In Episode 218 we covered how to review your year, this is an important step, don't miss it. I know it can feel frustrating or even cringy to review the year, but we need to understand what worked and what didn't so we can improve next year.

So here we are, 2025, or almost. Happy New Year! 🥳🥂

Take some time over the next couple of weeks to figure out what worked well last year and how you want to move forward with your English in 2025. Are you going to change your textbook? Find some new reading material? Or perhaps get a teacher?

Check out episodes 152, 164, 181 and 183 for more tips on tests, goal setting and planning.

Work out some priorities and some achievable goals and get them down on paper.

I'm taking January off so I'll be back in February to see how you get on.

Any questions, just put them in the comments.

Good luck!

#emmaseslenglish

This week I have something a little different for you. Last year my family and I went to Castle Howard. This is an English country home in Yorkshire that puts on a special Christmas display every year. They take a story and decorate the house with that theme. Last year the story was JM Barrie's Peter Pan.

Wow! Here we are again, at the end of the year!

For those of you who have been with me for a while, you will know what's coming, review and plan.

In this episode I'll give you some tips and thoughts on how to review your year in English.

This is an important step. So many language learners feel like they're not making any progress. It's important to take a little time to recognise how much work you've put in and any progress you've made. Honestly, even if you feel like you haven't made any progress, take time to recognise all the hard work you've put in (and yes, I'm counting watching TV shows and movies with subtitles as hard work 😉).

Let me know how you get on in the comments.

This week we're analysing last week's reading. I'll talk you through some of the references and vocabulary. I'll also put the vocabulary list below.

In the first video I referred to the illustrator as Paul Kirby, which is actually not just confusion because the names sound similar. Terry's original artist who did about half of the covers of the original books was called Josh Kirby. When he passed away in 2001 Terry worked with a few authors but eventually settled on Paul Kidby,who I believe he met through the Discworld Conference and was a big fan.

Vocabulary List

Ticked off - slang - to anger or frustrate someone

Satire - a form of humor that reshapes real life so we can laugh at it

Sledge - a vehicle on sleds that is used to move people and goods through snow (Santa rides one)

Lavatory - Toilet

Deference - polite submission or request (so they are submitting to their age)

Underpinned - to be held tightly underneath something

Minstrel - a singer or song creator

Scribbling - writing quickly and untidily

Wince/Flinch - in the book Terry uses 'wince' which is when our face clenches in response to something we see that looks painful or worrying. I used 'flinch' in this episode is when our whole body clenches for the same reason or when we're surprised or scared.

Henchman - Harry has some stupid henchmen. Henchmen are the bad guys (often not smart) who work for the really bad guy and do everything he says.

Steed - the thing you're riding, usually a horse

Started with humble means - he began with small or not very expensive things (in this case a shed!)

Revert - to go back to a previous place, situation or state

Vicinity - the area around here

Marmalade - a British sort of jam made from Oranges (I'm sure we didn't invent this because we didn't have oranges in the UK for a long time (there's some disagreement about whether the first oranges arrived in the 1300's or the 1500's.)

a dig on our modern world - 'a dig' is when someone tries to make fun of something or to be rude about it.

Concubine - a woman who is married to a man but is not the main wife, emperors often had many concubines.

Never got the hang of dying - to 'get the hang of' something means you get good at it.

This week we have the inevitable Pratchett Christmas reading. I hope you enjoy. This is taken from The Last Hero, a book about Cohen The Barbarian (that'll be the hero!). In this excerpt I'm reading a conversation between him and his old friends as they make their way up a giant mountain in the centre of Discworld with the goal of returning fire to the Gods 'with interest'.

A few weeks ago one of my students brought me some phrases. She couldn't really work out what they meant, and the context wasn't helping. I was very quickly able to work out that the writer she was reading was using only half an idiom. Helpful!

The idioms we'll cover today are:

Spill the beans/Tea - to tell a secret or gossip

Not my circus, not my monkeys - to say we're not getting involved in something because it's not our business or not related to us

Additional Vocabulary

to gloss over something - phrasal verb - to quickly cover over something, to carry on as if nothing happened

clarification - to make something clearer or easier to understand

Osmosis - this is a biological function where cells can pass through a membrane, however, we often use it like this to mean we learned something without trying and in the natural course of our life. This is a common colloquial use of this word.

All the way back in Episode 4 I covered the idiom 'Spill the Beans' I also cover a lot of other common English idioms in this episode.

In Episode 37 I shared how Shakespeare influenced English and in Episode 38 I covered some vocabulary and idioms that we can track back to Shakespeare.

This week we're reading another Engoo Article: Level up your language skills by thinking in English.

This week we have a bit of a silly episode focused on the pronunciation of the 'f' sound.

Episode 87 covers more pronunciation.

You can find the YouTube video here:

This week we're looking at animal idioms. Surprisingly there's not as many of these as you might imagine (there's far more of the body part ones from last week!)

This week we're learning some English idioms that use body parts! There are SO many of these so do Google for more if you'd like.