923. A Rambling Exercise for Fluency 🗣️ Late-Winter 2025 ❄️☀️
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If you haven't noticed, it's winter. And now more than ever, I'm in need of a little treat. That's why I joined First Leaf, a wine club that delivers my favorite types of wine right to my door. Because there's really no better treat than a glass of delicious red, white, or rosé. So go ahead and treat yourself to world-class wines from First Leaf.

Go to tryfirstleaf.com slash winter to get your first six bottles for just $44.95 with free shipping. That's T-R-Y-F-I-R-S-T-L-E-A-F dot com slash winter. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment.

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Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. Brand new episode for you. And this one is a rambling episode, which means that I will be just chatting to you, making it all up as I go along. I don't really have much planned for the episode. It's not like a lot of other episodes where I carefully prepare everything in advance. This one is sort of unprepared and spontaneous, which I think is a positive point, actually.

because I think there are a lot of benefits to listening to spontaneous speech. It's natural, it's authentic, and hopefully it will be engaging to listen to. So if you are

a long-term listener, then you'll know what to expect from rambling episodes. If you're a brand new listener, well, just carry on, keep listening, and you can kind of just discover it as it happens. Actually, two things I want to do at the beginning of this. The first thing is to set a 30-minute timer to remind myself to drink water. So I'm going to take a water break in 30 minutes. Obviously, it's important to stay hydrated. You've got to make sure that you're

body is receiving plenty of H2O. And also that is to satisfy those people who watch or listen and comment that I need to stop and drink water just to give my kidneys a chance. I do, honestly, I do drink plenty of water. I drink water before and after recordings.

and don't often do it in the middle of recordings, but just to make everyone feel better and to make my body fully hydrated, I will schedule a special moment where I will drink some water. So I'm going to do that. Siri, 30-minute countdown timer. Oh, come on. Siri, start a 30-minute countdown timer, please. Okay, Siri did it. Normally, Siri goes, okay, 30-minute countdown timer starting now, but Siri's not feeling very...

chatty this morning, it seems. So that's the first thing I wanted to do, set that timer. So when that goes off, I'll have a big swig of water from this bottle on the floor here next to me. What's the other thing I wanted to do? It's to suggest an exercise, a speaking exercise, a kind of fluency exercise. In fact, this is the speaking exercise that I'm going to be doing myself in this episode. But you could do it too.

So here's an idea for you as a way to practice your fluency. And it involves you doing what I'm doing in this episode right now, which is essentially speaking off the top of my head and trying to keep the English flowing. And it's an interesting exercise because it's a sort of a, what's the word for it? It's like a tightrope walk, a tightrope walk. That's where you have to walk

on a rope that has been tied between two posts and the rope is very tight. It's pulled very tight, tightened, and then you have to kind of balance and walk along the rope. Obviously, that's really, really difficult. People do it in the circus and stuff like that. You've got to be a bit of an acrobat or a gymnast to be able to do it very well. But doing this is a bit of a tightrope walk in the sense that

It's quite a difficult discipline because you feel that you could easily lose your balance and fall off. I mean...

continuing to talk and letting the ideas flow and continuing to make sense, make logical sense with the things you're saying, while also trying to think at the same time is quite difficult. And not stopping, not giving up because you feel like you're not making sense, just keeping going as long as you possibly can. Now for you, um,

as a learner of English, obviously you've got that added challenge of it being your second or third language or whatever and that makes it more difficult, right? Because

naturally, you might start to translate in your head or you get blocked when you realise that you don't know how to say a certain thing. But this is exactly the kind of skill I want you to practice, which is being able to deal with those obstacles, being able to deal with those mental blocks. And those blocks come for several reasons. They might come because, as

as I said, you just don't know how to say something. You don't know what the right vocabulary is. Or it might be that you just run out of inspiration. You don't know what to say. And I've got a couple of ideas to help prevent that, which I'll explain in a moment. It might be that or it might be another kind of block which stops you. And that's just the sense of I can't do this or that sense of this feels ridiculous or I'm not good enough or something like that. Some kind of

editorial decision in your head, which says, no, you should stop doing this now because this isn't working. I want you to switch off that voice, that editor, which is kind of telling you, which is criticising you and essentially telling you that you can't do it because it's not perfect. It's not good enough. It's not right. Switch off that part because I want you to practise not perfection here, but I want you to practise

kind of flow and focusing on those skills of being able to get around those mental blocks. So when you get to a point where either A, you just don't have the vocabulary for what you're trying to say, you have to find another route. Let's say you're walking

You're walking through the mountains or walking through the forest or something, and you're trying to get from A to B. And in your path, you find there's a tree that's fallen across the path or there's a river or there's a big, you know, load of boulders, lots of rocks. And you can't follow the path you were following. You just need to find an alternative route. So off you go. You go off in a different direction using the words that you learned.

have at your disposal until essentially you manage to say more or less what you were trying to say. Even if it's not great, even if it sounds clumsy, even if it's not exactly what you wanted to say, you have to keep going. The whole point is that you can't stop talking and you have to keep going. It's difficult, believe me, it is difficult, but you have to just do whatever it takes to keep the words flowing. So this is the exercise I'd like you to try to do. Now,

So, keep talking without stopping, basically, and without translating from your first language. Just make sure the words keep coming out in English. And you could use a basic structure to help you to do this. So, you could just try to answer three questions. And how long are you going to speak for? It's up to you.

you know, whatever's practical for you, the more you do that, the longer you do this, the better. But let's say, try to do it for 10 minutes. Okay, just 10 minutes. Let's do that at the beginning. If you feel like it, if you feel like 10 minutes is too much, just do five minutes. And you'll see actually that five minutes will go by very quickly. But five minutes, 10 minutes, something like that. You could set a timer if you want on your phone or your watch or something like that to give yourself a sense of, you know,

completion. But feel free to keep going for longer if you feel like it. But let's say about 10 minutes. And your basic structure is you could try to answer three different questions. The first question is, what have you just done? So describe the things that you did just before this moment that you're in now.

OK, so just describe either the previous few minutes or the previous few hours or maybe even the previous few days. Just talk about the past a little bit. The recent past. What have you just done? What did you do? You could say, what did you do before what you're doing now?

And I'm going to demonstrate this in a moment. Then once you've kind of spent some time talking about that, you just talk about what you're doing now. And that's literally just provide a commentary on what is happening now. Imagine you're on the telephone to someone and they say, what are you doing? You just describe what you're doing in this moment. And that involves communication.

you know, obviously describing your current sort of situation, but it could involve describing how you feel about things, you could talk about the weather, you could describe your surroundings.

And then when you've done that for a while, you can talk about what you're going to do next. OK, what are you going to do next after this particular moment? What are you going to do next? Do you have any plans for later? What's going to happen after this? And just talk about the future a little bit. You could talk about the sort of the future that is going to arrive soon. So like we did before, it could be the next few minutes or the next few hours.

or the next few days, the next few weeks, or the next few months if you like. You could talk about your plans for the summer holidays, whatever you want. There's really no right or wrong way of doing this. Again, the overall aim is just to let the English flow and to practice your fluency, okay? It's a good idea. Now,

Another aspect of this is that you should let your thoughts arrive. So this is almost like a meditative experience as well, to an extent, because in meditation, what we do is we kind of sit with ourselves and we let our thoughts arrive.

flow and we don't stop them. So if you just leave your thoughts to reach their logical conclusions and you don't stop them, you just kind of let go and don't impose your own judgments or your own control over things. You just kind of let

everything go. And in this exercise, that means that when an idea comes to you, you try to explain it and keep going. Keep explaining what you're thinking and let that thought continue until that basic thought has been concluded.

So you don't what you try not to do is have that negative mindset where an idea comes to you and you maybe start to explain it. And then you kind of think to yourself, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to talk about that.

Or I can't talk about that. No, you have to just let it go and try to express each thought to its logical conclusion before coming back to the main idea, which is what have you just done? What are you doing and what are you going to do next? OK, and I'm going to try and do that a bit. So no judgment, no self-editing and tangents. When those tangents arrive, meaning those moments where you get sidetracked,

and end up talking about a different subject than this main idea. When those tangents arrive, welcome them and explore every different avenue that you arrive as you go on your little journey of spoken English here. You could, while you're doing this, you could consider recording yourself. Okay, you could record yourself with your phone or your computer or something, and you could check it later, which could be a reflective exercise.

There's different modes that you can operate in when you're practicing your English. There could be the kind of, what's the word for it? Mode of correction or perfection, where you're trying to

perfect your accuracy in grammar or try to improve your specific bits of pronunciation or other things like that. So that sort of corrective mode, okay, there's that.

which maybe you're in when you're doing grammar exercises or when you're proofreading your writing or when you're doing writing and you're trying to make the sentences correct and you take time to focus on the accuracy and the specific words. But the skill that we're practicing here is a different one. It's more about flow, entering some sort of flow state where you are...

kind of working that for want of a better word, you're working that kind of muscle in your mind, which is responsible for fluency. Okay. And that's a really important one to work on because you've got, you know, often when you practice English, you are practicing a sort of

You know, a grammar muscle or something like that. And you take time to work on accuracy and make sure you're using the right form of these words and the right tense and the right sentence structure and stuff like that. And that's a sort of analytical state of processing language. But there's this other state, which is what I'm doing now is.

which is really a difficult thing to practice. And you can only really get better at it by practicing it again and again and again, I think. And that is the ability to think and speak at the same time. Because you've got your, let's say, you've got your grammar brain, right? The part of your mind that's responsible for understanding the rules of grammar and processing what is essentially like correct or incorrect English or what is normal English.

There's that brain, and then there's the speaking part of your mind, which is responsible for delivering English with your mouth, your vocal tract, your body, actually producing English. And sometimes those two brains, let's say, I mean, I'm trying to be creative in the way I describe this. Sometimes those two brains...

don't really connect with each other. The grammar part of your mind and the part responsible for speaking, especially when you're in a social situation, when there are other people around, those two things don't always connect, right? And we've all been in that situation where you can't quite get your words out. And that's because there is a sort of

I don't know how to describe it. There is some sort of line. There's some kind of little path, pathway or something that connects the processing part of the language, you know, in your brain where all the grammar rules and your understanding of what is correct English is stored. And then the actual productive part. And doing this exercise...

where you're just trying to freely speak and speak your thoughts and express yourself as you go. Doing this, I think, really probably works that pathway, helps to clear that pathway, helps to kind of make it easier for your brain to connect the language processing part with the productive part. And yes, it is a sort of meditative exercise, I think.

I mean, I'm speaking in sort of, I don't know, kind of made up terms here. This is not necessarily backed up by full research, all the things I'm talking about here. Although it is informed by...

all my experiences as an English teacher over the years and all of the academic reading and studying I've done about learning and practicing English. So, you know, it's kind of a mix of just my intuition for what is a good exercise in practicing your English and, you know, some of the things that I've just, I know to be true. So you could consider recording yourself and then checking it later. So the speaking part,

what I'm doing now, that's where you kind of liberate yourself. You switch off the editor and you just try to focus on fluency. And then later on, you could listen back to what you recorded and then you could...

take a more reflective or analytical approach and you could try to identify your strengths and the things that need to be improved and then you could try and work on those things. And it could be that, you know, you realise that you couldn't quite put into words those ideas you were having. You didn't know what the vocab was. So then you can take time to try to find the right phrases in English for those things and then record them

Right. Just make a note of them. Or you could listen to your pronunciation and realize where you were struggling to, um,

pronounce things and work on those things, right? So you could take time to correct yourself and then you could try doing it again after you've analysed it and sort of done a bit of research and looked at vocab and grammar and pronunciation or whatever. You could then try and do it again and try and express what you were saying again. You could also even try to transcribe what you said, like write it down, and then you've got a written version of it

Online software might be able to help you if you can upload your audio to some sort of online transcription service like otter.ai, for example. Most of them are paid services now, though. You could maybe use ChatGPT. I'm not sure if that's a possibility. Maybe if you speak into it while you're doing the exercise, maybe something like that.

And anyway, or you just listen back to your recording and write it out yourself. And then you've got a written version of what you said and you can read it and you could that might make it easier for you to analyze the English that you used and correct it, write it again and then re-read it.

read it out, maybe record yourself reading it out, maybe even just do the whole thing again without looking at what you wrote down. But just the act of analysing, correcting and thinking about what you did could help you to then, when you switch back into your open-minded fluency mode again, that you might just be in a better position to perhaps do the things better than what you did before.

OK, so you could if you want to help you do this, you could write down a few little ideas, just a couple of words or phrases for some of the things you want to talk about.

You could think about, you know, before you start your speaking, you could think about a few ideas in advance. So what have I been doing? What have I just done? Just note a couple of things down. What am I doing now? Note down a couple of ideas. What am I going to do? Just note down a couple of ideas.

Just so that you've got a bit of structure to work with, but the rest of it, you just make it all up as you go along. And you certainly must not write a script for this exercise. Okay, no script, because that's not the point. It's not a writing exercise. This is a speaking exercise.

Okay, so that's kind of what I'm doing now, in a sense. And that's usually the spirit of these rambling episodes, just to talk spontaneously. And I've set you a task there, which is hopefully to inspire you to try and do the same thing as a way to practice your spoken fluency. But here we are in the episode, maybe...

about 20 minutes in already. And as well as me setting you this speaking task, I do want to give you a nice listening resource with this episode, as usual. The purpose of this

as always, is to help you listen to more English. And there are lots of benefits, I think, to extensive listening. I talked about them in a few episodes ago at the beginning of the year. I've talked about the benefits of doing lots of listening plenty of times on this podcast. And

But a stream of consciousness episode, a rambling episode like this, I hope makes it a bit easier for you to achieve that. Basically getting lots of listening into your life. I wonder if speaking spontaneously like this is kind of easier to follow. I wonder if it also is perhaps even...

more engaging than listening to scripted speech. I've talked about this before as well. And I think that, I mean, I guess that it is in a way because maybe listening to me speaking spontaneously sort of

is easier to follow because you kind of lock into my thought process. Do you know what I mean? Again, I'm speaking in layman's terms here, meaning I'm not speaking in sort of strictly scientific terms. I'm just speculating, really. But I wonder if as I try to link my thoughts up and express the ideas which are arriving in my head moment by moment, maybe it's easier for you to kind of follow

what I'm saying as well, because there is a sense of a natural rhythm of mental processing being converted into spoken English. And maybe it's easier for your mental processing, your natural mental rhythm to kind of fit in with mine.

I don't know, but hopefully it will be something engaging to listen to, which allows you to really lock in. And hopefully I can hold your attention with an episode like this, which is the whole point, you know, with that sort of.

engaged mode of listening where you are really paying attention to every single word as it arrives. You're really locked in. You're not kind of half listening, but you're really sort of locked into what I'm saying, following it all very closely. I'm sure most

That that is a more effective form of listening for language learning, right? I'm really quite sure about that, that the more engaged, the more sort of closely involved in what you're listening to, the better. It probably leaves more of an imprint. It probably...

allows you to remember even subconsciously things like sentence structures and collocations and things like that. So that is the idea. I hope to inspire you to do some of your own fluency practice, but also to engage you

in some really effective, natural listening with an episode like this. So I guess I could probably do what I mentioned there, which is talk about what I've just done, what I'm doing and what I'm going to do, even though I've kind of talked a little bit about what I'm doing already. But anyway, so what have I just done? Well, I should say...

And entering into this next bit in the spirit of the exercise I just mentioned, which means there are no rules, really. And I have to follow every thought process, every idea and tangent to its logical conclusion without blocking myself and stuff. So what have I just done? Well, actually, it's the morning as I'm recording this. It's a Monday morning in mid-February. And...

The weather is lovely at the moment. The beautiful pale blue sky, clear skies, lovely late winter sunshine. And in Paris, where I live, just in case you didn't know, I do have to mention that sometimes because I get quite a lot of comments from people saying, oh, I love listening to your podcast. I'm going to be in London next month and it would be amazing to be able to meet you. And I...

you know i have to say well that's nice but i don't live in london uh anymore i live in paris anyway so uh yeah it's lovely that you get this beautiful light at this time of year in paris and i think that actually sort of this time of year late winter is one of my favorite times of year weirdly enough even though it is winter and it's cold um i like the freshness and the kind of um

crispness of the air and yeah lovely sunshine so that's nice that always makes me feel much better getting some winter sunshine on my face and the clear blue sky it's not too hot just right just great um so anyway this morning yeah i took my son to creche

Kresh is the daycare centre and that was really nice. I mean, he's happy to go, which is great. And so I dropped him off and he was...

Happy to arrive, said hello to the ladies that look after him there and the other kids that he can play with. And it's wonderful. He gets to basically play all day long. There are toys everywhere. There are other little kids for him to play with. They listen to songs and music. They sing. They go outside and play on the slide and the climbing frames. And he has a wonderful time. And I spent the weekend with him.

This weekend, because my wife and our daughter went away for a friend's birthday weekend outside of Paris and my son and I stayed together in Paris. So we spent the weekend together, which was, you know, lovely sort of father son bonding time. And yeah, he is nearly 18 months old now.

And he's doing fine. He's a toddler. You know, that's the word we use to describe a little child that's recently learned to walk. He's a toddler and he's pretty sure, pretty steady on his feet. He sort of runs around or kind of trots around the place. And it's very interesting observing his development and he's starting to speak more and more.

His vocabulary is expanding all the time. He's starting to say please and thank you, which is adorable. Sometimes he has to be prompted. You know, you have to say, say please or say thank you. And he says, you know, you say, say please. And he says, that's his version of please and other things. It's interesting also to see how he's different to our to our daughter and trying to identify what his personality traits are.

It's hard to see really at this early age, but he's, you know, he can be shy sometimes. And then at other times he's really confident. He's very playful, but then sometimes seems to be quite serious as well, where everyone around him is trying to make him laugh and he can be a bit sort of serious. Where his sister is definitely very creative sometimes.

He is certainly at this stage quite destructive. I don't know if that is a boy thing, and I don't want to kind of impose certain preconceptions onto him because, you know, we interpret our children's behaviours through certain kinds of...

I don't know, lenses of perception where we see a child's behaviour and we kind of even subconsciously reward behaviour that we think is appropriate for a boy and we reward behaviour that we think is appropriate for a girl. I try not to do that. I'm trying to keep an open mind so I'm not kind of subconsciously encouraging him to behave in a certain way and imprinting certain kind of preconceived ideas of what he should be and just trying to let him...

be himself. But I've definitely noticed that he is more, I guess, sort of typically male in his behaviour. So he's quite physical. He fights a lot more.

He struggles and fights. So if, for example, if I'm trying to get him dressed or change him from his pyjamas into his clothes, there's a lot more struggling and fighting than there was with his sister. He seems to be more physical. So rather than sitting quietly for longer periods of time and playing with things or looking at books, he likes to go around and climb up on chairs and

Um, and yeah, he's quite, quite destructive. He likes smashing things. He often throws, uh, objects around the place. And, um,

Yeah, and he, I have to say, he does hit and scratch sometimes, which is quite normal, I understand, for toddlers that they do, you know, obviously little kids, they cry, they might throw food and they might sort of hit and scratch. And he does that. In fact, I've got like a little scratch on my nose sometimes.

Because he took a swipe at me over the weekend and his nail scratched the bridge of my nose and left a little scratch. So I've got a small scab on the bridge of my nose from where he swiped me. And that's obviously not great when your own child, who you want to just cuddle and kiss and stuff, if he's frustrated, he'll just slap you across the face. And it's almost...

It's obviously bad and you say, no, don't do that. No scratching, no hitting, don't pull hair. That's very naughty. No, no, no. You know, you do all that sort of thing and I don't know how much of a difference it really makes. But sometimes it takes you by surprise. You'll hold him in your arms and maybe you've just picked him up because, you know, he's trying to grab something.

a plant in a plant pot or something and you say no no no and you grab that and he looks at you for a second and you know it's coming you know he looks at you and there's a small pause and then suddenly thwack he'll slap you over the head and then you have to tell him off and stuff like that but it's it's almost impressive i don't know if that's a good thing to say but it's almost impressive because of the accuracy he's actually quite good you know he delivers a slap with

Surprising accuracy. Bam! Like that. His hand-eye coordination is impressive. He might be a good sportsman one day. And he does high-fives. So you'll say high-five and whack! He gives you a really good solid high-five. Um...

So, yes, life is interesting with this little guy. He's funny and he is adorable. But, yes, he has his destructive and slightly, what's the word for it, violent side.

Which I understand is quite normal for a little kid of his age. And I don't think we've got some sort of violent psychopath on our hands. But who knows? We'll see how he gets on. His sister, on the other hand, she's doing great. And obviously she was in that episode. Oh, my timer.

Right, everyone, I need to stop and take a big swig of water and I'll talk about my son's sister, also known as our daughter, our daughter, not my son. Anyway, I'll talk about her in a moment. I'm just going to drink some water now. A reminder for everyone listening, don't forget to hydrate. You have to drink plenty of water every day. So here we go.

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If you haven't noticed, it's winter. And now more than ever, I'm in need of a little treat. That's why I joined First Leaf, a wine club that delivers my favorite types of wine right to my door. Because there's really no better treat than a glass of delicious red, white, or rosé. So go ahead and treat yourself to world-class wines from First Leaf. ♪

Go to tryfirstleaf.com slash winter to get your first six bottles for just $44.95 with free shipping. That's T-R-Y-F-I-R-S-T-L-E-A-F dot com slash winter.

Hello, this is Luke from the future. I thought that I would just take this moment while me from the past is busy taking a big drink of water. So while I'm there drinking loads of water, I thought that I would quickly interrupt here in order to let you know about my friend's new podcast. A friend of mine has started a new podcast and he interviewed me in an episode. So just in case you felt that you hadn't heard enough from me, you could listen to it. So let me tell you about it. And actually, it's also a little chance to

for me to just teach you a phrasal verb as well while we're at it.

So hopefully me from the past is going to be okay just constantly drinking from this bottle of water. I hope I'll be all right. I think it's okay. I'm not going to drown or anything. Can you drown in a bottle of water? I don't know. Depends on the size of it. Anyway, so my friend Alex Love, who's been on this podcast a few times actually, especially in the earlier days,

Alex is a friend of mine that I know from doing stand-up comedy in London and he started a podcast which is called The Following Through Podcast and it's with his friend Siobhan Dodd. So Alex and Siobhan...

In episodes of the Following Through podcast, they talk about overcoming challenges in difficult circumstances. They interview different guests and talk about their experiences of overcoming difficult challenges, following through on the things that they've attempted to achieve in their lives. So there's that, plus stories about pooing your pants as well. Yes, I did just say that, stories about pooing yourself.

And at this point, I need to explain this phrasal verb following through, to follow through.

It's quite a good phrasal verb and it's worth learning. We've got the normal definition, a couple of standard definitions, let's say, and then a kind of slang, slightly rude, depending on how you feel about the subject. But there's also a slang, rude, informal meaning of the expression to follow through as well. Maybe you can guess what that means already if you don't already know. So to follow through,

The first definition of this would be to kind of complete a commitment to if you start something and you then complete it, that's to follow through. For example, you know, you start a project and, you know, you have to follow through on your commitment or you have to follow through on your plans to do it. Right. Another example, he promised to help me move house, but he never followed through.

If you want to improve your fitness, you need to follow through with your workout routine. So you might decide that you need to get fit, you need to start doing exercise. So you plan a routine of doing exercise every day, but then you never follow through on it, meaning you never actually do it. So that's to kind of complete an action all the way through the process from start to finish, including the bits that are difficult.

So you can see that the title of the podcast refers to that, you know, talking about finishing things that you've started and completing things despite challenges. The title of the podcast is quite clever because it's a little joke. Also, in sport, we use the phrase follow through to talk about actions in sport. For example, games.

hitting something or swinging at something, right? For example, in golf, you swing the golf club to hit the ball. And then the bit after you've hit the ball where the golf club continues swinging, that is the follow through as well. It could be a noun, a follow through. So to follow through.

When you're playing tennis, you swing the racket and you follow through. You hit the ball, but you follow through. So your arm continues swinging. And that part of the swing can be a very important part of the overall swing, right? The follow through or the moment when you follow through. Similarly, in boxing or martial arts, you don't, when you punch, you don't just stop when you make contact. Right?

But you follow through with your fist and your arm and your shoulder to create a more powerful punch, right? That's to follow through in sports.

But then this rude meaning, and remember I mentioned pooing yourself. Yes, and it does get a bit disgusting. The rude meaning of follow through is, and I quote from the Wiktionary, and this is the Wikipedia free dictionary, which is the only dictionary I could find that actually included this definition, this third definition. This rude definition is to defecate unintentionally.

meaning to poo unintentionally, so by accident or by mistake, as a result of something else. For example, if you fart or if you cough or sneeze and a bit of poo comes out, or if you fart especially, but then, you know, in the same way that your arm continues through the swing, it doesn't stop there. The fart comes out and then a little bit of poo comes out as well. I know it's disgusting. It's a

I mean, you know, it happens to all of us at some point, doesn't it? You know, we all follow through sometimes. So that's the other meaning of follow through. So you can see that the podcast and I'm devoting a lot of time to describing this, but, you know, it's worth it for learn just for learning. Right. To learn this phrasal verb. I hope I haven't drowned. I hope me from the past is OK. Still drinking from this bottle of water anyway. So that, you know, that's the title of the podcast following through.

stories and descriptions of continuing with commitments despite challenges plus stories of pooing yourself and that's right every guest at the end of each interview gives a story a dramatic story about a time when they have pooed their pants and so if you want to hear a story about how

Well, it's complicated. I'll let you listen to the episode if you want to. The Following Through podcast, you'll find a link on the page for this episode on my website. You can listen to the episode there. That's the Following Through podcast by my friend Alex Love and also Siobhan Dodd. Available now. All right. Now, let's go back to me from the past, still drinking from that bottle of water. Here we go. Lovely, cool, cool water.

This is mineral water, natural mineral water from somewhere in France where they have sort of volcanic rock which filters the water. That is lovely, lovely, fresh. I say fresh, I mean cold mineral water. I would drink the tap water, but I don't have a tap in this room, so I have to drink bottled water. Anyway.

Right. So, yeah, our daughter, she's doing fine. And of course, she was on the podcast a couple of episodes ago. And a lot of people commented lovely things saying that she's great and that it was really nice to listen to her and that they're impressed by her English and stuff like that. And yeah, I mean, it's really good. I think her English is doing really well. In fact, her teacher recently said that she thought that she was

more of a native English speaker than a native French speaker, or that she definitely seems to be really like a native English speaker, which is great. Obviously, I feel very proud of that, of course, because I'm trying to make sure that both my kids, you know, my wife and I have both, we both wanted our daughter and now our son to, um,

have English which is comparable to that of a kid who lived in England. That's very difficult to achieve, but that's always what we've tried to do. And so I got a few comments asking about our approach to the bilingualism of our kids. And I've done a couple of episodes about this before, so I won't go into full detail about it now.

But I will let you know that I've done a couple of other episodes about this in the past. And what are they? Let me just check my episode archive on my website so I can tell you specific episode numbers. Bilingual, bilingual. I'm searching for the word bilingual. That might be the way to do it. OK. All right. So first of all.

Before Our Daughter Was Born, I did do an episode about raising bilingual children. That's episode 685 called Raising Bilingual Children, Alex and His Daughter Alice. So in that one, I spoke to a lepster called Alex who has been raising his daughter to speak English. He's basically spent all his time speaking English to her.

And we explore the subject of how to raise a child to speak English. I talk to Alex. He's an English teacher. English is not his first language. And in the episode, we talk about how he's been speaking exclusively in English to his four-year-old daughter since she was born. And we talk about how it's been going. So there's that one. There's also an episode I did with my wife. Where is that?

Right. OK. Episode six, six, four. So actually, the one with Alex, the one with Alex was after we'd had our daughter. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Episode six hundred and sixty four was called Lockdown Ramble with my wife. And we talk about lots of different things. But we do spend some time in that episode talking about our approach to lockdown.

raising our daughter to be bilingual. And we talk about it there. And there was also an episode with Bree from into the story more recently. Let's see if I can find it. Uh,

Brie Acy from Into The Story. Where is it? Okay, that was episode 848 called The Superpower of Starting English Early with Kids. And Brie is an English teacher with a background in psychology, especially in child development. And she gives lots of advice and encouragement for parents who want to help their children to learn English from an early age. Basically, for us...

You know, there's various different approaches to raising bilingual children. For example, there's a one parent, one language or a location-based approach where you speak one language in a certain place and another language in another place and things like that. And there are also basic principles that I think are really important. Those principles are that, first of all, the child needs a good reason to use the language that you want them to learn, right? They need a really good reason to do it.

And usually that good reason is because they have a relationship with someone, a meaningful relationship with someone in that language. Okay, so those are two really important principles. A good reason to use the language and a meaningful relationship, at least one in that language. In terms of one parent, one language, this is a common approach where one parent always speaks one language to that child and then maybe the other parent speaks another language. So

For example, Alex speaks English to his daughter and Alex's wife speaks her first language to their daughter. Okay. Now that

I think works best when the parent speaking the other language, let's say it's English, maybe in your situation, when the parent speaking the other language, the second language, only speaks that language and is really quite strict about that, that they only ever speak in that language with their child. Now, obviously, that's a decision that's quite a big decision to take where you think, am I really going to have...

Is my relationship with this kid only going to be in English? And am I not going to have a relationship with them in my first language and be able to share all of that with them? This is a decision that you have to make.

And because if the child knows that you speak the other language and if you do speak your first language with them sometimes, then the child is just going to default to that first language and it's going to take away a lot of the effectiveness of doing it. So, you know, just speaking English with them sometimes, it's good. Don't get me wrong. It's good. It's definitely beneficial. But to get the full benefit of that one parent, one language situation, you do need to

almost exclusively speak that language with the child. Now for me, my lack of French is actually a huge advantage in this situation, which is one of my many excuses for not improving my French that I'm doing it for the kids. But that is an advantage because I always just speak English with them and my daughter

you know, knows that I don't really speak French. And so she just instinctively speaks English to me. She doesn't speak French at me. She used to when she was younger, she would come out of school or something and she would sort of speak French to me. And I, and it didn't work, you know, it just didn't work. She couldn't really have that relationship with me in French. And I would always reply to her in English. And I'd sort of say, I don't know what you mean, even if sometimes I did, to be honest, know what she meant. Uh, but it would always be in English. So

Strictly adhering to the one parent, one language thing is one way of doing it. And then the location-based thing, which is where, for example, your home might be an English zone and then the rest of the world might be another language. But again, that requires a decision and it requires a commitment.

But anyway, just talking about us and our situation. So, yeah, it's a bit of one parent, one language. Although my wife speaks English when we're when we're sort of when we're all together. English is the predominant language.

So, maybe actually this is the best way of doing it. We've got a combination of one parent, one language and location-based. We actually do a combination of the two. So, obviously I speak English all the time to the kids and I speak a lot to them. You know, I make a point of being very kind of talkative with them, engaging them in conversation, trying to keep the conversation going. A lot of commentary when we're out and about. I'm talking about stuff, describing things, asking them questions.

you know, always sort of pointing things out, explaining things and just really attempting to colour their world with language, you know. So that, taking a very active approach and trying to be, trying to make everything meaningful through English. So I'm always talking to them in English.

And then location-based, which is the way we think about it, is that we've got like a predominant language and a secondary language, like a primary language and a secondary language in locations. So in the home, English is the primary language, okay, where most of the time it's in English. So when we talk together, we speak English. I speak English to my wife and she speaks English to me, which is also, I think, really important because the child...

listens to conversations in English as well. And it means that the overall atmosphere is in English. But then French at home is the secondary language where my wife and our daughter will speak French to each other quite a lot, especially if I'm not there, they'll start chatting in French. Or sometimes when we're together as a family, things happen in French and I'll speak a bit of French and

even ask my daughter these days to help me with that. Um, but most of the time at home it's English. And for example, I, I put the English radio on quite a lot. We listened to radio five live. We listened to radio, BBC radio four. We listened to BBC radio six music. So, you know, a lot of English is going on. A

So English is the predominant language, French is the secondary language. But outside of the home, to a large extent, French is the predominant language and English becomes the secondary language. So at school, a lot of it is in French. But actually, another part of our story is that we've managed to get our daughter into a school that has a native English section, which is where they have

Twice a week, they spend half a day in a class where she is with other kids who are kind of the same as her. Other kids who've got probably at least one native English speaker as a parent. And the teacher speaks English and they do the sort of English school curriculum. OK, so it's all in English and all the kids are able to operate in English.

at a similar level. And that is really important as well. I know it's difficult for every, you know, you might not be able to get the same thing that we have with all these different conditions. It was difficult to get her into that school. We tried hard to get her in and there was a process involved and stuff. But it's not for you if you're thinking about how to raise your kids to have, to be comfortable and confident in English.

I think that anything you do is beneficial. So it's not a case of either we raise our kids to be perfectly bilingual, like a native speaker with the conditions that Luke has just explained, or we don't do it at all. It's not a

it's not a hundred percent or nothing. I think any input you do with your kids, any kind of English that you incorporate into their lives, anything at all is beneficial. So even if you're doing half of what I'm doing with my, with my kids, that's a whole 50% of English that they'll be getting, which is really, really advantageous. You know, I know French families who, um,

Both parents are French, the kids are French, everything's French, but the parents have done various things to incorporate English into the lives of their children.

Even if it's just once a week, sending them off to the British Council where they spend time in English and do lots of things in English, play games in English and do reading and listening and other things in English, or where they have a nanny who speaks English to the kids, or where the parents spend time speaking in English with the kids too. They have English books knocking around. They listen to English audio stuff. And all of those things definitely help. And I know lots of...

French kids and young adults who've grown up in environments like that and they are definitely better than you know significantly better than kids who didn't do those things you know and it doesn't matter that they might have English that sounds a bit French maybe they've got a bit of French pronunciation maybe some of their sentence structure or some bits of vocab are

are influenced by French, you know, it's not like native level English, let's say, but the confidence, the fluency they have and the ease that they have, the way that they can operate in English is great. And that is maybe ultimately the most important thing, right? That you've got to think of English as being a functional thing and you want to raise your kids well.

to be able to operate in English comfortably. It doesn't matter really if they don't sound like they are from the UK. It doesn't necessarily matter that much. What's more important is that

You allow your kids to be familiar with English to an extent that it's not like this really foreign obstacle they have to deal with where they, you know, maybe it's not as fluent as their first language, but it's not completely alien to them.

So anything you can do with your kids in English, including speaking to them, even if your English isn't perfect. And this, again, is what the linguist David Crystal said when I asked him this question. He said, yeah, anything you do with your kids, even if your English isn't perfect, it all helps to put them on that kind of ladder. You know, it gives them a head start. So don't worry about it being perfect. This is a thing that keeps coming up, isn't it?

that you don't have to wait to be perfect before you operate in English. In fact, anything you do in English is ultimately beneficial. So anyway, I wanted to mention that because I got some comments from people asking about our approach to our daughter's English after that episode.

So, yes. So I brought my son to Kresh this morning and then wandered back down to to my pod castle here and then, you know, climbed the many stairs.

into this room, set myself up and then just decided to start this episode. And here we are. This is it. It's happening now. Actually, I'm going to have to go before long because in 15 minutes, I'm going to have to leave and go and do a band practice. We practice at lunchtimes.

because that's actually the most convenient time for us to practice. So I've got to go in about 15 minutes, I think. So I don't know, maybe I'll stop this in 15 minutes and that'll be the end of the episode and I will have done, you know, a good hour. Or maybe I'll continue when I get back, I'm not sure. Going back to...

comments on recent episodes. I hope you've enjoyed the episodes I've done this year so far. There was obviously the first episode of the year, Learning English with Luke's English Podcast in 2025, where I kind of filled you up full of inspiration, I hope, and comments about how you can improve your English with this podcast. I think the spirit, the sort of learning English spirit was really strong.

at the beginning of the year when everyone started the year with the best of intentions and that episode got a lot of attention and lots of positive comments and stuff like that. So I hope that you're still...

Kind of carrying on with your learning of English and still listening to these episodes with the same level of enthusiasm and positivity that you did right at the beginning of the year with the first episode. What else did I do? There was the Sherlock Holmes story, another Sherlock Holmes story, The Blue Carbuncle, which people seem to like. And...

I'll do more Sherlock Holmes stories on the podcast, but I do realise that I need to do more modern stories in episodes. Classical literature like Arthur Conan Doyle is great, but the language is a bit old-fashioned. One of the reasons I do Sherlock Holmes stories is that, first of all, they are short stories, even though the episodes often are several hours long.

But they are actually short stories, which is doable. I mean, sort of it's feasible for an episode of a podcast.

But also because those stories are in the public domain, which means that there's no copyright issue associated with them. Because Arthur Conan Doyle, he died over 70 years ago. And those stories, yeah, they're in the public domain. So I can freely record those episodes without any issue of copyright infringement or something like that. So that's kind of why I do it. And also because they're just great stories. They're really good fun.

and I really enjoy them. Other people seem to enjoy them too. But yes, I will be focusing on trying to do more modern stories as well, including things I've come up with myself and stuff like that. So, learning English with a short story. You'll get some more short story episodes coming as we go through the year, but I'm going to try to make sure that we have plenty of modern, up-to-date English in those episodes as well.

So the adventure of the blue carbuncle, the Sherlock Holmes one, which was about that blue precious stone which ended up hidden inside a goose. At the end of the episode, I asked people to write comments with the word bird in the comment section.

Which is what I do at the end of episodes sometimes. I'll say, make sure you use this password or this keyword to show that you listened all the way to the end of the story or the episode. So quite a lot of people left comments with the word bird in their comment. And I got one from...

Luke from Poland, and this is the second time I've read out one of his comments. Luke from Poland, is that your real name? I don't know. But anyway, Luke from Poland wrote this, and this comment's got lots of little idioms in it. So he wrote this, I got up early this morning because the early bird catches the worm.

So, let me read the comment and then I'll go back through it and explain some things. "I got up early this morning because the early bird catches the worm and I listened to the next episode of Luke's English Podcast. I could listen to it later or I could have listened to it later, but I thought a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A little bird told me that this is one of the best podcasts about English.

Listening to it is like killing two birds with one stone. I can learn English and enjoy a good story. Then I decided to write a post on Luke's English Podcast's website, knowing that it will be read by the community of listeners like me. It's good to know that there are other people that struggle to learn English. As they say, birds of a feather flock together.

Yeah, okay. So that's a nice comment. A few little expressions in there. The early bird catches the worm. The early bird catches the worm. This is a saying in English, which you might have an equivalent for in your language. The early bird catches the worm basically means that, you know, it's good to get up early. If you do something early, get up early, you have an advantage. And the early bird catches the worm, meaning the bird that

I mean, have you ever seen that early in the morning? You look out at your garden and there's a little bird sitting on the grass and it's pulling up a worm out of the ground because the early bird catches the worm. I suppose this is because first thing in the morning when the ground is kind of wet, that the worms in the ground are often to be found near the surface. And so birds that

try to catch worms early are more likely to catch them because the worms are closer to the surface earlier in the morning. So the early bird catches the worm and if you want to achieve something, get up early, start early. A bit like I did this morning. A little, yeah, he said, I could have listened to it later, but I thought a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Wow. I suppose this comes from hunting, which is a pity, really, because, you know, as a bird lover, I don't like to, you know, spend too long talking about hunting and killing birds. But anyway, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A bush is a kind of plant, like a small tree. So if you are hunting for birds and you find that there are two of them in this bush, that's obviously good because these are two birds that you might be able to catch.

But a bird in the hand, meaning a bird that you have caught, is worth a lot more. It's more valuable to you than the potential of catching two.

So he's saying, I thought I would listen. I could have listened to it later, but I decided that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, meaning something that you have now is worth a lot more than something that you might or could have later. So he decided to actually listen to it rather than just wait until later. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And then he said, a little bird told me that this is one of the best podcasts about English. So that phrase, a little bird told me, is something that

An expression that means, I guess I heard or...

That's an odd expression. A little bird told me. It's a bit like saying someone told me or I heard, but you don't say specifically how you heard it or who it was who told you. So it just means like I got this information from an anonymous source or I got this information from it doesn't really matter where or I just heard or I found out from someone.

Yeah, a little bird told me. So it's a bit like, you know, you can imagine another situation. Imagine you're at work and you see a colleague of yours and your colleague is leaving the company. He's going to leave and move to a different company. So you say, oh, a little bird told me that you'll be leaving. So this just means I found out that you'll be leaving or someone told me and, you know, I'm not going to say who it was.

Just a little phrase. A little bird told me that this is one of the best podcasts about English or a little bird told me that you're leaving. Listening to the podcast is like killing two birds with one stone, which is a quite well-known idiom, which means when you achieve two things by doing one thing, right? You achieve two things at the same time. You kind of do one thing, but you achieve two things at the same time.

So a bit like going for a good walk while listening to Luke's English podcast. You're killing two birds with one stone. You're getting some exercise, but also you're doing some listening practice. So that's killing two birds with one stone. I can learn English and enjoy a good story.

Right. Then I decided to write a post on Luke's English podcast website, knowing that it will be read by the community of listeners like me. It's good to know there are other people that struggle to learn English. As they say, birds of a feather flock together. Birds of a feather flock together. It just means similar people come together and become a group, like to spend time together. People who are similar like to

uh, people who are similar find each other and like to be close to each other and form little communities. Um, yeah, birds of a feather flock together. So yeah, if you do go to the comment section on my website, you can see other people like you who have gathered together and might be sharing their comments and thoughts and things like that.

So that was Luke from Poland with a few little bird related idioms. And also Mia wrote on the same episode another comment, which was this. A little bird told me that Luke had published another wonderful episode. There's that idiom again. So I rushed to grab my phone and headphones and off I went all the way through it in one go. Well done, Mia. You listened to the entire episode all in one go.

So that was nice. I mean, I've got other episodes that I could mention that I've published. There was the Amber and Paul one, which was fun with that horrendous rat story from Paul and various other funny moments and things like that. The poor rat. But it survived. It survived the story, thankfully. Thankfully? I don't know. It depends how you feel about rats, really, doesn't it? What other episodes have I done this year so far? Yeah, um...

The Animal Vocabulary Quiz with my daughter, which I mentioned. From Comedy to Cozy Crime with Ian, which was probably more challenging because I just think that when I'm in conversation with guests like that, it's probably more difficult for you to follow. But I published a transcript for that and my long introduction with comprehension questions

hopefully helped, although I know how some people feel about my introductions. They say, just get to the point, for goodness sake, get on with it. But there's method in my madness, and if I do a long introduction, it's for a good reason. It's because I'm setting the stage for the rest of the episode. Yes. What else? And today, Monday, the 17th of February, this is the day that I'm publishing the Words of the Year episode with Amber.

The audio was published earlier this morning. By the way, listeners, the audio episodes get published a good, uh, how many, uh, eight, nine, 10, 11, two, three, about six hours before the video versions. So if you, so the early bird catches the worm, if you want to get, um, episodes, uh, as soon as they're published, then subscribe to the podcast, the audio version of the podcast in a podcast app of your choice. Um,

Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or one of those other podcast apps that you can download on your phone. If you subscribe there, that's the quickest way to get early access, let's say, to episodes. I publish the audio versions half a day before the

Half a day? Quarter of a day? Six hours? What is that? Is that half a day or quarter of a day? Technically a quarter. Anyway, I published the audio episodes before the video one. So if you want to get them as soon as they're published, then subscribe to the audio podcast in a podcast app on your phone. And so, yeah, the Words of the Year episode was published this morning. The video version hasn't been published yet. So I don't know what people think of it. I haven't had any comments or responses to it. But I hope that you found it interesting.

And really, that was a chance to kind of have some conversation on various interesting current cultural themes, you know, like the threat of AI and the ticketing, the Oasis concert ticketing scandal and whatnot.

We had a tangent about horror films and horror literature, fantasy literature, and all those other things. So anyway, I hope that you found that interesting. As I said, I don't know what people thought of that. So that's what has... Well, that's what I have done in terms of the...

recent episodes. For my exercise, for my fluency exercise, I should be talking about what I'm doing now. But I feel like I've done that. I feel like I've kind of integrated those ideas throughout the episode. Maybe I can end the episode by talking about what I'm going to do, the plans for upcoming content.

Actually, I just realized there was something I wanted to say about conversation episodes. I suppose this relates to the upcoming content as well. So like the Ian Moore episode, the last one, the one before last, I guess, episode 921, I think that was. I know those are more challenging to listen to.

And I wonder if some people just kind of become skeletons while listening to those or just can't take it or maybe find that they're not quite as compelling as episodes with a story or something like that. But I do those episodes with guests for several reasons. One is because I think it's really important for you to listen to conversations where I'm talking to someone else. It's not just a kind of solo ramble like this.

You know, I think it's really important for your English to listen to natural interactions between people in conversation, even if it is a bit more complicated. Also, personally, I find that interesting. It's an interesting way to live my life as a podcaster.

I like to have guests. You know, that's one of the interesting things for me about having this podcast platform is that I can interview people and have these really interesting conversations and really explore different topics and get into conversations.

you know, quite deep conversations with people. I just really enjoy doing that. Um, so yeah, so that's, I guess sort of my justification for those episodes, even if they might be more, uh, difficult to follow. And I'll always be doing, uh, a variety of different things, um, of solo episodes and episodes with guests. So in terms of upcoming content, I kind of want to keep it a surprise, uh,

You know, I want it to be a surprise where every week you don't know what you're going to get, you know, because Luke's English podcast is like a box of chocolates.

You don't know what you're going to get. As Forrest Gump said, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. Not strictly true, Forrest, because we know that you're going to get chocolates. And a lot of chocolate boxes actually have pictures on the back of the box that specifically state exactly which chocolates will be in the box. But anyway, you get the idea. I want to keep it a surprise where you don't know exactly what you're going to get every time. But I'll give you a sort of overall idea.

idea that basically there's i've got how many episodes in the pipeline right now it's possibly about 10 episodes in the pipeline that are in various stages of preparation and development i've recorded a few conversations with people so you've got a few conversation episodes coming including a returning guest some family connected things and walk and talk stuff as well

The Medieval Museum. I mentioned it a few times that it has been a nightmare to edit that recording, but I've almost finished. So you should be getting the Medieval Museum Walk and Talk with Amber and Paul and Paul's brother, Kyle, making his first appearance on the podcast.

The audio and video versions are slightly different. The audio version is a bit longer with more interruptions from me explaining bits of medieval history and stuff. So a history podcast about the medieval era that is coming.

and other things. I'll let you discover it as it comes. But basically, I'm going to be mixing it up between an episode on my own where I'm doing a ramble or I'm telling a story or some other thing on my own and then episodes with guests where it'll be more or less one week on my own, one week with a guest or two, one week on my own, one week with a guest or two. And we'll go like that for a few weeks. That's the idea. I'm a few weeks ahead of myself.

It's probably very late in the episode for me to remind everyone about LEP Premium, but if you are a Premium subscriber, let me just remind you again that Premium Series 66 is available for you. That's the most recent series, so if you weren't aware, that is available for Premium subscribers. Now, a four-part series covering...

The fascinating subjects of phrasal verbs and their noun equivalents. Because this is an interesting thing in English. Obviously, you know about phrasal verbs, but a lot of those phrasal verbs have compound noun equivalents. For example, to break in, to break in, to break in or to break into a building and a break in. Right. So there was a break in at the building and some some thieves broke in.

That's probably quite an easy one, but there are loads of these sorts of phrases and it's interesting to look at the fact that these kinds of nouns are often quite dynamic. They have a kind of dynamic, punchy sort of feel to them, which is why they're often used in the titles of movies and novels and things. Also, there are differences in pronunciation to break in and a break in. You can see that this word stress is different.

So, lots of vocab to learn from the series. Also, lots of pronunciation practice to do where you can practice

repeating lines of a story after me that contains a story that contains a lot of these bits of vocab and plenty of other things to a four part series P66 available for premium subscribers. Now, check your episode list. If you have added LEP premium to a podcast app on your phone, just have a look back through the list and you should see P66 parts one and two, which were published between episode number 906

and 921. That's when P66 parts one and two were published. And then parts three and four were published between episode 921 and 922. And you'll see them there. Links for the PDFs and video versions in the show notes for those. If you are a premium subscriber and you haven't added the LEP premium to a podcast app on your phone, what are you doing? You really have to do that. Go to teacherluke.co.uk slash account.com

And then just click listen in podcast app and follow the steps. You will need a podcast app on your phone first. Before you do that, I recommend Pocket Casts. Just search the app store on your phone for that. And if you are not a premium subscriber, then, you know, have you considered signing up? It could be a great thing to do in your life because you'll get all these extra episodes every month. Normally a whole premium series every single month.

For example, recently, that's four episodes, you know, part one, two, three and four of P66. If you want information about LEP Premium, just go to teacherluke.co.uk slash premium info.

All right. I think that's it now. That's the end of this episode. I am both hungry and suddenly in a rush because I've got to go and go to this band practice. I'm going to be playing music for an hour and a half. All right. So let me just go back to the very beginning where I was talking about this rambling exercise for fluency. Let me just encourage you once more to do that. So what have you just done?

What are you doing now and what are you going to do? And can you talk about that for 10 minutes without stopping? But if you do stop and have to think, that's all right. No worries. But try to let the English flow. When you get to a point where you're blocked, find a way to get around. So when you find that tree in the path, that fallen tree in front of you, you've got to climb over it. You've got to find an alternative route to get around it.

or you blow it up with some high explosives, whatever you need to do to keep going on your journey, just keep the English flowing. And then you can, you know, analyze it later and look at ways to correct it and improve it and expand your vocab afterwards. But just try and do a fluency exercise. It could be a really good way to improve your English. I hope that you've enjoyed listening to this rambling episode.

and that you have a lovely morning, afternoon, evening or night, wherever you are in podcast land. Thank you so much for listening. Leave your comments under this episode. Something about the word tree. OK, something about a tree.

Because remember, I just explained this image of you trying to go on your exploration through the forest or something, and there's a huge tree that's fallen down in your path. And this tree represents some sort of mental block in your English fluency and the fact that you've got to find some way of getting around it, getting over it, getting under it.

blowing it to smithereens with high explosives, whatever it is that you need to do, chopping it up into firewood and selling it. I don't know. But mention something about a tree in your comment just to prove that you have made it thus far without turning into a skeleton with headphones on. Thank you for listening. Have a lovely life. Until the next time.

I speak to you, but for now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk.

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