell asleep but in the middle of the night i woke up to a strange sound i listened for a while and realized that something was scratching and poking the bear box just outside our tent just on the other side of the curtain something was definitely investigating our box and trying to open it i could hear scratching and if i listened closer bear in mind this is only about two meters away from where we had our heads on the pillows if i listened closer i could hear some breathing and the sound of teeth and jaws biting and scraping against the box now bear in mind that the box was only about two meters away from us on the other side of a canvas curtain in the entrance to our tent so i suddenly became terrified when i realized that it was a bear right there in front of us obviously i couldn't actually see it but i was convinced that it was a bear i'd seen all the documentaries about bears bear attacks polar bear attacks people being eaten by bears and more i'd seen the documentaries i knew what had happened i knew what happened in the revenant with leonardo dicaprio i'd seen all the warning signs around the campsite now there was an actual bear just outside our actual tent very close to our our soft probably delicious human bodies um i started thinking about whether the bear would decide to investigate our tent remember how curious they are was there anything smelly that would attract it i was lying there thinking still my wife was sleeping and this is what was running through my mind will the bear try to investigate the tent i realized that my wife and i were still wearing the anti-mosquito bracelets which were quite smelly and i expected to see the muzzle of the bear poking in between the front flaps of the tent which were held on only by a simple bit of string surely it would come and investigate us i thought that at any moment we would come face to face with a bear what would i do scream punch it could i really punch a bear in the face at this point i decided i should i should wake up my wife because she was still asleep right i thought that she might want to be awake for this to see her newlywed husband either punch a bear in the face or get mauled to death by one maybe both i just thought that we should experience that together you know because we'd recently made marriage vows about that kind of thing in sickness and in health till death do us part etc i know it didn't say anything about bears in the marriage vows but i decided to wake her up anyway so i gently and quietly woke her up like this darling darling darling what you know she she was annoyed that i'd woken her up what i was like there's a bear there's a bear there's a bear just outside our tent there's a bear out there she started laughing at me she could not control herself this was hilarious for her just she found this hilarious meanwhile i was panicking about the huge beast that was just a couple of steps away i was like shut up it's a job as a bear don't think she understood the danger we were in because you know she's from the city she was born and raised in paris i don't think she really knows animals so i think she didn't fully understand the threat the danger the peril i said bear and i think in her mind it was like the teddy bears picnic or something i don't know so there i was between danger and ridicule in the middle of a forest in america so i know what you're thinking now you're thinking luke what happened did you get killed by a bear and yes i did i got killed by a bear and i'm dead now the end no not really of course what happened is that we lay there for a while listening and eventually the sounds of scratching and breathing went away the bear must have walked away and moved on to another bear box or something i know that's perhaps not the dramatic ending you were hoping for but that is what happened the next day i read up on bears in yosemite national park bears in yosemite national park i read up on it and i learned more i found out that they are black bears and of all the bear species in the united states the black bears are in fact the least dangerous that's not to say they're not dangerous at all because as i said before they can be but they're not like polar bears or grizzly bears they won't attack people unless they absolutely have to i don't think polar bears and grizzly bears always attack people anyway but that if they are hungry they might but these black bears in yosemite are not likely to be that hungry so they won't attack people unless they absolutely have to they will usually avoid us completely and can be scared off quite easily by just making a lot of noise attacks by black bears are very rare so actually they're fine they're quite nice in fact and just i'll add an additional point here the signs warning people of bears are there to protect the bears as much as it is to protect the people because when bears and people get together they don't have a great time they don't like hey bears let's have a beer instead often it ends up being a bit complicated and sometimes the bears are the ones that might even be put down which means they might have to be killed if there's a situation where you know when things can get complicated quite easily these are large animals they can be dangerous they don't want to attract bears into the park sometimes bears get hit by cars and stuff that drive around in the park you know they want to try to reduce the contact between bears and humans as much as possible not just for the sake of the humans but for the sake of the bears as well so anyway the bears are actually fine they're they're quite nice in fact so the next night i was much more comfortable and slept well and in the end it was all okay and i was absolutely fine my wife got eaten by a bear but i was fine the end of course she didn't this is just a joke at the end of the story i just wanted to make you laugh so there you go that was my story of the bear now before i talk about language practice exercises here are some additional comments about this story i often use this bear story when playing the lying game in class with my students the lying game is a speaking exercise in which people tell stories and other members of the class have to ask questions and guess if the story is true or not i've done it on the podcast lots of times with amber and paul to demonstrate the game i tell my students this story and they have to guess if it's true or not right now it's a true story 100 true but most people usually think that this is not a true story which means i get lots of points in the game because it is completely true i've told it before on the podcast in fact in episode 292 california road trip part 5 as i said so here are comments or questions that my students ask me when i tell them this story i thought these these sorts of things might be in your mind so they say things like this weren't there any armed guards in the park protecting visitors from bear attacks well in fact it's not necessary really the bears aren't that dangerous despite what i had in my head in fact when bears and people come into contact with each other it's usually the bears who end up getting hurt they can be hit by cars they can climb inside cars to find food and sometimes the bears have to be put down meaning killed if they are in a potentially dangerous situation so the park rangers prefer to keep the bears away from the park and the best way to do this is to make sure that there is no food lying around that will attract them hence the bear boxes next thing that students ask me is this why didn't you call for help well i don't know really i guess i didn't get to that point but if the bear had tried to come into the tent then i certainly would have screamed and made noise apparently you're supposed to just scream and shout and they don't like that and that will make them run away i don't think they would let people another comment from students is this i don't think they would let people camp in this place if there were bears well like i said the bears generally don't hurt people and the safety measures are for the protection of the bears as much as for the protection of the people so yeah people camp there and stuff um and they just include lots of safety measures so the next thing is this so luke you didn't actually see the bear it's true i didn't how could you be so sure it was one this is true we didn't actually see it but what else could it have been and the bears are very common they do come down they do check the bear boxes they do investigate these smells they're they're very common um but what else could it have been scratching the sounds of biting on the box i could hear it i mean i'll you know like it was obvious to me the breathing a sort of snorting sound sounds i mean i i can't think of what unless there was a a guy a drunk man loose in the park desperately trying to get food from my bear box i don't think so so here's a quick summary of the story this is basically this is what happened in just a few sentences so my wife and i went on our honeymoon to the usa one of the places we visited was yosemite national park where we did some camping in the park there are some bears and occasionally they will come into the camping areas to look for food at the campsite we had to put all our food and products into sturdy metal boxes so the bears wouldn't be able to steal it while my wife was sleeping in our tent a bear i think i'm pretty sure a bear tried to open our bear box i could hear the bear scratching and biting the box just a couple of meters from where we were sleeping i was terrified i woke up my wife but she just thought it was funny that i was so scared thankfully the bear eventually went away and everything was okay that's it so you know that's the basic version of the story i mean obviously i added some color and you know i tried to make the story entertaining i didn't just it's not just let me impart the basic facts of the story to you it was more like i'm going to tell you the story but you know i'm going to try and make it an enjoyable story and i think it's important when we tell anecdotes and things that we do make them funny this is sort of like fun isn't it this is just what life's all about isn't it um so language practice exercises working with the story let me check my wife just called me um i'll need to call her back i need to sort of we need to get a move on here so let me just go through some of the stuff that you can use to help you with your english here so language practice exercises working with the story here is how you can use my storytelling technique to work on your english with this story just follow my instructions you've already listened to the story so you've done the input part now we have to move to the controlled practice part there are two ways of doing this on paper and pronunciation so let's start with exercises on paper that's grammar and vocabulary on the paper part you can pause the podcast go to the pdf or check the pages for this episode then do the exercises the exercises are just down there he says pointing to to the you know pointing downwards you will see gapped versions of the original story grammar verb forms so the first version of the story has verbs missing i've taken out most of the verbs from the transcript you have to put them back in in the correct form so we can focus on verb tenses narrative verb forms but also other types of verb forms such as gerunds and infinitives those moments when the verb is in the ing form or the base form want to highlight instances where either an infinitive for example to go is used or a gerund going is used to help attach verb phrases into sentences or when making participle clauses and so on so as well as verb forms for past tenses and conditionals etc look out for gerunds and infinitives too basically all the times when the verbs are used in various forms vocabulary the second version you will find has vocabulary removed now obviously a lot of words so i just picked out some of the words and just removed them essentially any i said meaningful items of vocabulary which i think are worth learning have been gapped you have to put them back in this should force you to notice the different words and expressions which i used just simple exercise i mean often it's not rocket science it's just a question of forcing you to notice certain things forcing you to work with the language a little bit more than just reading it and listening to it in both cases the grammar and the vocabulary the verbs and vocabulary items are given to you in a box in alphabetical order it's up to you to choose the right ones and put them in the right form so you might need to change the form of those words and put them into the spaces then prepositions the third version of the story focuses on prepositions i've removed the prepositions from the story and you have to put them back in and this will test things like collocations phrasal verbs and more test but also highlight these parts of the language so that's the paper part you can check all your answers by returning to the original story script to check and then pronunciation exercises then the pronunciation part basically involves repeating the story after me line by line i'll break the story into chunks with pauses and sentence stress highlighted and you have to repeat it all after me so and then free practice try and retell the story then after the controlled pronunciation work there's the free part where you have to retell the story yourself try to tell the story again without reading it from the script don't worry if your version isn't exactly the same as mine just try to tell the story in your own words if you use the same language as i did great if you find another way to do it that's okay too let's say though that you should be trying to use my version in order to essentially take on the language that i use and then tell your own story and then you can try to think of a similar experience you've had and describe that either by speaking or write or by writing it doesn't have to be a with a bear in this case it's like have you ever had an encounter with an animal basically a snake a spider a mouse whatever okay so then we've got the language practice exercises which are on the pdf now i'm not going to go through them all here i'll just show them to you so it says language practice exercises grammar verb forms put the verbs in the box into the correct gaps in the text use the correct verb forms in each case sometimes you might need to add an auxiliary verb like have be or do check the original text when you've finished for the answers so this version that i'm showing on the screen while recording the video doesn't look great it's going to look best on the normal uh pdf version but we've got verbs like bring cook have include surround and so on and then there's you know the story let me you about a time when i'm a close encounter with a bear this hmm on my honeymoon my wife and i hmm to do a tour of california so you just have to put the verbs back in some of them are easy some of them are less easy okay so there's that i'll let you do that yourself in your own time on the pdf i mean for example the park is in a valley in the middle of a large area of mountain and forest it's a great it's a great place for what it's a great place for so what's the verb for the verb is camp but what form is it it's a great place for camping hiking uh sightseeing i think was the other verb so you know there you go gerund in that case the area is also home to plenty of wildlife bears what would that be well if the verb is include so and it's a gerund the area is home to plenty of wildlife including bears okay now i'm just showing you the exercises here i'm not going to go through all of the explanations and stuff at this point but there it is exercises are there it's not the entire story i'm just scrolling through it scrolling scrolling scrolling it's not the entire story you know i don't want to overload you with work so that's just the first half of the story i would say and then it says that's enough no need to do the entire story check your answers by looking at the original script okay now you might want me to give you comments and stuff but i mean i'm trying to keep this brief here let's move on to vocabulary so for the vocabulary it's it's more or less the same thing can you remember the missing vocabulary from the story i've given you the first letter in each case so i actually haven't given them to you in a box i've just given you the first letter so let me tell you about a time when i had a close eh something with a bear well you know now look the answer's there a close encounter all right that's easy but i just just forcing you to do it and you'd have to write it if you've printed it it all helps this happened on my in 2015. why why were we in california because it was our honeymoon right and so on and so forth with other words removed you know more words um sense of smell extremely curious trapped in a corner with a bear heavy duty metal boxes lay down on our camping mattress a couple of little strings okay the occasional sound of some people moving around scratching and poking the bear box and so on okay all right not the entire story again that is enough it says on the pdf you can check your answers by looking at the original version and then we get prepositions to help you notice preposition collocations prepositions of place and movement and also phrasal verbs or dependent prepositions do this exercise all and the missing prepositions all possible prepositions are provided in the table well i've oh hold on a minute i need to edit this all possible prepositions are provided in the table i'm not doing that because or maybe i am i haven't finished the worksheet obviously i've got some work to do there or will i will i give you the prepositions or not i i think i'm not going to because there aren't that many prepositions i think probably at your level you don't need me to provide them in a box let me tell you a time when i had a close encounter a bear let me tell you about a time because it's tell you about when i had a close encounter with a bear because it's to have a close encounter with something this happened my honeymoon right this happened on my honeymoon 2015 in 2015. some of these are easier than others but it's still good to do them all now we fly through those i'll let you do them in your own time you can check the script afterwards to check your answers just the first part of the story that's enough to check your answers just look at the script for the original story all right so that's where it says that's enough but let me just go through some of those prepositions quickly just to highlight the collocations so we have things like tell you about something to have an encounter with something to be on your honeymoon in 2015 and so on that's the sort of thing we're looking at if you want to continue the exercise with the rest of the script why not make your own exercise you could do this yourself you can just copy paste the story into a text editor like microsoft word for example go through the text and remove all prepositions just replace them with a gap like the one you can see then when you've finished try to put the prepositions back in so you've removed them and then you just wait a minute and then try and put them back in can you put them back in the right place it forces you to notice how uh english is in these phrases like to have an encounter with something you know it's not just the word encounter it's have an encounter with something okay so this will help i promise another idea is to remove every ninth word just count the words in the story and remove every ninth word then look at the text again and try to put the words back in from memory this will force you to notice certain bits of language including grammar and vocabulary collocations trust me this works and then pronunciation finally near the end of the episode we're nearly there this has been like an english lesson to be honest my english lessons in my classes are about 90 minutes or two hours long so it's kind of like that you think about it in those terms this is not a super long you know it doesn't have to be ten what can i achieve in 10 minutes no this is a proper lesson like my lessons at school except in the lessons at school my students do a lot more talking than this pronunciation so for this section i've broken the story into chunks these are groups of words which are separated by pauses just repeat each chunk after me that's it i will do the first three paragraphs of the story here okay in in this part in this in premium 35 part one for pronunciation practice with the entire story you'll have to listen to part two of this which will be a pronunciation exercise and that will only be for the premium subscribers so part one is free part two is going to be a premium episode just as as usual so anyway let's look at a chunked version of the first three paragraphs of this story premium subscribers should know what i mean when i say a chunked version anyway i described it earlier on in the episode there's a whole episode of lep premium about chunking with a video as well so check that out so chunked version of the story the first three paragraphs so just try to repeat each line or each chunk after me don't just listen to me saying these lines you have to repeat these lines after me out loud don't be embarrassed it's fine i'm telling you to do it so it's not weird you don't need to feel awkward or anything just repeat after me even if you can't do it out loud if you're in public or something or there's a bear sleeping next to you and you don't want to disturb it at least mouth the lines silently like that don't just listen to me saying these sentences this will work if you actually try to repeat these lines trust me i know what i'm doing i'm a qualified english teacher notice how each chunk is pronounced without gaps or pauses between the words in each chunk there are stressed words highlighted in bold on the pdf as i've said before i could go into all the analysis of the phonetics here with connected speech and so on but let's just try and keep this simple and just try to copy me try to do it exactly like me and don't be distracted by the way the words look on the page focus on the way these lines sound not how they look copy the sounds i will give you some silence after each line that's when you should be repeating after me okay let's begin so my close encounter with a bear my closing count with a bear that's where you repeat my close encounter with a bear let me tell you about a time when i had a close encounter with a bear this happened on my honeymoon in 2015 my wife and i decided to do a tour of california over about two and a half weeks so my wife and i decided to do a tour of california over about two and a half weeks i insisted that our tour include a visit to yosemite national park which is a huge wilderness area surrounding a canyon surrounding a canyon i should be doing these twice and it's home to some of the most famous rock formations and is home to some of the most famous rock formations mountains and cliff tops mountains and cliff tops in the world i don't know if you've heard of it or been there it's a fantastic place wait a minute wait a minute wait wait wait okay okay sorry about that i don't know if you've heard of it or been there i don't know if you've heard of it or been there it's a fantastic place it's a fantastic place my wife wasn't entirely sure about this my wife wasn't entirely sure about this as it involved camping in the forest as it involved camping in the forest and she's not very outdoorsy and she's not very outdoorsy someone is outdoorsy means that they're the sort of person who likes being outdoors you know likes camping and he's happy to be outside in in uh in nature or something so she's not very outdoorsy she's she's more and more outdoorsy all the time i have to say all right in the end in the end i convinced her i convinced her i made sure we had plenty of mosquito repellent i made sure we had plenty of mosquito repellent including those smelly anti-mosquito bracelets that you can get including those smelly anti-mosquito bracelets that you can get you wear them around your wrist you wear them around your wrist and they're supposed to keep the mosquitoes away and they're supposed to keep the mosquitoes away i don't really know if they work i don't really know if they work but i thought that if they made my wife feel a bit more comfortable but i thought that if they made my wife feel a bit more comfortable they'd be worth bringing they'd be worth bringing now actually we're going to stop there okay now as i said before if you want to get the rest of that you'll need to you'll need to check out part two okay so if you want pronunciation drills for the whole story you can listen to part two of this episode that's p35 part two which will be available soon but you need to be a premium subscriber for that but now that is the end of this episode of luke's english podcast premium available free here on luke's english podcast if you want to sign up to lep premium and get access to the full episode archive there's about there's like nearly 150 episodes already plus all the forthcoming stories in the story time series then go ahead and click the link in the show notes but that's it for the podcast today though thank you for listening thank you for watching if you're watching the video version on youtube leave your comments below in the story time episodes there won't be that massive section at the beginning where i talked about the story time technique and the process i won't be doing that it'll just be straight to the story then you you'll have your grammar and vocab and prepositions exercises in the pdf and then straight to the pronunciation so the episodes will not be long like this they'll be much shorter and much more contained but anyway that's it uh thank you for listening thank you for watching have a lovely day lovely morning lovely afternoon lovely evening or night a lovely night try not to be eaten by a bear and i will speak to you again soon but for now it's time to say good bye bye bye bye bye bye bye you

Channel: Luke's English Podcast

Views: 663,462

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

Id: 7Pk2wN8APes

Length: 101min 9sec (6069 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022