Ivy League English | Best Podcast for Learning English

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TRANSCRIPT

What’s up, everyone! Welcome to episode 3. Today we’re going to talk about the Ivy League English TV and Movie Club and I’m going to give you some homework. A lot of students seem interested in watching TV shows and movies together so that they can ask questions and get help understanding the things that they watch. So we’re going to give it a try. Today, I’ll tell you what show to watch. After you watch it, you can post your questions about the show in the comments. Now, pay attention. There’s one rule about asking questions. You’re not allowed to ask me what a word means. That’s what dictionaries are for. You don’t need me for that. If you hear a word that you don’t understand, just look it up. Ok? This TV and movie club is not for lazy students. This is for serious students who really want to learn. Got it?

So, the show we’re going to start with is . . . . are you ready for this . . . Friends! That’s right. And I know what some of you are thinking. “Patricia, in the last episode you said that Friends was a terrible show for English students.” Well, that’s not exactly what I said. Friends is an old show so there are some things that you might hear in the show that people don’t really say anymore. But I also said that you can watch an old show if you want to. It’s still good listening practice and most of the English language really hasn’t changed in 20 years. Since you guys will be watching Friends with my help, I can explain what words or phrases in the show are not used anymore. Friends definitely wouldn’t be my first choice for a student that’s watching these shows without the help of a teacher, but you guys have me. So you have absolutely nothing to worry about. I’m going to take good care you guys. To be honest, the reason why I chose Friends is because it’s really easy for students to find online. It’s on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and lots of other websites. So, for that reason it’s a great choice for what we’re trying to do here.

Alright, let’s get to the homework. Your first assignment is to watch season 1, episode 1 of Friends. When you watch the show, remember to use the tips from the last episode of this podcast. After you’ve watched the show a few times, post any questions that you have right here in the comments. Then, I’ll answer your questions in another episode of this podcast. That’s it, guys. I hope this all makes sense. If you have questions about what to do, you can ask in the comments. Good luck with your first TV and movie club homework assignment. This is really exciting! I can’t wait to see your questions and talk to you guys about the first episode of Friends.

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Vocabulary from this episode:

• to mumble (v)
• speech (n)
• lecture (n)
• nerd (n)
• hilarious (adj)

Expressions from this episode:

• to let the cat out of the bag

TRANSCRIPT

Today we’re going to talk about a great way to improve your listening skills in English. Lots of students enjoy watching TV shows and movies in English because they’re fun and entertaining. But this is also a great way to practice understanding native speakers. Let’s be honest, native speakers can be really hard to understand. Sometimes we speak quickly. Sometimes we mumble. That means we don’t speak clearly. Here’s what mumbling sounds like: (example). Did you understand that? Yeah, that’s mumbling. Plus, native speakers use so many expressions and slang words. You need to practice listening to native speakers a lot if you want to be able to understand them easily.

When you watch TV shows in English, you’ll hear common words, phrases and expressions that native speakers use when they talk about everyday things like work, family and their personal lives. You’ll also hear references to American culture, so you can learn a lot about that from these shows too. As a matter of fact, most of my students who take private classes with me watch TV shows as part of their homework every week. But here’s a common mistake that a lot of students make. They choose the wrong show. So today, I’m going to talk about how to choose a show and which show my students have enjoyed the most. After that, I’ll give you some tips on how to really learn from watching TV shows.

First, I want to talk about some of the common things that students watch. Ted Talks videos are very popular. There are tons of videos available on YouTube and Ted Talks can be great practice. You can learn vocabulary and expressions from these videos, but you need to remember a few things. First, a Ted Talks video is usually a speech or a lecture. One person talks for the entire video. And the way people talk when they’re giving a speech is not the same as the way people talk when they’re having a conversation. Second, the thing that a lot of students need to practice as they get more advanced is understanding conversations where more than one person is talking to them. A lot of students need to improve this skill, especially if they work in a place where meetings are held in English. When you’re trying to listen to more than one person, things can get really confusing. And listening to speeches and lectures, won’t really help you to improve that skill.

Another popular show is The Big Bang Theory. I’ll be honest. I’m not sure why people think this is a great show for English students. Most of the main characters in this TV show are nerds. They’re very smart and they talk a lot about science and math. So, the way these characters speak is sometimes very complicated. They use advanced vocabulary that isn’t important for English students to learn and that can make the show more confusing. These characters also don’t have the best social skills, so the way they talk is not the best example of the English language, unless you want to sound like a nerd. So, yes, the show is funny, but it may not be the best show to use if you want to hear how most native speakers talk. The truth is most people don’t talk like the characters on the Big Bang Theory.

Game of Thrones is another show that’s popular with students, but again, native speakers don’t talk the way the people on this show talk. The accents and the vocabulary are different. So, watch it for fun if you want, but it’s not the best example of how people in the U.S. speak.

The last show I’ll mention is Friends. I think every English student that I’ve ever talked to about TV shows has mentioned Friends. So, here’s my advice on that show. You need to remember that it’s an old show. It’s about 20 years old. Of course, the English language hasn’t changed that much in 20 years, but there are some things that are different. The most common slang words today, for example, are different from what they were 20 years ago. Also, the references to American culture that you’ll hear are kind of old. Honestly, this is my biggest problem with a show like this. Watching TV shows is a great way to learn more about American culture, but culture changes over time. I always prefer that my students watch something modern that will introduce them to today’s slang and culture. I think that those shows are more useful and a better resource for students.

If you want to watch videos or TV shows that only have one speaker, are a bit complicated or are more than 10 years old, that’s ok. They’re still good listening practice, but you need to remember the things that I mentioned earlier. Now, I’m going to tell you about one of my students’ favorite TV shows and if you have access to Netflix or Amazon Prime video, it should be really easy to find. If you don’t have either of those, you can probably find this show online somewhere else, so look around. Maybe some of you know a great website for watching English TV shows. If you do, please share the link in the comments. I’d love to share it with other students.

Ok, I have two students, Steve and Jacky...If you’re listening, hey guys! Ok, I have two students who love this show. It’s called The Good Place. This show is about a woman named Eleanor who dies and goes to heaven, but she wasn’t supposed to go to heaven. She was supposed to go to hell. So she’s in a place where she doesn’t belong. Only one person knows and she needs to make sure that no one else finds out. She doesn’t want to let the cat out of the bag. Do you guys know that expression? Let the cat out of the bag means you tell a secret or you reveal a secret. So Eleanor has to work hard to keep this secret, but of course, lots of hilarious..That means really funny. Lots of hilarious things happen. The great things about this show are that it’s current (it’s only about 4 or 5 years old), there are lots of group conversations and the language isn’t too complicated. Also, even though the show happens in a strange place, there are still lots of everyday conversations. People fall in love, get in trouble, ask for help, things like that. So give this one a try.

The next show is one you should try if The Good Place is a little too advanced for you. This TV show is a cartoon, but it’s not too silly. It’s actually based on a really old computer game that I used to play when I was about 10 years old. The show’s called Carmen Sandiego and it’s about a young woman named Carmen, who grew up in a school for professional thieves. She learned how to steal things when she was a kid. As she gets older, she realizes that the people she grew up with are breaking the law, so she decides to use her skills to stop them. This show is great for a lot of reasons. First of all, it’s less than a year old, so the language is very modern or current. Since it’s a cartoon, the vocabulary and story are also simpler than what you’ll hear in adult shows. Finally, a lot of the shows that you’ll hear people suggest for English students are comedies. If you’re looking for something different, this show has plenty of action that you might enjoy.

Now, let me give you a few tips for watching TV shows in English. The first thing you should do is watch the show without any subtitles and see how much you can understand. Then watch the show as many times as you want with English subtitles only. Don’t use subtitles in your native language. That won’t help you very much. When you watch the show with the subtitles, you should try to read the words on the screen as you hear them. This will help you to learn how native speakers pronounce words when they’re part of a sentence. This is a good way to train your ears so that you can understand connected speech. This is how you can practice understanding real English from real native speakers.

Here’s another suggestion: The first time that you watch the show with subtitles, you should take notes on any words or phrases that you don’t understand. At the end, look up the words and phrases that you think are the most important for you to learn in order to understand the show. Then when you watch it again with subtitles, look at your notes so that you remember what these new words and phrases mean. This will definitely help you to understand more of the show. Over the next few days and weeks, make sure that you review the vocabulary that you learned. You need to look at it again and again so that you remember what the words mean and how they were used

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Do you want more help with your English?  Visit my website and join the Ivy League English Club for study resources.

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Vocabulary from this episode:

• to dine (v)
• blind (adj)
• deaf (adj)
• blindfold (n) / to blindfold (v)
• finger food (n)
• theory (n)

Expressions from this episode:

• To step into someone else's shoes / To walk in someone else's shoes

TRANSCRIPT

Today’s topic is dark restaurants and dark dining. First of all, what is “dining”? If you know what a dining room is then you can probably guess what “dining” means. A dining room is the room in your house where you eat, but it’s not the kitchen. It’s a different room. If you’re alone, you might eat in the kitchen because it’s easier or you might eat in the living room while you watch TV. But if you want to serve a big meal because it’s a special occasion or you have lots of visitors, that’s when most people would use the dining room, if they have one. “To dine” is a formal way of saying “to eat” and the dining room is a formal room for eating.

So what is dark dining? Here’s where things get interesting. There are restaurants in North America, Europe and Asia called dark restaurants. People who eat at these restaurants eat in complete darkness. Can you believe that? It sounds strange, I know, but that’s what “dark dining” is. So why would anyone want to do that?

First, let me tell you how dark dining started. The first dark dining event that I could find information about happened in 1997 in Paris, France. These events happened from time to time for years, but the first restaurant to have dark dining every single day of the week was in Switzerland. It was established or started by a blind man named Jorge in 1999. In case you don’t know the word "blind", that means you can’t see. Some people are born blind and some people become blind during their lives. Here’s another good vocabulary word for you: deaf. That means you can’t hear.

So the man who opened the first dark restaurant in Switzerland was blind. After having his friends come to his house and try dark dining, he realized that people really liked it. His friends told him that their senses of taste and smell improved when they couldn’t see. That made the meal taste and smell even more delicious than usual. So Jorge opened a dark restaurant because he wanted people who were not blind to experience what it’s like to be blind. In particular, he wanted people to experience food and eating the way blind people do.

I’ve never been to a restaurant like this, but it sounds really interesting so, of course, I decided to do some research. Here’s what happens when you go to a dark restaurant. There are two ways that these restaurants create darkness. One way is to turn off all of the lights in the area where people eat. If restaurants do this, they also take away people’s electronic devices, like cell phones and cameras because they want the dining area to be completely dark. The other way is to put a blindfold on everyone. We just talked about the word blind. So what’s a blindfold? That’s a piece of cloth or fabric that you put over your eyes and you usually tie the ends of the cloth together at the back of your head. That way, you can’t see. When you’re wearing a blindfold, you’re blind. So here’s my first question for you guys. If you had to go to a dark restaurant, which would you prefer? Would you want to be in a room that’s totally dark? Or would you want to be blindfolded?

Personally, I think I’d prefer being in a dark room. If you’re blindfolded for the whole meal, that could get uncomfortable. If you’re in a dark room at least there’s nothing on your face. But I do wonder what would happen if there was an emergency in the restaurant. What if everyone had to get out of the restaurant fast because of a fire or something like that. I’m sure that the people who run these restaurants have thought about that. So hopefully there’s a quick way to turn all of the lights on.

I also started thinking about what I would want to eat if I had to eat in total darkness. I mean, how well can you use a knife and fork if you can’t see anything? So with that in mind, I thought that I would probably choose some kind of finger food if I had to eat at a dark restaurant. Ok, really quickly, what’s a finger food? That’s a food that people generally eat with their hands. Here’s another question for you guys. If you were the chef at a dark restaurant, what kind of food would you serve? Would you serve finger foods? What kind of finger foods would you serve? And what other foods can you think of that people could easily eat even if they can’t see?

And the last thing I want to ask you guys is this: If a friend asked you to go with them to a dark restaurant, would you go? I think that it would be interesting to experience a meal the way a blind person does. Personally, I enjoy stepping into someone else’s shoes or walking in someone else’s shoes. Those are common expressions in English, by the way. They both mean the same thing: experiencing life the way someone else does. Walking in another person’s shoes is a great way to understand that person better. I think it would be really interesting to walk in a blind person’s shoes even if it’s just for a few hours.

There’s also a popular theory that I’m curious about. A theory is an idea that people believe is true, but it hasn’t been proven, so it’s not a fact. There’s a theory that if you can’t see then your four other senses become stronger. Or if you can’t hear or can’t smell then your four other senses get stronger. I wonder how true that is. Is it something that happens as soon as you lose one sense? Would I notice a difference in my sense of taste or smell if I ate in complete darkness? Or is that something that takes time. Maybe it takes months or even years for your other senses to become stronger. Or maybe that theory isn't true at all? Who knows?

Well, maybe one day I’ll experience dark dining. I actually thought about trying it at home. That wouldn’t be too hard to do. But I’m pretty sure that my husband would think that I was crazy if he saw me eating with a blindfold on. So maybe I’ll just wait until I can visit one of these dark restaurants.

Ok, guys. That’s it for today. Don’t forget to answer the questions that I asked earlier:

• If you had to go to a dark restaurant, would you prefer to be blindfolded or to be in a completely dark room.
• If you were the chef at a dark restaurant, what kind of finger foods would you server? Can you think of other foods that you would serve?
• Finally, if a friend asked you to go to a dark restaurant, would you go?