Listen to English - learn English!

Welcome...

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:27:00 +0100

..to Listen to English, the podcast website for people learning English.

The podcasts on this site will help you to improve your English vocabulary and pronunciation and your listening skills. There are two short (3 to 5 minutes) podcasts every week, in clearly spoken English. Many of them are linked to grammar and vocabulary notes, or to exercises or quizes. You can download the podcasts to your computer, or subscribe using a programme such as iTunes or Yahoo, or simply listen to them by clicking the Flash player on the web page beneath each episode. You can put the podcasts onto your iPod or MP3 player, and listen to them on your way to school or work. The full text of each podcast is on this site (and will also appear on your iPod screen), so you can look up the meanings of words that you do not understand in a dictionary. Then close your eyes and listen! Have fun!

NEW : you can now subscribe to Listen to English – learn English! by Email

Vote for Listen to English!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:12:00 +0100

The nice people at Lexiophiles and at babla are running a contest to choose the Best Language Blog for 2009. Listen to English is one of the blogs chosen for the Language Learning category. You can vote for Listen to English by clicking the button below. Scroll down the list to find and click:

Listen to English – http://www.listen-to-english.com/

Then – this is important – scroll all the way to the bottom and click vote

Voting ends on 28 July.

I meant to ...

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:49:00 +0100

I didn't mean to make a mess… Photo by Stuart Woodfin/flickr

Today we meet the English expression “I meant to”. “Meant” is the past tense of “mean”, and I know you all know what “mean” means. (Sorry, there are a lot of “means” in that sentence!) I guess you often ask, “What does this word mean?” or you say “Now I understand what the sentence means”.

Now look at these sentences:

I meant to go to the supermarket, but I did not have any money with me.

I meant to do my English homework, but my friend visited, and we talked all evening.

I meant to speak to my mother, but she was not at home when I telephoned.

“I meant to..” means “it was my plan, or my intention to..” do something. And it is an expression we often use when we have to explain why we have not done something! “I meant to send her a postcard, but I could not find a stamp.” “I meant to meet my daughter in town, but I had to stay late at work for a meeting.”

Why am I explaining about “I meant to..” in this podcast? Well, quite a lot of you have sent me e-mails to ask why there have been no new podcasts for the last few weeks. I have been busy. I am the Trustee of a Charity which helps children who have emotional or family problems. Unfortunately we have run out of money, and have had to close the Charity, pay all the bills, make the staff redundant and find other organisations to help the children. This has taken a lot of time, so I have not been able to make as many podcasts as I would like. I meant to make several new podcasts, but I did not have the time. I meant to explain to you, but I forgot. I did not mean to leave you in the dark, but I had so many other things to do.

Here in England, it is nearly the school summer holidays. I am going to take a break, but I will be back with new podcasts early in September. Also in September, I want to redesign the Listen to English website, and add several new features. Listen to English is now on Twitter, and there is also a Listen to English page on Facebook. You can find links on the website. I shall use Twitter and Facebook to tell you when there are new podcasts, and to send you other news. You can use the Facebook page to send messages to me and to other listeners. So, please follow Listen to English on Twitter, and become a fan of the Listen to English page on Facebook.

There is an exercise about “I meant to” on the website. Have a good summer!

Listen to English on Twitter :: - follow me!
Listen to English on Facebook :: - become a fan!
Quiz about "mean to.." ::

File download (3:40 mins | 2 MB)

Royal Ascot

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:35:00 +0100

Hats at Royal Ascot. Photo by Lizi G/flickr.

Today we go horse racing, and we meet people with lots of money and no dress-sense!

Ascot is a small town, south-west of London, and close to the royal castle at Windsor.
In 1711, Queen Anne went horse-riding from Windsor, and “discovered” Ascot. She decided that it was exactly the right place for horse races. So the poor folk who grazed their cows or their pigs on the land had to move, and there has been a race-course at Ascot ever since.

There are race meetings at Ascot throughout the year. In the summer, the races are “on the flat”, which means that the horses simply run round the race course. But in the winter, the racing is “over the fences”, which means that the poor horses have to jump over fences as well as race round the course.

The greatest race meeting of the year is called Royal Ascot, and it is one of the grandest social occasions of the year, at least for people who care about grand social occasions. Royal Ascot is taking place this very week, from Tuesday to Saturday, and I see from the Royal Ascot website that there are still a few tickets left. Before you rush off to buy a ticket, however, here are a few things which you should know about Royal Ascot:

One, it is expensive. You will pay about £60 per person per day for a grandstand ticket. You cannot actually buy a ticket for the poshest area, the Royal Enclosure. To get a ticket for the Royal Enclosure, you have to know the right people.

Two, the Queen will be there, and lots of other royals and celebrities, and if you are lucky you may see some of them.

Three, Ascot racecourse is very concerned that people should wear the right clothes. Morning coats and top hats are good. Jeans, t-shirts and trainers are bad – very bad. (If you do not actually own a morning coat or a top hat, you can hire them from a company called Moss Brothers. In other countries, do you have to hire clothes in order to watch a horse race?)

Four, the hats are more important than the horses. Ascot is famous for the extraordinary hats that the ladies wear. Many of these hats are masterpieces of structural engineering. There is a link on the website to photos of some of this year's finest hats.

Five, eating and drinking is almost as important as the hats. Last year, race-goers at Royal Ascot drank 60,000 bottles of champagne and ate 11,500 boxes of strawberries.

Six, the horse racing does not really matter, but if you are interested an Irish horse called Yeats won the Ascot Gold Cup yesterday. Second was another Irish horse, and third was a French horse. English horses don't win at Ascot, just as English tennis players don't win at Wimbledon.

But I had forgotten. Our economy is in recession. People are feeling poorer. Many people have lost their jobs. Surely, this year people will not spend lots of money on champagne and silly hats?

And, yes, there are fewer people at Ascot this year than last year. Champagne sales are down. And one newspaper reports that the Queen's granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, was seen at Ascot wearing a £90 jacket from Topshop and a pair of shoes which cost only £65. Oh, horror! Times are definitely hard!

Hats at Ascot! ::

File download (4:57 mins | 2 MB)

Travelling slowly is best

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:22:00 +0100

Boat on a canal near Worcester. Picture by juggzy_malone/flickr.

We have more about canal boats in today's podcast.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at the boatyard to find our canal boat. One of the staff took us round the boat, to show us how things worked. Then he gave me the keys. The boat was ours, for the next week, at least.

The first thing you learn about an English canal boat is that it is slow. It is, in fact, almost the slowest form of transport you can think of. Small children riding bicycles overtake you. People walking their dogs on the towpath overtake you.

Perhaps you think that sailing a canal boat is easy. It must be easier than a car, you think, because it goes so slowly. Wrong. Sailing a canal boat is difficult.

To start with, there are no brakes. “If you want to stop,” the man in the boatyard told us, “you put the engine in reverse.” OK – I put the engine in reverse. The boat takes no notice. It keeps going forward. In a panic, I increase the engine revs [ie I made the engine go faster]. Gradually, the boat slows down, and eventually stops. It takes me about 50 meters to stop a canal boat travelling at walking pace. Amazing.

Then the trouble starts. You can only steer a canal boat if it is going forwards. If the canal boat stops or goes backwards, it goes where it wants to go, not where you want to go. Generally, the canal boat wants to drift in front of a boat coming the other way. If there is no boat coming the other way, the canal boat will probably want to drift to the side of the canal where it will run aground in the mud. You then have to spend several minutes pushing the boat off the mud.

Now, suppose you want to turn the boat round, to go the other way. Turning round is no problem in a car. However, the canal boat is 15 meters long, while the canal is only 10 meters wide. You need a special wide bit of canal, called a “winding hole”, to turn the boat round. You look at the map. No problem, there is a winding hole only 5 kilometers down the canal. Then you remember. The canal boat will take an hour to travel 5 kilometers.

You sometimes hear car drivers say that “parking is a nightmare”. They know nothing. They should try mooring a canal boat. (“Mooring” is the proper word for parking a boat). First you have to stop the boat. Then you have to persuade it to move towards the bank and not towards the middle of the canal. Everyone on the canal boat, except you, the driver, has to jump onto the canal bank. You throw them ropes to tie the boat to the bank. The ropes fall in the canal. You pull them out of the water and throw them again. A group of people watch with interest as your helpers make the boat fast. (The word “fast” has two completely different meanings in English – generally, it is the opposite of “slow”; but sometimes it means “cannot move”. So, if I “make a boat fast”, I mean that I tie it to the bank with ropes so that it cannot move. English is a crazy language!)

The people who built the canals liked to play tricks on canal users. A favourite trick is to put a canal bridge just before a bend in the canal. That makes it impossible to see whether another boat is coming the other way. Another trick is to make some bits of canal so narrow that two boats cannot pass each other. When you find a narrow section, you have to stop (if the boat is in a good mood), and send someone to walk along the towpath with a mobile phone, to phone you when they can see that there is no boat coming the other way.

But at least there are no traffic jams on the canal, you say. Wrong. At busy times, you may have to wait an hour or more to take your boat through a set of locks. But it is not like a traffic jam on a motorway. On a motorway, you sit in your car getting more and more tense and angry. You look out of the window at other drivers who are also getting tense and angry. But on a canal, when you find a traffic jam, you park – sorry, “moor” – your boat and go and talk to the people in the other boats. You swap stories about your adventures on the canal, and then help each other take the boats through the locks.

In a week on the canal, I think we travelled 60 kilometers. It is good to travel slowly. You relax and notice things which otherwise you might not see, like the wild flowers on the towpath and a heron standing completely still in a field. At night, we moored in peaceful quiet places, and in the morning the singing of the birds woke us up. We met several people who live on the canal permanently. They call themselves “live-aboards”, because they live aboard their boats. They have a simple life, because there is no room in a canal boat for many possessions. Some of them make souvenirs which they sell to other people on the canal. Some of them stay in one place for most of the time. Others move their boat to somewhere new every day. The “live-aboards” think they are the luckiest people in the world. What do you think?

File download (7:19 mins | 3 MB)

Canals and narrowboats

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:05:00 +0100

Canal narrowboats. Photo by welshdan/flickr

In the podcast about Mr Speaker, I told you that I was going on holiday. I said that I would be the captain of a ship and sail away to new and interesting places. So, where did I go on my ship? Perhaps I sailed across the Atlantic. Perhaps I visited the islands of Greece.

But, no. Actually, my wife and I hired a canal boat and we went for a holiday on one of Britain's beautiful canals.

We have lots of canals in Britain, especially in England. Most of them were built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Boats on the canals carried coal, iron, pottery, stone, lime, salt and many other goods needed by the new industries which grew during the Industrial Revolution. Until the railways came, the canals were one of the most important forms of transport in the country.

The centre of the canal system in England is here in Birmingham, where I live. We like to tell visitors that there are more canals in Birmingham than in Venice! (This is true, but the canals in Venice are probably more beautiful!)

Originally, horses pulled the boats on the canals. The horses walked along a path at the side of the canal. Do you know the English verb “to tow”? It means to pull something which cannot move by itself. If your car breaks down, you may need to use another vehicle to tow the car to a garage. So, the horses towed the boats along the canal, and we still call the path beside a canal a “towpath”. In the 19th century, however, some canal boats had steam engines instead of horses, and today, most canal boats have diesel engines.

Compared to the great canals of the Netherlands or Germany, English canals and canal boats are tiny. The traditional boats of the English canals are only about 2 meters wide and between 10 and 20 meters long. A bigger boat could not fit through the bridges or the locks. We call these boats “narrowboats”. Why are they so small? Well, the canals are narrow, because it was cheaper and easier to build a narrow canal than a wide canal. And the boats are small because, originally, they were towed by a single horse. Traditional English narrowboats are brightly painted in red, blue, green or yellow, or all of these colours. Often they are decorated with pictures of flowers or castles.

When the railways arrived, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the canals began to decline. It was much quicker to move goods on a railway than on a canal. And in the 20th century, road vehicles took traffic from the canals as well.

Here is a typical story about the decline of the canals. There was company with a factory which made feed for animals. It was beside a canal, and the company had 11 narrowboats which brought grain and other things which it needed from a sea port. The narrowboats took 3 or 4 days to make the journey from the factory to the sea port and back. In 1923, the company bought a lorry. The lorry could make two return journeys each day. Naturally, the company scrapped the narrowboats and used the lorry instead.

And so, everyone thought, that is the end of the old canals. The narrowboats disappeared, many canals were abandoned, weeds grew in the water so that boats could not pass, the towpaths collapsed into the canals, the locks would not work any more. It was all very sad.

Then, shortly after the Second World War, people started to think that the canals could have a new use, for recreation i.e. for leisure and holidays. They saw that many canals went through beautiful, quiet countryside, where people could relax and enjoy nature. Gradually, people started to use the canals again. Abandoned canals were cleaned and re-opened; locks were repaired; and in one or two places new canals were built. Today, you can see large numbers of brightly-painted traditional narrowboats on our canals again. But they are carrying holiday-makers, not coal, or lime or pottery.

There will be more about canal boats in the next podcast. There is a quiz on the Listen to English website so that you can test how well you have understood what I have said.

Quiz - how well did you understand the podcast. ::

File download (6:09 mins | 3 MB)

Black Jumper Day

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:59:00 +0100

A black jumper shows everyone that you are big and important!

Today, I will tell you about “black jumper day” , and we will meet the English expression “to leave for” somewhere.

In a podcast a very long time ago, in November 2006, I told you that most English children wear a school uniform to go to school. My daughter, who is 15 years old, goes to a girls secondary school. [Sorry – I say “11 years old” in the podcast, but this is wrong. It should be “15 years old”]. She has to wear a dark green skirt or trousers, and a white blouse and a dark green jumper.

She is in year 10 at school. In year 11, the girls sit their GCSE exams. GCSE stands for “General Certificate of Secondary Education”. After their GCSE exams, the girls leave the secondary school to go to sixth-form college, or to a further education college, to continue their studies or to learn practical skills. By tradition, in my daughter's school, the year 11 girls are allowed to wear black jumpers, instead of dark green jumpers. They like their black jumpers, not because the jumpers look beautiful, but because they show everyone that year 11 are the senior girls, the most important girls, in the school.

However, the year 11 girls do not have to come to school any more. From today, they are on “study leave”, a time when they can stay at home and work and revise for their GCSE exams. Some of them, of course, use “study leave” as a time to go shopping or have parties, but perhaps we had better not talk about that.

This means that, from today, the year 10 girls are the most senior girls in the school. It is now their turn to wear the black jumpers, to show the rest of the school how big and important they are. They have looked forward to this day for weeks. They have all searched the local shops to find a black jumper in a style which they like. And today, they have all left for school, wearing their new black jumpers.

They have “left for school”. That means, they have left home to go to school. Here are some more examples. Do you understand what they mean?

At eight o'clock, Kevin leaves for work.
At half past eight, Harry leaves for college.
George has left for a meeting with some clients.
Sarah has left for lunch.
At the end of the day, Kevin will leave for home.
Tomorrow, Joanne will leave for her mother's (ie she will go to her mother's house).
George has a business trip to America. On Thursday, he will leave for New York.
The train leaves for London in 10 minutes.
And, of course, the girls leave for school wearing their black jumpers.

File download (4:00 mins | 2 MB)

Goodbye, Mr Speaker

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:01:00 +0100

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin.

Who is Mr Speaker? Mr Speaker is the chairman of our House of Commons, in Parliament. He is called the Speaker of the House of Commons because, several hundred years ago, it was his job to speak to the King, to tell the King what Parliament wanted, and to bring the King's reply back to Parliament. Generally, the King's reply was “no”, so the Speaker did not have an easy job. In the 15th century, several Speakers made the King so angry that he had them arrested and executed. Politics was fun in those days.

Since then, life for the Speaker has been more peaceful. Yes, there was a Speaker at the end of the 17th century who was sacked because he had accepted a bribe from businessmen in the city of London. But generally, the Speaker's life has few problems. He, or she, chairs debates in the House of Commons, and makes sure that the House of Commons obeys its rules. The only real disadvantage is having to wear old-fashioned black clothes with gold embroidery, and having to listen to so many boring debates.

But things have changed. To understand what has happened to Mr Speaker, you need to know that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Britain receive a salary, and are also able to get other money, or “allowances”, to pay for things like an office, a secretary, travel and the cost of having a second home in London, if they do not live in London already. MPs make a list of their expenses – we say that they make a claim – in order get this extra money. They give their claim to the finance office in Parliament. If the finance office is happy with the claim, the MP gets the money he or she has claimed.

Until very recently, information about MPs allowances was a state secret. But now, the newspapers have found information about the allowances, and published it. It is clear that some MPs have behaved dishonestly. One MP claimed money to pay interest on a loan to buy a flat in London – which was fine, except that he had already repaid the loan and there were no interest payments. Other MPs claimed for the cost of repairing houses, which they then sold at a profit. One MP, who lives in a castle, claimed for the cost of cleaning the moat – that is, the water around the castle. Another MP, who has a country estate, keeps ducks on the lake on his estate. But foxes kept killing the ducks, so he claimed for the cost of building a little island for his ducks in the middle of the lake, so that the foxes could not catch them

All this has made people very angry. There are demands for big changes in the way that Parliament is run – for changes in our election system, changes in the way MPs do their jobs and the way they are paid.

And Mr Speaker? Well, the present speaker – Michael Martin is his real name – has opposed changes and many MPs think that he is not the right person to lead the House of Commons. So they have forced him to resign. He has become the first speaker for over 300 years to be forced out of office. Next month, Members of Parliament will elect a new Speaker to wear silly clothes and listen to their boring debates.

I will be on holiday next week, so there will be no podcast. I am going to be a captain of a ship, and will sail far away to new and interesting places. I shall tell you about it when I get back.

File download (5:07 mins | 2 MB)

The Poet Laureate

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:06:00 +0100

Carol Ann Duffy

Britain has a new Poet Laureate. Already, I hear you asking, “What is he talking about? We know what a poet is – it is someone who writes poetry. But what is this ‘laureate' thing?”

You may know that the ancient Greeks used to place a crown made of laurel leaves on the head of someone as a very special honour. Laurel is a type of bush, with sweet-smelling leaves. Normally nowdays we call it ‘bay', and we use bay leaves as a flavouring in cooking. So, that is the literal meaning of ‘laureate' – ‘crowned with laurel leaves, as a sign of special honour'.

Since about the 17th century, English kings and queens have appointed a poet as their own, special, private poet. The king paid the poet a small salary, and the poet wrote poems for special royal occasions, like births or marriages in the royal family. The poet appointed by the king became known as the poet laureate. Over the years, some very famous English poets have been appointed as poets laureate – William Wordsworth, for example, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The latest poet laureate has recently retired, and the Queen, advised by the Prime Minister, has just appointed a new one. Neither our Queen nor our Prime Minister know very much about poetry. But they have made a very good and popular choice for the new poet laureate.

Her name is Carol Ann Duffy and she is the first woman to hold the position of poet laureate. Her poetry is simple and direct, and easy to understand. Perhaps for that reason, pupils in many English schools study her poems. Recently, indeed, there was controversy about one of her poems – it is a poem about the feelings of an angry young man who wants to kill and destroy things. The first few lines are:

Today I am going to kill something. Anything. I have had enough of being ignored and today I am going to play God.

Some people argued that reading the poem would make some young people pick up a knife and go and kill someone. One of the organisations which runs school exams in England even asked schools to destroy copies of the poem. This is ridiculous, of course. People kill because they are very angry inside, not because they have read a poem. Also, as Carol Ann Duffy herself pointed out, Shakespeare's plays are full of angry young men who murder other people. Should we ban Shakespeare's plays in schools?

Here is one of Carol Ann Duffy's poems. It is a love poem – but a rather unusual one. She is going to give her love a present – a present that represents love. And what is the present? An onion! Listen.

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

File download (5:08 mins | 2 MB)

Without hesitation, repetition or deviation

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:29:00 +0100

Clement Freud. Artwork by mediamolecule/flickr

Two weeks ago, a man called Clement Freud died. He was 84 years old. He was a remarkable man, and very well-known and liked in Britain. He made us laugh, and I thought I would make a short podcast about him.

Clement was born in Berlin in Germany. His father was an architect and his grandfather was the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud. His elder brother is the famous artist Lucian Freud. Clement's family were Jewish, and they left Germany in 1933 when Hitler came to power, and moved to London. Clement went to school in London, even though at first he spoke hardly any English. When he left school, he became an apprentice cook in the kitchens of one of London's grandest hotels.

That was the start of Clement's first career. How many careers do most people have? Many people – perhaps most people – do the same sort of work for the whole of their working lives. They are a teacher, or a farmer, or an engineer, or a driver, or a civil servant. Clement Freud had five different careers.

First, he worked in restaurants. He learnt about good food and good cooking. He opened his own night club.

Second, he became a writer. He wrote books for children. He wrote books about food. (We British, as you know, do not understand how to cook properly, but we love books and TV programmes about food.) For many years, he wrote articles for newspapers, about food, sport and life in general. he was particularly keen on horse racing.

Third, Clement Freud went into advertising. He advertised dog food, in a series of TV ads in the 1960s and 1970s. The advertisements became classics, and most people who were alive and watched TV at that time remember them. There is a link to one on the website, and a transcript. His co-star was a dog called Henry. Clement and Henry looked very alike – they both had long faces and a mournful expression.

Clement Freud and Henry in one of their TV ads. Clement is the one on the right.

Fourth, Clement Freud became a politician. He surprised everyone except himself by winning a seat in Parliament for the Liberal Party. He remained an MP for 14 years.

And fifth, he became a very well-known radio personality. For over 40 years, he appeared regularly on a BBC radio game called Just a Minute.

The rules of Just a Minute are simple. The contestants are each given a subject and immediately they have to talk about it, for a minute. Easy, you may say. Anyone could do that. However, they have to talk without hesitation, repetition or deviation. “No hesitation” means that you are not allowed to stop and say “um – er” when you cannot think what to say next. “No repetition” means that you are not allowed to use the same word twice. And “no deviation” means that you must stick to the subject, you are not allowed to talk about something else. If you hesitate, or repeat, or deviate, one of the other contestants will challenge you, and if the chairman agrees with the challenge, the other contestant takes up the subject and tries to talk – without hesitation, repetition or deviation – for the rest of the minute.

It really is very difficult to speak without hesitation, repetition or deviation for a whole minute. Try it some time! You could even try it in English!

File download (5:04 mins | 2 MB)

Help - the hens are on the point of taking over the world.

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:08:00 +0100

The flower is on the point of opening. Photo by Dezz/flickr

I am sorry it has been so long since my last podcast. Thank you to all of you who sent me e-mails to ask what had happened and when would my next podcast be. No. I am not ill. No, I am not dead. No, I am not bored with podcasting. No, I have not run away with a beautiful blonde model 40 years younger than me. I have simply been busy.

In the last podcast, I told you about my hens. I am watching them as I write this. They are running round the garden, eating grass and anything else they can find. Soon there will be no garden left. However, the hens are happy, and they lay an egg each every day; and the fox has stayed away.

Last time, I told you that the hens were “point of lay” hens. I want to explain properly what “point of lay” means. Perhaps you know the English expression “to be on the point of doing something”. For example, if I am “on the point of” going to bed, it means that I will go to bed very soon. I have locked the front door. I have put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, I have cleaned my teeth. The next thing I do will be to go to bed. I am “on the point of” going to bed.

Or, look at the picture on the website. It is a picture of a flower. The flower is still closed and there is snow on the ground. But you can see that very soon the flower will open. It is on the point of opening. It is on the point of flowering.

Recently, some builders came to do some work on our house. Before they came, a scaffolding company came and erected scaffolding so that the builders could reach the roof. After the builders had finished work, I waited for the scaffolding company to come and take the scaffolding away. I waited for days, then weeks and they did not come. Then I found their telephone number, and picked up the telephone. Just then the doorbell rang. It was the men from the scaffolding company. I said to them, “I was on the point of telephoning you to ask you to take the scaffolding away.”

The English language is never simple. We always have more than one way that we can say something. Here are two other ways of saying “I was on the point of” doing something. We can say “I was about to do something”. I was about to telephone my mother. I was about to get into the car.

Or we can say, “I was just going to do something”. I was just going to visit my friend. I was just going to buy a train ticket.

Here are a couple more examples:

I have written a shopping list. I have found my money and a shopping bag. I am about to go to the shops.

My car is making strange noises. Perhaps it is on the point of breaking down!

You are sitting in an aeroplane. The cabin crew have shut the doors and told everyone to fasten their seatbelts. The plane is about to leave. It is on the point of departure. It is just going to take off.

So, now you understand why our hens were “point of lay” hens. They were on the point of laying their first eggs.

Now they are on the point of completely destroying my garden. Soon they will take over the world!

File download (4:35 mins | 2 MB)

The fox and the hens

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:37:00 +0000

Our hens – two Black Stars and a Bluebelle.

I like hens. When I was a child, my grandmother kept hens. When we visited her, we could help her feed the hens. We thought she had hundreds of hens, but actually I think she had 40 or 50. They lived in hen houses in her garden, and during the day they ran around in hen runs. Every week, a man with a lorry stopped at her house to collect the eggs for sale.

A “hen” is, of course, a female bird. A male bird is called a cock, or a cockerel. His job is to look beautiful and make lots of noise. Just like a man, in fact. Very often, people say “chickens” when they mean hens, though strictly a chicken is a baby bird. Hen meat which you buy in a supermarket is always called “chicken”. It sounds so much better than “hen meat”!

My grandmother, however, did not call her hens “hens”. She talked about her “fowl“. Fowl is an old word meaning birds which are kept or hunted for their meat or their eggs. Another word which you may hear is “poultry“. Poultry just means birds kept for their meat or their eggs. A poultry farm is a farm where they keep large numbers of birds, sometimes in big sheds, or sometimes in tiny cages called “battery cages”.

My wife and I have our very own poultry farm, only a few kilometers from the centre of Birmingham. Last summer, we bought three hens, a hen house and a little hen run. The hens grew big and fat, they wandered round our garden and they laid big, brown eggs. The hens were happy. We were happy.

Then disaster struck. A fox killed one of our hens, and then another one. We gave the last hen to some friends who also keep hens, because she was lonely by herself.

Last weekend, we went to a poultry breeder to buy three new hens. There is a photo of them on the website, and – I hope – on your iPod screens. Like my grandmother, the poultry breeder does not call them “hens”. She describes them as “pullets”, which means a hen which has not started to lay eggs yet. In fact, they are what the breeder calls “point-of-lay” pullets – that is, birds of about 16 weeks which will shortly start laying.

What are our new hens or pullets like? They are all hybrid hens, that is they are a mixture of different types or breeds of hen. Many hen-keepers like hybrid hens because they are strong and lay lots of eggs. two of our hens are of a hybrid type called Black Star. The third hen is a Bluebelle. She is very aristocratic. Like human aristocrats, she is big, beautiful and slightly stupid. Yesterday, we found our first egg. Well done, hens!

We shall have to keep our hens in their hen run for most of the time, and not let them wander in the garden, otherwise the fox will get them too. There are foxes in most British cities. Indeed there may be more town foxes today than country foxes. There is an old English sport called fox hunting. Special dogs called fox-hounds find a fox, and chase it across the fields and through the woods, until they catch and kill it. The hounds are followed by people riding horses. There has been a lot of controversy in recent years about fox-hunting. Some people say that it is cruel to let fox-hounds chase and kill foxes. Other people say that it is important to reduce the number of foxes. There have been some changes in the law about fox hunting in the last few years, which restrict the sport but do not prohibit it.

At one time, I thought that fox hunting was very cruel. Now I am a hen keeper again, I think that it should be legal to hunt foxes with tanks and machine guns if you want to.

What sound does this animal make? :: A drag-and-drop exercise.

File download (5:16 mins | 2 MB)

What does your ring tone say about you?

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:55:00 +0000

Leave me a message! Photo by couleurs gm/flickr

Do you know the word “impact”? “Impact” means the action of hitting something with a lot of force. So, if two cars hit each other, we can talk about the “impact” of the collision. But generally we use “impact” in a figurative way – we use it to mean “a big effect”. For example, if someone loses their job, this will probably have a big impact on their lives and on their families. Or we might say that cars have a big impact on the environment.

What piece of modern technology, do you think, has had the biggest impact on the way we live? Perhaps modern medical technology – like drugs to treat cancer. Or computers – I wrote this podcast on a computer. Now I am recording it on a computer, and soon I will put the recording onto another computer, so that you can download it to your computer! Or maybe modern means of transport, like aircraft and cars – maybe they have had the biggest impact on the way we live.

I think, however, that the piece of modern technology which has had the biggest impact is something which most of us carry with us almost everywhere. You probably have one in your bag or your pocket. I am of course talking about mobile phones.

I remember the first mobile phone that I ever saw. It was about 25 years ago. The phone was the size of a brick. You needed to be quite strong to carry it. I asked the owner if I could make a call on it, and he agreed. It felt strange to be standing in a field in the country, talking to someone on a telephone.

Today, over half the population of the world either own or use a mobile phone. At the end of last year, there were over 4.1 billion mobile phones in use in the world. In most countries in Europe, in fact, there are more mobile phones than people.

You might think that mobile phones would have the biggest impact in those countries where most people have one. However, I do not think this is true. In Africa, for example, mobile phones have made a huge difference to people's lives, because so much of Africa does not have a network of fixed telephone lines. In Gambia, for example, there are only 50,000 fixed telephone lines. But there are 800,000 mobile phone users – so, roughly, 16 times as many Gambians can use a mobile phone as can use a conventional telephone. A few years ago, in many parts of Africa, it was very difficult to send money from one person to another, because most people did not live near a bank, or did not have a bank account. Today, many Africans are able to send money to their families, or to pay for things, by mobile phone.

The mobile phone has given us more freedom. We can contact other people, when we need to, wherever we are. But it has also given us less freedom. The boss can talk to you at any time, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. A few years ago, people travelling by train sat quietly and read a book or a newspaper. Now they talk on their mobile phones. They tell everyone, “I'm on the train.” They discuss private affairs in loud voices. When they get off the train, they plug an earphone into their ear and carry on talking. Once, if you saw someone talking to themselves in the street, you assumed that they were slightly mad. Now you know that they are using their mobile.

Because of mobile phones, teenagers live different lives from when I was their age. At one time, parents would sometimes allow their teenage children to call their friends on the ordinary telephone. “Only a short call,” they would say. “Telephone calls are very expensive.” Now, teenagers send text messages to each other from their mobile phones, all the time. They have developed new ways of using their hands. They use their thumbs to press things like the keys on a mobile phone, while older people use their fingers. Is this how evolution happens? They have developed a new sort of texting language. As you know, the spelling of words in standard English is sometimes very strange. If you are texting in English, however, you can ignore normal spelling completely. You spell words exactly as you pronounce them. You use all sorts of strange abbreviations as well. In twenty years time, texting may have changed the English language completely! The quiz this week is about texting, to see if you can guess what some texts mean.

My mobile phone is about 8 years old. Several museums want to buy it from me. I hardly ever switch it on, and it refuses to send texts any more. I do not care, because I love its ring tone. It is a short piece of music by Franz Schubert. It tells the world that I am a sophisticated and cultured person.

Other people too have ring tones that tell the world what sort of person they are. Sometimes the ring tone says, “I am a witty and intelligent person”. Sometimes it says, “I am ignorant and uncivilised.” What does your ring tone say about you?

Quiz - do u no how 2 txt? ::

File download (7:15 mins | 3 MB)

Missing

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:32:00 +0000

Missing tooth! Photo by starfire/flickr

Today we are going to “miss” things!

“Miss” is a word which we can use in several different ways. Here are some of them.

Kevin is at a football match. United, the team which he supports, is losing 1-0, and there is only five minutes before the final whistle. Then United’s star striker gets the ball. He runs down the field, past one, two, three of the players from the other team. Now he is only 10 meters from the goal. He kicks. Does he score a goal? No, he misses. The ball goes over the cross-bar. Kevin groans and buries his head in his hands. United have scored only three goals since Christmas.

You can miss other things too. You can miss your English class – that means, you do not go to your English class. Perhaps you are ill. Perhaps you forgot to do your homework. You can miss a meal. If you wake up late, perhaps you rush out of the house without eating anything. You miss your breakfast. And, of course, you can miss a bus or a train, if you arrive too late at the station.

Here is another way of using the word “miss”. Imagine you have come to England for three months to learn English. There are probably lots of things about England that you like. But there are probably some things as well that make you sad or anxious. Perhaps you miss your friends – you would like to be able to meet them and chat to them. Perhaps you miss the food of your country – English food is awful! And perhaps you miss hearing people speaking your own language.

Now lets look at the word “missing”. If something is missing, it is not where it should be. It is gone.

Joanne’s niece Sarah is seven years old. Her milk teeth (that is, her baby teeth) have started to fall out and her adult teeth have started to grow. At the moment, she has a big hole where her front teeth should be. She has two front teeth missing.

Joanne is shopping in the supermarket. At the till, she gets out her purse to pay. She looks in her purse. “That is strange,” she says to herself. “I am sure that I had a £10 note. The £10 is missing. Did I loose it? Did someone steal it?” Then she remembers. She spent the £10 note yesterday.

It is not just money or teeth which can be missing. People can be missing, too. Every year in Britain, the police deal with over 200,000 cases of missing people, or missing persons.

What sort of people go missing? Many of them are children or young people. Perhaps they had an argument with their parents, and ran away from home without saying where they were going. Perhaps they were frightened, or badly treated.

Adults can be missing too. If you are an adult, you can leave home if you want to. You can run away from your family and your job without saying where you are going. It may not be a responsible thing to do, but it is not illegal. Some adults gradually lose touch with their friends or family – they never write or telephone, and after a time the family does not know where they are. Some missing adults are people with drugs problems or mental health problems.

Happily, most missing persons are not missing for ever. Angry young teenagers calm down and return home. Adults get in touch with their families again, or send a message to say that they are safe and well. There are charities that help to find missing people, and which help people who have left their homes and families. There are only a very few missing persons cases which end with the police finding a body on a railway line or in an abandoned house.

So now you know all about the words “miss” and “missing”. Listen to the podcast again, to make sure that you did not miss anything! Then do the quiz on the website, which is all about missing words.

Quiz - missing words ::

File download (5:32 mins | 3 MB)

Lauren's eyes

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:17:00 +0000

Eye make-up – but why do women do it? photo by bluewinx15.

Britain has a new celebrity. Her name is Lauren Luke, and she is …how shall I describe her? Not a film star, exactly. No, she is a video star, a YouTube video star in fact.

Lauren is 27. She lives with her mother, her 10 year old son, her sister, two nieces and five dogs in a little house in South Shields, in the north-east of England. Lauren used to work in a taxi office. She answered the telephone, and sent the taxis to people who wanted them. It was not work that she enjoyed. She found it very boring.

Lauren had always been interested in make-up. In fact, people told her that she was good with make-up – she understood what sort of make-up would look good on a particular face; or what sort of make-up to wear for different occasions. She decided to give up her job at the taxi company. Instead, she started to sell make-up on eBay, the internet auction site.

Now, men like me find make-up a complete mystery. Why do women want to paint their faces? Do they think that it makes them more attractive to men? Or do they do it to impress other women? I don’t know. I am only a man.

Lauren found a cheap video camera. She put it beside the mirror on her dressing-table, and she started to make short films of her putting on her eye make-up. She put the videos on YouTube, and people started to watch them. At first there were only a few downloads, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of people watched her videos. She is now probably the most-viewed make-up artist in the world.

Who watches her videos? I guess that many of them are teenage girls, who want to know how to look like Britney Spears or Kate Winslet. Perhaps they are women who want to know how to put on liquid eye-liner without getting it all over their face. Or maybe they are men, who want to know why women paint the skin round their eyes. Lauren probably knows why women paint the skin round their eyes, but she does not tell us in her videos, she just shows how to do it.

And now Lauren has a weekly column in a national newspaper, and an American cosmetics company will soon start selling a range of Lauren Luke cosmetics. Lauren has come a long way from the taxi office. She is now famous. She is a celebrity.

There is a link on the website to Lauren’s YouTube videos. Lauren speaks with a north-east of England accent, what we call a Geordie accent, but I think you will be able to understand quite a lot of what she says. In the background in the videos, you may hear the sound of snoring. That is one of Lauren’s dogs, fast asleep.

Now, as I have told you before, Listen to English has an ambition to become a celebrity. If I am a celebrity, I might be invited to be on Strictly Come Dancing where I could dance with Cherie Lunghi and other beautiful ladies. Maybe I should get a video camera, and make videos of me cleaning my teeth in the mornings. I could put the videos on You Tube, and dentists everywhere in the world would see them. They would tell their patients to watch the videos, and before long I would be as famous as Lauren, and I would have my own brand of toothpaste. What do you think?

File download (4:44 mins | 2 MB)

Golliwog

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:32:00 +0000

A golliwog . Photo by frozenmeat/flickr

Today’s podcast is about a child’s toy, and a TV journalist.

The child’s toy is a golliwog. A golliwog is a soft toy, a sort of doll. There is a picture of a golliwog on the website, and – I hope – on your iPod screens. The Golly in the picture is wearing black and white striped trousers and a red coat. He has a bow-tie and a white shirt. And his skin is black, and he has curly black hair. Golliwog is intended to look like black minstrel singers and musicians in America in the late 19th century.

Golliwog first appeared in a children’s book in 1895. The book, which was called “The Adventures of two Dutch Dolls and Golliwogg”, was very successful, and lots more books about Golliwog followed.

Naturally, toy manufacturers noticed the popularity of the Golliwogg books, and they started to make golliwog dolls. And the dolls were popular with children too. In the first half of the 20th century, many British children had a golliwog. Sometimes they loved their golliwog and took him everywhere they went. And sometimes they threw their golliwog into the corner or under the bed and forgot about him.

Robertson’s, a company which makes jam, used the golliwog as their trademark (what we would call a logo today, I think). For many years, children collected little golliwog stickers from the labels on jars of Robertson’s jam.

Then things started to change. Immigrants arrived in Britain, especially from former British colonies. Gradually, Britain became a racially diverse country. And people started to wonder, is it OK for children to have golliwog dolls? Surely a golliwog is an out-of-date stereotype of black people. Golliwogs in short are racist.

Now, it was of course adults who worried about whether golliwogs were OK. I doubt if most children thought of their golliwog as representing real black people. Nonetheless, golliwogs gradually became less popular. Children wanted Action Men, and Barbie Dolls, and computer games, not an old-fashioned golliwog doll. Eventually, even Robertson’s stopped putting the golliwog on the labels of their jam jars.

Now we turn to our TV journalist. Her name is Carol Thatcher. Where have you heard the name “Thatcher” before? Yes, Carol is the daughter of the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Carol has done various reporting jobs for the BBC. After a TV show about 10 days ago, Carol was talking to a group of BBC colleagues. They were discussing an international tennis player – a black international tennis player. Carol referred to him as a “golliwog”. Some of the people who heard her were shocked. They told the producer of the TV programme. She in turn told the BBC’s senior management. A few days later, Carol Thatcher was sacked.

There has been a storm of controversy in the newspapers and on radio and television. Some people said that it was an unacceptable racist insult to refer to a black person as a “golliwog”. Other people said that when Carol called the tennis player a “golliwog”, it was only a bit of fun. They argued that Carol was having a private conversation, and that the BBC were wrong to sack her.

Personally, I think it is very insulting to call a black person a “golliwog”, but I know that lots of people think differently. English people do not all agree about what is acceptable language in a multiracial society. You are learning English, and I guess that sometimes you too find it difficult to know which words are acceptable, and which are not.

Poor Golly. He never meant to cause so much trouble!

Quiz - how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (5:08 mins | 2 MB)

We love snow!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Fisher Street, London, in the snow. Photo by Danny McL/flickr

When English people meet each other, they generally start their conversation by talking about the weather. “It’s nice weather we are having”, they say. Or, “It’s a bit cold for the time of year.” This week we have had a big national conversation all about the weather. It has snowed.

If you live in Scandinavia, or Germany, or Russia or Canada, you are perhaps saying, “It is winter. It snows in winter. Why are the crazy English obsessed with the snow? What is the problem?”

The problem is that, in recent years we have had very little snow. Our winters have been wet and windy, but in most places they have not been cold and snowy. This week has been different. We have had the heaviest fall of snow for 18 years. The snow has come on east winds all the way from Russia. It has been particularly heavy in London and the south-east of England.

We do not know how to cope with snow in England. In other countries, normal life continues even in the snow. On Monday this week, however, London came to a complete standstill. There were no buses. There were hardly any trains. The airports were closed. People could not go to work. Children could not go to school. It was like an extra public holiday. The TV news had interviews with tourists who were visiting London. They were puzzled. They said that they had come to London to do some shopping, but all the shops were shut.

Later on Monday, the snow came here to Birmingham, and then moved further north over the rest of the country. We woke up on Tuesday to see the sun shining on a world which was sparkling white. Then came the really wonderful news – all the schools in Birmingham would be closed for the day.

But today, Wednesday, the national conversation about the snow has turned into a national argument about the snow. Why does normal life come to a standstill in England whenever we have even a little bit of snow? Surely we could do more to keep the roads open and the trains and buses running. What must the rest of the world think about this country, when they read or see on TV that everything in London has stopped because of some snow? And why were so many schools closed? Surely most children and most teachers could have got to school, even if they had to walk.

Some older people remember – or think they remember – winters in the 1950s and 1960s when there was lots of snow. They have become national experts on snow, and they have been on TV telling us how they used to go to school through snowdrifts 2 meters deep, and things like that.

While the adults have been arguing, the children have been enjoying themselves. Until this week, most British children had never seen real snow, lots of snow, snow to make snowmen and snowballs. Tuesday was a wonderful day – cold and sunny – and because so many schools were closed, the children could go out into the gardens and the parks to play in the snow, and sledge down the hills. This is much more useful than a day in school, in my opinion. The children will remember this winter for the rest of their lives.

And the weather forecast is – more snow. Good.

Thee BBC report on 'snow chaos' ::
My last podcast about the snow :: - nearly three years ago!

File download (4:27 mins | 2 MB)

Massive reductions - up to 50% off!

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:59:00 +0000

It has been more than two weeks since my last podcast. I have two excuses. The first is that I have had another bout of flu – not badly, but enough to make it difficult to do anything like writing or recording a podcast. My second excuse is much more exciting. I have just finished a project on which I have been working for several months. The computer programme, or software, which runs the Listen to English website is called LoudBlog. I have been rewriting LoudBlog, to add some new features. I have called the new programme PodHawk. If you are really interested, you can read all about PodHawk at www.podhawk.com.

Every day for the past couple of weeks, I have looked through the newspaper for a nice, light-hearted story that I could use in a podcast. But there have been no nice, light-hearted stories, only serious, depressing stories about the recession and unemployment. But yesterday I found some inspiration. I was in a traffic jam, behind a bus. It was a number 37 bus, going from Birmingham to Solihull, but that is not important. On the back of the bus was the slogan “Up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday”.

Now, “up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday” is not very good grammar. And if you look up each word in a dictionary, it still won’t make any sense. “Up to” indicates a maximum. If you see road sign which says that you can park for “up to an hour”, it means that you may park your car for an hour, but not for longer. I know however what the bus company is trying to say. It wants to tell us that, on Mondays to Saturdays, there are buses every 5 minutes at some times of the day. At other times of the day, the buses run less often – maybe every 10 minutes or every 15 minutes. But the bus company wants to tell us only the good news – sometimes there is a bus every 5 minutes. So – “Up to every 5 minutes Monday to Saturday”.

In recent years, the phrase “up to” has become very common when people want to tell you only the good news and not the not-so-good news. For example, at this time of year, many of the shops in Britain have sales. They reduce their prices to try to persuade us to buy all the rubbish we refused to buy before Christmas. This year, there have been lots of sales, because of the recession. You will see signs in shop windows which say something like “Massive reductions – up to 50% off”. This means, “We have cut some of our prices. Some of the price cuts are big – 50% – but most of them are much smaller – maybe 10% – and some prices we have not cut at all.” It does sound so much better to say “Up to 50% off”, doesn’t it?

“Up to” is also a a favourite phrase in advertisements when they only want to tell us the good news. A car advertisement might say, for example, that the car has “up to 25% more space” or has “up to 30% better mileage“. An advert for a household cleaner might say that it has “up to 45% more cleaning power”. What is “cleaning power”? How can I measure it? “Up to 45% more cleaning power” really, really does not mean anything.

We have an expression in English, to “take something with a pinch of salt.” It means, to be a bit sceptical, a bit doubtful, not to accept something “at its face value”. So, for example, Kevin tells Joanne about the truly amazing, truly wonderful things which his football team did at the match last Saturday. Joanne knows that Kevin often exaggerates, and that she does not need to believe every detail of what he says. She takes Kevin’s story “with a pinch of salt”.

So, when you see “up to 50% off” or “up to 45% more cleaning power” or even “a bus up to every 5 minutes”, you know that they are only telling you the good news, and that you should take what they say with a pinch of salt.

The Kinks :: all about massive reductions (in the workforce, rather than in prices) and very topical!

File download (6:01 mins | 3 MB)

How to keep track of the kids

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:08:00 +0000

Kiri:D/flickr has called this beautiful photograph “I lose track of time…”

Do you know the English expression “to keep track of” something? If you “keep track of “ something, you always have a good, up-to-date knowledge of it. Here are some examples to help you understand the way we use the expression.

Molly is an air-traffic controller. She works at a busy airport, and her job is to guide planes into the airport safely. She needs to keep track of all the planes which arrive at the airport.

Kevin likes to keep track of his money. He always writes down what he spends, so he knows how much money is left in his bank account.

Joanne has a job where she needs to visit lots of other companies, and to meet people at her office. She has a special programme on her computer to help her keep track of her appointments.

And John uses Facebook to keep track of what his friends are doing. Perhaps you use Facebook to keep track of your friends too.

The opposite of “keep track of” is “lose track of”. Sometimes, if I am reading a good book, I lose track of time. That is, I forget what time it is. Suddenly I realise that it is much later than I thought.

Kevin has three older brothers and an older sister. They are all married and have children. Kevin is “Uncle Kevin” to the children. But poor Kevin always loses track of the children’s birthdays. He cannot remember whether little Harry has a birthday in March or in June, and whether little Deborah is 3 or 4 years old.

At Kevin’s work, there have been a lot of changes. The boss has re-organised all the Departments and has moved a lot of people to new jobs. Kevin cannot keep track of all the changes. He cannot remember who is now doing which job.

I have a reason for telling you about “keep track of”. There was an article in the newspaper yesterday about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in the United States. This is the show where firms display their latest clever gadgets which they hope to persuade the public to buy. A British company is displaying a gadget which looks like an ordinary wristwatch. Inside the watch is a chip which uses the Global Positioning System to keep track of where the watch is. The idea is that parents will buy these watches for their children; they can then receive text messages on their mobile phones which tell them where their child is. Is he at school? Has he gone to see his friend? And so on. But won’t children simply take the watch off if they do not want their parents to know where they are? Well, if the child removes the watch, this will immediately send a message to the parents.

The new device sounds like a way of making children prisoners. However, the company which makes it says that it hopes that it will give children more freedom, not less. Parents may be happy to let their children go out to visit friends, or to play in the park, if they always know where the children are.

I can however think of one problem. I wear a watch so that I always know what time it is. Most older people are like me, and have a watch. Children and teenagers, however, do not wear watches. If they want to know the time, they look at their mobile phones. They will not want to wear the new watch. They will know that its real purpose is to enable parents to keep track of the children, not to enable the children to keep track of the time.

What do you think? If you are a young person, would you agree to wear this new watch? If you are a parent, would you think that the watch is a good way to keep track of where your children are and what they are doing?

File download (5:16 mins | 2 MB)

Crackers

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Christmas crackers. Photo by Miss Shari/flickr.

A Happy New Year, everyone. Many thanks to all of you who sent e-mails to wish me a speedy recovery from the flu. I am now much better – thank you.

Today’s podcast is a delayed Christmas podcast. I would have made it before Christmas, but I was unwell so I could not do so. I hope you will like it nonetheless. In the podcast, we meet the words “crack” and “crackers”, and we learn what you should do at a Christmas dinner in England.

Let’s start with the word “crack”. Imagine that you drop a plate – a china plate – on the floor. It does not break into lots of pieces, but when you pick it up you see that the plate now has a line running across it. You know that soon the plate will break completely along this line. The line is a “crack”. You have “cracked” the plate. The plate is “cracked”. Here are some other things which you can crack. A piece of wood can crack if you hit it hard. Ice on a river or a pond can crack if you walk on it. A window can crack if you throw a stone at it. And an egg can crack if you tap it with a knife or a spoon.

We also use the word “crack” to describe the sound of something cracking – a sudden, short sound – “crack” – like that.

And a “cracker”? What is that? It is something which makes a cracking sound. In America, they call a savoury biscuit – the sort you eat with cheese, for example – a “cracker“. A “firecracker“ is a firework, especially a firework which makes a cracking sound. “Crackers” is also a rather old-fashioned slang word meaning “mad” or “crazy”. And in England, we have Christmas crackers.

Imagine that your English friend has invited you to join his family for dinner on Christmas Day. When you sit down at the dinner table, you will probably find a strange object made out of coloured paper and cardboard on the plate in front of you. If you pick up the strange object and shake it, you will hear something rattling inside. The strange object is a Christmas cracker. There is a picture of some Christmas crackers on the website, and (I hope) on your iPod screen as well, so you can see what they look like.

What do you do with the Christmas cracker? Perhaps you remember what I just said about biscuits in America. Perhaps you should eat the cracker? No. Do not try to eat a Christmas cracker. Perhaps a Christmas cracker is like a firecracker. Perhaps you should find a match and set fire to the Christmas cracker? Wrong. Do not set fire to the Christmas cracker. Well, perhaps the best thing is just to put the Christmas cracker in your pocket so that you can look at it more closely later, when you are alone. No. No. No. You hold of one end of the cracker and give the other end to the person sitting next to you. Together you pull the cracker. The cracker will break open with a “crack” sound – that is why it is called a cracker! And the things inside the cracker will fall out.

First, you will find a silly little hat made of paper. Etiquette requires that you put this silly paper hat on your head and wear it throughout the meal. Do not feel embarrassed. Everyone else will wear silly paper hats as well. Second, you will find a toy, or a puzzle. You are allowed to play with the toy or puzzle during the meal. Indeed, if you are lucky you may find a whistle inside the cracker; you can blow the whistle as often and as loudly as you like. Third, you will find a little piece of paper. On the paper is a joke. It will be a bad joke. For example, this is the joke from my Christmas Day cracker:

“Why did the skeleton not go to the party?”

“Because it had nobody to go with.”

“No body” – “nobody” – do you understand? Never mind, I said it was a bad joke. You should read the joke from your cracker out loud to all the other people at the table. Everyone will laugh. You should laugh loudly when other people read their jokes as well, even if you do not understand the joke, and even if you do not think that it is funny.

You may be thinking, perhaps all this stuff about Christmas crackers and paper hats and things is an ancient Christmas tradition, going back hundreds and hundreds of years. Wrong again. Christmas crackers have nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with the birth of Jesus, which is what we are celebrating at Christmas. The first Christmas crackers were made in the middle of the 19th century by a man called Tom Smith. Today, you can buy boxes of Christmas crackers in the supermarket in the few weeks before Christmas. Or you can make your own crackers, if you wish.

So now you know that the English really are mad. Crackers, in fact. Happy New Year!

File download (7:08 mins | 3 MB)

I am ill

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:32:00 +0000

My teddy bear has flu as well!

I am ill. I have flu. I have been sent to bed with a hot water bottle and my teddy bear until I am better. So I have not had time this week to make a proper podcast. I hope to have time in a few days.

But maybe this is a good opportunity to give you some information which I hope you will find useful. Some of you have sent me e-mails asking me whether there is a podcast similar to mine, but in American instead of British English. I have recently looked at the Voice of America website. Voice of America is a radio station which is largely funded by the American Government. I remember Voice of America in the old days, when it used to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda to listeners in Eastern Europe. But times have changed, and Voice of America is more balanced today. Among other things, there is a Learning English section on the VoA website, and it includes podcasts. Like the Listen to English podcasts, you can listen to the podcast and read the text at the same time. If you are interested in American English, try listening to some of these podcasts.

There is a link from the VoA website to Ted Lamphair’s blog. Ted has had a long career as a radio reporter and he writes about the many places in America, and in the rest of the world, which he has visited. At the end of each blog post, he explains some of the more difficult or unusual words which he has used. His blog posts are quite long, but they are written in good American English, and you will find them both interesting and useful reading practice.

Recently, I received an e-mail from Mike Marzio. He tells me that he runs a language school in the south of France. He has also built a large collection of short video clips of people speaking English, in the streets in America and in many other English speaking countries. The video clips are on his website. Many of the videos are linked to quizzes, so that you can test how well you understood what the people in the video were saying.

Finally, the English Cafe website has an article on how to use Google to improve your English. If you cannot remember whether you should say “I arrived to London” or “I arrived in London”, just try Googling “I arrived to London” and “I arrived in London”. Go on. Try it. Which one is correct?

That’s all for today. I must go and look after my teddy bear. He seems to have flu as well.

File download (3:36 mins | 2 MB)

Christmas Shopping

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:38:21 +0000

Christmas shopping crowds in Oxford Street, London, photographed by Claire Rowland/flickr

In today’s podcast, we have a serious discussion of the state of the world economy, and we go Christmas shopping with Kevin and Joanne.

As I am sure you know, there are some big problems in the world’s economy at present. There is a recession (that is, a reduction in output) in many countries, including Britain. The problem is that banks in America, and in Britain and some other countries, lent money to people who could not afford to repay. So many banks are in big trouble, and have stopped lending to anyone. So people have less money to spend, and many have lost their jobs. And the big shops are cutting their prices because they are worried that people are not buying. And governments have had to intervene, to do things, some of which are useful and some of which are not useful. That is Listen to English’s summary of the world’s economic problems. You can use it in your economics homework if you wish.

December is the biggest shopping month of the year in Britain, as it is in many countries. People want to buy Christmas presents for their friends and family, and nice things for themselves as well. As a result, the shops are full of people. But perhaps this year is different. Because of the recession, maybe the big stores and the out-of-town shopping centres are deserted. Perhaps this year, for once, it will be possible to go Christmas shopping in peace. Wrong. Things are as bad as ever.

Kevin and Joanne went Christmas shopping last Saturday afternoon. They needed to buy a present for Kevin’s aunt Joan, who is 73 years old. “A cardigan,” said Kevin. “Old ladies always like a new cardigan.” So they agreed, they would buy Aunt Joan a new cardigan.

“Good,” said Kevin. “I am glad that we have decided what to buy her. So is it alright if you buy the cardigan and I go with George to the football match”.

“No it is not alright”, said Joanne. “She is your aunt and you can come and help choose her present.”

They took the bus into the centre of town. There were crowds of people everywhere – people going to and fro; people going in and out of shops; people getting on and off buses; people getting into and out of taxis. Every now and then, there was a gap in the crowds, and Kevin and Joanne made their way carefully down the street to Marks and Spencer. Marks and Spencer is, as I am sure you know, a well-known British store which sells mainly clothes, including cardigans of the sort which 73 year old aunts like to get for Christmas.

In Marks and Spencer, Kevin and Joanne looked around for the ladies’ cardigans. They went round and round the store, and up and down the escalator, looking unsuccessfully for cardigans. Then Kevin saw them, in a corner. It took several minutes for Kevin and Joanne to fight their way through the crowds to reach the cardigans. It took about 10 more minutes to find a cardigan of the right size and colour. And it took about 15 more minutes before Kevin and Joanne reached the front of the queue at the tills to pay for the cardigan. Kevin and Joanne were exhausted. When English people are exhausted, and even when they are not exhausted, they need a cup of tea.

Kevin and Joanne looked for a cafe. They were all full. Several had a queue of people waiting outside. Then Joanne remembered that there was a cafe at the art gallery. The art gallery was empty. Perhaps people are not interested in culture at Christmas. Kevin, who had never actually been there before, looked around with interest. “That painting is upside down,” he said in a loud voice as they went through the modern art section. “And that one is sideways.” “Kevin, “ said Joanne. “The people in the art gallery know which way to hang their paintings and you don’t. Now shut up and stop making an idiot of yourself.”

There were only a few people in the cafe at the back of the gallery. Kevin and Joanne drank tea, and ate a slice of cake each. They talked about how difficult it was to do shopping when there were so many people. “You know,” said Kevin. “It is better at a football match. There aren’t as many people, and they are not so aggressive.”

“Drink your tea,” said Joanne. “We need to find a present for my mother next.”

Vocabulary Note ::
Quiz ::

File download (5:44 mins | 3 MB)

Christmas Shopping - Vocabulary Note

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:15:00 +0000

Look at these expressions and check in a dictionary that you know what they mean. Then try the quiz.

to and fro
in and out
on and off
now and then
round and round
up and down
backwards and forwards
from side to side
upside down
inside out
back to front
there and back

Podcast ::

Learning languages - why can't the English do it?

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:45:00 +0000

They speak many different languages in this restaurant in Lugano, Switzerland, where they have very big brains indeed! Photo by Eric Andresen/flickr

I read an interesting story in the newspaper last week. It said that researchers at University College London had measured the brains of people who are bilingual (that is, people who speak two languages well) and also the brains of people who spoke only one language. They found that the part of the brain which processes information is better developed in people who are bilingual than in people who are mono-lingual. This effect is particularly strong in people who learnt a second language as a young child of less than five years old. So, quite simply, learning a second language makes your brain work better, and if you learn another language when you are very young, your brain will be very wonderful indeed!

If you are listening to this podcast, you are – I guess – learning a language which is not your own. So you must all have brains which work very well. The report in the newspaper is good news for you. Congratulations.

But it is bad news for us English, because we are really bad at learning foreign languages. Only the Americans are as bad as we are. So, British brains and American brains are perhaps not as good as the brains of people in a country like Switzerland where it is normal for people to speak two or even three languages to a high standard. In Britain, only about one adult in ten can communicate at all in a language other than English. In fact, “one in ten” may be too optimistic. A few years ago, a survey by a recruitment agency found that only 5% of British people could count to 20 in another language. What? How difficult is it to learn to count to 20 in German, or French, or Italian? British people who go to live in Spain or France are notorious for failing to learn Spanish or French, even after they have lived in the country for many years.

You probably know already that English children move from primary school to secondary school at the age of eleven. At secondary school, they start learning a foreign language, normally French. A year or two later, some children will start a second foreign language. At one time, the second foreign language was normally German, but this is not the case today. German language teaching has declined sharply in Britain. Spanish has taken its place. I do not know why Spanish has become so much more popular than German. Perhaps it is because so many English people go to Spain for their holidays.

In addition, in big cities where there is a large immigrant population, it is common for secondary schools to offer courses in south Asian languages like Punjabi or Urdu. But of course, most of the children who take these courses speak the language at home already. The courses give them a better knowledge and understanding of their own language, which is a good and important thing to do, but it does not teach them a new language.

Students at an English language college in Canada. Photo by Adrian Bailon/flickr.

When they are 14, children in England have to choose which subjects they will study for their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams, which they take when they are 16. The government decided a few years ago that it would no longer be compulsory for children to include a foreign language in the subjects they chose. The result has been that the number of children who study a language after the age of 14 has fallen dramatically. The number of children taking the GCSE French exam, for example, has fallen by 50% since 2001.

We see the same pattern when we look at British universities. The total number of students at university in Britain has risen, but the number of students taking degree courses in foreign languages has fallen. There have been particularly big declines in the numbers studying French and German.

This is not a good situation. Everyone – politicians, school teachers, academics – agree about this. If young people do not study a foreign language, probably they will not understand much about other countries or other cultures. Most British teenagers, however, do not think that learning a foreign language is interesting or important. They think that they will never need to speak a foreign language, and that all foreigners speak English anyway. Foreign languages have a low status with young people. Our government thinks that part of the answer is to start language learning at a younger age. It wants primary schools to start teaching a foreign language. However, at the same time, it has cut funding for adult education classes in foreign languages.

The problem is complicated and deep-seated. How do you think that we can interest more young people in England in learning languages?

Quiz - how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (6:38 mins | 3 MB)

The Great Train Robbery

peter@listen-to-english.com (Peter Carter) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:48:00 +0000

This was the engine which pulled the train in the Great Train Robbery. The picture is signed by Bruce Reynolds, who planned and led the robbery.

I think you know the English word “famous”. If someone is famous, it means that everyone has heard of them, that they are well-known. So, Beethoven was a famous composer, and the Eifel Tower is a famous landmark in Paris. But, suppose that someone is well-known for bad things and not for good things. Can we still say that they are “famous”? There are two words which we can use to describe someone or something which is famous for bad things – “infamous” and “notorious”. So, we would probably not say that Hitler for example was “famous”, we would say that he was “notorious”.

This is a long way of introducing today’s podcast, which is about the most famous – or perhaps the most notorious – crime in Britain in the last 100 years. It happened 45 years ago, in August 1963. In those days our Post Office used to send mail from one part of the country to another in special mail trains called Travelling Post Offices. During the journey, the Post Office staff sorted the mail so that it was ready to be delivered the next morning. Some of the mail was valuable. For example, the banks used the mail trains to send banknotes around the country.

In the summer of 1963, a group of criminals planned an attack on one of the Travelling Post Offices. They interfered with the railway signals in order to stop the train. Then they uncoupled the railway carriage which contained the banknotes, and used the railway engine to take it to a place where the railway crossed a bridge over a road. They threw 120 packages of banknotes over the bridge to other gang members, who loaded them into Land Rovers. The gang escaped with over £2.5 million pounds in used banknotes. This is equivalent to over £40 million today. It was at the time the biggest ever robbery in Britain.

A few days later, the police found the gang’s hideout, in an isolated farmhouse. And in the weeks after that, the police found and arrested 13 of the 15 gang members. They were tried, and sentenced to long periods in prison. However, most of the stolen money has never been found.

The story did not end there. Two of the gang members escaped from prison. Charlie Wilson fled to Canada. He was eventually brought back to England and to prison. Ronnie Biggs fled first to France, then to Australia, and then to Brazil. The British police found where he was, but they could not persuade the Brazilian courts to send him back to England. So Ronnie Biggs lived in Brazil for more than 30 years. He had a home and a family and friends there. But in 2001, when he was 71 years old, he returned to England. He said that he wanted to “walk into a pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter“. In other words, he was home-sick. I do not know if he was ever able to buy his pint of bitter in a pub, because he was arrested and sent back to prison, where he still is.

The story of the Great Train Robbery has fascinated the British public over the years. Our newspapers reported every detail of the robbery, the capture of the gang, their trial, the escapes from prison and Ronnie Biggs’ return to England. Only a few weeks ago there were reports that Biggs, who is now old and ill, would shortly be released from prison. Why are we so interested in the Great Train Robbery? Some people sympathise with the robbers. They think that the Great Train Robbery was a clever, daring plan, and that the robbers were unlucky to be caught. Ronnie Biggs is the most famous (or the most notorious) of the train robbers, and many people therefore think that he was the mastermind behind the plan.

The truth is more complicated, however. The robbery was not particularly clever. Ronnie Biggs was not the leader – in fact he played only a small part. The gang was too large – 15 people in all – which increased the chances that one of them would do something stupid. They had planned to drive the train themselves to the bridge where they unloaded the banknotes. But after they had stopped the train, they realised that they did not know how to drive the engine, so they made the real train driver drive it for them. And they left their fingerprints all over the train, and the farmhouse where they went after the robbery.

So, was the Great Train Robbery Britain’s most famous crime? Or the most notorious crime? What do you think?

Quiz - how well did you understand the podcast? ::

File download (6:10 mins | 3 MB)