Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 401 and it’s about developing your fluency in English. I’m going to talk about creativity, open and closed thinking and about how turning off your internal editor can help you to make more progress in your language learning.

I've decided to celebrate the 400th episode of LEP by making up an improvised comedy story, just for fun. In fact, this is the long-awaited sequel to The Pink Gorilla Story from episode 125. http://wp.me/p4IuUx-78D

Talking with two American friends about journalism, how the internet works, the US presidential election results, California's new marijuana laws and puffins. http://wp.me/p4IuUx-776

In this episode I want to talk about two things: My first impressions of the US Presidential election result, and then some things I said in the last episode of this podcast. I just want to clear up some comments I made last time. I just want to get straight into it. So here we go. Click here for the page for this episode http://wp.me/p4IuUx-73G

Talking spontaneously about gloves, mittens, OO7, Bob Dylan, an LEP app, The Walking Dead, Oasis, Black Mirror, The Crown, a bit of politics and some 10-year cave-aged cheddar cheese. Click here for the page for this episode http://teacherluke.co.uk/2016/11/07/397-ramble-on/ ‎

This episode is round 2 of the LEP anecdote competition. You'll be able to hear the 10 anecdotes that got the most votes from round one and some language feedback afterwards. Click here to vote for your favourite stories in the poll http://wp.me/p4IuUx-72K

In this episode I'm joined by Paul Taylor and Robert Hoehn and we do a speaking exercise that I often use in my classes to help my students to practise using different grammatical structures in their speaking. I thought it would be interesting to record some native speakers doing the exercise too, so that's what you'll hear in this episode, as well as various little anecdotes, a few jokes and general chat. The conversation contains swearing and a few humourous comments which shouldn't be taken too seriously. Click here for the page for this episode http://wp.me/p4IuUx-71a

Here are some more of my favourite podcasts. You might like to listen to them too, even if they're difficult to understand because they're not specifically for learners of English. It's good to challenge yourself sometimes, so why not try listening to these. If I like them, you might like them too. Click here for the page for this episode http://wp.me/p4IuUx-70z

In this episode I'm going to recommend some other people's podcasts that you might also enjoy. Last time, in episodes 236 and 237 I recommended some of my favourite podcasts. I recommended a mix of British and American podcasts. This time I'm going to tell you about some more but we're focusing only on British podcasts this time - ones that are produced in the UK and on which you can listen to British voices. Click here for the page for this episode http://wp.me/p4IuUx-5gQ

This episode is full of what I hope will be more useful insight and advice on how to learn English as an adult so that you don't end up sounding like a robot, because you're learning English or at least maintaining your English and it's a long-term process, there are right and wrong ways of doing it and I want to support you along the way. The main aim of this podcast is to help you stay on track as you continue to develop your English, trying to find new ways and improving the old ways so that you get a grip on this language. This episode represents not just my ideas but also the thoughts, conclusions and recommendations of plenty of other linguists and polyglots who certainly should know what they're talking about because they've either studied the process of language acquisition or they've learned multiple languages themselves. Contained in this episode is a distillation of lots of experiences, research and common knowledge about language learning, including my own thoughts and practical tips which I've picked up after 15 years of teaching English as a foreign language. I hope this will be a motivating, inspiring and interesting episode for you to listen to as part of your English learning journey. So, let's go. Click here for the page for this episode http://wp.me/p4IuUx-2NT

Here's a conversation with a friend of mine who originally comes from the Netherlands but he has lived all over the world. You're going to hear us talking about cultural differences, Dutch stereotypes, doing business in France, the UK and the USA, the different communication styles in those places, doing stand up comedy and getting Darth Vader's signature. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed recording it. Click here for the episode page http://wp.me/p4IuUx-6YN

This is a conversation with my dad about recent news, including a Brexit update, the US presidential election, Obama's plans to send people to Mars and back and more... Click here for the page for this episode http://wp.me/p4IuUx-6YS

Here is part two of my conversation with Sarah and Sebastian from the USA about the upcoming presidential election. In this episode we turn our attention to Hillary Clinton. Click here for the page for this episode http://wp.me/p4IuUx-6Yd

The presidential election in the USA is about a month away and I've been meaning  to talk about this subject on the podcast for ages. So in this episode you're going to hear me in conversation with a couple of American friends of mine who you might already know from their previous appearances on this podcast - Sarah Donnelly and Sebastian Marx. We sat down in my flat today to talk about the elections, Hillary Clinton, DonaldTrump, their thoughts, feelings, opinions and predictions on the whole thing. Click here for the page for this episode http://teacherluke.co.uk/2016/10/11/388-us-presidential-election-2016-trump-vs-clinton-with-sarah-and-sebastian/

Voting is now open in the first round of the LEP Anecdote Competition. You can listen to all the anecdotes on the page for this episode and vote for your favourites using a simple poll. I'll give you the full details and instructions in this episode. I'm also going to talk about the results of the podcast survey I did recently and a couple of other things, including the top countries for LEP this week. Click here for this episode's page http://wp.me/p4IuUx-6W3