ESL Pod Official - Speak English Fluently by Listening (with Text)

By Dr. Jeff McQuillan

English as a Second Language Podcast (ESL Pod) You can only master a language by comprehending what you hear. If you don't get it, you're not learning anything. Our lessons are simple, clear, and easy... more

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The podcast currently has 54 episodes available.

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Number 1: ESL Podcast 1 - Introduction
ESL Podcast 1 - Introduction Welcome to our first English as a Second Language Podcast! In this podcast, we are going to introduce you to the format of the podcast, as well as the people who record it. ESLPodcast is designed especially for people who are intermediate or advanced speakers of English, but want to improve their listening and speaking skills. We plan on providing a new podcast every day, Monday through Friday. The daily podcasts are always free. There will be many different topics for our podcasts. We try to talk about topics that you will find interesting. All of our podcasts use “real English”—the normal, everyday English you will find among native speakers in the United States. ESLPodcast is not a textbook or a course. It is a way to listen to real native speakers talking as they do everyday in English. ESL Podcast tries to provide you with English you can understand. We speak at a slightly slower rate, but always use normal, native speaker English to help you improve. There are two parts to evey podcast: After a brief introduction, there is a discussion or dialog of the topic of the day. This usually lasts 3-6 minutes. In part 2, there is an explanation of the vocabulary and expressions used during part 1. We explain how certain words and phrases are used by native speakers, including both formal and informal expressions. ESLPod cast is currently produced by a team of volunteers. It is a production of the Center for Educational Development, in Los Angeles, California. My name is Dr. Jeff McQuillan, and I’m the host of ESL Podcast. I have been teaching English as a Second Language for many years both here in the United States and in other countries. I received my Ph.D., my doctorate, in applied linguistics from the University of Southern California. I taught as a university professor for several years here in California and in Arizona. I have written many articles and books on the teaching English. All of the voices you will hear on ESL Podcast will be native speakers. We suggest that you listen to the entire podcast at least once, and then re-listen to Part 1 until you feel you understand most of it. You will find that your listening comprehension will increase after each listening. The text or script of Part 1 of each podcast can be found on our website, www.e-s-l-p-o-d.com. That’s www.eslpod.com. Click on the “Scripts” link in the upper, right hand corner. We would love to hear from you. Please email us to tell us where you live and what topics you would like to hear on future ESL Podcasts. Our email address is [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. Thank you again for listening. We hope you enjoy these podcasts and that they help you in your goal to improve your English. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
July 08, 20236min
Number 2: ESLPodcast 54 - Talking to the Professor
[A knock on the door.] Jeff: Come in. Julie: Hi, Dr. McQuillan, I'm Julie Taylor. I'm in your 2 o'clock class on Thursdays. Jeff: Hi, Julie. Have a seat. What can I do for you? Julie: I wanted to come see you during your office hours because I missed class last week. I had a family emergency . Jeff: I'm sorry to hear that. We went over a lot of material so make sure you get the notes from another student in class. Julie: Thanks, I will. Did you give any assignments ? Jeff: Yes, I assigned an essay on the topics in chapter 3 of your textbook. Julie: Oh, I see. Are there guidelines for the essay? Jeff: Yes, it should be 8-10 pages and it's due in two weeks. Take a look at your syllabus. It has more details. Julie: I will. Thanks a lot. I've also been meaning to talk to you about the trouble I'm having keeping up in class. I'm having trouble understanding the lectures. Is there anything you would suggest? Jeff: Some students tape record the lectures and listen to them afterwards. That seems to help. Julie: That's a great idea. I'll definitely try that. I'm wondering if you give extra credit in your class? Jeff: No, I don't give extra credit assignments. But if you're worried about passing, there are still two more tests to pull up your grade. Julie: Yes, I'll study hard for those. Thanks a lot for your time. Jeff: No problem. See you in class. Julie: Okay, Professor McQuillan, see you Thursday. Script by Dr. Lucy Tse Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
November 22, 202521min
Number 3: ESLPod002 - Family Members
My name is Jeff McQuillan, and let's get started. Today we're going to talk about family and family members, and in doing so, we're going to go over some idioms and expressions related to expressing likes and dislikes. We focus on two questions today: What family member are you most like, and what family member are you least like? Well, my family member that I think I have the most similarity to or that I resemble the most would be my sister Therese. There are a couple of reasons why I think that we are most similar. Number one, she likes to read and I like to read. We're both readers. We always have lots of books in our house and are always reading something. My sister also likes to write. She is a writer by profession and I, as a researcher, do a lot of writing myself, so we both share an interest in writing. More importantly, we are the two members of my family that moved away from where my parents and the rest of our family still lives back in the state of Minnesota. We both live here in California—my sister in Northern California and I in Southern California. I think often in dealing with family members and family tensions and family politics, sometimes it's a good idea to move to another part of the country or sometimes even another part of the world, as I have done, and break away from those family ties to strike out on our own in order to do something different. And that is what both my sister and I did, and I think that's one of the things we have in common. Now, in terms of my siblings that I have the least similarity with or have the least amount of common interest, that would probably be my brother Mike. Now, Mike is a big sports fan. He was an athlete himself. He taught physical education for a few years. So Mike has a lot of interest in sports, and he spends a lot of time on things connected with sports, both with his own sons as well as his own activities outside of work. I am not a sports person. I don't really like sports that much. I don't watch sports very often. And so this is one reason why we're not very much alike. Let's start by talking about these terms like, alike, and likes. In English, the word like as a verb, you probably already know, means that you're interested or you enjoy something. For example:I like to read.I like to go bowling.I like watching television.Like is also used as a preposition to mean that you have a similarity or a resemblance with another person or thing. So, we might say:Los Angeles is like New York. They're both big cities.I'm not like my sister Therese in that she likes to drive and I don't.We use the term like here as a way of describing a phrase or expression that has some similarity with something else. Another term that sometimes gets confused but is similar in meaning is alike. That's A-L-I-K-E, all one word. Alike is usually used as an adjective. For example:My sister and I are alike.This is to express resemblance and similarity. Finally, there's the term likes. And likes relates back to that first definition we gave of the verb like. Likes as a noun means the things that you enjoy. For example:Some of my likes are reading, watching television, and surfing the internet.All of these would be likes, and again, likes serves there as a noun. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
July 08, 20239min
Number 4: ESLPod006 - Bad Dreams
I do have nightmares sometimes. I do have bad dreams. A lot of my bad dreams are things like I'm being chased by someone and I can't get away from them, or I'm hiding from them. Some other of my bad dreams involve not being able to get home. I'm trying to get home and there are a lot of different obstacles that I have to get past before I get home. And I usually wake up before I get there. So I find it very frustrating. These bad dreams make me really tense. And when I wake up, I'm very, very stressed out. A bad dream that I kept having over and over again—a recurring bad dream I had when I was in high school—was a really horrible one. I dreamt that my mother had a knife, a meat cleaver. And I was a child, and I saw her in the bathroom cutting up a dead body with a meat cleaver. And she saw me watching her, and she started chasing me with her knife. And she never caught me, but I had to hide from her. And she chased me and chased me, and I was really scared. I had this recurring dream, probably, I don't know, for several months. And to this day, it's the scariest, worst bad dream I've ever had. Boy, that's an interesting question—bad dreams. Well, I would have to say that the worst bad dream I ever had, and this happens a lot to me in my dreams, is that I was trapped inside a building or I'm trapped in another country and I can't get back home. Usually what happens is that I meet someone there from my past—an old friend, an acquaintance, a classmate, someone from high school. And, of course, it seems normal. It seems just natural when I'm having the dream that I meet these people. But it's always in a situation that never actually occurred. But usually my dreams, like most people's bad dreams, I think are related to things that I thought about or happened to me that day or recently. For example, I had a very difficult time getting my car fixed the other day, and that night when I had a dream, I dreamt that I was broken down on the highway. And I couldn't get home. And it was dark. And it was starting to rain. I started to get desperate and so forth. So when I woke up, of course, I was sweating and a little bit scared. But fortunately, I was able to calm myself down. And eventually, I actually got my car fixed. I hope I don't have that nightmare again. You've just heard two people talk about a bad dream, including me. And I want to now talk about some of the vocabulary that they used that you might have had difficulty with. Remember, this section of our podcast is optional. If you want to go back and listen again and again, we recommend that. But if you want some additional help, then stay tuned. One word that both speakers used is nightmare. A nightmare is another word for a bad dream. When Lucy was talking about her bad dream, she mentioned that she couldn't get home because she had lots of obstacles. An obstacle is something that gets in your way either when you're walking, running, in a car, or just generally in life. We talk about obstacles that get in our way—things that prevent us from going or doing what we want to do. In the Army, they have something called an obstacle course. And sometimes in school, in physical education class, they'll set up a game called an obstacle course. And you have to go through all sorts of different obstacles, different challenges, such as walking through some tires or climbing up a rope and so forth. Another word that Lucy used was recurring. She said that she had a recurring dream. To recur means to repeat. So she had that dream several times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
July 11, 202312min
Number 5: ESLPodcast 52 - At the Art Exhibit
I really wanted to see the new exhibit at the art museum and invited Lucy to come along. We both like contemporary art and this was an exhibition for an artist that we've both liked, ever since she was an up and coming artist 10 years ago. This was a retrospective so there was going to be a lot of different types of work by the artist. There would be some of the artist's paintings, her early work. There would also be some of her sculptures. Her most recent work is mixed media. This is very versatile and that's one of the reasons I like her work so much. We were going to the opening of the exhibition, with a wine and cheese reception for the artist. When we arrived in the main gallery , there were already a lot of people there. Looking around, I could see that some were artists themselves and some were art critics. I'm sure there were collectors there, too. I knew the curator and looked around for him. I spotted him talking with a group of people in the corner, probably trying to talk up the gallery and the artist. After a little while, the curator said a few words and then introduced the artist. We got a chance to meet her briefly and she was very gracious. I'm glad that someone with her talent has made it in the art world. That's not easy to do. And, I think her best work is still to come. Script by Dr. Lucy Tse Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
November 22, 202519min