English Tonight Podcast 1 Intro:

Welcome to the English Tonight Podcast where you can learn English online in your own time; even at 2:00 A.M. in your pajamas.

Janet:

Hello, hello and welcome to the English Tonight Podcast. This is Episode 1 and my name is Janet. I will be your host for this podcast. If you would like to read or print a transcript of this podcast, please visit www.speakenglishtonight.com. Again, this is episode number one. Thank you so much for listening; whether you found us through our website, English Tonight, or through iTunes. I am glad you are taking time out of your busy schedule and life to listen to this podcast. The first step to improving your English is by doing something. I congratulate you for taking action and finding an English podcast to listen to, to help you improve your English listening and understanding. Before we get started, I just want to go over a few things: #1: I will not be speaking super slow during this podcast as it will not help you in the long run if I speak at a slowed pace of speech. When you’re out in the real world speaking to native English speakers, they generally will not slow their speech. Most commonly, native English speakers will repeat things, which means they’ll say something more than once; they’ll rephrase which means that they’ll something but in a different way. So if you didn’t understand the first time, they’ll say the same thing but a little bit different to help you understand. Some people will try to make a gesture or point at something to help you understand what they’re talking about; repeating, rephrasing and gestures are all very helpful. Sometimes, you might encounter someone who’s not very interested in helping you learn English. Then most likely this type of person will annoyingly raise their voice, which means speak louder as if you suddenly would understand English better with them yelling at you. Now I don’t know if you’ve had this happen to you but I know when I was learning my second language, I definitely had many times when I didn’t understand what someone was telling me. And instead of just repeating themself they started getting louder and louder and all I wanted to tell them is, “You know what, I’m not deaf. I can hear you just fine. It’s just that I don’t understand.” So, you are just learning to speak and understand English and you will occasionally need extra help. So, if you do encounter someone that raises their voice and yells and repeats things in a not so helpful manner, find someone else to talk to. So, in this podcast I don’t plan on yelling at you today or any time for that matter. Yelling is not a helpful way for someone to learn English. I might raise my voice a little bit but that’s just because I’m expressing my feelings and emotions.

Out in the real world, you will get confused if you are used to listening to someone like your English teacher or friend slowing down their speech. And I know you don’t want to get confused, do you? Who wants to listen to someone speak really slow, anyway? I don’t want you to fall asleep while you listen to the English Tonight Podcast. That would be horrible. Now I do understand why some people that are teaching English speak at a slow rate but it is not necessary and it could be setting English students up for embarrassment and failure later on. If you are used to someone always speaking in English slowly, you won’t understand when you actually meet and um…uh, meet a real person out on the street. Um, you… they’ll speak at a normal rate and you’ll get confused and you’ll constantly be saying, “What?” and making them repeat themselves. So, it’s best that we create good habits from the beginning and you, as time goes on, will need to train your ears to listen for important information. Native speakers, the TV, movies, music and podcasts all are at a normal rate of speech. #2: I am an American. I don’t know if you can tell that yet or not. I am from the United States so I will be using American English. If I know something that I’m talking about is, uh, different in British English or Australian English or Canadian English, I will let you know. But for the most part, I will be speaking American English. And I’m really sure you wouldn’t want to hear me fake a British accent now, would you? That would be bad. #3: I assume, I am making assumption here, that you are here to improve your English. Yay! You don’t need to understand everything. What? Yeah, I’ll repeat that for you. You don’t need to understand every single word you hear in this podcast or in English in general. It is important to understand the main idea or the overall idea but don’t get worried or dwell on not understanding every word. Are you trying to figure out what dwell means now? Dwell means to pay special attention to or a lot of attention to something. So remember I told you not to focus on every single little word. You don’t need to know everything. Stop trying to be perfect. So, since this is English Tonight’s first podcast, I am nervous. Can you tell? I guess I do have some experience working with microphones. The schools where I have taught for the last five years make us wear microphone headsets every single day while we are teaching. But that’s not important right now. So back to me being nervous, I am nervous. And I thought I would teach you five idioms or expressions or phrases that are commonly, commonly used when you talk about nervousness. So, are you ready? All right… 1: Sweating bullets Sweating bullets, yes bullets, the things that go into guns um obviously is not something that would really happens… So, sweating bullets means to be extremely nervous or anxious about something. An example sentence would be, “I was sweating bullets before my job interview. I was so afraid I wouldn’t know how to answer the questions.”

Number two, idiom number 2: Butterflies in my stomach or get butterflies in my stomach. So, butterflies in your stomach means that you have a fluttering and flutters like what the wings of a butterfly do, they flutter so fluttering or a slightly odd feeling in your stomach when you’re nervous. And an example sentence with, um, butterflies in your stomach would be, “Whenever I have to speak to someone in English, I get butterflies in my stomach.” 3: Get the jitters. Yes, the jitters. So let’s see. Get the jitters means that you feel especially nervous or anxious, um, usually before an event or something that’s about to happen. So, an example sentence with the “get the jitters.” Hmm. All right. “Michael Jackson always got the jitters before singing at a big concert.” All right. Idiom number 4: On pins and needles So on pins and mid… needles not middles, needles, excuse me, that means to be anxious or in suspense, worried or excited. So an example sentence with “on pins and needles.” Let’s see. Um, “I have been on pins and needles all week long. I can’t wait to find out if I got the job I interviewed for last week.” And the last idiom is: Tongue-tied. So your tongue is obviously what’s in your mouth and tie is what you would do with your shoe laces. So it’s really not possible that your tongue would be tied, but tongue tied means that you’re unable to express yourself clearly or fluently. So an example with tongue-tied would be, “I always get tongue tied when I have to speak in front of a lot of people.” All right. So I hope some of those were new or interesting to you. Next time that you’re in English class or about to make a presentation in English at work, try using one of these idioms. Tell your professor or your colleagues that you have the jitters or you have butterflies in your stomach. It will help you relax a little bit and let other know how you are feeling. Now we’ll move on to the last topic of this podcast, and still does have to do with being nervous and more so about your feelings. So every day, I get emails, um, from many people from around the world asking me how they can improve their English and telling me that they’re very embarrassed and afraid to speak English and what can they do? Many people say they just don’t have the confidence to carry on a conversation or they are afraid to make mistakes. So let me tell you something – Yes, YOU! – anyone can learn English. I’ll repeat that – ANYONE CAN LEARN ENGLISH. That means that you can learn English. Yes, YOU. The problem is, is that too many people let their feeling determine how they perform and do in life. Your feelings and mindset or your thoughts

influence everything you do in life. It especially influences how quickly you learn English. Now you are probably asking yourself, “What do feelings and English learning success have to do with one another?” A lot. Your feelings and emotions about learning English directly influences your success. So, how do your feelings influence you? When you go to English class or work or wherever you have to speak English, do you ever feel unsure when or what to say when you speak English? Do you second-guess yourself or what you are about to say or do? Are you unfocused? For example do you try learning English one way for one month and then switch to a new way? And are you seeing the results you want? So, for example, if you aren’t feeling… if you’re feeling anxious and nervous when speaking English, you might speak slowly, um, and you might think too much. So you might be pausing a lot and trying to think of which words and what to say. And you might be unsure of what to say or what. Um, you might think that everything you say is wrong or you think that other people are going to make fun of you or laugh at you. So, when you go to English class or speak in English and you let all of these negative thoughts of, “You-can’t-do-it, you-are-bad, you’ll-never-be-able-to-speak-English, you’re-making-mistakes.” If you… if you let those thoughts determine, if you do a good job or not, um, then you’re really, unfortunately, letting your negative thoughts determine your success or failure in this case. So, next time that you find the negative thoughts creeping or coming in to your brain or your head, stop and say to yourself, “What is the worst thing that could happen?” So I’ll repeat that. You’re going to stop when you start having the negative thoughts coming in to your brain telling you, “I can’t do this, I’ll never learn English, it is too hard, I make too many mistakes,” you’re going to stop. So you stop it. “Negative thoughts, get out of my head.” You’re going to stop and you’re going to ask yourself, most likely in your head, you don’t have to say it with your mouth. So you’re going to inside your head you’re going to think, “What is the worst thing that could happen if I say this in English or if I have this conversation? What is the worst thing that could happen if I give this presentation?” So, these are some possible worse things that could happen when you’re speaking English. Maybe you could make a mistake; maybe you make a lot of mistakes. You could pronounce a word wrong; you might not know how to say something; you might look confused and not know what’s going on or what someone else is saying to you; you might feel embarrassed in front of your peers, or co-workers or your teacher. So, none of those things are really that horrible. Not really. You’re just making mistakes and learning from what’s happening. So you need to stop being negative and afraid and start approaching learning and speaking English with a positive mindset, with positive thoughts. So start getting rid of those negative thoughts and having positive thoughts. You will start to think… it might be hard at the beginning but if you keep thinking, “I’m stupid, I can’t do this, English is too hard,” will you ever get better at English? No! You

have to be positive. You have to have positive thoughts in your head. You need to change the way you’re thinking about learning and speaking English. So instead of thinking about how little you participated in English class today or how… or about the five mistakes you made in a dialogue or a speech and getting mad at yourself, you should count how many times you spoke or did the right thing. So, for example, today, when you went to your English class or wherever you speak English and you spoke one word or one sentence or shared your ideas, if today you did it three times, next time try to speak more; try to speak 4 times or 5 times in your next class. Try to be positive. Try to look for positive things that you did well. Now, of course, everyone make mistakes. That’s how we learn. But by focusing on what you are doing well and what you are improving on, you will get better quicker. So you do have to put in a lot of work and effort to be successful and see progress when you are speaking English. You must be committed to learning English. You… but you can do it a lot faster with a positive attitude. If you think, “I can do this. This is easy. It’s not that hard. Who cares if I mistake… make mistakes? It doesn’t matter,” you’ll get better at English so much faster. So you do need to practice, and then you need to practice some more and some more. And you will never get better at anything without re-practicing. But I need you to remember – yes, you, my friend, that is, I don’t even know somewhere far, far away in another country, you can speak English. You can do it. I know you can. Just keep the positive thoughts in your head. So as I finish up the first English Tonight podcast, woohoo, I’m a little less nervous. I feel better after finally getting out there and doing the podcast. How did I do? I hope you are still there. Are you still there? Hello. And I hope you enjoyed it. So if you have a minute, please leave us an honest rating and comment on iTunes and until next time. Thanks for listening to the English Tonight Podcast. Bye. Outro:

Thanks for listening to the English Tonight podcast. For more tips on improving your English or a transcript of this podcast visit us at www.speakenglishtonight.com.

English-Tonight.com All Rights Reserved © English Tonight, LLC