917\. Listener Stories 🥷 How LEP has helped my listeners with their English ⭐️ Success & Advice
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Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com. Real Noom users compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, the typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. This is episode number 917.

And, yeah, again, there's a PDF available for this one with a full transcript and a vocabulary list of all the words and phrases which are highlighted in yellow on the PDF. You'll see some things. If you look at the PDF, maybe you're not going to look at the PDF.

Maybe you're kind of just like, no, look, this is a podcast. I listen to this podcast. I don't look at the PDF. That's fine. The thing will work totally fine even if you don't look at it. But if you choose to and you look at the PDF, which you can get free, then you'll see some bits which are highlighted in a bright yellow colour.

And that's some vocab that you might want to pick up from the episode. And yes, after the transcript of the whole thing, you'll see a vocab list with all of those yellow expressions. Also, at the end of the PDF, you'll find a study guide to help you internalise the main points and essay questions with sample answers to practice your writing and another Certificate of Achievement

and gold medal if you make it to the end of the episode. You'll find a link in the description for the PDF. And could you remind me why I'm giving this away free? Why? I've forgotten why I'm giving that away free. Most normal people doing the sorts of things I do would be at least getting your email address or something. But no, I'm just like, no, you can have it free. Anyway, link in the description. Now,

There are absolutely loads of great insights about improving your English in this episode with specific advice from listeners who've done it themselves. So I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Are you ready? You're ready. Yes? Yes. That's why you pressed play? Good. Right then. Well, let's get started properly and I'm going to start reading from the PDF in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Here we go.

You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk. So, this is episode 917, Listener Stories. How Luke's English Podcast has helped my listeners with their English success and advice. Hello! This episode is a continuation of the last one, which was all about how to learn English with this podcast.

In this episode, I'll be focusing on comments from my listeners with their own specific stories of English success and their own tips and advice for how they did it. Normally, most of my listeners are like ninjas. They stay silent and just listen anonymously, never coming out of the shadows to leave me a message.

But in this instance, a lot of LEP ninjas emerged from the darkness to write to me, and I'll be sharing their comments in this episode. A lot of ninjas came out of the shadows for this one, and probably went straight back in afterwards. So, if you remember, in episode number 914, I made a request for your input. In one of the final episodes of last year,

I asked my audience to write to me with A, descriptions of how their English has improved as a result of listening to this podcast and B, how they did this, specifically how they improved, including any advice for other people who want to do the same. What can people do to improve their English with this podcast? Maybe just listen to it or maybe do other things too.

In this episode, I'll be sharing as many of those comments, experiences and bits of advice as possible. So this is a listener-generated episode.

My audience basically wrote this episode and I'm just putting it all together, summarising and collating comments, sprinkling a bit of fairy dust on everything and pooling the knowledge and experience of my listeners in order to get some concrete and proven ideas about how podcasts can help with your English so that everyone can benefit from the progress that everyone else has made.

If they did it, you can do it too and you can find out how. I hope you get some inspiration from this, some specific tips and also some encouragement that consistent practice, a positive mindset and an active approach to your learning can really help you improve your English with this podcast and have a wonderful time in the process. My listeners are so lovely. Thank you for your messages.

You have really helped me to put this episode together. So please accept my thanks and gratitude for listening to my request in episode 914 and responding to it by taking time to write to me with your sincere feedback. As I said in the last episode, I was overwhelmed by comments, so I can't read out every single one. So I apologise if your comment didn't make the cut in this episode.

As you listen to this, see if you can pick out some specific tips or steps you can take or things you can add to your routine. We're talking about little details here. Little things can make a big difference. Big things have small beginnings. Every little helps. So I'm not talking about you making huge, drastic changes to your life here. Just a few incremental little things here and there which can help you leverage more gains in your English learning.

By the way, I'm doing this episode now, recording this about a week or more after publishing episode 914. So if you wrote to me more recently than that, there's a chance that your message will not be included in this. So sorry about that. But, you know, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

So remember, in 914, episode 914, the midwinter ramble, I asked two questions. First one, how has your English improved with this podcast? Meaning, in what ways has your English improved by listening to this? And secondly, can you give any recommendations for how to improve your English with this podcast? I was looking for tips that you could share with other listeners who want to find new ways to improve their English.

As I said in the last episode, a surprising number of people completely misunderstood the second question. People seemed to think I was asking for recommendations about how I can improve this podcast. And I ended up with a lot of unsolicited advice on how I should be doing this, a lot of which contradicted itself. But no worries. What I was actually looking for was specific tips for

for how to improve your English, even if that means just listening to my episodes and doing nothing else. So let's start with a summary of all the comments on 914 on YouTube. So most comments in response to episode 914 arrived on YouTube, which is normal. It's easy to write comments on that platform. And commenting is part of the experience of using YouTube. So it's normal that I got most comments there. If you left a comment, nice one.

And I read out a similar summary of YouTube comments near the end of the last episode.

But since then, about 50% more comments arrived. So I've created a new summary, which includes those comments as well, which I'm going to read now. And I'll add some of my own responses as well. So at the time that I'm writing these notes and also recording this episode, episode 914 on YouTube has nearly 400 comments.

So there are far too many to read out individually. So what I've done is used generative AI to summarize all the main points. So I basically grabbed all of the comments from the comment section of that episode and I inputted all of them into Google's Gemini AI and asked it to generate a global digest of all the main points.

And that was quite a complicated process because there's like a maximum number of characters that you can input. So I had to do it in sections. In the end, I managed to stick it all into the AI and asked it to basically give me a summary of all the main points that have been made. Because a lot of people were making the same points. So...

This is a general collation of all the comments that were made, summed up in a few paragraphs. Let me read out this summary and add a few comments. My comments, by the way, throughout this episode are included in bold text on the PDF. So in terms of language improvement, first of all, the majority of comments were overwhelmingly positive, which is nice. You know, as I said, my listeners are lovely, expressing their appreciation of the podcast and the efforts I make in every episode.

So thank you for expressing those thoughts and for thanking me for my work. That means a lot to me. Thank you. Many listeners credit the podcast with significant improvements in their English skills, particularly listening comprehension. And this is very encouraging to me, you know, because I put a lot of heart and soul into

I wouldn't say blood, sweat and tears, but I certainly put a lot of work into my content. So getting these kind of these sorts of responses is extremely encouraging and sort of really gives me a boost.

Some commenters mentioned progressing from lower levels like A1 to reaching B2 and beyond, while others highlighted feeling more confident understanding spoken English, including native speakers. So some people talked about getting from like an elementary level to an upper intermediate level or even higher than that. This is the sort of amount of progress that some people talked about.

And I think A1, to be fair, is a low level for listening to this podcast. A1 is definitely a low level. I imagine that if you are A1, and remember the levels are basically A, B, C, right? A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, to keep it basic.

A1 is elementary, A2 is like pre-intermediate, B1 is intermediate, B2 is upper intermediate, C1 is advanced and C2 is proficient. Now there's a lot of, I have to say, a level like B1 and B2, these are very broad levels and you can subdivide A1.1, A1.2, A2.1, A2.2 and so on. But anyway, that's just how to explain it.

So I imagine if you're A1, if you're elementary, then it would be extremely difficult to understand this. So it's very impressive if people do listen to the podcast from such a low level. People ask me all the time, what level is this? And to be honest, I tend to aim the podcast at intermediate to above level.

all the way up to advanced or proficiency levels sometimes. And I would go as far as to say that even native speakers could and in fact do enjoy some of the content. But the question of level, it all depends on your motivation and your own personal preference. I think I'm going to be going into the, you know, my more details about how I approach this from a point of view of deciding what level it is. I'll be talking about that

in this episode. If your level is A1, then it will be difficult at first. But with persistence, then you will definitely raise your level as you continue to listen more and more. And I have had some people tell me that when they started listening, they couldn't understand most of what I said.

But things slowly started to make sense as they gradually got used to it and developed their listening skills. I should say as well, if that's you, if you've done that, if you've been, if you started listening and you didn't really understand, but you continue to then, you know, well done to you because that shows a level of perseverance, which is impressive and commendable. So, yeah.

You'll hear specific comments like that about going from a low level to a higher level. You'll hear specific comments from listeners later in the episode when I read out a couple of emails. I admit it is quite a mysterious thing, language learning, like the fact that just continued exposure to language with motivation results in you just understanding it more and more, just listening to it.

eventually means that you just start to understand. That's mysterious, but it is real because it happens all the time. So going back to the summary of comments, some listeners linked the podcast to success in exams like IELTS or Cambridge exams.

and alongside listening, many reported improvements in their speaking abilities, including pronunciation, accent, vocabulary and fluency. So this is no surprise, really, but it's still very encouraging. Improving your listening and exposing yourself to plenty of spoken English will improve your understanding of pronunciation.

and pronunciation helps with fluency. It will also build your vocabulary and give you a sense of grammatical instinct. And all of those things are vital for achieving fluent, expressive speech. So listening feeds the other language skills and systems, especially in the case of oral English. And in my experience, this is what most people want to improve their speaking skills. If that's the case, start with listening then.

Some people specifically said they noticed a positive change in their pronunciation clarity or felt more comfortable speaking overall. Other listeners said that as a result of listening to the podcast, they just experienced a general sense of cosmic enlightenment and oneness with the universe, a state known in Buddhism as Nirvana, even after just a few episodes. So some people just listened to a few episodes and instantly achieved total consciousness.

Yeah, that's obviously not true, of course. I made that bit up, didn't I? That was obvious. I wanted to mention something about negative comments. So I was joking there about achieving total consciousness and whatever. I guess I'm making fun of myself here.

And by the way, before we continue, I do want to point out that I know this episode is in danger of becoming a massive ego fest for me, full of flattering and positive comments about how great this all is. Like, yeah, let's spend ages reading out all this praise from listeners, all thanking me over and over again. And let's keep doing it until my ego feels satisfied, which will probably never happen. But let's carry on anyway with more flattery.

So, yes, there is a danger that this is all a bit too positive and it all sounds like an excuse to and it sounds like an exercise in blowing my own trumpet. Well, it's not my fault, is it, that my podcast is just brilliant and everyone loves it, is it? It's not my fault. But I should say that I do get some negative comments. Some of it's probably trolling. But, you know, I do get negative comments, as you would expect on the Internet. Any content creator online gets a certain amount of that.

It's not all positive stuff, people just saying how great everything I do is. Obviously, there's a certain amount of negative feedback as well, right? The trick is to know how to react to it. Sometimes, actually often, negative comments make me feel bad, right? But mostly it's okay. I think there are various ways to deal with comments and deal with negativity, right?

and this I suppose relates not just to making stuff on the internet but just in life in general right? But specifically with getting negative comments

One way is just to realise that the comment doesn't mean that much and it might just be some loser who doesn't really care all that much, so you should ignore it. Don't feed the trolls by responding. Often a negative or let's say abusive comment tells you more about the person writing it than anything else.

And I know from being a teacher in language schools, out of a hundred or so people, there's always at least one person who is just plain nasty and is simply filled with negativity and can't really operate among other people because they are so antisocial. For some reason, there's always someone like that. On the internet, there are plenty of these people. In fact, the internet can encourage that kind of antisocial behaviour.

Sometimes it feels like the people who are just normal and don't have any desire to make you feel bad, you know, they just find happy listening and everything's fine. In fact, they might really love it, but they, they're quite comfortable just continuing to listen. But then the people who are motivated to get in touch with you to make you feel bad about a certain thing, um, you know, they're just a small minority really. Um,

So you have to learn to filter this kind of thing out of your life. If comments are driven by hatred or a desire to hurt you or just to get your attention, then it's worth trying to find a way to ignore it. Secondly, if the comment is sincere and the person has a good point,

Something you are doing is wrong or irritating or just bad in some way, then you might need to accept it and try to make changes. A certain amount of humility is necessary and a willingness to take constructive criticism on board and make changes, that could be a good thing.

Constructive criticism is the thing. There is a difference between someone criticizing you in a constructive way and someone just being nasty. The first one is OK, even if it's hard to swallow. The second one shouldn't be worried about or responded to. But it's hard, though, and it's hard to make the distinction. So I'm, you know, again, going back to the fact that this episode is probably going to contain quite a lot of praiseworthy comments.

I am aware of my limitations and my failings and my weaknesses. I try to work on those things and try not to beat myself up about them. Nobody is perfect. Also, to an extent, the things that some people don't like about what I do are the things that other people really enjoy. And you have to be prepared to be distinctive and original if you want to do something that's a bit different. And this means that you won't appeal to everyone.

I get a lot of comments on my work and there's always a certain number of comments telling me to do things differently. In the end, I'm the one who decides. I'm the one who smashes the microphone accidentally. Sorry.

But I'm the one who decides, and that's that at the end of the day. You can't appeal to everyone. Instead, you have to be true to yourself. Try to do things as well as possible, but in your own way, and hope that enough people like what you do. But I know that sometimes I ramble too much, and I might repeat myself, and sometimes my introductions are too long, and all the other things. I know certain content is more popular than others,

For example, it's a bit disappointing when I publish an episode and someone comments "please do a short story episode" under it because this obviously means "I don't like this, please do something else". Anyway, I know my failings and I'm always trying to improve my work while also maintaining my commitment to be myself and not let negativity affect me too much if possible. This is true in making online content,

It's also true for learning English or doing anything for that matter. When we speak another language, we risk making a fool of ourselves or attracting the attention of haters. But there's nothing you can do about that.

You know, we try to do our best, but also try not to be bothered by the judgment of others. If you keep your head down and avoid attention because you're scared of being judged, then you'll never achieve anything. So we keep calm and carry on. Try to stay humble. Try to keep learning. But remember to take both negativity and flattery with a pinch of salt.

Anyway, back to the digest of comments from YouTube. So, tips for using the podcast. A common piece of advice was to listen to episodes multiple times with and without subtitles, on YouTube in this case. Utilising transcripts, shadowing for pronunciation practice and actively noting down new vocabulary with examples were also popular suggestions. And I'll mention these things in more specific detail later.

Several people recommended incorporating the podcast into daily routines. These are stacked habits, putting one habit on top of another and focusing on simply enjoying the content rather than pressuring oneself to memorize everything.

Episode requests and suggestions. So I didn't ask for these suggestions, but I'm happy to share people's thoughts anyway. So more short story readings were a recurring request. Surprise, surprise. People love stories. Some people requested more modern stories. The Sherlock Holmes ones are extremely popular, right? But there were also requests for more up-to-date stories written in today's English language.

also stories which are a bit shorter. So this is a bit complicated, the issue of

sort of older stories from 100 years ago, like Sherlock Holmes ones, and modern stories, and then the length of short stories. Okay, so finding the perfect story is a bit complicated. It's actually harder than you might imagine, for various reasons. I'm going to expand on that later. Several listeners expressed a desire for content with a stronger focus on linguistics, covering tolerances,

topics such as English tenses, idioms and phrasal verbs, also song lyrics analysis and specific pronunciation challenges. So actually the first thing I should say is that, you know, LEP Premium always deals with those sorts of things. Grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation challenges. So there's that. But also I have plenty of episodes in the episode archive that deal with those things and I will mention some in a moment. So

It's worth going back into the archive to see what's on offer there. Many listeners expressed interest in hearing more from guests, particularly those who appeared regularly, like Amber and Paul and my dad, my father. One commenter even suggested inviting a librarian to discuss books and their profession. That could be interesting. That's, I suppose, after...

Those library jokes. So, yes, I plan to have more guests on the show. I think it's really important to let you hear me in spontaneous conversation with others. And this is where my English becomes a bit faster and perhaps more challenging. And also, yeah.

Listening to my guests is a really important thing, and I always want to try to get guests with a variety of different accents. Again, that's a bit of a complicated one because on one hand, I think I want to have guests that my listeners can understand easily.

But then on the other hand, I think, but they need to also hear different accents and slightly more challenging English. So it's always in the back of my mind to have guests from diverse places. And that includes native English speakers, but it also includes other people who speak English fluently, but they're from other places.

Like, I've got a friend, a comedian friend who's Indian. He's a stand-up comedian, and he's from India. He speaks fluent English, but he does have an Indian accent. I think it would be a great idea to have him on the podcast. I mean, that's so important, absolutely vital, that you're able to understand Indian people when they speak English, right? Because it's the most populous country in the world, and English is generally...

are considered to be like their other language. So anyway, I've written this now. Let me interrupt here to respond to those requests for certain types of episode, like grammar, idioms, phrasal verbs, song lyrics, pronunciation. So I have covered a lot of those things in many times before in older episodes. So check the episode archive for episodes on those things. Here is actually a selection

So if you're looking for grammar episodes, check these ones from the archive. Episode 29, the mystery story, narrative tenses in English. I wrote a story and then used it to teach you past simple, past continuous, past perfect. Episode 176, it was called Grammar Verb Tense Review, a review of loads of different verb tenses.

Episode 224 was called Pronunciation, Verb Tenses and Connected Speech. That was really all about how different verb tenses are pronounced in fluent speech. And that's all about how the little auxiliary verbs get squashed and turned into weak forms and how hard it is to identify when someone is using past perfect or past simple words.

and things like that. So that's episode 224. Episode 263 was called Past, Present and Future, another verb tense review. Episode 372 was the importance of anecdotes in English. And that was all about the language that we use to tell little stories. And also you can hear four stories, one from my mum, one from my dad, one from my brother and one from me.

It's a classic episode, that one, with some really good stories at the end. Episode 406 was grammar, past continuous tense. So as you could tell, I talked about using the past continuous tense in that one. Episode 518 was all about different grammar questions. And I talked about present perfect continuous, future continuous, and also the language of newspaper headlines. So that's just a selection, a smattering of episodes that deal with verb tenses.

In terms of idioms, there have been loads of episodes dealing with idioms. Episode 24 was all about music idioms. Episode 60 was all about idioms using the word mouth. Episode 61 was all about idioms involving the word hand. Episode 66 included loads of idioms with the word say. Episode 87 included six idioms and six phrasal verbs with my cousin Oliver.

Episode 147 involved lots of idioms being explained from previous episodes of the podcast. Episode 242 was 11 idioms only Brits understand. Episode 410, teaching 12 idioms in the street with Amber and Paul. Um, uh,

Episode 479, The Holiday Diary Part 6, when we were in Las Vegas. I taught 11 gambling idioms. Episode 519 with Andy Johnson. Episode 543, Insect Idioms. Episode 616, 15 Random Idioms with Paul Taylor. Episode 731, Explored Beatles Song Lyrics. And there were lots of idiomatic expressions in that one.

In terms of phrasal verbs, to be honest, there are so many episodes in my archive with phrasal verbs that the best thing would be to go to my episode archive, teacherluke.co.uk slash episodes and do a command F or control F search for the word phrasal.

to highlight all the episodes with phrasal verbs in my archive. So you could do that. Also, don't forget my phrasal verb podcast, A Phrasal Verb A Day, about 140, 150 short episodes dealing with a phrasal verb in each one. You can just Google A Phrasal Verb A Day or check your podcast app for A Phrasal Verb A Day.

In terms of song lyric analysis, I've done this a few times, but yes, this is definitely a good idea. I've actually got some episodes in the pipeline that deal with song lyrics. It's tricky, though, because I like to be able to sing the songs, but it's hard to sing songs on the podcast these days because of copyright strikes.

Every time I sing a song on the podcast, it gets copyright flagged and demonetized. And if I do that a lot, they could block my channel and other things. So I shouldn't really do that, which is a pity because I used to enjoy singing. Although, to be honest, when I listen back to myself singing on the podcast, it's a bit of a cringe for me. But not for you, apparently. I get a lot of comments from certain people who say they love hearing me sing songs and

So I don't know what to do about that. But anyway, song lyric analysis, yes, good idea. In terms of specific pronunciation challenges, as I said, this is dealt with a lot in premium episodes, but you could also do a Command F or Control F search for the word pronunciation in my episode archive to see what is there. Here's some other anecdotes also from listeners on YouTube. So

There are all sorts of other things, including a Ukrainian listener who shared their resilience using the podcast to learn even during power outages caused by attacks, which is amazing. Talk about commitment, being committed to managing to continue listening even when the power keeps going down.

So that's a lot of commitment and, you know, all the best to you. Bon courage, as they say in France, to continue your English learning in such difficult circumstances. A ballet teacher in England attributed their impressive C1 English level to the podcast after arriving in the country with minimal language skills. By the way, all these comments can be

discovered for yourself under episode 914 on YouTube. An aviation English podcaster was inspired to start their own channel after listening to the show. So this is Luis Horta Baeza from Chile. He is an air traffic controller who has set up his own podcast, which is called the Go Ahead English Podcast. And

So check it out. Several comments mentioned using my content to fall asleep. I get quite a lot of comments saying that, that apparently my episodes help a lot of people fall asleep. So people mentioned using my content to fall asleep, highlighting the calming quality of my voice. And I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this, to be honest.

Like, oh, your podcast. People say it in positive terms. They say, I love your podcast. It really helps me fall asleep. I'm like, uh, thanks, I think. Humorous remarks about my habit of hitting a plant in the background of my videos added a lighthearted touch. Yes, my podcast room is small and so I often end up hitting things with my hands and arms when I just gesticulate the plant next to me.

Which is absolutely fine, by the way. I think it quite likes the interaction, to be honest. You know you're supposed to talk to your plants. Did you know about this? Apparently you're supposed to speak to your plants when you go around watering them, you look after them. You're supposed to talk to them. I don't know if there's any truth in it, if that is good for them. But you can imagine that talking to your plants would be good because a lot of, I suppose, carbon dioxide comes out.

your mouth when you do that and they like that but also if you go around talking to your plants it probably also means that you're giving them plenty of attention and that's bound to be good because you're probably going to water them a bit more look after them a bit more so yes i do bump things on the table i bump the leaves of the plant i bump the microphone quite a lot if when there's a mug on the table like with a pen in it or a fork in it i often will crash into that

Yeah, I'm always bumping into things and crashing into things. Overall, the comments demonstrate that the podcast serves as more than just a learning tool. It fosters a sense of community, offers comfort and escapism, and provides a window into British culture for listeners worldwide. So here's a specific comment from YouTube. This one came in earlier today, and I've chosen to read it out because it has quite a lot of details and...

And it tells a little story of steady improvement with some tips for other listeners, too. I think we can actually take quite a lot of good advice from this comment. So I'll be adding my thoughts to this as we go. Let's see what we can take away from this in terms of language learning insights. So this is Ionella. As usual, I'm sure I'll be pronouncing everybody's names wrong, but Ionella, Ionella on YouTube.

She wrote this. Hi, Luke. I've been listening to your podcast for three and a half years, and I want to show my appreciation by sharing my experience with your podcast. So my comment is this. Learning English like this is a long-term process, but slow and steady wins the race. So three and a half years for Ionella.

She continues. So when I first started listening to your podcast, my level of English was like A1 to A2. Therefore, my vocabulary was very basic and I couldn't understand much. And also, I didn't learn lists of words. Instead, I started listening because honestly, I didn't know what to do to learn English, but I was listening to some tips on how to learn English. And that person recommended us to listen as much as possible. And then I found out about podcasts.

And it's before then or until then, I didn't even know what a podcast is. So my comment here is this. It could be hard to know where to start with learning English. But as I've said before, all roads lead to Rome, meaning every every avenue that you choose will ultimately get you there. You know, there's many ways to get into it.

But so hopefully get into it somehow. Hopefully a podcast like mine is a good way to connect with the living language. And you also get the sense that you are not alone. It's interesting that Ianella started at a basic level. It must have been difficult, but it shows how persistence pays off eventually. So she continues. I found out about your podcast by chance and I started listening to you. I remember I was listening to one of your episodes about poshness.

And I couldn't understand much. That's probably that series called Posh or Not Posh, where I talked about various celebrities and talked about whether they were posh or not, and talked about the concept of being posh and also the accent as well, identifying whether someone is posh from the way that they speak.

If you don't know about what poshness is, go back and listen to Posh or Not Posh. It's in my episode archive. I think it's a three-part series. There's a bit of Amber and Paul in there as well. So I was listening to one of your episodes about poshness, and I couldn't understand much. I was struggling trying to decipher what you were talking about because I love how British English sounds. By the way, decipher, that's a nice one. If you're trying to decipher something, it's like you're trying to crack a code somewhere.

Anyway, she was trying to decipher what we were talking about. But because I love how British English sounds and the way you speak, I kept listening because it was like music to my ears. Nice idiom. And I kept doing this with each episode that I was listening to until now. OK, so great. Fantastic. This is great to hear.

She continues, also, I was listening carefully to understand how you and your guests express yourself. What kind of words you use, how you link ideas and how you pronounce them. So my comment, yes, noticing and being mindful of the language that you're hearing, noticing how things are being put, what phrases and structures are being used and consciously focusing on this. It can all help you with your acquisition of English. Being mindful while you're listening.

She says: "I tried to learn bits of chunks and use them in my own speech." So, yes, chunks. Chunks of English. This is a good way to think about English. It is a language of phrases or chunks. Let's say pieces of English.

Not just individual words, but words in little expressions. Words go together in clusters, and so does our grammar to an extent. You can notice, understand pieces of English and fit those pieces together to make your sentences. Maybe to give you an example of what I'm talking about, you know, I've given this example before, but the expression, you know, I am really looking forward to hearing from you soon, right?

So here we've got one piece is to look forward to, right? So look forward plus to plus an ing form, right? So you've got the continuous form, I am looking forward, but then that's always followed by the preposition to and then a gerund. And that's a whole piece that you can learn to look forward to doing something.

Right. So you always try and extend the chunk that you're learning to include not just look forward, but look forward to and look forward to doing something. You can also say look forward to something. I'm looking forward to my holiday or I'm looking forward to spending time with you. Right. But that's an example of what I'm talking about.

In this way, you can see English as more a language of vocabulary units that fit together rather than a language of grammar. Our vocabulary beats our grammar, I think, in English in the sense that we've got... it's very broad in terms of vocab and grammar is relatively simple in comparison.

Yonella continues,

as well. Now I could say my level of English is B2 and your podcast helped me to get this level.

And honestly, I truly love listening to you because you speak so clearly and coherently and your voice is pleasant to listen to. So my comment here is that this is good, obviously. Try to turn, everyone, try to turn passive listening into active learning by taking the initiative to repeat certain things out loud or do other things. If you like, you could use me as a model for your spoken English.

So Ianella continues. Now my recommendations are to listen to an episode more than once. And I've done this and it works wonders. To listen carefully to the way natives speak, like what words and expressions they use, bits of chunks, how they pronounce it and try to imitate them. I would say these are my go-to tips. Fantastic. Thank you, Ianella.

And then she finishes by saying, I've never thought that listening could be so helpful to learn a language. I'm still surprised. In any case, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you do, for your work and your podcast. God bless you. Happy holidays. You too. Thank you for taking the time to write your comments. That is lovely. Let me continue with more and more comments now from podcast listeners. OK, everybody.

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So here are some website comments, comments that arrived on my website, teacherluke.co.uk. These people are probably audio Lepsters only, I imagine. So the first one to mention is from M and it goes like this. As for the question about learning English with your podcasts.

Number one, by listening to this podcast, I'm sure that my listening skill has improved. I think I've got used to the British accent. I feel I speak with a British accent. Great. I also learned some British culture and news, which is a main purpose of listening as I currently live in the UK, which is my main purpose of listening. Okay.

I basically listen to this podcast just for fun, but I make it faster when listening, meaning increase the playback speed.

It was originally because your podcast is so long, but listening at faster speeds has been training my ears. So my comment is that that's an interesting idea. Podcast players and YouTube give you the option to increase or decrease the playback speed, and it doesn't raise the pitch of my voice, thankfully. You can just make everything faster or slower without making it doesn't it doesn't make me sound like a chipmunk.

It's very clever. So try playing with it to either raise or lower the challenge. I sometimes listen to content at a higher speed if there's a lot and I want to get through it. But you could do that if you feel like you want a bit more of a challenge, raise the playback speed of the episode or lower the playback speed if you perhaps want to try and repeat and you need it to be a bit slower, something like that.

So M said, I hope you have another successful year full of joy in 2025 and looking forward to listening to new slash old episodes. Fantastic. Thank you, M. Another one from Slavic. Hello there, our master teacher. I'm Slavic from Poland. As for the improvements of my listening comprehension while working with your podcast, I must admit that a clear shuffle up can be noticed immediately.

And actually, I've never heard the expression shuffle up in this way.

But I get it. I would probably say a level up has been noticed. I've been a listener to your endeavor for a bit more than three years and do find it very useful and entertaining. If I could ask you something, please consider doing more episodes covering a specific area of our life like you did with the DIY episodes. So when I was setting up this podcast room and when we'd recently moved into our apartment at home, I did...

I did a couple of episodes talking about how I put the shelves up, talking about painting, talking about DIY, do it yourself. And I went into all the language of doing that and stuff like that. So this is what Slavic is talking about. He continues, it could be angling, that's fishing, repair of car failures, football basics like marking or tackling, etc.

more ways of preparing dishes or whatever. So, yes, that is a great idea. Anything can be a fascinating subject if you go into enough detail. And Slavic says, and if you would be so kind as to do more British slang pieces, that would be great. All the best, Slavic. Right. So this is a good point about those specific episodes on specific topics, including slang. Again, I'll point you towards some episodes from the archive series.

that deal with a lot of stuff like that. So there are some older episodes in the archive that you might want to check out. Episode eight. So these are ones on specific subjects with a lot of vocabulary. Episode eight, dating and relationships. Episode 23, summer music festivals. Episode 27, British weather. So all the vocab you need to describe the weather. Episode 33, money.

phrasal verbs and other expressions to talk about money related things. Episode 40 was about health and feeling ill, phrasal verbs, expressions. 48 was about traveling, useful expressions we use when we are traveling. Episode 88 was how to play the drums. So I explain how to play the drums from the basic level, describing the drum kit and also talking about how to actually do it, how to play.

Episode 89 was called A Day in the Life. This was the vocabulary of everyday routines. I talked about in as much detail as I could about everything I did on a typical day from waking up, getting up, getting dressed, having a shower, not in that order. Right. Episode 100, Going to the Pub.

And that's an episode with James where we talk about everything you need to know about going to the pub in the UK. Episode 137 and 138 were called Discussing Movies. All the language you need to talk about films, how they're made, describing their plots and describing how you feel about them. Episode 139 was Hard Driving. I was in a car while recording the episode driving across Paris,

Very stressful experience, but I also explained and described lots of vocabulary for cars and driving. Episode 328 was cooking with Luke. I was in the kitchen cooking something, chopping up vegetables, slicing garlic and stuff and describing everything I was doing.

464, 464 and 465 are both called how I make episodes of the podcast. And how many years ago was that? Quite a few years ago. But at that time, I described my process for making the podcast, including the technical stuff.

And so I go into quite a lot of details about the vocab of the equipment I used and microphones and things. Episode 617, Sales and Advertising, the Language of Sales and Advertising with Paul Taylor. Then there's the British Slang Series, British Slang A to Z, episode 148, 150, 154, and then another one somewhere.

Okay, so there you go, Slavic. There are just some episodes you might want to check out if you haven't heard them before, but also I'll consider the things you said for future episodes. Now, a message from Naoko. Hi, Luke. I'm Naoko from Japan, and I've been listening to your podcast for more than five years. In fact, I listen to your episodes for at least 20 minutes every day, so practically you are part of my life. Hello, Naoko. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

When I first started listening to your podcast, I could understand 60 to 70% of what you said. But since your English is spoken very clearly and stories are so interesting and funny, my listening skills have improved unbelievably quickly. Nice use of a double adverb there.

Now I understand 99% of each episode thanks to your efforts. I passed the Cambridge C1 exam in 2021 and my listening score was 192, which I'm quite proud of. That's excellent, Naoko. Well done. That's a solid C1.2 level. Well done. You should be proud of yourself. If you understood only 60% of what I said in the past, you were probably like B1, B1.2,

if you understood that much. So you've made great progress these last few years. Well done.

Naoko continues: "I also appreciate the way you introduce the words and phrases and use them in example sentences. It's incredibly helpful for learners to memorise the words and use them in real-life situations. I always take notes to reinforce the vocabulary and it's certainly improved my speaking skills as well." Yes, learn vocabulary and phrases in context. Keep notes.

Take notes, in fact, and keep them. Keep a vocabulary diary and include some example sentences, then review it later. Even small entries in the diary are good, right? Hey, everybody, be like Naoko. She continues. The other thing I love about your podcast is your insight into music. I'm a professional bass player in Japan. Cool. Brilliant. What bass have you got?

Have you got like a Fender P bass, Fender jazz bass or one of those fancy ones like a Warwick or something? What have you got? What bass have you got? And I must say, you never miss the important points when you talk about music and musicians. I can relate so much to what you say. I can't wait to listen to your next episode with your brother, James. We always talk about music together. This is another reason I'm always motivated to listen to your program every day. So, yes, James and I actually...

My brother James and I agreed the other day that the next episode we do about music should be about British bands from the 60s that are not the Beatles. So we're hoping to do what probably will be a long episode talking about other bands from the 60s that are not the Beatles. And there are loads of them.

Naoko says, "Thank you indeed for the time and effort you put into the podcast. Please remember there is an avid listener here in Tokyo who is sharing these moments with you. Happy holidays." Thank you, Naoko. Arigato gozaimasu. Azamas. Next one is from Paulina, and I've edited this message a bit to save time. In fact, going forwards as we go through the rest of this list, you'll see that some of these messages become edited.

to save time. Hi, Luke. So Luke's English podcast and me this year. Number one, from September 2023 to June 2024, I didn't have any English classes and I was afraid of a decline in my English, but it became even better. I was listening to your podcast for half a year and I noticed progress when I started lessons in June. Excellent.

A. Generally it became easier to speak English. B. My vocabulary has really expanded. Some interesting words just stuck in my mind and I may repeat them in my head the whole day. Excellent. C. I've learned some syntactic constructions, so that's like grammar forms, and started using it. So even my teacher notices it. D. My listening has really improved as now I have a lot of practice.

Now I understand 99.9% of what you say, although I could barely understand a half of what you said before. When I practice doing my English exam, I usually get maximum points for listening. Yes, super listening abilities unlocked. I've learned lots of bits and pieces about English that even my teachers don't know. For example, about the R sound in that recent episode, the R sound. Yes, excellent, Paulina. Super skills to impress teachers unlocked.

My pronunciation has also improved and now I do fewer mistakes. Although I'm a great perfectionist, I'm not so afraid of making mistakes anymore because you, native speaker, always say it's not so bad and tell us about your experience in French. Bah oui, mon français, franchement, c'est vraiment de la merde.

um yeah my french is terrible and je ne rigole pas je suis toujours serieux en français what's up with my french when i try and speak french it always ends up sounding like some terrible um what's the word for it like a caricature i don't know anyway um

Paulina continues. Her name's Paulina, right? Yeah. She continues. She says, besides this, I also learned really a lot about English, French and other countries. It's so interesting to listen to a person who lives in a foreign country himself and can tell us about the events, culture, etc. It's much more interesting and closer to the truth than reading a textbook or even an article. I like discussing with my mum some English or French traditions, events, etc. that you talk about.

It's very interesting to know how people live in other countries. And it's such a joy that we have a lot of common, a lot in common, especially problems like problems with kids and keeping order in the house. Yes. Thirdly, I also want to mention that Luke is a professional, a very professional teacher. Yes, I am very professional.

Though he's a native speaker, he almost always knows what words I can't understand, and he explains them, and the thing is, he doesn't explain words or phrases I know, even if I think they're difficult. Maybe it's just my imagination, but for me, it's magic, and Luke is a wizard. Yes, I am a wizard, but don't tell anyone, or they will come to get me, and I will have to live in a cave like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode 4.

So don't tell anyone that I'm a wizard. But I am a wizard. Jedi, to be exact. Point four, Luke also helped me to win the English Olympiad in my district. I'd listened to the episode 905 and one of the jokes that Luke was explaining had caught my mind. The joke was, what starts with E, ends with E, and only has one letter in it? The answer, an envelope. A few days later, I wrote an English Olympiad, which I suppose is some sort of competition.

And there was a crossword with this joke, but in the form of a question without an answer. In the form of a question without an answer. Without listening to the podcast, I could merely guess the answer. Now, actually, Paulina, if you don't mind, I'm going to correct that to this. Even if I hadn't heard the podcast, I could have guessed the answer, but I knew it was envelope.

So she's saying that she could have guessed the answer even if she'd never listened to the podcast, but she instantly knew it was envelope anyway and managed to solve the whole crossword. Brilliant. Some words and phrases in this Olympiad I've also learned due to Luke. And now I have the first place and I'll participate in the next stage of the Olympiad. Yes, Olympic level crossword solving English abilities unlocked. This is amazing.

Really is. Fifth point. I also love Luke for his openness, simplicity. Yes, I'm a very simple man. His great humour. Let's spell that in the British way with a U in it. Thank you. Though he hasn't, though he has quite a big audience, he hasn't got a swelled head. No, as far as I can tell, my head is not too badly swollen. Despite all of the praise that I'm receiving in this episode.

His voice and stressless content always help me relax and distracts me from all my problems. I listen to the podcast almost every night to calm down and eliminate any negative thoughts before falling asleep. Negative thoughts eliminated.

And I don't use any special technique. I just attentively listen to your podcast while going to or from school or doing some household chores. But it really helps. Thank you, Luke, for your podcast. It helps a lot of people to improve their English and find a good way to entertain themselves. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, Paulina. Thank you. And then a comment on the website from Raquel, keeping it nice and simple. She said to me and everyone, she said, I love rambling episodes. I get most of the...

Let me start that again. I love rambling episodes. I got most of the library jokes without the explanations. Yeah. Yes. English library joke understanding abilities unlocked and achieved. Well done, Raquel. And thank you for so many comments on the website this year. I mean, last year, 2024, whatever. Here are some messages sent by email. First, a funny comment from Medhi.

And Mehdi, you wrote to me again yesterday. I haven't had a chance to update this with your second email, but I think it's fine. So Mehdi wrote to me and he said, Dear Luke, I'm 45, a four-year lepster from Iran. I've listened to more than 270 podcasts for more than five times. So what? I've listened to more than 270 episodes more than five times.

So what? Mehdi, you, wait, you've really listened to 1,350 episodes of the podcast? That's 270 times five. You've listened to 1,350 episodes of the podcast, even though there are only 917 of them, including this one, and you still have 647 episodes that you haven't heard? I don't, how is that possible? I don't know, but impossible math skills unlocked.

Medhi continues. At first, I couldn't understand what you were talking about in your podcasts. Just a few words like the and is, you know, but by masochistic persistence, ultimately, the doors of listening opened up to me and my brain started functioning properly. Good, Medhi. This is how I like to imagine the way the world works. People's brains do not

do not start to function properly until they've heard a certain number of my episodes, maybe like 38 or something like that. So just picture all the people out there in the world who never listened to this podcast and their brains just do not function properly yet.

Please, tell your friends about Luke's English Podcast. Let's save the world. Mehdi continues, After six months, I could listen to your one-hour podcast without a break and understand 50% of it, and after about a year, I was diagnosed with a severe addiction to LEP podcasts, that's Luke's English Podcast podcasts, which doctors say is contagious and widespreading, but fortunately non-lethal. Yes, yes.

I talked on the podcast recently about how annoying it is that most viruses have only bad symptoms. But I suppose if LEP is a virus, then it only has beneficial symptoms, right? So spread it around, Medi. Spread it around. Go and cough on some people. Spread around that virus. Tips from Medi.

Number one, his podcasts are highly addictive. Be aware of the consequences of your choices. Yes, please listen to Luke's English podcast responsibly and take great care when driving or operating heavy machinery.

under the influence of the podcast. Second tip, do not give up on your first attempts. Relax and let the magic of LEP and your subconscious mind work together to overcome obstacles. Persistence is key. Yes, it's magic. Remember, I am a wizard, but don't tell anyone. But there is magic here. There's magic in my method and in my madness.

Number three, for your interest, he is talkative, coincidentally sarcastic, and with a bare British sense of humour. I would say dry, a dry British sense of humour. Prepare yourself for more than a one-hour burden. Coffee, chocolate, a cosy sofa, loose clothing, a private place, and anti-skeleton pills are highly recommended. That's very good. Anti-skeleton pills.

What are anti-skeleton pills? I'd love to know. But I suppose what Mehdi is referring to here is the comic, the funny idea that some people, when they're listening, because the episodes are so long, people die and waste away and end up becoming skeletons while they're listening to the podcast. So at the end of the episode, I just imagine loads of skeletons with headphones on. But anti-skeleton pills, you'll be all right.

Number four, try it in the bathroom or kitchen, car, train, queue, everywhere, while showering, washing, driving, commuting, chilling, or spending time with your beloved wife. It enriches your daily routine. Yes, have a romantic evening in with your partner and listen to an episode of Luke's English Podcast together to get you in the mood. Remember, Valentine's Day is approaching. If you're looking for something to do, listen to an episode of my podcast together.

Never mind Netflix and chill, let's... Luke's English Podcast and chill. Number five: start listening to LEP at higher speeds if your auditory system sinks. Have you ever experienced 1.5 times or two times or more? Very intense. Number six: LEP is like a rotary sushi bar of English. Use a vocabulary learning app such as WordUp app to master new ones, new words.

Number seven, if you are French, don't be angry with Luke for not learning your language. He never ever follows his own invaluable pieces of advice on learning a second language. To be explicit, Mehdi. Well, Mehdi, that was nice. I enjoyed this comment. And also, the reference to the rotary sushi bar of English, that is a deep cut for

for only the most hardcore lepsters out there. Listeners, have you ever heard that episode? Episode 99, the Rotary Sushi Bar of English, which is basically the idea that that's how I see this podcast. It's kind of like a Rotary Sushi Bar of English. You sit there. You know those Rotary Sushi Bars where sushi goes round on little plates on a little conveyor belt and the sushi goes past you. You can...

Just watch it go by and anything you'd like, you can just grab it. Right. Just take the plate off the conveyor belt. This podcast is like this. Right. The English goes round. It goes past you. Anything you want. Just like, oh, I'll have that expression. Have a little bit of grammar. Thanks. Yeah, I'll take that bit of pronunciation. The rotary sushi bar of English. Going back to Mehdi's point about the WordUp app.

So this looks like a useful app, WordUp, W-O-R-D-U-P. It looks like a useful app, and yes, you can add your own custom words to it. So consider taking words from my PDFs and adding them to apps like WordUp. There's also Anki.

Brilliant. Nice one, Mehdi. Let's move on to Zabier from the Basque Country. Hello, Luke. I'm Zabier from the Basque Country in the north of Spain. Hope this email gets you well and you're enjoying Christmas. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Same to you. In my case, the most noticeable improvement in my English is the pronunciation and the listening. As a member of LEP Premium, well done, sir.

Good job. Excellent. Bonus points. A thousand bonus points. The pronunciation episodes and brief stories helped a lot with that. With the cadence, I suppose that's intonation, how to stress words and whatnot. I got my B2 certificate a few months ago.

And now I'm aiming at the C1. OK, go for it. So thanks for the plug for AEP Premium, Sabie. Just a reminder for everyone, there are plenty of stories there and they always have dedicated pronunciation episodes where you can repeat each line of the story after me several times, focusing on the right sentence stress. Sign up by going to teachaluke.co.uk slash premium.

Zabier continues, I'm currently in an English academy with an Australian teacher. G'day. And I introduced your podcast to the class and hopefully some of the students will be listening to you. If you are one of Zabier's fellow students, then, you know, hello to you. I tip my hat to you.

And the funny thing is, my teacher sometimes asks me if I learnt something new or what's up with the podcast. Well, Zabia, you can tell your teacher that I read out your comments. So, g'day from me and hoo-roo. Those are Australian things, in case you were wondering, everybody.

Regarding ways I learnt and improved my English, it's a two-part process in my case. The first one was just some passive learning through music, videos, reading, video games, some active learning like searching grammar meanings and such. Then, probably last year, I started listening to your podcast and started chatting more in English. Here is where part two comes and where I improved the most. I started dating a girl from England. Well...

It's always the best way, isn't it? You know, I think it's known as learning by doing, Zabie. So I started dating a girl from England. So I was able to speak and write in English every day for months and months, spending a few days. It's a few days, not just a few days, spending a few days every month in England and even a full month in her house. Plus listening every day to your podcast has made...

My English skyrocket. Nice use of the word skyrocket. Nowadays, I'm not with that girl anymore, so I don't speak English nor write with someone as often, but keep listening to the podcast. OK, so my advice would be try to be immersed in English as much as you can and keep it up every day. Eventually, you'll be better.

For the record, when you're learning by doing, keeping it up every day is a good idea, if you know what I mean. Anyway, for the record, my score from the listening, according to the common European framework of reference, was 125 two years ago and currently is 150. Well done. Take care and keep up the amazing work you are doing. I will. So, listeners, immerse yourself in English.

If possible, get an English girlfriend and immerse yourself in her. Otherwise, just find ways to surround yourself with English because learning a language is a deeply personal process. And don't forget to keep it up while you're doing it. All right. Next comment is an email. It was from Rosetta. Rosetta Stone. You could call yourself Rosetta Stone if you're a good language learner. Anyway, dear Mr. Luke, it's Mr. Thompson.

Dear Luke or dear Mr. Thompson. Just dear Luke is enough. Greetings. Greetings, Rosetta. I am a high school senior currently juggling exams and college applications. And I'm also a big fan of Luke's English podcast. Well done. And well done for writing to me while juggling. That is impressive that you were able to do that.

I've been listening to LEP since around 2018, which was when I first started self-learning English. Over the years, I've listened to almost every episode, and it's no surprise that LEP has consistently topped my Spotify wrapped. Is it wrapped or unwrapped? I don't know. It's been a joy to witness both the podcast's growth in terms of more listeners and even better content, and my own progress in English. Wow! Every episode...

Are you okay? Sounds like it.

Last year, I achieved a major milestone by succeeding in my IELTS test through solely listening to your podcast and some self-learning, which has opened doors to applying to several dream universities abroad. Well, great, but I would recommend applying to real universities and not dream universities because they do not exist. Okay. Sorry to burst your bubble with that one, Rosetta Stone, but...

And that's a general piece of advice. If you're applying to anything, especially universities, try to apply to real ones and not dream ones. Anyway, Rosetta continues, I also won first prize in my school's English speech contest, representing my school at the national level and earned other English-related honours along the way. Wow. English super speech contest winning skills unlocked.

I'm often asked if I've lived in the UK or Australia. No, but I wish. I wish to. Wow. Do you live in the UK or Australia? Do you live in the UK or Australia abilities achieved? Well done. And I always proudly credit your excellent podcast instead. Most people here speak with an American accent. An American accent. Our schools mostly teach American English.

so I tend to stand out with my British one, which I absolutely love. Oh, well done. A thousand bonus points to you, Rosetta. Most importantly, LEP sparked my love for learning languages, for which I am deeply grateful. I'm not sure if I can offer any groundbreaking advice for learning English, but one thing I know for sure, whenever you're unsure how to begin, just click play and listen to Luke's English podcast. This is a great piece of advice. If you're just never sure what to do next...

Just listen to Luke's English podcast. Like, for example, I don't know, you're on a skiing trip and you've fallen into a ravine and you're trapped on a small ledge of a seemingly never-ending crevasse in the ice and you don't know what to do next. Should I crawl this way? Should I crawl that way? Oh, but both of my legs are broken. Shall I try and climb out of the ravine?

What shall I do? If you're not sure, just listen to Luke's English Podcast. It might get a bit cold. Just give your arms a bit of a rub and you'll be all right.

So Rosetta continues, the odyssey of learning a language takes time and effort. So stay calm and patient. Good advice. I have so much more that I want to share with you about listening to the podcast and everything regarding learning languages. But I'm right now in the busiest time of application slash exam season, which limits my screen time a bit. It's actually 24 days away from my college entrance exam.

I hope to write to you again after late January once my biggest exam is behind me as LEP has truly played a vital role in my English journey. And Luke, yes, don't worry, a cheque will be included. A payment will be included. I'm joking. Merry Christmas, Luke. Wish you a joyful holiday season and a wonderful 2025 ahead. Best wishes. I suddenly became...

I suddenly became Sean Connery there for a second. Best wishes, Rosetta, or best wishes, Rosetta. Fantastic stuff, Rosetta, really. Really good. Give me a slow clap. Fantastic stuff and all the very best to you in your journey. Ninja status revoked. Your ninja status has been revoked. In fact, everyone who's written to me, your ninja statuses have all been revoked.

Next email is from Anka. Anka is actually one of my students in class at the BC, although she used to be, but she's moved up now. She was in my B2 class. She's moved up to C1 now. Hello, Anka. And Anka says, hi, Luke. I've been a Lepster for more than a year now. And thanks to this, my language skills have improved a lot. I've never passed the IELTS test. You mean you've never taken the IELTS test?

But I did the TOEIC twice and upgraded from 760 to 920 points within a year with a listening score from 485 out of 495 recently. Well done. Bionic listening skills unlocked and TOEIC's smashing superpower attained. Well done, Anka. So listening is no longer a problem for me as I nearly understand 90% of all jokes and bits and bobs included. Well done to you.

As I'm spending a lot of time on public transport, or as I spend a lot of time, probably, I practice listening about two hours a day. By doing this, I gradually improved my vocabulary range, my pronunciation, my accuracy and my fluency. Now I'm also much more confident and spontaneous when I'm speaking to other people. Good job. Here's my personal method to deal with your podcast. And you have to deal with my podcast. Just got to deal with Luke's podcast. Hold on a minute.

So, Anka's method. I first listen to the entire podcast at normal speed. Then I speed it up to 1.3 speed or 1.5 speed max and listen a second time. That's good idea, Anka, but my name is not Max.

Let me rewind. So then I speed it up to 1.3 speed or 1.5 speed max. And no, I speed it up to 1.3 speed or 1.5 speed max. And listen a second time. Great, Anka, but my name isn't Max. Anyway, Anka, you should know that by now. My name is Luke. I'm just joking, of course. She means Max, meaning maximum.

Finally, I slow it down to 0.8 or 0.9 speed and try to repeat all the text just after the speaker. All this happens on Spotify without reading the PDF.

When I'm at home, I sometimes watch your YouTube version on my laptop. In this case, I try to read the PDF. PDF. That's how you say that, isn't it? Not PDF. What's that? I don't know. I try to read the PDF out loud simultaneously to your speaking. I preferably do this when you're telling stories as a kind of exercise to perfect my reading. Good idea.

To enhance my writing skills, I follow your suggestion to write a diary and try to produce one page as often as possible. Good. In order to improve my speaking skills, I talk to my mare. That's a horse, ladies and gents. Anka rides a horse. And not only does she ride the horse, she also speaks English to the horse. You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, but you can speak English to it.

Anyway, in order to improve my speaking skills, I talk to my mare in English each time we have a walk in the forest. She's really attentive, but unfortunately she can't reply so that our conversation is a bit limited. Anka, she needs to listen to Luke's English podcast, doesn't she, your horse? Don't be ridiculous, Luke. Horses can't listen to a podcast. Oh, God. What are you like?

So you can see that I'm doing my best to continue on my English learning journey. My ultimate goal is to be trilingual before dying. Thanks, Anka, for adding the bit about dying there. It's very important that you added that because, you know, there's no point being trilingual after you've died, is there? I'm trilingual finally, but I'm dead. Oh, God. So if you're going to be trilingual, good idea. Do it before you're dead because otherwise, what's the point?

Anyway, so my ultimate goal is to be trilingual before dying. Not sure that I'll succeed when I consider all the time I already need for becoming bilingual French and German. You can do it, Anka. You can definitely do it. I have all the faith in the world in you. I rarely spend time on grammar lessons because it bores me. Yeah, fair enough. Language learning must be fun. And that's the main thing. So it's got to be. It must be fun.

I have to admit that I'm also listening to other podcasts. Sorry, what? What did you say, Anka? I missed that. Other podcasts? What? You're listening to other podcasts? Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fine. Yeah, sure. Listen to other podcasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was never an exclusive thing anyway, was it? No, no, no. Yeah, I listen to other podcasts as well.

Yeah, I listen to loads of other podcasts, like just loads, loads of them. So yeah, it's fine. You can listen to other podcasts. I don't mind. I'm not hurt at all. Anyway, she said, I have to admit, I'm also listening to other podcasts such as Thinking in English, Send Seven, Leonardo English. That would be English learning for curious minds, etc. That's just the way she says, etc. Like how many other podcasts is that? And it's not going to be clear about that. Okay.

And I like all of them for diverse reasons. Thomas, that's supposedly from thinking in English. Thomas for his nearly always interesting topics. Nearly always. Stephen for the daily information and all the useful vocabulary. Alistair for his perfect language and structure. Bone structure, is that? But of course, LEP is my favourite one. Oh, anchor. Because of your pleasant voice, your perfect British accent.

All your advice, explanations, dissections and your unique rambling talent in short because of you. Oh, you shouldn't have this, but I'm glad you did. In comparison to other podcasts, which are often more compact, intense and economic, a bit like a language shower, LEP is much more like a smooth language bath in a bathtub, relaxing, refreshing and regenerating. Yes, exactly, Anchor.

Have a nice Christmas, dear Luke. Thank you. I did. I've already done it. But Anka, seriously now, joking aside, thank you very much for your very considerate email, which specifically answered my request for advice on how to use the podcast to improve your English with very specific ideas and tips. That was very useful. Thank you for doing that. Dennis is the next person. An email from Dennis. Hi, Luke. Hi, Dennis.

By the way, Dennis, I've edited your email a bit because I wanted to jump forward to this paragraph here where Dennis says this. My big problem is to chat spontaneously with English speaking people. Doesn't matter at my workplace or weekly with my teacher. In these moments, I'm feeling so speechless. I would say in these moments, I feel so speechless like every time. So it's present simple.

I feel so speechless and I'm struggling. I struggle with my words so hard. Hmm, that's pretty tough, Dennis, but carry, keep it up, keep going, keep calm and carry on. Keep calm and keep it up and carry on. So Dennis continues, but I know I can just improve my speaking skills when I take the chance to talk, talk and talk again. Yes.

Do you see any possibility to build up a chat for chatting with your audience monthly? I have no idea how it works, but maybe it will run. For example, for instance, Luke's chatting hour with audience or the great Luke Thompson show. OK, Dennis, so I would love to do something like this, but to be honest, it could be very difficult. I could do a huge Zoom call.

But there would be hundreds of people in it and it would be hard to speak to everyone because I'm, you know, I'm just so popular. I'm not sure how I could achieve this kind of a chat with my audience in any kind of satisfactory way because there would be too many people. Perhaps I could do it for premium subscribers, but even then it might get too crowded. So I'll have to think about it.

I mean, I could do YouTube live stream, but then the comments get ridiculously crowded and it's hard to make it work, basically. Anyway, Dennis says, now I will finish my thoughts about your podcast and I'm looking forward to the new episodes in 2025. All the best for you and your family in 2025. Kind regards, not kindly regards.

Kind regards. Dennis from Lucerne in Switzerland. Hello, Dennis. All right. Next one is from Burak. And again, Burak, I've edited your email a little bit to try and save time. So Burak says this. You asked which approaches can be useful for English learning and requested some suggestions from us. As an educator, I want to give some advice if I may. Yes, you may.

Your podcast gains us perfect listening features, but speaking is the most important part of communication. Yeah, all right. Maybe you can make an episode about apps which have AI-generated tutors. What?

Right. Yep. People can converse with AI tutors and might really raise their speaking level, even if the opposite side aren't really humans, aren't real humans, especially if they don't have anyone around them in order to practice like me. I've been using the Practica app for six months. Practica, P-R-A-C-T-I-C-A, Practica. Not sponsoring the podcast, so...

Anyway, I've been using the Practica app for six months and it works to some extent. And I also heard about the Promova app, P-R-O-M-O-V-A, also not sponsoring the podcast, which has a similar feature. Maybe you want to share your thoughts about apps and draw people's attention to their advantages to advance speaking skills. It is also a non-stressful way to converse. Greetings from Turkey.

And he added, as a number of people did, I wrote without any control or error checks. Sorry for mistakes. Best wishes, Burak. By the way, any listeners who got in touch with me, you obviously get 100 points for coming out of the shadows and your ninja status is revoked for a three month period. If you also included in your message that you didn't use chat GPT or Google Translate to help you, you get an extra 300 points. So good for you.

My response to Burak. Burak, you make a good point about using AI apps for speaking practice. I have to say at this point that I'm not familiar with the various apps out there. You mentioned several, Practica and Promova. I haven't used them myself. There's ChatGPT on your phone, which you can talk to easily and ask it to correct your errors.

But I would like to ask other listeners, everyone, do you know any good AI apps for speaking practice? Please let me know. If I get some good recommendations, I can make an episode about this. I think it's very relevant. Over the next few years, these applications will become very effective and will probably put a lot of English teachers out of a job, to be honest.

But it would be a good idea to know what is available so we can find the developers and stop them. But let me know if you know any good apps for practicing your speaking practice. I'd like to know about them so I could potentially make an episode about them. Only a couple of other emails left here in our list. Antonello says,

Antonello, by the way, misunderstood question two, but it's okay because I'd like to address his comments. So Antonello said, Dear Luke, my name is Antonello and I'm from Naples in Italy. I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your amazing podcast, which has become an essential part of my daily routine. And bear in mind, Antonello lives in Italy. So, you know, when he could be eating pizza, he's listening to my podcast. In fact, maybe he's doing both.

Anyway, in one of your recent episodes, you asked your listeners to answer a few questions about their experiences with your podcast. Here are my answers. So I edited out the bit about question one because it, to be fair, it repeats some of the things we've heard from other people. So let's skip to point two. Can you give any recommendations for how to improve your English with this podcast? The question's pretty clear, isn't it, Anthony? Anthony?

Anyway, I think your podcast is already an amazing resource. Thanks. But I have a few suggestions that could make it even more effective.

Okay, go ahead. You could add interactive exercises, including short quizzes or comprehension questions at the end of each episode that could help listeners test their understanding and reinforce learning. So these days, I do tend to publish PDFs with each episode when possible. And those PDFs often have vocabulary lists and quizzes to help you check and reinforce your learning. But

And those are just on the PDFs. I mean, I don't normally have time to actually put them into the episode itself because normally the episode is long enough, but you can go through the quizzes on the PDF. But LEP Premium episodes always have these things. Vocab quizzes, memory prompts, discussion questions and other activities on the PDFs.

The next point was this. You could, Luke, focus on common mistakes. Dedicating episodes to common errors made by non-native speakers could be very helpful for identifying and correcting typical issues. So, yes, I did one of those a long time ago, and I have another one in the pipeline. But again, in Luke's English Podcast Premium, I often mention common errors and their corrections. So that's, you know,

That's interesting, isn't it? But anyway, that episode from the archive about common errors that I did a long time ago is episode number 69, common errors slash typical mistakes and their corrections. Have you heard that episode? If not, go back and check it out.

C, shorter practice segments. Luke, adding brief focused segments specifically for pronunciation or vocabulary drills could provide listeners with practical exercises. So my comment to this is yes, everyone, you guessed it. Every premium series has a dedicated episode for pronunciation practice in which I let you listen and...

I let you do listen and repeat drills, including the vocabulary I have taught in previous episodes. So a lot of these things that you're mentioning are included in all premium episode series.

Another thing, Luke, you could organise content by levels. Clearly categorising episodes by English proficiency levels, like beginner, intermediate, advanced, might make it easier for learners to choose appropriate material. So I would say, first of all, generally none of my episodes are for beginners, and all of them are from more or less intermediate up, as I said before. But I've got other things to say on this, like this. So people sometimes talk about levels,

and ask me about what level this episode is and stuff. But honestly, I never think of it this way. I know levels are important as a teacher. It's obviously really important, and that's a massive part of teaching in classrooms. But when I do the podcast, I generally don't really think about it. My approach is that I generally don't set out to make episodes at a particular level, which, as I've said, is totally different when I'm teaching in...

where classes always have levels. Instead, I let this happen naturally. This may seem a bit negligent or something, but it's just a consequence of the natural approach I choose. I think the level is set by the listener and their motivation. If you struggle to understand it, the level is higher than yours. But that's a good thing. If you understand a lot, this is also good because it means you are hopefully able to

more easily pick up that 10 to 20 percent of bits that you don't know and also just enjoy it all the more. I think, for example, when you understand an Amber and Paul episode, you will have a really great time. So the rewards are in themselves. So basically, no, I won't be categorizing the episodes by level, I'm afraid. It's also a little bit too complicated because the level kind of fluctuates depending on the moment.

So I just don't think about it in those terms. I have a completely different approach than that. Sorry.

E. Cultural context. Luke, including more cultural comparisons or real-life examples related to daily situations would make the learning process even more relatable and practical. Well, I am always trying to make everything relatable with my examples and constantly refer to real-life moments, including cross-cultural comparisons. Like, by the way, did I ever mention that I used to live in Japan? Did I ever say that?

But anyway, the point is, I do try to do that as much as I can. Live interaction opportunities. Luke, organising live Q&A sessions or discussions where listeners can interact with you directly could enhance engagement and motivation. So, yeah, this goes back to what was said before by another listener. Maybe I should do a live stream on YouTube, but actually I find them very chaotic with all the comments that come in.

And I've, and it's very difficult to respond to comments because so many come in so quickly because, you know, I'm so popular. Um,

A message now from Daria. Daria, I edited out some of your lovely, polite comments just to save time. Dear Luke, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family. You too. I can't believe that I'm writing to you right now. It seems to me that one of my biggest dreams has finally come true. It's an indescribable feeling. I have been an LEP ninja for more than a decade. Whoa.

But episode 914 of your amazing podcast made me think that it's time to change it. Welcome out of the shadows, Daria. Welcome into the light. Daria is now standing in the light. It's too bright. My eyes, my eyes. Sunglasses is what you need.

I've been listening to you. I've been listening to your podcast since 2011, and I love and appreciate it more and more every year. I've changed a lot since I listened to your podcast for the first time in 2011. I was a carefree sophomore of the chemical faculty who loved English and tried to find something interesting that could help me to improve my English, and I found it.

But now I'm a mother of identical three-year-old twins. Identical three-year-old twins. Pow. That's a tough one. Who make me feel exhausted and tired all the time. I think you know what I mean. Yes, I do know what you mean. I've only got an identical... One. I've only got one identical kid. Does that make sense? I've got one... I've got two kids. But they're identical... Never mind. I've got two kids and they're non-identical. Um...

So, I mean, I've got like an 18 month old son and he's identical to himself, but there's only one of them, one of him. And that's enough as it is. So having two would be, yeah, tough. So I'm not carefree anymore. Oh, that's a sad story. But I have one thing that is constant in my life. It is Luke's English podcast that reminds me that I am not only a mother, but a person with my own interests and dreams. And it makes me feel relaxed and happy. Wow.

Despite my tiredness and lack of sleep and time, I always have time for Luke's English podcast. That's amazing. Really, it is amazing. And bon courage to you. My English, especially my listening and speaking skills, my English has improved a lot since I started to listen to your podcast. I have a special Luke's English podcast notebook where I write my thoughts, comments, words, sentences for each episode of your podcast, especially early ones. Now I don't have time to do it.

not for doing it, but I don't have time to do it. But I'll do it later when I have more free time. Some photos of it are attached. So one of the photos of the notebook is on the PDF and you can see neat, vibrant notes

written with idioms and expressions listed under different episode titles and some thoughts and comments for each episode as well. Some things are highlighted in pink, green and blue pen. What a wonderful site that is. We've got a big list of idioms to be good with you or expressions to be good with your hands, to get your hands dirty, keep your hands off, hands up, to have your hands full and

Right. To be in someone's hands. Like, remember I said you're in safe hands. So these are idioms that are from episode 61, I think, of the podcast. Yes. 15 hand idioms are listed under episode 61. Idioms with say are listed under another episode. Details of the UK school system are listed under another. This is great stuff.

Okay, so the pages are not filled with all the details I mentioned in my recent episode about remembering vocab, but it doesn't matter. Every little helps, and this is bound to have helped Daria a huge amount.

Also, she can go back to this and remind herself of it all, and it will zip back into her memory because she took the time to make those notes herself. So bravo, Daria, well done. Now, I know we don't all have time to do this, and Daria did this when she was a student, but even writing a couple of lines or bits of vocab in a notebook under each episode can make a lot of difference.

So Daria continues,

Wow, excellent.

Excellent. Manufacturing technician job in American company attained. Make English friends achieved with honours as well. Daria continues. Another tip for learning English for me is reading books in English. I love it most of all. The first stories that I read were about Sherlock Holmes. And to my amazement, you told some stories about him in your podcast. Yes. And there's another one coming very soon.

It was really helpful for me to listen to the story after reading it. So another tip is to read a book, story, etc. in English and then listen to its audio version. Your podcast can help with it through your short story episodes. I hope my answers will help you with your new episode. Definitely, Daria. Thank you. And yeah, I edited out some more lovely comments from Daria here where

where she was very grateful for the podcast and hoped one day to meet me. So thank you for your comments, Daria, and for sharing the specific ways you've worked on your English. And good luck with those twins. Do you speak English to them, I wonder? I think we've got about two or three messages left. This one from Pavel.

which is also edited. Hi, Luke. First of all, I would like to thank you for what you do. Your podcast in particular is an incredible resource that I find both informative and inspiring. The effort and thoughtfulness you put into each episode are truly commendable. Thank you for consistently providing such valuable content that has had a significant positive impact on my English. You're welcome. Notice that I didn't edit out that bit.

because it was just so flattering and complimentary to me. So, I was listening to your last episode, number 914, A Midwinter Ramble, and heard your request. Please find my response to your request below. I hope it brings some valuable insights for you. Number one, how has your English improved with this podcast? And by the way, I edited this bit out because it echoes what...

what was already said. Pavel's comments in response to question two are interesting. So question two, we know Pavel said, like any language in order to be used, it must be developed on three basic levels. So first is listening. As I mentioned before, I use rambling and interview episodes, and there are more different types too, like bits and bobs, et cetera, to develop my listening skills.

Writing and reading out loud. That's pronunciation. Here I use short story episodes and work on them using the following method. Wonderful. A method.

First, I listen to the entire text read by you. Then I start listening to the text again. This time, I pause the video after every phrase or few sentences to give myself time to focus on the correct pronunciation. I try to repeat after you a few times. When I feel I'm able to repeat after you, I write the current sentence down using the old school method, pen and notebook.

When I finish writing down the whole text, I have a new text in my notebook which I use for repetition, which is very important. Keeping them in one place gives me an easy way to read out all the already analysed texts and episodes, even when I have only 10 to 15 minutes. That's really good.

This method works for me. I explain it to myself that by learning whole phrases that contain words that are new to me, I attach them to existing connections in my brain. This gives them something to latch on to and they stay in my head longer than if I were to learn individual words and leave them hanging in the void. Yes, Pavel, this makes total sense to me and I think is very well put. I really like the way you put that.

And the context of use is natural because it results from the described situation. My primary goal is to learn to speak fluently, but thanks to this method, it becomes natural. Improving my pronunciation becomes a byproduct of all these steps. Yes, Pavel, I really like the way you flip a passive learning process into an active one.

Pavel continues, "...some words about short stories. In conclusion, I'd like to share some observations regarding short stories. I've noticed that with my method, when a short story is lengthy, I feel overwhelmed and have to exert a lot of self-discipline to work through the entire text from beginning to end. An ideal length is represented, for example, by the episode about the snowman."

Additionally, short stories that come from the texts of well-known writers are more challenging to process because they contain many old-fashioned words. This is probably because my English proficiency is not yet at a level where I can truly benefit from such texts.

I first need to fill the gap with more fundamental concepts. Thank you once again for everything you do. Without your podcast, I would probably still be in the same place with my English without any progress. Take care. Best regards, Pavel. That's Paul in English from Poland. Thank you, Pavel from Poland. So.

About stories. Now, I understand that stories of a certain length are best for what you are doing, repeating each line and writing the stories down. Ideally, all the stories would be of an appropriate length, but it can be hard to find ones that are exactly the right length. So from my point of view, I'm always looking for stories, trying to find the right stories. It's difficult to find ones that are exactly the right length, like The Snowman, which is a good find.

Already, it's a bit tricky to find appropriate stories, right, for a few reasons. Now, one of the reasons is copyright. So I have to often, I have to choose older stories because they are in the public domain, right? Because the author died over 70 years ago. And so they're in the public domain. Do you understand that? So that's about copyright. Certain stories have gone into the public domain, meaning they can be used in

without affecting copyright because the author has died over 70 years ago. And if that's the case, I can use them. But those stories, those older stories are usually much longer stories

And have that old fashioned language. So I don't I try not to do only old stories, but I love those old stories. I think everyone loves them. But for what you're doing, Pavel, I can understand that it's difficult to deal with them. So for me, things like Sherlock Holmes stories are there just for pure entertainment. And that's certainly, I guess, passive learning, really.

So the Sherlock Holmes stories are just things to listen to just for enjoyment. But when it comes to doing the things you're doing, all this active stuff, repeating, writing and stuff, yes, I understand that modern stories in modern English, which are a bit shorter, are better, but they're harder to find. So I have to ask for permission from writers who self-publish. This also cuts down my options. Now I can use ChatGPT.

an advantage is that I can select the length of stories but the results are not usually as good as stories by humans and I've had a couple of people say I love your story episodes but

I prefer the ones that are written by real authors. The AI stories are not quite as good. An example of that would be the simulation, which is not a bad story. I don't know. What do you think? What did you think of the simulation? Have you heard that one? Is that the only AI story I've done? I've done a few other AI stories in the premium podcast. But what did you think of the simulation? Do you think the standard was enough? I actually adapted that one quite a lot with my own

changes to try and make it a bit more human but writing a good short story is hard anyway all these factors mean that it's hard to always control the length of each story but i try the optimal optimal optimal length is more or less the same as the snowman or the mountain but sometimes the stories end up longer or shorter for the very long ones like the sherlock holmes ones

The aim is simply to tell the story and let you enjoy it. And I don't imagine you can repeat the entire thing after me. It's too long. But you could focus on doing just one section of a story or an episode. No need to do the entire thing. Another specific comment from YouTube, which arrived today, by the way. This one has some interesting points about shadowing. This is the penultimate email. Actually, this is from YouTube. Muslimbek Izroylov says,

wrote this. Hello, dear Luke. Normally it's hello, Luke, or just dear Luke, but I understand. I hope you're doing just right. I hope you're doing just fine, I would say. I hope you're doing just fine. I am. And my message reaches you just in time. Yeah, you're just in time to be included. My name is Muslim Beck. I'm from Uzbekistan, but currently based in South Korea, Chongcheon,

I've been planning to write to you for ages now. I did one or two times, I guess. Yeah, I've noticed your comments before on videos. I'm going to answer your questions. So number one, how has your podcast helped me? So I've been listening to your podcast since 2016 to 2017. I started listening to your podcast with three episodes, namely Telling Jokes in English. That's episodes 265, 266 and 267. Have you heard them? If you haven't heard them, hear them.

since then, I am a regular listener and Lepster, or you may say, or Ninja. Yeah, you're not a ninja anymore, though. Not really a ninja, because I've definitely seen your comments in the past.

In 2018, I happened to come to Korea to do my master's degree in English language and literature. I didn't know Korean language at all at the time. I thought Korean people spoke English before I came to Korea. So I was surrounded by a Korean environment where my Korean started improving while my English literally was slowly dying. Then it hit me. What, like a boomerang?

The only way to keep my English at the same level or improve was listening to podcasts, presumably to stimulate that immersion that you were missing, right? Then I doubled or tripled my listening time. I was listening only to your podcast. Very wise. Yeah.

In 2019 or 2020, I started hearing compliments from people about my English. I admit I had seven, an IELTS score of seven. That's listening seven, reading 7.5, speaking 6.5, writing six before coming to Korea. But I was always not satisfied with my speaking. You mean I was never satisfied?

I could never speak with confidence, but through the shadowing technique, I mastered my fluency and pronunciation. There are two ways of shadowing. One is I repeat what you say just right after you or almost at the same time with you. I can do it even when I'm listening to your new episode.

Oddly enough, I cannot do it with other podcasts, mainly American speakers. You get two bonus points for that. One bonus point for saying oddly enough. And second, for not being able to do it with American speakers. I suppose you just reject the...

I'm kidding. You can do it with American English. I don't mind at all. Anyway, another way I shadow is to repeat what you say after pausing you or the podcast after one sentence or some phrases if the sentence is too long or too difficult to repeat.

I do this with short story episodes where I try to sound exactly like you at everything. Like if you speak with a different accent during the story, I also try to do so. Plus, I record them and listen back. I can feel the sense of satisfaction. Last year, I took the IELTS exam in order to work at the university in my country because they require C1 from the teachers who are applying for a job and O2.

All teachers must hold C1 while working. My result was 7.5 overall, listening 8, reading 7.5, speaking 7.5, writing 6.5. You raised your speaking by one whole level. That's excellent.

And listening was eight. That's outstanding. Thanks to you, in my first attempt, I studied for IELTS, prepared for it for about a year while majoring English language and literature at the university and got seven. But this time without any preparation, I got 7.5, which is great for someone living in Korea where most of the time I communicate in Korean. I think I covered the second question as well.

up to this point. That's it. Have a great morning, afternoon, evening. I may speak to you again, but for this time, it's time for me to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Okay. Muslim Bec.

continues he said thank you for reading my message thank you for producing the best content for learners of English cheers all the best Muslim Beck is Roy love well thank you Muslim Beck clearly their shadowing and listening have had a great impact on your English so just to be clear here are the two types of shadowing that he mentioned so first you repeat what I am saying more or less while I am saying it

So you're listening, even if it's the first time you've listened, you're trying to repeat everything I'm saying at the same time I'm saying it. I spoke to an accent coach, a voice coach on this podcast, a guy who works with Hollywood actors. He actually recommended the exact same thing. So it's not just for learners of English. Anyone can do this if they're trying to copy a certain voice.

So you repeat what you're hearing at the same time you're hearing it. Now, this seems a bit weird at first, but when you get used to it, it becomes more natural. So that's the first one. Simultaneous. Second one is you listen to a short bit of English, like a sentence or phrase, then pause and then repeat what you heard.

Okay, now in both cases you try to copy exactly the way I say things, including different accents, the way I emphasize certain words, etc. So the first one, which is like that simultaneous one, that seems a bit more subliminal and probably involves less conscious thought.

The second one is probably a bit more deliberate and requires more conscious effort, I suppose. If you hear this phrase or sentence, pause and then try and repeat, maybe rewind, do it again until you get it right. In both versions, you can check with the transcript if there is one to make sure you're saying what you think you're saying.

Again, premium episodes always include episodes which are designed to help you do this shadowing. The second version, I mean, with sentences and stories. TeacherLuke.co.uk slash premium. And then finally, we have Andre from Brazil who talks about stacked habits. This is the last one. Hi, Luke. How are you doing? I'm doing fine, thanks.

When I heard your last episode about sharing experiences of learning English through your podcast and showing gratitude for all your work, I promptly thought about writing you an email. 2024 was such a wonderful year in my life. In fact, the best year ever. And your podcast is on my top one podcast list this year. That's brilliant. I'm very proud to be part of what sounds like a fantastic year for you, Andrej.

My name is Andre, 28. I'm a long-term ninja LEP listener. Not anymore. I work as a co-pilot in a major airline in Brazil. And in my free time, I like to run wherever I am. Sometimes at home in Sao Paulo, sometimes in some other Brazilian capital. And wherever I go running, I always take you in my ears. Wow. Andre, it's awesome to imagine there is an airline pilot, an airline co-pilot...

Running around in Brazil somewhere, listening to me. It's crazy, really. It just makes, you know, hearing things like that, I have to say it makes my day. And the world seems a slightly better place from my point of view when I hear those sorts of things.

Yes, Andre, that is exactly why I never do it.

Um,

So I decided to couple two health habits together. This is stacked habits, running and podcast listening. And it all worked perfectly because I didn't feel alone or bored anymore because each time I was eager for the next story, next guest or next ramble that was waiting on the next LEP episode. Now it's impossible for me not to do both together. I normally run every other day, 10 kilometers in 50 minutes.

I always start by listening to your podcast and halfway through I stop to hydrate, meaning as a drink. In the next half, I'm a little tired and after consuming my regular dose of English with LEP, I switch to an upbeat music playlist that gives me the stamina to continue till the end. Next time I'm running, I decide if I want to continue from the previous episode or just jump to the next one because it's difficult to keep up to date with all your episodes. Yes, I know.

I have used podcasts to learn other languages such as Spanish, French and Italian as well. I think they're an underestimated tool for language learning. Sometimes we just need to let a foreign language run through our ears, catch part of it and understand the bulk of what is being said.

I did that with your podcast and it helped me enormously. Those breaks you take to explain bits of pronunciation and grammar are so helpful. I keep these tips at the back of my mind. They're sure things I could never learn in any English course. When you take your time to paraphrase, I get two for the price of one. Simply listening to what you've got to say has helped to take my understanding of English to a much higher level.

The way that you speak clearly and patiently has played a major role in the way that I communicate and sound in English. Wow, Andre, dude, you're putting this all very clearly and very persuasively. I feel like listening to my own podcast now. Um,

andre continues thank you for everything you've been doing dear luke your work is invaluable i wish you and your loved ones a new year full of love hope accomplishments union health and happiness that i and the universe of lepsters may have a wonderful 2025 to listen to another dozen entertaining new episodes oh there will be more than a dozen a dozen that's 12 right there's going to be at least 50 isn't there

If you can, please consider bringing your family, Paul and Amber, back for more episodes this year. It will happen. I've been in touch with Amber and Paul already. I'm going to meet them here in a week or so.

Andre shared a picture taken in a place where he used to run and listen to the podcast. Andre continues back in 2020, where I led an idyllic life teaching Portuguese on italki before I could eventually work in aviation. The unpaved roads at the back where I used to run while listening to LEP bring me so much nostalgia. I'm happy to share with you where it all started. And there's a lovely picture of this place where Andre used to run.

with beautiful blue sky, lovely green trees and a track. So, ladies and gents, that's it. This is the ending of the episode. Thank you so much for your comments, if you sent them. Sorry if I didn't include your particular comment that you wrote to me. I did receive a lot. But this has been a tremendously encouraging and also humbling experience for me. Again, sorry if I didn't read out your message or if you wrote to me after I recorded this. Um...

I'm so happy I've been able to help anyone. But like I said in the last episode, it's mostly you. You know, it's nice that you kind of show your gratitude, but it's you. It's mostly you. You know, I love doing this podcast. As I said in the previous episode, I'm living the dream. And actually, I can't wait to make more and more new episodes in 2025. I have tons of ideas. And my enthusiasm for doing this is as high as ever.

I hope that I don't lose this zest for this podcast. But while the spirit is with me, I will continue making episodes. Episode 1000 is in my sights now and beyond. Thank you so much for your support.

Remember, on the PDF for this episode, there is a plethora of useful extra information for you, including a list of all the specific bits of advice presented in this episode to help you consolidate it all. And I'll read that out in a moment. A study guide with questions and answers to help you check your learning of the main points and insights.

a vocabulary list of useful words, phrases and idioms in the episode, essay questions to help you practice your academic writing with sample essays to compare. And those sample essays are worth reading. They're actually very interesting sample essays that kind of regurgitate a lot of the things that have been stated in this episode, but in the form of academic essays, shortish ones. So all of that is available on the PDF as extra information. You're welcome.

So I'll read out the list of advice now. This is the last thing that's going to happen in the episode. I'll let you check out the rest in your free time. The link for the PDF is in the episode description. So here's a summary of the advice in this episode. Feel free to consider doing any of these things or alternatively, don't worry about any of them and just listen to the episodes when they arrive. And again, the next one will probably be another Sherlock Holmes story, which should mainly just be entertaining for you.

Then after that, there will be various other episodes in modern, up-to-date English on various topics, including conversations with guests and funny stuff. As you heard from the various testimonies of my listeners in this episode, there are plenty of ways to improve your English with the podcast. And perhaps the most important is to enjoy the process and find a way that works for you. No stress, no pressure, just happy podcasting and English learning.

So here's all the advice in this episode summarised in a convenient list, which I'm just going to fly through now. So you could do these things. Listen to episodes multiple times. Listen with and without subtitles on YouTube. Utilise transcripts when available. Shadow my speaking for pronunciation practice. Actively write down new vocabulary and include example sentences in your notes. Focus on just enjoying the content rather than feeling you have to memorise everything.

incorporate the podcast into your daily routines. The audio podcast is perfect for this, those stacked habits. Increase the playback speed of the episodes sometimes. Notice and be mindful of how language is being used. Pay attention to phrases and structures. Learn chunks of English rather than memorising individual words. English is a language of phrases and clusters. Add custom words from the episode PDFs to vocabulary learning apps like WordUp.

Keep a vocabulary diary and include example sentences and review it later. Repeat lines from the short stories after I read them. Write down the short stories after listening to me read them. Um...

Learn whole phrases from the short stories to improve retention. For longer stories like Sherlock Holmes, focus on repeating sections rather than the whole story, or just feel free to simply enjoy listening. Read a book or story in English, then listen to the audio version like my short story episodes. Read the episode PDFs aloud while listening to me or without listening to me at the same time.

Write a diary in English as often as possible in which you describe things you've done and how you felt about them. Talk in English, even if you don't have someone to talk to. And use AI-powered apps for speaking practice like Practica, Promova or ChatGPT. I also stress the importance of consistency and a positive mindset for improving your English skills. Remember, you have to be in it to win it.

And if you don't use it, you lose it. So keep it up and just keep practicing. Remember the five P's. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. The five L's. Listening, listening, listening, listening, listening. And the five S's. Speaking, speaking, speaking, speaking, speaking. Thank you so much for listening. I'll speak to you in the next episode. But for now, it's just time for me to say goodbye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

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