Alan Palmer's Language Chat podcasts

Guy Fawkes Day (5th November)

This is generally known as "Bonfire Night", and marks the failure of the "Gunpowder Plot" in which Guy Fawkes (the leader of the conspirators) and his fellow conspirators planned (in 1605) to blow up (with gunpowder) the Houses of Parliament in London.

Once, it was common for a family with children to have its own bonfire. But now for safety reasons, the bonfires are usually organized by local councils or communities,

Two essential ingredients for the occasion are a “Guy” ( a figure of a man made of (wood)sticks and old clothes put on top of the bonfire and plenty of fireworks of all types for the crowds to enjoy.

Vocabulary:

Bonfire = big (good) fire made from wood and built on a field or in gardens

Guy Fawkes – the man that lead a conspiracy to blow up the parliament in London

Conspirators – people who make a plan to do something like a crime

Gunpowder – explosive used in fireworks – which is why the festival has fireworks to “celebrate”

Council – local government

Houses of Parliament – the building where the government of Britain is housed.

Essential ingredients - the most important things necessary

Figure – model of a person (in this case, the same size as a man)

The Donkey

I saw a donkey

One day old

His head was too big

For his neck to hold;

His legs were shaky

And long and loose,

They rocked and staggered

And weren’t much use

He tried to gambol

And frisk a bit

But he wasn’t quite sure

Of the trick of it

His queer little coat

Was soft and grey,

And he curled his neck

In a lovely way.

He looked so little

And weak and slim

I prayed the world

Might be good to him.

Anon.

I explain a little more about using intonation in English

Hello everybody

I thought that today you might be interested in listening to English intonation.

English has two main "tones": a "rising" tone for questions, and a "falling" tone for statements and commands.

Father: "Are you not going to play with your friends today?"

Son: "No, I'm not" (slight falling sound on "not")

Father: "Why not?"

Son: "Because I feel ill"

Father: "Oh dear! what is wrong?

Son: "I fell over and banged my head and I have a headache!"

Father: "Ok, I think you need to rest!..."

question sound: "today?"

statement: "I'm not"

question: why not? (sympathetically)

statement "I feel ill"

question: "what is wrong?"

statement: "I have a headache"

command: "you need to rest!"

This dialogue shows how we use the falling and rising tones for conversation a bit clearer.

I hope you like my chatcast.

It's a bit longer than usual and I'll put a text here in a couple of days.

Be good be happy (BGBH)

Alan

How to make a perfect English cup of tea

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art39370.asp

Guest Author - Hellie T.

One of the things you need to be able to do is to sit down and enjoy a really good cup of tea.

As a tea drinker myself I drink tea at breakfast, eleveneses, lunch, afternoon tea and quite often in the evening as well! This gives you plenty of opportunities to enjoy a cuppa in your garden.

To make a really delicious cup of English tea - just follow the instructions below.

Please note that if your tap water is heavily chlorinated it will make the tea taste horrid and you will need to filter the water before boiling it.

Make a Pot of Tea to drink in your English Garden

· Put freshly drawn cold water into the kettle – never use water that has been boiled more than once – and make sure your kettle is kept clear of scale

· Boil the kettle.

· Pour a little boiling water into the empty tea pot – swirl it around carefully to warm it up. Pour away this water that you used to warm the pot.

· Put tea into the teapot - one teabag for each person or one rounded teaspoon of loose tea for each cup needed. It is better to add one extra bag or teaspoon “for the pot” to get a really good flavoured cup of tea. I recommend you use a tea generally called English Breakfast tea. A tea pot taking 20oz is about right for 2 people

· When the water is boiling pour it directly onto the tea.

· Then leave it to brew for a few minutes. 3-5 minutes is best and a tea cosy helps the tea stay piping hot whilst brewing.(Why not make one decorated with English garden flowers?)

· In an English Garden you will be sitting at your wooden table using a china teapot and china teacups.In teacups - the milk should always go in the cups first – because you have made the tea in the pot – it is different when making tea in a mug - see below!) Semi- skimmed milk tastes the best, never put cream or powdered milk in tea because they completely spoil the flavour.

· Pour the tea into the cup, don’t forget to use a strainer if you are using leaf tea.

· If required add a teaspoon of fine white sugar - never ever use brown sugar or honey! – stir and take into your garden carefully. Sit by your lavender or English Garden feature and sip the tea savouring the taste and enjoying your garden at the same time.

If you are making tea in mugs it is important that you warm the mug before you add the tea, swirl and empty.

Put in the tea in and pour the freshly boiled water onto it.

Never put the water in first and add a tea bag – this will make the tea taste disgusting!

Don’t put the milk in first either or prod or stir the bag whilst it is in the water!

Just wait about 2 minutes before you take out the teabag.

Then is the time to add the milk to taste.

Now you can drink your tea!

Here is my version of "L'auvergnat" (Song for the person from the Auvergne)

It was written and sung by Georges Brassens

It is ano old French song - and I like it a lot

I hope you like my version

Bye for now

Alan

If you want the English words - just e-mail me at [email protected]

Hello everybody,

I have had some nice feedback from visitors to my site. I have realised that to help people with English, it is sometimes very useful to talk about cultural activities.

Today I want to talk about small markets we have in some towns in England. Today, we went to a town called Skipton, near where I live. We visited a small market. This was called a “Farmers’ market”. It is where local produce can be sold. It is an alternative to supermarkets which are the shops where most people go shopping for groceries.

However, these markets give people the chance to buy some produce made locally by private business owners and which can be very good – although more expensive that supermarket equivalents.

The produce we saw today was: cheese, meats, fruit and vegetables, herbal oils, sweets (called fudge) and not just food, there was also pottery and jewellery.

Also in the town was a European market. These are sellers from France and Germany. They sell speciality products also, but prices are more expensive – because they have to travel from France and Germany and bring their products with them. With high fuel prices, it perhaps makes their products a little too expensive.

At the European market we saw: special German beer, French cheese, biscuits from Brittany (a region in France) many types of olives and special salami sausages with meat from wildboar and wild deer.

It is interesting to have the chance to visit these markets. They are held in quite a number of towns around the country, usually on a Saturday or Sunday.

Of course, many towns have weekly markets. Skipton’s weekly market is held each Saturday and the stallholders put their stalls along the main street. This market sells food, clothes and many other products.

Take care

Be good be happy

Bye for now

Here's a guitar tune I recorded today.

I hope you like it

It is called "Bubble and Squeak"

This is actually a food we eat in England:

Bubble and squeak

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_and_squeak

Bubble and squeak (sometimes just called bubble) is a traditional English dish made with the shallow-fried leftover vegetables from a roast dinner. The chief ingredients are potato and cabbage, but carrots, peas, brussels sprouts, and other vegetables can be added. It is traditionally served with cold meat from the Sunday roast, and pickles. Traditionally the meat was added to the bubble and squeak itself, although nowadays the vegetarian version is more common. The cold chopped vegetables (and cold chopped meat if used) are fried in a pan together with mashed potato until the mixture is well-cooked and brown on the sides.

Hello everybody

Alan here and welcome to www.alanlancs1.podomatic.com. And today I’m just speaking without a text.

Usually, as you know, I prepare a text. To make it easier for me and also easier for you to read as I say the same things as I’ve written.

But today I’m just doing a “chatcast” and what I mean by a chatcast is I just chat. I just speak about things I am interested in and hopefully you find it interesting too – well I hope so anyway.

So today I’m going to speak about reading in a different language and just recently I was on holiday in France and I was reading some French newspapers and French books during the holiday and sometimes I find the text very difficult.

In fact, very often I find it very difficult to follow the text as I would do in English for example. So I was trying to find was as in how to improve my reading skills and firstly I thought to myself how do I improve my understanding of the text?

So I came with an idea which I seem to think works quite well and so I’d like to share this idea with you.

The idea is that to understand the text better, maybe read it more than once, everyone says that of course. But I started to read each sentence more than once. Just read a sentence, then re-read a sentence quickly.

So, hopefully it would not take much more time to read a text than it would do if you didn’t do that, because usually people read a text in other languages rather slowly, but my idea is to read the text quickly, but read it twice. So read each sentence twice quickly rather than one sentence read slowly to try and understand it.

See if you like this idea it may help you. It certainly is helping me to read in other languages. I think reading each sentence twice helps us to understand it more because you are seeing the words twice.

So that is my idea for today – my weekend words for today and I hope you find this idea useful.

So, I’ll see you next time and be good be happy and I’ll see you again soon

Bye

Hello everybody,

I’m back from my holidays in France.

Today I want to talk about when people speak fast and what you can do to help understand what is spoken.

I think listening is the most difficult skill of the four skills in language learning

For example:

With writing, we have the chance to decide what we want to write and spend time on this.

With speaking, we have the chance to decide what we say

With reading, we usually have the chance to read the text many times if we want to.

I don’t mean that the other skills are easy, they are often very difficult. What I mean is that with listening to conversational speech we often have no control over it.

To explain more details:

 Often the speaker has an accent

 We cannot control the speed of the words (unless we deliberately ask the speaker to slow down – and very often we can’t do that)

 Maybe the speaker is using slang or expressions – sometimes dialect words

 Maybe more than one person is speaking at the same time, for example at a dinner table

 Maybe the subjects being discussed are cultural, social or political – and these subjects can be difficult even in our own language.

So, what can we do to make it easier to understand spoken language?

I have some ideas that can help sometimes.

Listen for key words (important words that help understand what is being discussed)

Listen for small pauses when people think a bit more what they want to say

Listen carefully to the stressed words (this is useful in English because English words have stress on the pronunciation

If you don’t understand something and it is possible to ask for more information, then ask a question. Instead of “could you say that again please?” , say “oh, was I correct in thinking you said this…….?”

If you listen to English radio, then be careful not to listen to something very complex or you will think you understand nothing, when it is mostly because the radio speaker is using vocabulary that you don’t yet know.

The most important thing to remember is not to worry –keep relaxed. The reason I say this is because I know from experience that many people can communicate well with very few words - providing people are relaxed and friendly.

To demonstrate, I’ll read a text very fast and then show you why it is perhaps difficult

From today’s “Daily Mail”

Teenager Holly Herdman clearly hadn't heard that it's not a great idea to mention you're having a party on a social networking site. And it is especially unwise if you have been left in charge of the house while your parents are away. What she claimed was intended as a drink with a few friends ended with a mob of teenage youths running riot through a small market town.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1047373/Couple-say-sorry-neighbours-newspaper-advert-daughter-holds-party-leaves-street-like-war-zone.html

Key words: Teenager Holly Herdman not a great idea - having a party -social networking site- unwise left in charge parents away – claimed –drink with a few friends – ended up – mob of youths – running riot – through town

If you listen again now to a slower version, you can see that the language is complex and only 70 words.

Many news items use lots of descriptive words and the language puts a lot of information in a few sentences. This is difficult to understand if it is spoken fast as much information is there.

So, knowing more about why listening is difficult helps us to think of ways we can improve our listening skills

Be good, be happy