Emma's ESL English

Thank you so much to all my podcast listeners, I didn't mention you much in the video, but this is where it all started. I know you have been listening long before I started understanding how to work YouTube! I watched my stats on here go up and was amazed that people found my videos useful. Sadly the platforms don't really give us much opportunity to connect but I can see the numbers behi...

Yesterday I read a famous scene from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Today let's review the vocabulary and meaning of some of the conversation. I'm particularly interested in the part about 'You think I am an automaton, a machine without feelings.' Let me give you a little historical timeline: British Industrial revolution 1760-1830 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was released 18...

This week, the day before Valentine's day, I'm reading from the grand romantic story, Jane Eyre. This little bit is from the moment Mr Rochester proposes to Jane. She doesn't believe him at first. Not surprising, he's been flirting with another woman openly in front of Jane for months! But eventually he convinces her that he is telling the truth. He does want to marry her. This sto...

This week we are talking about the Beatles very first trip to America. This tour was short but soon followed by one of the most famous and groundbreaking tours of the time in music. At this point the Beatles were new to America, only known for a matter of months, and yet already they had a number one hit. In this episode we'll learn about how they got so famous so fast and what technological a...

This week we are finally completing our series on Interview English. You can find all of these episodes in the Business English Playlist. This time we're talking about the etiquette and cultural expectations at interview. The most important thing I want you to understand is that having English as a second language is a strength and something you should be proud of. Many native English speakers...

This week we are learning about the famous explorer and travel writer Freya Stark. She wrote many travel books and focused her books on the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. She travelled all over this part of the world, talking to the people, learning their languages and describing their culture and landscapes to readers back in the UK. An essential part of Freya's process was that she o...

This week we're continuing our series on Interview English and we're focusing on Presentations. There are videos about this in the Business English and Dream Job playlists on YouTube so instead I'm focusing here on the challenges as an international speaker of English when giving presentations in English. From the blog: As I mentioned on the podcast, in the context of presentations dur...

This week we have a short listening episode to celebrate Emperor Hadrian's birthday. This Roman emperor is probably one of the most famous in the UK. Many British children first learn about the Romans through Hadrian's wall. This wall, built in 122CE is one of the few pieces of Roman architecture still standing today. You can visit the wall, the museum and even some remains of forts. You c...

Continuing our Interview series, today I want to talk about how, in an interview situation, certain aspects of vocabulary, etiquette, and tone of voice often differ from everyday interactions because of the formal setting. These can also be heavily influenced by culture, not only the culture of a profession (which might be different from finance to law, for example) but also the culture of a count...

Today we are talking about some English terms that are related to interviews, you might read them during the application process, hear them during an interview or need to use them if you're offered the job (Yay!🥳). These terms are not common elsewhere in English so don't worry if you haven't heard them before. From the blog: Behavioral Interview Questions are a specific kind of interv...

Today we're reading a short excerpt from Jill Shalvis's novel 'Almost Just Friends'. This is an American romance novel. Jill has written 50 romance books so far! So she's very well known in America. Romance novels and 'Chick lit' generally is quite a relaxed genre of books. There's a lot of conversation in these books and a lot of colloquial language so I think they...

This week is the beginning of a new series about Interviews in English, I hope you will find it useful if you're planning for applying for a new job where you need to speak English. In this episode we're discussing introducing yourself, the handshake and what to say. Vocabulary interviewer - this is the person who is conducting the interview, who works at the company interviewee - this is...

This week's episode comes from a question from a student who heard this phrase from a colleague and wondered what was wrong. They asked me what was the difference between a 'sofa potato' and a 'couch potato'. It's a good question, so I thought we'd look more deeply at these tricky idiomatic expressions. We'll talk a bit about what an idiomatic expression is, what it...

In this peppy episode we're talking about letting go. It's really easy to take all of the analysis we have done over the last few weeks and spend time making ourselves feel bad about all the things we didn't improve, didn't succeed at or downright sucked at! This is not helpful! So in this episode I will talk a little about how you should take the learnings from last year to apply...

Happy New Year! Every year, right at midnight, at parties around the world people hold hands and sing a song. In the English speaking world there is only one song that can be sung at this moment: Auld Lang Syne. This song was created by famous Scottish poet Robert Burns, initially as a poem and then turned into a song using an old Scottish tune. The problem is, everyone understands the chorus, and...

This week we're thinking about the past and thinking about what we want to achieve in the future. We're looking at what has worked before in your learning journey, and what hasn't. Don't think of this as 'failure' and 'success' but rather useful information to help you improve how you learn in the future. As I say in the video, the most important thing you can learn...

Christmas Day may be over but our Christmas readings are not! This year I'm reading an excerpt from Terry Pratchett's Hogfather. In this story Death is having to pretend to be the Hogfather (just like our Santa Claus). Here he is trying to enter a house to leave presents with his servant, sidekick Albert. Death has already visited some very rich houses so in this part he really can't u...

This week your task is to set yourself some actionable goals for next year. Keeping in mind what you thought about last week regarding what was successful this year, what wasn't and what you've already achieved this year and what you want to achieve next year. Vocabulary Focus tunes - songs or music that you listen to that helps you focus. actionable goals - goals that are measurable and a...

This week we are reading the most Christmassy Brother's Grimm story (only because it actually mentions Christmas and involves presents!). Note: Please forgive my side notes...there are quite a lot of them! This story is written in Old English. I think you should understand most of it, some of the words and certainly the grammar and use is quite out of date. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub...

This week we're analysing, along with your test results, where you are now in your learning journey. We want to know whether things are going well. We also want to understand what's working and what's not working. This is a really good time to look at everything you have accomplished this year and really recognise how hard you've worked and how much time you've spent learning....

Today on the podcast we're learning about similes and metaphors. I find these two very confusing and so look for the core differences between them to identify which is which. According to Google, a simile is: 'a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid' And a metaphor is: 'a figu...

This week we're getting ready for the new year. This is the first in a series of episodes, going out on Wednesdays that will walk you through the process of finishing this year and getting ready for next year. First we want to establish where you are in your English journey. Once we know where you are, then you can decide where you want to go. It also helps you understand how long it can take...

Today we're looking at some of the other influences on English, including the Vikings and Indian and African languages. English really is an international language and it is still evolving today, especially with the development of the internet and technology. If you're interested in some of the vocabulary I mentioned you can find lists of vocabulary from those countries in the links on the...

Today we're looking at some of English's weirdly spelled words and we're following them back through their roots to find out where they came from, what their journey was and how they ended up so weird! I did some research for this class, you can read some of the articles linked below (just click the words) if you're interested in this topic and want to find out more. Ghost Why Y Rh...

In this episode we're back to normal and studying some idioms. Some of my regular students will recognise their stories in this episode, I hope they don't mind me using them for dramatic effect! I gave you lots of examples of how you might use these idioms and sentence structures for them. Today's idioms were: Move the goal posts - to keep moving the end goal or parameters of success....