03. Music & The Beatles / Interview with Mum / Language Focus: Used to
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You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke.podomatic.com. Hello and welcome to episode three of the podcast. Thanks very much for listening and downloading and possibly subscribing to the show using iTunes. That's fantastic. In today's show, we're going to be talking about music.

And I'm going to talk to my mum about the Beatles because she was a big Beatles fan in the 1960s. I'm also going to respond to a couple of emails that I've had. And then in the last part of the podcast, the language part, I'm going to talk about habits and habitual behaviour in the past. So things like used to and would and some other useful language. So stay tuned for that. Now.

I've had an email from Alessandro in Italy in response to the question that I asked at the end of the last podcast. That question was, what kind of music is popular in your country at the moment? Is it kind of English language music or do you have music that is just exclusive to your country? Alessandro from Italy says that...

He still thinks that opera is the most famous Italian music, of course. Everyone knows opera. People like Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, of course that's the most famous Italian music. But also in Italy rock music is really popular.

and they have all the English language bands, the ones that we have obviously here as well, things like the U2, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, all these really big bands are popular in Italy as well. But also there are lots of Italian rock bands that are really popular there but aren't very well known outside of Italy. And I think this is probably true in most countries.

I know it's true in Japan that there are big very successful bands that are just famous in that country and because the lyrics are not in English they're not famous in America or in the UK so it's probably a bit lazy in terms of British people we don't listen to very much music that isn't in English we're probably missing out on quite a lot of good music

So thanks very much for your emails. Appreciate that very much. Remember, if you want to email me, you can. It's LukeTeacher at Hotmail.com. And I love hearing from you, so send me your emails and all your comments and stuff, and I'll get back to you through the podcast. Ask the girl what she wanted to be. She said, babe, can't you see? Star of the screen, you can do the tweet. You can drive my car, I'm gonna be a star.

A little bit of Beatles there. That was Drive My Car from the Rubber Soul album. And I'm playing that because the Beatles and Apple Corps, which is their company, and EMI Music...

have finally decided to re-release all of the Beatles studio albums in remastered form. So they're all going to be digitally remastered. And so that means you'll be able to listen to them and hear them sounding better than they've ever sounded before. Some of the albums that they released, particularly the early ones, were recorded in mono.

And there are CD versions of those albums in mono, but now they're going to be digitally remastered. So they'll sound really crystal clear and perfect. And they'll be all in stereo, which obviously makes the listening experience a lot better. Now. Right. So with me here now is my mum. Hello, mum. Hello, Luke.

How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Now, I thought that I'd talk to my mum today because she used to be, back in the 60s, a massive Beatles fan. Is that right? That's right, yes. Okay, so, right, so I hope you don't mind if I ask you some questions. No, that's okay. So, how did you first hear about the Beatles then, when you were...

Oh, it's very hard to remember, but I do have one memory of being on the school bus and hearing two other girls talking about this group called The Beatles and looking at pictures of them and saying, which is your favourite? And I think maybe that was the first time I heard of them, but I really can't remember the actual first time. Yeah, no.

They were a really massively popular band, weren't they? They were. I mean, everyone was crazy about them. So...

You obviously heard about them from some friends and then started... And then started to talk about them and look at pictures of them and listen to the music. And I didn't actually buy any records of theirs until the second LP, which was called With The Beatles, which my parents bought me because I didn't really have much money of my own in those days. That's nice of them. How old were you in those days? I would have been...

About 12 or 13, I suppose. So you were the target audience? I suppose so, yes. So why did you like them? They were so popular, but why? Why did you like them? It's very hard to explain why. They were just so unusual, so different. All the pop music we'd had up till then seemed to be mainly from America, although there were one or two English people like Cliff Richard and Adam Fay. Yeah.

But they were just so different. I mean, the first time I ever saw a group, you know, with three guitars and drums. Before, it was just a singer. They had something else about them, didn't they? They had a kind of personality. They had a good sense of humour. They were sort of charismatic. They were from Liverpool, which...

And so they had these wonderful Liverpool accents, which, of course, I didn't really know about in those days. I'd never heard of another Liverpudlian, I don't think. And they were very witty and very funny and very quick. Just wonderful, really. Great. So did you actually ever see them? I did. I saw them twice. I think the first time I saw them was 1968.

three I think in Wolverhampton and then I saw them again in Birmingham the following year so they were probably playing in a theatre or something like that right I can't remember where they were in Wolverhampton

It was probably a cinema or a theatre or somewhere like that. And in Birmingham, they were at the Odeon in New Street, which again was a cinema, but it had a stage, and so it could be used for concerts as well. And so what was the experience like? I mean...

Yeah, what was it like actually seeing them? What was the audience like? The audience was completely hysterical. They were all screaming and shouting. And it was... I remember the compere of the show, sort of... That's the man who introduced the acts. When it got to the Beatles, of course, they were the last on the bill. And he sort of...

stirred the audience up even more by saying, do you want to see them? Do you want to see them? And everyone was like, yeah! Everybody was shouting and screaming and the curtain came up and we could see their feet and then we could see their legs and then we could see them and then the music started and it was all extremely exciting. There's lots of video footage of the Beatles concerts where they're playing and you can't really hear the band. You can just hear all this ridiculous screaming. Yes, that's what it was like. I

I don't really think we could hear them properly at all. Yeah. So it was just total madness, really. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I expect probably at the time, because it was the early 1960s, young people didn't really have anything, you know, interesting like the Beatles. They just... I mean...

I think, I might be wrong, but I think that life was kind of boring, right? Well, I never thought it was boring. It was just the way it was in those days. But it was very different from the way it is today. Now teenagers have just got so much, so many...

you know, so much music, so many movies and all kinds of things there to entertain. And it's so much more accessible than it was in my day. You had to actually go to the cinema or buy a record. There was no downloading stuff from the internet or watching DVDs or anything like that. So which Beatle was your favourite? Because everyone had a favourite Beatle, didn't they? My favourite Beatle was... It was a toss-up between...

John and Ringo. Okay. I think mainly my favourite was John because he was so outrageous. Right, he was controversial, wasn't he? He was. Yeah, okay. So just the fact that he was controversial and outrageous. That was mainly it, yes. He was very witty and very funny. Yeah, yeah, he was, wasn't he? And what about now? Is John still your favourite one now? No.

Oh, I can't really think of it in those terms anymore, really. Because I just... I'm very fond of George now. Yeah. I appreciate him more now than I did then, I think. Yeah. OK. So do you still listen to the Beatles these days? Not very much, no. Why not? I find it quite strange listening to them now. It just... I don't know. It's very hard to explain. It just reminds me of...

those days and I don't really want to go back and think about those days anymore I'd rather live here and now right okay well thanks very much for talking to me it's a pleasure yeah um all right well that's that's it then well I think I might buy a couple of these new cds okay come out right because you know I'm a big fan yes well well I might listen to one or two of them if you buy them you probably enjoy them okay well okay thanks very much okay

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and in the last episode you heard my dad talking about his Easter experiences when he was a child and so he was talking about things that he usually did, things that he did regularly or every year when he was a kid. So we're going to look at some language that he used and that you can use to talk about regular habits in the past. Now there are

Some really common ways of doing this. The most common way is to use "used to". You've probably studied that. You probably know about "used to". So that's "used to". So, for example, something my dad said was, "We used to paint our Easter eggs different colors." Okay?

Another example for me would be, I used to live in Japan, right? Or I used to smoke. I don't smoke anymore because it's very bad for your health, right? I used to smoke, but then I gave up. So this is something really useful. Now, you may know about used to, and you may have studied it, but do you actually use it? Now, the most...

This is very important. You might know about different kinds of grammar. You might have studied different bits of vocabulary. But the difference between a learner of English and a native speaker

is that a native speaker uses all of this stuff. They actually use it regularly when they speak. They use a variety of different grammar and a variety of vocabulary. And used to is something that people use all the time when they're talking about the past, when they're talking about things that they did regularly in the past. So you should use used to a lot. You might think that this isn't new language for you, but the most important thing is that you're actually using it.

OK, something I always tell people is it's not important what you know, it's important what you do in English. So the important thing here is that you actually use something like 'used to'. OK, so just some other important points about 'used to'. Pronunciation. So obviously it should be 'I used to', so that's 'used to', not 'used to'.

and not used to or used to. I sometimes hear people saying used to or used to, but it's not that, it's used to, used to. Also in negative or in question forms, it doesn't have a D. So that's when you write used to in a negative, it doesn't have a D. So I didn't used to smoke, right? So it's without a D, so it's didn't.

U-S-E-T-O, right? And it's the same in questions. Did you used to, for example. Now, used to is commonly confused with another very similar structure. And that is to be used to doing something. For example, I am used to living in London.

Okay, so you've got used to, which is I used to live in London, and be used to doing something. I am used to doing something. I am used to living in London. So those forms are completely different, right? So I've told you about used to, to talk about past habits. Now let me tell you about

to be used to doing something or I am used to doing something, right? Which is totally different from just used to, okay? So, okay, let's see. So if you say I am used to doing something or I got used to doing something, it means that before something was difficult or strange for you, but now it's okay. Now you're okay with it, you got accustomed to it, okay?

So, for example, something that you might say, you might say, when I first moved to London, I thought it was very difficult to live here. But now I'm used to living here. OK, now I'm used to living here. So it could be now I understand the culture a bit more. I can speak better English. I remember that people drive on the left. So I'm used to living here now. So that is totally different from now.

I used to live in London, which means that I lived in London in the past, but I don't live in London now. OK, so another way of talking about a past habit, which is similar to used to, is the modal verb would. Now, would is usually when it's used to talk about a past habit, we use would, but in the contracted form.

OK, so for example, you may have heard my dad in the last episode say something like this. We'd roll our Easter eggs down a hill and then we'd eat them at the bottom. OK, so this use of would in the contracted form, for example, we'd eat them at the bottom or we'd buy each other chocolate eggs every Christmas. Not Christmas. What am I talking about? Not Christmas. Sorry. We'd buy each other chocolate.

Chocolate eggs every Easter, right? This use of would is very similar to used to. We use it to talk about things we did regularly in the past. OK, for example, for me, when I lived in Japan, I'd see businessmen asleep on the underground every day. OK, I'd see businessmen asleep on the underground every day.

Or, I'd sometimes get woken up by noisy motorbike gangs in the middle of the night. Right? I'd sometimes get woken up by noisy motorbike gangs in the middle of the night. That's true, actually. I used to...

get woken up all the time by motorbike gangs because I lived in a I lived near Yokohama and sometimes in the summer there were these big motorcycle gangs that would ride around the city in the middle of the night and they were so loud so for example you know

I used to wake up to the noise of these motorbikes and I'd get up and I'd go out onto my balcony and I'd look down on the street and I'd see all these motorbikes riding past. It was quite frightening because they were quite scary. Some of them had samurai swords on their backs which was quite scary. Anyway, I was talking about wood. So, for example,

I'd sometimes get woken up by noisy motorbike gangs. Okay? So try to use would like that in the contracted form to talk about regular things that happened in the past. Now, it's very similar to used to, but it is different. The only difference with used to is that we don't use would like this with state verbs. Okay? Now, you've got state verbs and you've got action verbs. Okay?

action verbs are the most common ones. Action verbs all describe an action, right? For example, something that you do rather than a kind of state or condition that you're in. So an action verb might be to go, to play, to eat, something like that, okay? Right, so we don't use... Okay, that's action verbs, play, go, eat, and so on. Now, state verbs...

are not used to describe an action, but they describe a situation or a state or a condition, right? These include verbs like live, know, like, understand, hate, okay? Now, we don't use would in the contracted form to talk about past habits with state verbs, okay? So, for example, you can say, "I used to live in London," right?

live is a state verb. You can say, I used to live in London. But you can't say, I'd live in London, if you're talking about the past. Okay? That's because live is a state verb. So, you can say, when I lived in London, I'd take the underground to school every day, and I'd often go to the pub after school on a Friday. So, you can say that because take

is an action verb and go is an action verb. So remember that you can only use would contracted for past habits with action verbs and not state verbs. If you're interested in action verbs and state verbs and what the difference is, it's really simple just go to Google, go to the Google search engine and type state verbs

Have a look at the results and you'll see lots of grammar pages from Oxford University or something like that. And they'll show you lists of state verbs and action verbs and the differences between the two. That's it. That's the end of the language section.

So, yeah, I hope you found that useful. Don't forget, you can email me questions. If there's something you don't understand or if there's another question you have about language, email me. The email address is luketeacher at hotmail.com.

and I will answer questions that you send me in the podcast. Now, I might not be able to answer every question that is sent to me because I get quite a few questions. So, if I don't answer the question that you sent me, I'm sorry. I'll try to answer all the questions that I get sent, but sometimes I can't answer them all. Okay, so that's the end of the podcast. Now, I'm going to end with a final question. And the question is,

this time is about skateboarding now it's about skateboarding because

I was talking to my brother recently and he loves skateboarding, right? He's a skater. He skates a lot. And I was talking to him about it recently and I was thinking that I might interview him for the podcast in the future. So I might have an interview with my brother James about skateboarding. But I'd like to ask you a question about skateboarding. What do you think? Is skateboarding popular in your country, right? And do you think skateboarding

is vandalism or is it okay? Now, what does vandalism mean? Vandalism is when people damage public property. So what skateboarders do is they use public property for their skateboarding. So they do things like they will ride on

on like a bench or they will ride on a handrail for their skating and it damages the bench and it damages the handrail and a lot of people in this country think that skateboarding is vandalism that it damages public property but a lot of people think it's kind of like an art form or a sport or something so what do you think do you think skateboarding is vandalism or do you think it's okay

So that's the question. That's the end of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. And don't forget to email me, luketeacher at hotmail.com. And I'm looking forward to hearing from you. So that's it. Cheers. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Thanks for downloading Luke's English Podcast. Don't forget to email me at luketeacher at hotmail.com.

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