Learning English on the go? Fabio Cerpelloni chats with ELTon nominee, Luke Thompson all about his English-learning podcast.
Q: You started the Luke’s English Podcast in 2009. What inspired you to do that?
A few things: first, I always wanted to have my own radio show, but I was an English teacher, so I felt I had missed the boat on going into radio. Then I realized I could just make podcasts with my laptop in my living room.
I’d been an English teacher for about nine years at that point, so I thought, ‘Why not make a kind of radio show for learners of English?’ I saw it as a chance for me to get an audience, have fun, be creative, make content, and do that thing I’d always wanted to do.
Second, I wanted to build a body of work long term, which is something that as an English teacher you don’t always get to do. I had built my materials bank, but every couple of weeks I would get a new group of students, which made me feel I was a hamster in a wheel. I saw the podcast as an interesting long-term project.
And third, I viewed it as an opportunity to help people around the world learn English.
Q: Who, and what, is your podcast for?
It’s for adult learners of English at intermediate and above.
Some episodes are easier to follow than others. Some are really challenging, even for advanced learners, but others are simpler. The early episodes are probably at a lower level, but the level went up as time went on. Today most of my listeners are at an upper-intermediate or advanced level. It’s hard to tell for sure.
The aim is to help learners of English improve their English by doing more listening for longer periods long term. It’s to help people get more English listening into their lives.
Q: How is your podcast different from others?
I always remember who I’m talking to and scaffold the listening experience for my audience. This involves explaining certain things as I go or laying out what I’m saying more clearly than I would do if I were talking to native speakers of English.
I always try to include educational elements too, whether it’s about building vocabulary by explaining it, demonstrating it, or giving learning advice. Also, I know that I’m talking to people who are probably from a different place and have a different perspective on things. If I were talking to people in the anglophone world, I would probably talk in a completely different way.
But this doesn’t mean I speak more slowly or simplify my language a lot. It’s more a case of explaining things more, giving more context, and perhaps repeating things more than I would if I were talking to native English speakers.
Q: How do you prepare your episodes?
Some solo episodes require little or no preparation at all; if I have guests, the amount of preparation depends on the guest and the nature of the conversation.
I’ve interviewed some big names in the ELT industry such as David Crystal, Nik Peachey and Santiago Ruiz de Velasco. I’ve also interviewed Mark Steel and Jerry Seinfeld, two famous comedians. Some interviews definitely require more preparation, but others can be very spontaneous.
Other episodes can be meticulously prepared and I’ll even write a full script sometimes. I also do ‘Learn English through short stories’ episodes; I read out the story and break it into chunks for video versions with Google Slides. I present almost one sentence per slide to make it easier for listeners to follow and repeat after me. Then I retell the story in my own words to make sure they’ve understood it.
At the end, I go through the story again explaining individual words and phrases, and teaching vocabulary.
There are also episodes where I force myself to improvise a story as a way of reviewing vocabulary. For example, if I’ve dealt with phrasal verbs, I’ll just improvise a story trying to use all the phrasal verbs. This requires some creativity because you end up having to concoct a stupid story that you don’t know where it’s going. The people listening know that you’re making it up, and they’re wondering how the next phrasal verb is going to be included. It’s a useful noticing exercise.
I have ‘premium’ episodes too where I go through vocabulary from a previous podcast episode.
Q: What role does creativity play in all this?
English language teaching involves a lot of creativity because it’s a problem solving activity. You need to come up with ideas to fix whatever the problem is.
Let’s say you’re teaching grammar. Classic example: the present perfect. For a lot of people, there’s no equivalent of present perfect in their language, so they don’t know where this semantic space exists in their heads. That’s a problem to solve. You can explain the rules, but that doesn’t really help. In fact, you could make it worse because you might be confusing people and making them feel stressed about it.
I found one way of teaching present perfect simple and continuous on the podcast. I get my listeners to imagine a village where everyone is an idiot. There’s one village idiot who’s walking around going up to people and asking them questions. A typical dialogue might go like this:
‘Hey, what are you doing?’
‘I’m just throwing stones into this lake.’
‘Really cool. How long have you been doing that?’
‘I don’t know. 7 hours?’
‘How many stones have you thrown in?’
‘I haven’t been counting, to be honest. I don’t know. About 300?’
This works well on the podcast because I can just keep going with this stupid situation. And the repetition of these idiots arguing with each other about nothing ends up being quite funny.
Q: How did you get nominated for an ELTon award in the category of Digital Innovation?
I applied in 2016 and found it easier than I expected to sell the podcast as an example of digital innovation. The panel judges were quite positive about it and I got the nomination.
I didn’t win, unfortunately, but it was great to be recognized by the industry to some extent. I went to the award ceremony, which was great, and I brushed shoulders with some big English teaching names, like Michael Swan, Nik Peachey, and my Delta tutor, Madeleine du Vivier.
Luke Thompson is an English teacher and stand-up comedian who has been making episodes of ‘Luke’s English Podcast’ for over 15 years. The show is one of the top-rated learning-English podcasts, and has won several awards, as well as a British Council ELTon award nomination. Luke’s aim is to help English learners to get more listening practice into their lives.
