Zdenek’s English Podcast

During my time in England this summer I struck up a friendly conversation with one of the group leaders and before you know it, I was invited for a pint of Guinness. I said to myself, I might as well capitalise on this and recorded a nice interview. 

In this episode, I tell an anecdote and talk about what I have been up to lately. 

In this episode, I introduce you to an American friend of mine with whom I took the CELTA course a few years ago. This summer we both worked for the came company in England, but in different centres. The episode is little bit light-hearted because we are good friends so wind-ups and jokes at each other's expense come to us very naturally.  

   This episode does exactly what it says on the tin. Firstly, I tell you some information about the meet-up, how it was organised, where it happened, and how it compares to the previous one organised a year before during which I had met Luke Thompson of Luke's English Podcast but failed to meet everyone else.    As one of the main attraction were board games, I will tell you a bit more about the...

In this episode I speak to Aisha who  I had a pleasure to work with during summer 2018 in London as an activity leader. She has studied at a music college and is a musician, singer, and composes music.  

In this episode I talk to my former colleague and a friend Marzena from Poland about her not always positive experiences of working for a language school in Oxford. 

   In this episode, I talk to my coworker Neimo from England. The episode was recorded in Oxford and we speak about our job on that day. But more importnatly Naemo tells us about herself, her life in Romania where she is studying medicine at a university.

This is an utterly imporvised episode. I had to kill time while waiting for a group at an airport.

After exactly one year I met up with Mark who is originally from Russia and has been living and studying in England for a while. This means he has a perfect British accent. We talked a bit about his school and I asked Mark a lot of random questions which gave me the opporutnity to insert lot of idioms and expressions related to maths.

In this, to my mind, very positive and motivating episode I talk to Ryoko, my former Japanese student and a well-travelled person, who has lived, worked, and done her research in developing countries in Africa, namely she helped to deliver babies in Cameron and Malawi. On top of that, she has studied in the USA and has now completed her premedical course in the Czech Republic. We also touch upon J...

   In this episode I would like to update you on what I have been doing. I had a free June which means I did a lot of things to kill time. I speak about LEP Premium which is a new service Luke from Luke's English Podcast offers, I talk about my plans for July, and last but not least, I spend considerable amount of time talking about the world cup and the chances of the teams who qualified. This is...

   This episode was recorded outside by the river. In it I have an informal chat with a high level English speaker Marija who has been on the podcast before several times this year. We have a very relaxed conversation which mostly focuses on English exams. Marija also makes an attempt at evaluating her academic year. A second part which will only be available for patrons will follow soon. 

   In this episode, I talk to a friend and another playtester of the game I have been developing called Kingdoms of Deceit. Nick is currently studying political science in Japan and so our chat naturally revolves around Japan, whatt is is like to live in Japan, Japanese mentality, Japanese history, and Japanese language. Admitedly the discussion is rather geeky at times, but Nick is a very well-sp...

In this episode I talk to Shaun from England about his job which is a library assistant. We speak about books and how they can benefit us and  we also discuss some knowledge related sayings. 

Remember Clare from episode 161? Well, she is back on the podcast. We did a nice skype catch-up discussing various topics such as teaching English, her life in the czech Republic, my experience of working in London, xenophobia, and more. 

In this episode I have a friendly chat with 2 young students of mine from Azerbaijan who have come to the Czech Republic to study medicine. We talk about different subjects such as their studies, cultural and mentality differences, what it is like to become an adult, and how it feels to move abroad and live there. 

   For this episode I invited a friend of podcast Nrup who comes from India. The aim of this episode is to clarify idioms which contain colours so if you want to know what red herring, to be caught red-handed, to see red, in the black, to be born with a silver spoon the mounth and more mean, have a listen to this episode.     Let me also use this as an opportunity to ask you to write a review for...

    In this episode, I talk to my students Fu aka Cloudy and Nikita. The former is Chinese and the latter Russian. We go through some common stereotypes about their own countries, and discuss whether we think they are true or false. Due to openinmindedness of the guys, we manage to do this successfully even though the topics themselves may appear slightly controversial at first sight. Overall this...

In this episode, I speak to my friend and surprsingly also my former student Max from the United States of America. We talk about Max's journey of learning to speak Czech, the difference in mentality between the Americans and Czechs, Max's further study plans, and last but not least music. Max also exclusively for ZEP performed and recorded a song called Up against the Wall. 

Honza back on the podcast in another instalment of Road to Civilization series. Apart from the usual nonsensical banter, we also attempt to play a game of guessing animal sounds. Of course it ends up being a disaster as usual. Towards the end Honza's alter ego is revealed. 

In this episode, I will take a look at phonology, namely how "th" is pronounced in English i.e "ð" and "θ" sounds. These seem to be some the most challenging sounds for most non-native speaker learners of English. The first half of this is my the theory presentation, while for the second half I intended to throw in various examples. However, that turned out to be a bit of self-indulging comedy sho...

   I have always been impressed by the Pink Gorilla Story episode (episode 125) of Luke's English Podcast and ever since I started doing my podcast I have dreamt of trying my hand at an improvised story like that. It has always been an objective that seemed unlikely to achieve especially because I was never able to keep it engaging and make it funny enough. I think I tried several times in the pas...

In this episode I talk to my three African students from Etiopia, Senegal, and Kenya, as well as a young man from Peru. The talk revolves around the topic of studying languages. We discuss the challenges of trying to use the target language with the natives, we talk about geography of each student's country of origin, and we try to find motivating words for anyone learning a foreign langugae.

This is a continuation of the interview with Key which was published in episode 208. The episode features Kay from Ireland herself, but also Maria from Macedonia, and Nrup from India. In a nutshell, it is a bit of a random chat involving interesting stories, especially the ones with Kay's priest brother quoting Starwars during his sermons, and how she is "sociable" with strangers on the Prague met...

This episode is a hodge-podge of 2 seemingly unrelated recordings. However, they have one thing in common - they are both improvised. In both cases there was absolutely no script whatsoever. The first part is a monologue ramble, which is not exactly information heavy. It was recorded because I had an urge to speak English as I was lying in my bed before mz bed time. Do not expect anmything profoun...