English Podcasts |

Did you know that Shakespeare coined* over 1000 words, many of which we still use today and some of them we use everyday!

But WHY did he invent so many words ? This is a good question. He didn't it simply to fit in with the rhythm of his text, he needed words with the right number of syllables to fit in with the meter rhythm of the line.

Indeed many of the words that Shakespeare coined came from adding suffixes and prefixes such as -ful, -able - fied. For example, laugh and able,  un and dress, care and less. So if you find English adjectives confusing you know who to blame !

Sometimes he put 2 words together, for example bed and room. Thank you Shakespeare for that one! Plus, birth and place, farm and house.

In this podcast, Sue asks Chris to explain 10 Shakespearian inventions and then he "turns the tables" on her... you can thank Shakespeare for that one too !!!

Listen out for these words and expressions:

It's Greek to me

To be tongue tied

fair play / foul play

A fool's paradise

A hard day's night

A green eyed monster

Laughable

An eyesore

What the Dickens !

To puke

to coin means to invent a new word or expression

Do you know what yoga is all about?

Yoga is an ancient and complex practice, rooted in Indian philosophy, which began as a spiritual practice but has become popular as a way of promoting physical and mental wellbeing.

Yoga typically emphasizes physical postures (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayama), and meditation (dyana). 

There are many different yoga styles, ranging from gentle practices to physically demanding ones.

Listen to this in-depth discussion with Renu an Ayuverda specialist based in Rishikesh in northern India on the basic tenets of Yoga.

In this series we are going to be looking at ways that we can enhance and improve our learning and perhaps crushing some of the myths about learning techniques that we learnt in school.

Every day we meet people with different techniques for learning vocabulary, but most of them revolve around some pretty shaky ideas, those being 'if you write stuff down, you've learnt it.'

If only things were that simple ...

This rarely works, due mainly to the fact that some important steps have been missed out - those being, actively learning the vocabulary and then actively using it.

Let's put this in prallel with sport, to illustrate the idea.

Imagine that you are a huge cycling fan and you love the Tour de France and you would like to experience the grueling (look that one up if you like) hardships of a day riding in the mountains of the Tour de France.

So, you get all the magazines about the Tour and mountain cycling, you have the maps and you have read all the technical stuff on hydration and nutrition during a massive climb in the Pyrenees mountains in the south of France.

You have even chosen your mountain, Le Col du Tourmalet - wow! that's a big one, and have bought a fabulously expensive 'S-Works' bicycle for the climb. 

You've seen the videos and read all the information, but that's as far as you go - THAT is how a lot of people learn - they don't go the final mile of training before getting on the bike after weeks of muscle and stamina building. They don't prepare for the day that they will be climbing Tourmalet on their bike.

OK, they know all about Tourmalet, Le Tour de France and mountaing cycling - but they have no guarantee of ever being able to achieve the ascent of a mountain on their bicycle.

Listen to the podcast, N°1 in a series, to get some ideas to improve your learning.

Staying focused, motivated and driven can be tricky, especially when you have a busy working and/or family life to deal with.

Check out this podcast to find 10 golden rules for staying motivated learning English.

When we start learning something new, it can be a novel experience at the start and we want to put a lot of effort into our learning, but as time goes on, we can start to flag and at times we just cannot get the motivation to continue learning.

This is especially true if we don't have a clear plan for our learning or if we can't see our progress moving along as fast as we would have expected.

Try some of these golden rules.

How many are you using now?

How many come as a surprise to you?

Will you try and use some of them?

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