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Steve: Hi Jill

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: You know one thing I was thinking about Jill, English.

You know, I don’t know if English is easier or more difficult than other languages, but what do you think makes English difficult?

Jill: I think one of the main issues is, of course, you’ve got to learn vocabulary like in any language, but I think English is quite illogical.

Steve: Illogical?

Jill: Illogical.

Steve: Yes.

Jill: There are a number of words that sound the same, but are spelt different, mean something completely different and even native speakers often have trouble choosing the correct spelling.

So spelling is difficult which, in turn, causes problems with pronunciation because there are silent letters; you know, thought is t-h-o-u-g-h-t.

Some words that have an “e” at the end will create a certain sound, but another word with an “e” at the end won’t create that same sound.

I was with my nieces this weekend and they are 6 and 8 years old, so learning to read and spell.

The 8 year old is learning to write and spell, so she’s really quite into it.

She likes school and so she wanted to spell a lot of different words and she would say oh, how do you spell this and I would always say you can do it, sound it out and so she would try every time.

Most times she would get the word right or pretty close anyway, but then a lot of times there was just something little and sounding it out she was right it should have been spelt that way, but because it’s English there are all these different weird things that happen that cause a lot of problems.

There are a lot of native speakers who cannot spell.

Steve: I know, I know.

Now what’s the solution there?

I mean if it’s difficult for native speakers it must be even more difficult for people coming from another language where the letters already have a value for them in that language and most languages are more logical, as you put it, in terms of the writing system.

What are some of the words that your nieces had trouble with?

Jill: I’m just trying to think now.

She was writing a Christmas song, so there was…

Steve: Sleigh bells, you know, “sleigh” for example.

Jill: And “bow” and the word “friend” was in there.

Steve: I know. You know, I find that I even have to think sometimes and I remember “i before e except after c.”

Jill: You know, I do that all the time, I have to say and, of course, then there are many exceptions to that like “their” t-h-e-i-r, “neighbor”.

There are many exceptions, but generally the rule is “i before e except after the letter c”, except after “c”.

Steve: Right.

Jill: But that’s the other problem with English and maybe it’s with all languages that there are so many exceptions.

There is a rule, but then there are so many exceptions to the rule and so people might learn a rule and they apply it every time in all situations and that’s just not right.

Steve: Right and there are so many of them to learn.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: But I wonder what other things about English make it more difficult.

You hear people talking about phrasal verbs that in other languages you might have one verb whereas in English there are a lot of “go up”, “go in”, “go out”, you know, “get out”.

Like “What am I getting out of this?” We had our thing on “get”, right?

Jill: Right.

Steve: So phrasal verbs might be something.

Some people say that the absence of a more structured grammar in English in a way is easier, but in a way is more difficult because then it becomes more idiomatic.

Jill: Yeah, you have to learn a lot of these.

I think with phrasal verbs or phrases in general, so many of them if you pick apart the phrase, if you take each individual word, it doesn’t make sense.

Steve: No.

Jill: The phrase does not mean what those individual words mean together, so you have to really learn it as a phrase.

Steve: You have to learn the phrases, yeah.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: Now what was your experience when you studied French, which is a little more logical?

Although, there are things that aren’t logical in French, but I think it’s certainly more structured grammatically than English.

What did you find difficult there?

Jill: I think with French, probably with most languages, grammar was an issue with me, still is a big issue.

Steve: Meaning what verb or what aspect?

Jill: The verb tenses; many different verb tenses and all the different endings and the different auxiliary verbs and all these different…

Steve: And then getting in the conditional and the subjunctive.

Jill: Yeah, when you use the subjunctive it’s only with certain words like “wish” and those sorts of thoughts that you would use the subjunctive, so I think that definitely I have a problem with verb tenses.

Steve: Yeah, which probably you would not get over, unless you were in a situation where you were using it all the time because you could sort of really study it to death and master it for an exam, but then if you didn’t use the language for three months it would be gone.

You have to develop that habit.

Jill: All over, yeah, it’s true and Spanish was the same.

Spanish is similar to French as far as verb tenses, but Spanish is easier I think than French.

The spelling is very easy and that’s one thing about Spanish.

Steve: Absolutely. You know, I think Spanish has tremendous potential.

I mean it already is an international language, but I think it will grow as an international language, first of all, because the spelling is so true, unlike French even.

French is better than English, but still in French there is funny spelling and Spanish, you know, is popular.

Yeah, people know that there are many hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers, but I think Spanish is connected with fun in a way, don’t you think so?

Jill: Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Steve: We think of the sunny climate, we think of Latin music and fun.

Jill: Certain words like “ola” and “un d’les”!

Steve: Un d’les, ola!

And I think the thought; if people believe that it is easier that helps them because if you’ve got this great obstacle and you say gees, I can’t learn that language it’s too difficult, I can never do it that weighs you down.

So people think Spanish is relatively easy to learn, which I think it is and it’s fun.

You know, if you’re living in Europe you can go to Spain, if you’re living in North America you can go to Mexico or you can go to South America.

Jill: Central America.

Steve: Central America as you did; visiting in Central America and, of course, there are more and more Spanish speakers in the United States or even here in Canada.

Jill: Yeah and Spanish is just a lovely language too.

It sounds pretty, it’s a nice language to learn and many people do speak it.

Steve: Although I must say that I like the sound of other languages too.

I like the sound of French; I like the sound of Italian.

Jill: Well yeah, all the romance languages are for sure my favorite sounding.

Steve: But, you know, I like hearing any language well spoken.

Mandarin or Japanese or even German, which isn’t really all that nice sounding a language, or Dutch, you know, even less so.

I don’t know any Dutch, but if you know the language when you hear someone express themselves very well in the language it’s always a pleasure; it’s always a pleasure.

Yeah, for singing, I think I’d rather hear someone sing in Italian than in German or Dutch.

Jill: I agree.

Steve: You know, for example, yeah.

Jill: What did you find most difficult about some of the languages you learned?

Steve: Okay, if I take Chinese…well, let’s start with French, which was the first one that I sort of tried to master; I think it was the pronunciation.

I worked quite hard on my French pronunciation and, obviously, these tenses and so forth and so on.

Mainly, I ended up going to France, so I had to use it a lot and gradually I just got better at it.

With Chinese, of course, the big obstacle is the characters.

Jill: Of course.

Steve: You’ve got to learn those characters. That’s a lot of work; it’s just a lot of work.

It’s not difficult in the sense of trying to understand nuclear physics or something; there is no comprehension issue.

You know, you don’t have to be smart to do it you just have to put in the time and it’s a lot of drudgery; a lot of drudgery.

People say oh yeah, but there are radicals, you know, there are components of the characters that repeat but, you know, it doesn’t help you a lot because a character has 10-12-15 different strokes and you have to remember the individual stroke order.

I had to learn 4,000 of these each one with 10-12-15 strokes; it’s a lot of work.

Jill: See, it’s just so daunting that I can’t even imagine undertaking such a task.

Steve: You’ve got to have a system and, you know, I took eight months.

Mark, when he started with Japanese, he went at studying the characters.

He worked very hard at it with flashcards and stuff and he learned 1,800 characters.

I mean you can do it, but it takes a lot of dedication.

Jill: You have to want to do it.

Steve: You have to want to do it and, you know, it’s not as much fun as listening and reading, but it’s not uninteresting because I kind of like the characters now that I’ve…

Jill: Well I think they’re really beautiful.

Steve: They’re beautiful and there are some things and it’s history.

It’s a writing system that, in a way, is primitive.

I mean you’re representing the meaning rather than the sound and, obviously, if you can just represent the sound it’s more efficient.

But I like them, but it’s a lot of work, so that was a problem.

And then the tones are a problem, but the structure of the language, the way they use their words, is not difficult at all.

There is no difficult grammar.

There are some patterns that are different from English, but a lot of the word order is the same as English.

There are some initial strange things like when they say “Are you going?” they say “You go not go?” That’s how they say it “You go not go?” So when you first encounter “You go not go” it’s a little difficult.

But after a while all these strange structures, as with any language, start to become natural, so that was the biggest problem there.

With Japanese the different levels of politeness is a problem and also the fact that they use effectively three writing systems, which I think is so inefficient, but that’s their language; it’s not for us to criticize the language.

It’s like English, objectively, the spelling system is just ridiculous, but that’s how it has evolved, so that’s what we have to learn.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: And I agree with you on French.

Yeah, as we said, the grammar in German as well and I just gave up trying to remember all those…

Jill: “Der”, “die” and “das”.

Steve: “Der”, “die”, “das”; all the endings I couldn’t remember, but after a while you just use it, you know, yeah, but those are some of the difficulties.

Korean is quite similar to Japanese.

One last thing on those East Asian languages, once you’ve put the effort into learning characters and learning the Chinese vocabulary that will be 50 percent of the vocabulary in Japanese and Korean, so that’s a big help there too.

So your nieces are…but it’s good that they like learning that’s the main thing.

Jill: Well the 8 year old does the 6 year old refuses.

Steve: Refuses?

Jill: She refuses at school and at home to learn to read to learn to write; she just wants no part of it.

Steve: And what are you going to do?

Jill: Well, it’s not that she can’t do it, it’s just she doesn’t want to be told she has to do it, so they’re struggling with, basically, using bribery.

You can only play with your Webkins on the computer after you’ve done half an hour of words or, you know, you can’t do this until you do this.

Steve: That’s not bribery that’s coercion.

Jill: Well, yeah, whatever works.

Steve: You’re taking away you’re not giving anything.

Jill: That’s true.

That’s right, but the teacher too even said…because most kids even if they won’t do something for their parents they will do it at least for a teacher or for somebody else, but even the teacher asked them, how do you deal with this?

What do you do?

She’s by no means a dumb child.

She’s very intelligent, very capable, she’s just being stubborn.

She just, for some reason, has it in her mind that she’s not going to be told she has to do this.

Steve: Now is she like that in other things?

Jill: I guess she’s a little bit stubborn.

She’s definitely got her own mind, definitely, but she’s just going to… You know with her, actually, it’s mostly laziness and we all joke about it.

Anything that requires effort even if it’s art, which she loves, as soon as she’s got to put in a little more effort she’s done with her picture or she’s done with whatever she’s doing.

She’ll sit on the couch and watch shows.

She’s just lazy and that’s basically what it comes down to, but she’ll learn.

Jill: Now how were you as a child? Were you lazy too or were you very diligent, hard working?

Steve: I guess I was a little bit of both.

I think I always wanted to do well at school.

I cared about my marks and my grades, so I did always do well, but I can’t say I put in a lot of effort with homework.

My mom wasn’t the type of parent who said okay, do you have homework?

Let’s get it out, do it, check it; never ever did she do that it was kind of just left to us.

If we did it we did it and if we didn’t we didn’t and my brother and I basically never did, but we always managed.

You know, the 15 minutes before school started; we always got there early.

We’d cram in our homework and we’d get it done somehow, so I guess I was lazy in that sense.

Steve: So, you mean maybe your niece has some of these genes?

Jill: Well, no, but she’s Chris’ niece actually.

Steve: Oh, she’s Chris’ niece, okay, alright.

Jill: So, not related to me.

Steve: Okay, alright.

So yeah, we’ve kind of covered on some of the things that make English difficult or other languages difficult.

But, I guess the example of your nieces the older one is keen and likes it, enjoys it and so she’s going to overcome any difficulties and the younger one, hopefully, will also learn.

Jill: She’ll catch up. I think the important thing with English — well, for me anyway — as far as spelling goes and vocabulary growth, is just to read a lot.

Native speakers need to read a lot.

Steve: Oh, so true.

Jill: If you’ve seen a word spelled correctly several times you will learn how to spell that word.

Steve: And, I might add, so read a lot for sure and the other thing, of course, that we hope that the LingQ System does for people is make them better at noticing.

You can pass the word “perceive”, “conceive”, whatever and you never pay much attention to it and then you spell it wrong one day and so now you’ve spelt it wrong and then thereafter you might start noticing “receive”, “perceive”, “conceive” every time you see the word.

Jill: Right.

Steve: That’s why we ask people to save words and when they have something corrected to really go and look at the things that they got wrong.

If they start noticing those words or those kinds of structures…because we can see a lot of things and not see, you know what I mean?

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: You have to become more observant of what goes on. Okay, thank you very much Jill.

Jill: Thank you.

Steve: Bye, bye.

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Mark: Hello again, Mark Kaufmann here joined by Jill Soles, as usual.

How’s it going Jill?

Jill: Good thanks, how are you?

Mark: I’m good; I’m good. How was your weekend?

Jill: Great! I’m just trying to think, it’s only Monday and I’ve already forgotten.

Mark: It was a long time ago, yeah.

Jill: It’s the pregnancy mush brain or whatever they call it though.

I do have a hard time.

Mark: Are you finding that?

Jill: The last couple of months I’ve been finding that.

Mark: More mushy than before?

Jill: Yeah, a little more empty in there, hollow, but I do forget things and can’t sort of focus as much often.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just looking for excuses really.

Mark: You know, I think people start to make up excuses or be more sensitive.

It’s like talking about senior moments, you know.

Jill: Yeah, yeah.

Mark: I mean, I don’t know, I’ve always forgotten stuff.

Just when I become a senior I’ll be able to blame it on being a senior.

Jill: Exactly.

Mark: I guess I won’t be able to blame it on being pregnant.

Jill: No, no, hopefully not.

But no, it was nice.

Oh, we talked about it I guess on Friday.

I did go over to the Sunshine Coast and hung out there with the kids and got a Christmas up and ate lots and played UNO and games with kids and just sort of hung out and relaxed.

Then yesterday I went to Stanley Park with my brother and sister-in-law and two kids and went on the Christmas Train.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: It’s a big area that’s all decorated and lit up and just beautiful.

Mark: Was it busy?

Jill: Oh yeah, it’s packed, but it was great.

We went on the train and then they have the farm animals that you can go and see after and there’s hot chocolate and different things there, so.

It’s not that much it’s like $7.00 and you can stay as long as you want and see the animals, ride the train and look around, so.

Mark: Oh that’s nice. You know, they have the Halloween Train at Stanley Park too.

Jill: Right.

Mark: I know for that it’s hard to get on you have to buy tickets in advance.

Jill: I don’t know if this is the case every year, but this year what they did is they had 50 percent of tickets for sale online in advance and then 50 percent that are there that you have to go there and buy them and, basically, you have a time, so between three and four.

So you can go without tickets and show up and hope that there are tickets left and then you kind of basically line up any time between three and four and that’s your time.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, my brother lives a ways away from Stanley Park, so they wanted to go in the evening, which is the most popular because it’s dark, but all of the online tickets were sold out.

Because they live about 50 minutes away they didn’t want to take the chance of coming in and not being able to get tickets, so we got ones from three to four.

Mark: Online.

Jill: Yeah, actually they got theirs online and I didn’t have one and I went and just bought it at the window.

We got there at around three and we were on a train at three-fifteen, so it wasn’t a problem.

Mark: No, well that’s pretty good.

Jill: Yeah and it was really well done.

Mark: That’s sounds like fun.

I’m sure my kids would enjoy that too.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I should think about doing that.

Jill: Have you guys never done that?

Mark: I don’t think so, maybe once quite a few years ago.

I can remember going on the Stanley Park Train when I was little, but I’m not sure.

I know we’ve never done the Halloween Ghost Train because my kids would be too scared.

Jill: I was just going to say, this one’s not scary so your kids might like it.

Mark: Yeah, exactly.

Jill: I know they’re not big fans of scary rides or anything, but this is very tame.

It’s just pretty and they’ve got Christmas music going the whole time.

Mark: Well, we should think about going.

Jill: And I think you can still get online tickets for the evening times for next weekend and the weekend after.

It was just that it was so close already to this weekend they were already sold out.

Mark: Is it only on the weekends?

Jill: No, I don’t believe it is.

Mark: Weeknights too we would be able to do it.

Jill: Yeah, I think so.

Mark: Well, I’ll look into it.

Jill: Yeah, you guys live close enough to Stanley Park that it’s not a big deal for you to just whip over.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: But yeah, I think they would enjoy it.

Mark: I’ll look into that after the show.

Jill: And you just got a call from your wife talking about your dog.

Mark: I did.

Yeah, he’s been limping for four or five days, at least four or five days, so she finally took him to the vet.

Apparently, he’s only nine months old now, nine month old puppy, but he’s got the beginnings of arthritis in both elbows.

And yeah, he’s been told not to play with other dogs, at least for a while, because he ends up playing with the dog across the street because the neighbors across the street got a puppy about the same time, so he’s about the same age.

He may be a month younger than Gordie, Gordie is our dog, but he’s like an Australian Sheep Dog.

Sheep Dogs are quick, they’re made to run forever and hyper and, you know, that’s how they are and our dog is kind of a big half Black Lab-Retriever cross.

He’s more of a bigger, loping kind of a dog rather than a quick hyper dog, so there’s a bit of a miss-match there in terms of speed.

I think it’s just hard on his joints.

Jill: To try to keep up with the Sheep Dog.

Mark: To try to keep up and I mean they love it.

They just want to play together all the time and really I don’t know how we’re going to keep him from going over there, but I guess we’re going to have to try.

Jill: Oh, that’s too bad.

Mark: Yeah, apparently the vet said he’s more of a 10-miler type of dog rather than a quick-burst type of a dog, which we know that.

He’s more of a loping type of runner.

It’s tough because the big dogs, like his breed Lab and Retrievers, they tend to have a lot of problems with their joints and their hips and arthritis.

So, we don’t want to…I mean he’s so young to have that already.

It isn’t very good, so we’ve got to try and keep him a little less active.

Jill: I know, which is so hard.

It’s like trying to keep kids from playing when they’re sick and they still want to play and they don’t understand why they can’t.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: They don’t probably understand that they’re in pain because of what they’re doing, because of their running, obviously, they don’t understand that.

Mark: No, for sure.

Jill: So that’s sad.

Mark: You feel bad for the dog.

You can’t speak to him, you know.

Sorry, you’re not allowed out for the next three weeks, you know, whatever it is.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: But it’s funny, friends of ours also got a Lab recently and also have a Sheep Dog living next door, a full-grown Sheep Dog, like a regular English…maybe it’s not a Sheep Dog, but it’s a Collie, which is a kind of a Sheep Dog anyway, quick and lots of energy and that dog needs surgery on both of its knees or two of its knees.

I guess it has four, I don’t know exactly…

Jill: …dog anatomy.

Mark: But yeah, probably for the same reason.

You know, young puppy, big breed, trying to keep up with a little, fast, aggressive, breed it’s just tough on them.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, so anyway, that’s too bad; we just found that out today.

Jill: So I guess that means you guys will be doing a lot more walking with Gordie.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: You can’t just send him out to play with the neighbor dog.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: You’ll have to take him out for his exercise.

Mark: We take him out quite a bit anyway.

Jill: Yeah, you do.

Mark: But he’s always wanted to go out and play with the neighbor’s dog, but he won’t be able to do that.

I mean I like running with him when I can.

If that’s okay then it’s just a matter of getting his current injury to settle down and then he’ll be fine.

Jill: Yeah, I think it’s like people.

From what I’ve heard about other dogs is if something starts acting up like that if you rest it and lay off it for a little while it will get better and then, obviously, you can’t resume the same activities exactly the same way or as much, but you can certainly continue to have activity in their daily routine.

Mark: Yeah, oh yeah, I mean he’s got too much energy to sit around for too long as a pup.

Jill: And that can’t be healthy anyway.

Mark: No.

Jill: Dogs need to run around.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: So.

Mark: So, that’s that. Otherwise, I don’t know, anything exciting?

Jill: Oh, you had your all weekend hockey training course.

Mark: Yes I did.

Jill: How did that go?

Mark: I did.

Well, actually, I went on Saturday and the guy running it didn’t want to be there.

He didn’t think he was going to have to do it and he found out sort of late and he’s like well, I can only do it on Saturday.

They were going to bring someone else in on Sunday, but then they ended up… He said you know what, let’s just get through it all on Saturday, so he went through it really quickly on Saturday.

I didn’t have to go Sunday, it was perfect.

It wasn’t perfect because I had to be there on Saturday too, but I got my Sunday back.

Jill: Oh good.

Mark: So that was great, yeah.

Jill: So, I mean, obviously, they’re not that concerned if they’re going to let a replacement come in and just rush right through it.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, they make a big deal of it and I think they probably wouldn’t be that happy if they knew that was what happened, but he just couldn’t come Sunday and it was a last minute thing and so he just did that, which was lucky for us.

Jill: So, did you get anything out of it?

Mark: You know, a little bit, sure but, again, the little bit that you get out of it doesn’t make up for a full day that you spend there.

It’s hot in here, can you open that window?

Jill: Yeah, we’re having hot flashes here.

Mark: That’s right.

But now I’m done; now, hopefully, I don’t have to do it anymore.

I do have a homework assignment that I have to send in.

Jill: You’re kidding?

Mark: No, but, hopefully, that won’t take too long and then I’ll be done.

Jill: And can you actually fail that assignment?

Mark: I think if you don’t send it in then you fail but, otherwise, not.

Jill: You can officially be the coach now?

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: The coveted role of coach.

Mark: The coveted role of coach, so that now I can spend…

Jill: …four mornings a week.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: Well, that’s good.

Mark: Yeah, so that kind of worked out well.

I got the Christmas tree on Sunday and set it up and it’s all decorated.

Jill: Oh nice.

Mark: It’s looking quite Christmassy at home. I guess that’s about it.

Jill: Good.

Mark: Had a nice relaxing day.

I saw Annie’s hip-hop concert dancing with her friends.

Jill: Was it a Christmas concert?

Mark: No, just the end of their little term, so they have their concert.

Jill: Was that at the Centennial Theatre or something?

Mark: No, it was at Kay Meek Theatre at West Van.

High, which everyone was kind of grumbling about because it was quite expensive to go and watch my own daughter dance with her class.

Jill: I know the Kay Meek Centre is only a couple of years old and its, apparently…I haven’t been inside, but just a beautiful…

Mark: It’s really nice, yeah.

Jill: And it’s at a local high school.

Mark: It’s at a high school, yeah.

Jill: And they have performances of all calibers there.

Mark: They really do, yeah.

Jill: So how much was it to go?

Mark: Well, it was like $15 bucks a person, but by the time the whole family is there just to watch my daughter and it’s not like a professional production, it just seemed like…

Jill: Who’s kidding who?

Mark: Yeah, it just seemed like ha, why?

I mean I pay for her to go and now I’ve got to… Anyway, she liked it, but they used to do it in a school gymnasium, but I don’t know why they didn’t this time.

I heard that they weren’t allowed to for some reason, but it seems strange.

It’s fine to have it in a school gym, why do we need to be in a fancy theatre and pay that kind of money.

I mean it’s a lot, there were four of us that went.

Jill: And the kids didn’t even get…there was no discount for kids?

Mark: Oh kids were $10.00, adults were $15.00.

Jill: Yeah, that is actually a lot though, yeah.

Mark: Yeah, I mean…

Jill: So it was $50 bucks then.

Mark: Yeah, that’s a lot.

Jill: To see your daughter dance for five minutes, ten minutes.

Mark: Five minutes, you know, maybe yeah, it’s a 30 minute show, 30 minutes tops and she’s not in every…she went out and did two songs, so two songs, yeah.

Jill: Yeah, that’s pretty amazing that they can charge those prices.

Mark: I know. I think a lot of people complained, so now the instructor is like pouting.

Jill: Oh.

Mark: Oh well, we had to do this for this reason.

I never saw the email, but apparently she sent an email out and we’re not going to have the class anymore.

Jill: What do you mean?

Mark: After Christmas there’s no more.

The class is no more because people complained too much.

Jill: So she’s just not going to offer that class anymore?

Mark: That’s what she said.

Jill: Oh is that ever bizarre.

Mark: Yeah, I know. She probably will, she’s just being an artist, you know.

Jill: Has hurt feelings or something, yeah.

Mark: Exactly. So, at any rate, I mean it was fun.

They are getting better.

Like she’s done that, I don’t know, three or four years now and it’s been pretty painful at times to watch that.

Jill: It cannot be as painful as children learning to play instruments and going to see their band concerts.

Mark: I haven’t done that, but I’ve watched my daughter’s piano recitals.

They play for such a short time and there are always some kids that are good and some that are less good.

I don’t mind those, actually, the recitals.

Jill: A piano recital is okay, but when you’ve got a whole band and nobody is in tune and nobody is playing together and there are a bunch of 10 year olds and it’s their first year of playing the trumpet it’s not very harmonious sounding.

Mark: Are you speaking from experience? You’ve done this?

Jill: I have done that, actually, I’m sure I thought I was really good at the time.

Mark: Oh, you were playing.

Jill: I was in the band, yeah.

Mark: So you don’t know, in fact, that you were bad.

Jill: No, because I’ve also gone and listened too.

My little sister is so much younger than me, so I have gone and listened year’s ago, but… I was speaking about it with Kate here at the office too because she’s had to go watch her little niece’s concert and same thing they just… How can we get out of this?

How can we be busy that night because it’s just painful it’s like nails down a chalkboard, you know, so at least dancing you’re just watching something.

Mark: Yeah, that’s true and that was why I was glad it was only half an hour because that’s perfect.

You get a little bit of it and then after a while you can’t watch it anymore.

I shouldn’t say that.

I’ve missed a few; I have missed a few.

Jill: Well, I think mothers and fathers and women and men are a little bit different too because you probably really enjoy watching your son play hockey.

Mark: Yeah I do, yeah.

Jill: And I don’t know, I mean sure, if it’s my own son I will care more, but I don’t know that I’ll really get a lot out of watching an 8 year old play hockey.

Whereas, I’ve watched little girls that I know or care about have little recitals when they were even younger than Annie, like 6 years old, and I thoroughly enjoy it because I like watching the dancing.

I think it’s so cute and all the costumes so I think…

Mark: Yeah, that’s for sure part of it, for sure. I know that Kindrey my wife enjoys it much more than I do.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Although I didn’t mind it this time, but I will say that she’s a diehard at the hockey games.

Jill: Kindrey is.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: But I can see that too.

Mark: You know what though?

Hockey is much more exciting to watch than kid’s soccer.

Kid’s soccer, especially when they’re young, is painful.

Whereas the hockey for whatever reason… One big advantage is that it’s confined.

The puck has to stay in play.

It can’t go out of play, so they’re kind of trying to do it and they can’t really stand up and they can’t really hit and every once in a while somebody makes a play.

It’s just like you’re watching it and you’re come on!

Jill: And it’s so cute.

Mark: It’s cute, yeah.

Jill: The little boys and they can’t skate and they look so little out there.

They’re falling all over the place and they can’t stop and it’s cute; it’s funny to watch the little kids.

Mark: Yeah, I mean even non-hockey fans, mothers, they all love it.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: They all say it’s more exciting than any other little guy’s sporting activity that they watch. The hockey is by far the most fun to watch.

Jill: I can see that.

Mark: I don’t know why that is, but partly it’s because it is difficult and they just look funny.

They can’t really stand up and yeah, no, it is.

Jill: Oh yeah.

Mark: Anyway, with that I think we should let everybody go here. We will talk again later.

Jill: Alright, bye, bye.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Mark: Hello again, Mark Kaufmann here for EnglishLingQ. Jill Soles joins me today, how’s it going Jill?

Jill: Good, how are you?

Mark: …as usual, I might add. I’m good, I’m good, another sunny podcast day.

Jill: I think Wednesday was too or when your dad and I did it. No, maybe it wasn’t, yesterday was.

Mark: Maybe it’s only sunny when I do them.

Jill: Perhaps.

Mark: That’s the affect I have.

I guess what we thought we would start with today was just a brief update on the system, since it is Friday.

There hasn’t been that much done this past week at least that most of you would notice, but the one big thing is on the Account Page where we have now added the ability to purchase six-month memberships.

For most of you, of course, that doesn’t really matter because there is no break or deal or discount for doing that but, basically, we did it for people that don’t have credit cards.

Maybe Jill you can explain the different methods that they can now pay us by.

Jill: Because it takes a lot of time if people send us money orders or wire transfer money into our account — you know, there is stuff that we have to do – we don’t want to do that on a monthly basis to try and keep track of the people that are doing that.

All of that can be a little bit challenging, so that’s why if you don’t have a credit card you have to pay in advance for six months a certain amount of money, a lump sum and, basically, that allows you to pay through PayPal.

You can set up a PayPal account through your bank account.

Not every country can you do that in, but many, many, countries you can.

Mark: Quite a few and it seems to be growing all the time.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I should also add that PayPal allows you to create an account with your bank account, but very often it also accepts a lot of European debit cards.

Obviously, they accept credit cards, but there are a lot of European debit cards and North American debit cards.

Jill: And does it accept the Japanese the JTB?

Mark: JCB?

I don’t think PayPay accepts JCB, but I could be wrong; I could be wrong.

I know, for example, in Germany there’s a very common banking debit card system that is very common in Germany and PayPal accepts that, so it certainly opens up a lot more payment options.

Jill: If you don’t have a credit card.

Mark: Yeah and, otherwise, you need a Visa or MasterCard to sign up in our regular payment system, so here you can pay through PayPal with your bank account or your debit card or whatever options they provide in your country.

I know that in Japan it’s common to pay directly into a Japanese bank account and so we do in Japan have a bank account which our Japanese members can pay into.

If you want to use that payment option then they would have to let us know.

Jill: They have to contact us, yeah.

Mark: Contact us and let us know I’ll be putting money in and we’ll watch for that payment and we’ll manually set up your account.

Jill: First we’ll have to give them the details and then they’ll put the money in and then we’ll set up their account.

Mark: Anyway, I guess the point is that we now have some options for those of you without credit cards, so please check it out on the Account Page and if you do have any questions just send us an email.

Otherwise, Jill, what’s shakin’ for this upcoming weekend?

Jill: Oh well, I’m supposed to go to a Christmas party tomorrow night, but I think we’re actually bailing on that.

One of Chris’ coworkers is having a Christmas party just for the sort of elite people in his company.

Mark: Okay.

Jill: Not everybody is invited.

Mark: Not the riffraff.

Jill: No, sort of just the senior people are invited.

I think he’s got a very nice home in a very nice area of Vancouver.

It would be quite nice, but I think we’re actually going to go over to the Sunshine Coast, which is a 40 minute ferry ride, boat ride, away from Vancouver and that’s where his sister and brother-in-law and two nieces live.

Mark: Chris.

Jill: Chris’, yeah.

Mark: I thought you had family over there.

Jill: My brother and sister-in-law and nephew did live over there as well until about a year and a half ago.

Mark: Oh, okay.

Jill: They moved back over here and, basically, when they moved over here is when Chris’ family moved over there.

Mark: Okay.

Jill: So yeah, we go over there fairly regularly, probably once a month anyway and visit with them and eat lots and we play cards at night.

Mark: Oh, that’s nice.

It’s nice to go over there, actually, because it’s not that far and it’s a nice ferry ride because there is a lot to see, lots of islands.

Jill: It’s a beautiful ferry ride.

Mark: It’s a beautiful ferry ride, yeah.

Jill: Especially on a sunny day.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: It’s just gorgeous and there are a lot of people over there who actually work here in the city.

Mark: Right.

Jill: They commute every day.

Mark: Because it’s only 45 minutes, I think, the ferry.

It’s a lot nicer than the ferry ride to Vancouver Island, which is like an hour and 40 minutes and it’s pretty much open water most of the way, so there is not as much to see.

I mean not that it’s not nice, but it’s just more fun going up the Sunshine Coast.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Well that sounds like fun.

Jill: And then I think we’ll make sure we come back early enough on Sunday that I can actually go and buy some pants that fit me.

Mark: Yes, Jill is finally admitting defeat to her pants as her tummy grows in size.

Jill: I’m tired of being uncomfortable now, so I have to bite the bullet and get some of those ugly maternity clothes.

Mark: Yes.

Well, you’ll probably use them again, right?

Jill: Yeah, I’m sure, several times maybe.

Mark: Exactly, at least four or five times.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, well that’s good.

Jill: Yeah. I know you’ve got a really exciting weekend planned.

Mark: Well yeah, I’m glad you asked.

I have a hockey coaching clinic, seminar, whatever you want to call it, yes, for coaching my son’s hockey.

I have to go for a two-day seminar all day Saturday-Sunday.

Like I don’t give up enough time I now have to go for two full days.

My whole weekend killed for this seminar.

It’s just mind boggling to me.

Jill: What time in the morning does it start at?

Mark: It starts at nine.

Jill: And goes until …?

Mark: Five.

Jill: Wow!

And you get an hour break or something.

Mark: Something like that.

The way it works in Canada for the most part, for younger age groups, is that all the coaches are volunteers.

Probably that’s why we have so many kids that play hockey and play sports in generally is that most of the coaching is done by parent volunteers and so the participation is much higher because it’s cheaper and yeah, you don’t have to pay for professional coaches.

I know in Europe when I was there and I think in Japan too for hockey, all coaches were paid professional coaches for kids.

Jill: Oh really?

Mark: Oh yeah, so I think for that reason they have fewer kids playing.

Now maybe at the younger age groups that isn’t the case.

I don’t want to speak for everywhere, but from what I saw they just didn’t have sort of a volunteer coaching-type system that we have here, at least for teen sports.

Jill: Which is maybe both good and bad.

Mark: It’s good and bad.

Like I think because the European coaches are professional they probably on average are better and per capita develop more skill.

Certainly, if you’re a swimmer or a gymnast you’d never have a parent coaching you here.

Jill: Right.

Mark: I don’t know why it’s okay for teen sports, but that’s how it is.

At any rate, to try and help with that issue of better trained coaches they have these coaching seminars.

I mean they’re good in a way because they do teach people who don’t know about hockey but, quite frankly, I do know; more than the people running the course having played professionally for 10 years.

There is no sort of allowance for having that kind of experience, which is mind boggling.

Jill: That’s what I don’t understand.

Okay, maybe it is a good idea to have these courses because there are parents out there — I know even with my sister’s baseball team and whatever team sport — that really don’t have a clue and never played that sport, but why is there no gray area so that if somebody like yourself who knows the game better than most people, why should you be forced into this?

Mark: It makes no sense.

Really, if the issue is you wanting to get knowledgeable people involved then you should be removing barriers to entry for people that are qualified.

And yeah, that’s fine, if somebody didn’t play a little bit of hockey as a kid and doesn’t know much about it yeah, sure, put him through the course, hopefully, he’ll be a better coach at the end of it but, otherwise… There are so many ex-hockey players in Canada, like ex-professional hockey players.

There are relatively a large number of people that have played professionally at different levels and you should be encouraging those people to join, you know, rather than putting up impediments.

You know, yeah, okay, I want to coach my son, but if I wasn’t coaching my son there’s no way I would do all this stuff.

Jill: No.

Mark: So anyway, whatever, I’ve got to do it; it will be a long weekend.

The most irritating thing is it’s already a very large commitment to coach.

Jill: I know.

You’re up at six in the morning some days.

Mark: Yeah, like it’s four days a week; two practices, two games and, you know, it’s a big commitment already and then they’re going to kill my weekend.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: It’s just amazing to me. Anyway, I’d rather be on the Sunshine Coast.

Jill: Yeah, I can’t say that I envy you or would like to trade places with you.

Mark: No, no, not many people do.

Not many people would but, hopefully, this will be the last time I have to do this.

Jill: You’ve done something before.

Mark: I’ve done a couple before not as long, but this one…I think if I do this one I won’t ever have to do another one, so.

Jill: Just get it over with and that will be it.

Mark: One other thing we were talking about before we got on was we were talking about the news and I guess different topics that are in the news lately, but I mentioned the fact that I’m not getting the newspaper anymore and that I cancelled my subscription a couple weeks ago.

I was commenting earlier today how it’s great, I’m not irritated by the news every morning.

I’m in a better mood.

Well, you never did get the newspaper and read it.

Jill: No, no, I listen to the news in the morning on TV, but I don’t read newspapers very often.

Mark: I mean, in a way, I like the newspaper; I like to have something to read in the morning.

I get up and read something and at lunch, whatever, throughout the day, but also I kind of feel like I should read it because I’ve got it now.

I’ve paid for it and I’ve got to read it before I can throw it out, so for that reason it’s also nice not getting the paper.

On Saturday they delivered it for some reason, I guess by mistake.

He’s used to delivering it Saturday, so he just delivered it.

I flipped it open and, you know, on the front page there’s a big serial murder trial going on in Vancouver.

What’s his name?

Jill: Pickton. Robert?

Mark: Robert Pickton? Willie?

I was going to say Willie.

I don’t know what his first name is.

Jill: I think his full name is Robert Willie or Willie Robert Pickton or something.

Mark: Oh really?

Jill: I can’t believe we don’t know; this is a huge story.

Mark: Yeah, it’s a huge story.

Anyway, this guy he liked murdered I don’t know how many prostitutes in downtown Vancouver over the years.

Jill: He’s only being charged with… I shouldn’t say only, but he’s being charged with six, but they believe he’s responsible for 30 to 40.

Mark: I mean it’s an unbelievable situation.

Jill: Over a 20-year span.

Mark: He had a pig farm and they figure he got rid of the bodies at the pig farm.

Like the pigs were eating them, is that not… I don’t know exactly.

Jill: Yeah, like he had them all…I won’t…

Mark: It’s just a gruesome story.

At any rate, I have no interest in hearing anything about it ever and the front page is all about the Pickton trial, this and that, and I’m like, you know, that’s why I don’t get the paper.

I don’t care.

I know the guy did it, lock him up, hang him, I don’t care; I don’t want to hear about it.

I don’t need the details and so I was thinking, you know, I’m kind of glad I don’t get it anymore, not to mention all the… I don’t know how best to describe it, but there’s just a lot of stuff in the newspaper that I just don’t agree with.

Whatever particular ax they have to grind they just put it in your face all the time and you get sort of only one point of view all the time and it irritates me.

So yeah, anyway, my point is that I think I might just cancel it permanently.

I suspended it for a month just to see what it would be like because I’ve always got the paper and I must say, I like reading the sports and I like reading the business section.

Just internationally trying to stay up on events it’s nice to have it, but because so much of the local paper that I was getting is local news most of which…

Jill: You really don’t care about.

Mark: Yeah or the dramatic headlines: “Global Warming will Flood Vancouver” or whatever.

I don’t believe that stuff.

How do you know?

You can’t tell me what the temperature is going to be tomorrow, how are you going to predict what percentage of Vancouver is going to be flooded by global warming.

It’s just totally not credible and yet they write it with total authority, like we know.

You don’t know; you think.

I think something different, whatever.

Jill: It is always very one-sided.

Very rarely do you see an article where there are two different opinions presented and then you sort of form your own opinion.

Mark: Which is only natural. Anybody writing an article they’ve got an opinion of their own.

Jill: Of course.

Mark: So they are going to look for facts and data, maybe not necessarily facts, but supporting information for what they believe, so at any rate.

Jill: No more paper for you.

Mark: I think so; I think so. I’ve been using Google Reader or Google News, which then you can sort of input.

In Google News you can input, you know, I want to follow the news in Vancouver.

I want to follow the Vancouver Canucks, which is the local hockey team.

I want to follow business news in Canada.

I want to follow world news, so you input the types of news you want to follow and then it shows you those kinds of stories.

I can subscribe to that in my Google Reader, which then gives me just the headlines in a long list and so then I can go through them very quickly and only look at the ones I’m interested in.

It’s just better; I’m kind of liking it.

Jill: And it’s free.

Mark: And it’s free.

Jill: I mean not that a newspaper subscription is a lot of money, but still.

Mark: It’s free. I don’t have newspapers building up at my house that I’ve got to get rid of. I must say, I’m kind of liking it.

Jill: You’re converted.

Mark: I am; I am. Now if I could only somehow have that in a form that I could access while I was eating breakfast, you know.

Jill: Yeah, unfortunately, you have to be on your computer to see it.

Mark: Like Amazon came out with this E-book reader device called a “Kindle” recently, which allows you to subscribe to online newspapers and blogs and so on.

It’s like a hand-held thing and you can read and, apparently it’s much nicer to read on that then it is to read from a computer screen.

Jill: Oh really.

Mark: And it’s portable and all your stuff is there, so maybe it won’t be long before these kinds of devices will replace paper newspapers.

Jill: Well and it makes sense too, just from the paper point of view, just from not having all that paper all the time and having to throw it in the garbage or recycle it or whatever.

Mark: Exactly, it’s a lot of paper generated; although, as we like to joke around here, we want to support our brothers in the pulp and paper industry. That’s right.

With that though, we should probably wrap it up.

I think we want to stay within the time of a regular commute or session on the step master machine, so we will talk to you all next time.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Hello Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you today?

Jill: Good, thank you, how are you?

Steve: Not too bad.

Jill: Good.

Steve: You know what I thought we would do today?

Do you know what I thought we would do today?

Jill: I do.

Steve: Oh, because I told you ahead of time.

Jill: Because we were just talking about it.

Steve: Alright.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to look at The Vancouver Sun online version and we’re going to talk about whatever we find there.

So, I opened to the Editorial page…

Jill: Maybe we should just mention what The Vancouver Sun is.

Steve: That’s a good idea, why don’t you tell people.

Jill: Probably, I guess, the most read local newspaper, I’m not sure.

Steve: I would think so.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Well, The Sun and The Province .

Jill: Owned by the same people.

Steve: We have a monopoly almost in newspapers, but that’s another subject.

Yeah, The Vancouver Sun is probably the most popular newspaper in Vancouver.

A lot of people also read a national newspaper like The Globe and Mail or The National Post and then they read either The Vancouver Sun or The Vancouver Province for their local news, primarily.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Here the editorial is entitled “Everyone Benefits when Newcomers Master an Official Language” which, right off the bat, is such an obvious statement.

Well, of course, they should master the official language.

Jill: And, of course, it’s going to be beneficial to them and to us.

Steve: And to the society; that’s such a given.

It’s like everybody gets wet if they stay out in the rain without an umbrella, you know, it’s the same.

But there was a recent sort of publication of a census or the results of the census.

A census, of course, is a statistical recording of what’s going on in the population and it points out that between the years 2001 and 2006 one million people immigrated to Canada with the result that today nearly 1 in 5 people in Canada in 2006 were born outside the country.

Now that’s, first of all, not so unusual because the percentage of people born outside the country has always been between 16-17 to 20 percent, but it is higher now that it has been and people from Asia and the Middle East represent 58.3 almost 60 percent of these people.

Jill: Actually, sorry to interrupt you.

Steve: No, go ahead.

Jill: I did hear also on the news this morning just a little blurb about how India has the most immigrants coming from one place to Vancouver.

Steve: Oh really?

I know that I read in a Chinese newspaper when they discovered that the immigrant numbers from India were now greater than the numbers from China that seemed to bother them.

But, certainly, if you take the whole South Asian continent, you know, if you take India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and then I don’t know whether Afghanistan is part of that, but if you take that area of the world that’s the largest source, I would imagine.

But people from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, in other words, Chinese-speaking people, would be pretty close, so those two are the two largest groups, no question.

The article goes on to say that 4 out of 5 immigrants were – here’s a new term – allophone.

Allophone is typically a Canadian word.

It was a word that was coined in Quebec where they have English speakers and French speakers, so they have Francophones who are the majority and they have Anglophones who they would like to put back in their place and then people who are neither one nor the other are allophone.

Jill: So people whose native language is not English or French.

Steve: Right, that’s right.

In Quebec, of course, it was politically very important to count those allophones as allophones and not as Anglophones because otherwise you would make the Anglophones feel that they were more important than the Francophones would like them to feel, so this all becomes very political.

In Vancouver, which is the second most popular destination after Toronto, we get a lot of these people whose mother tongue is neither English nor French.

French wouldn’t help them very much in Vancouver.

Jill: No.

Steve: Now, one recent study found that immigrants’ wages lagged significantly behind those of native-born Canadians; yes.

One possible reason is that some immigrants have trouble with English or French; yes.

Jill: That’s obvious.

Steve: And it’s not only that, let’s face it, in any society if you’re a newcomer you don’t know as many people, you don’t know your way around, you don’t have the connections, you are at a disadvantage, but in addition to that, in all jobs employers are looking for people who can communicate well with colleagues, with customers, with suppliers.

Language is very, very, important unless you’re working in some kind of, you know, a technical position or as a laborer or something.

Jill: Yeah, at a plant or factory or something like that then maybe it’s not so important.

Steve: Well, that’s right, but if you’re having to work as a professional, which many of these people are, you have to have good English.

So, the editorial goes on that this should alert us to the importance of improving adequate language instruction for newcomers.

We might need to…you know, it says here, for example, might need to…review the five-year limit on ESL funding.

Students are expected to learn English within five years in contrast to French immersion students who receive support from kindergarten to grade 12.

I mean that’s a ridiculous comparison.

Someone who comes here, goes to school in English, is surrounded by English, English on television, English in the schoolyard, that’s not the same as someone who’s in French immersion who sits in a classroom which is artificially in French and otherwise is totally surrounded by English.

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: So it’s different; there is no comparison.

Then they go on and say that the private sector might well have to step up language training for some employees, blah, blah, blah, and it does say immigrants themselves can do much to learn English or French through the many family literacy programs available.

All is not doom and gloom, immigrants have fared much better than those in most other countries, blah, blah, blah.

Well, you know what I want to talk about in this here, aside from the fact that I think all those immigrants should be on LingQ, but, you know, we haven’t been very successful.

We began LingQ with the idea of offering this to immigrants.

I went on Chinese radio.

I spoke, you know, for like a total of 26 weeks.

I was on there talking in Chinese about what you need to do to learn languages and so forth and very few of those people have joined LingQ.

Jill: And we offered free membership.

Steve: Well, that’s right, in those days.

I have come to the conclusion that to improve in a language requires a tremendous amount of dedication, motivation, interest; not just a small amount, a lot.

The number of people in any group who have this degree of motivation and dedication is very, very, small.

Jill: And it doesn’t matter whether we provide more resources or more funding and the taxpayers more, if those people don’t have the desire, the willingness, the motivation to learn, it doesn’t matter how many years of school we throw at them they are still not going to learn, so how is that the answer.

Steve: I mean I have spoken to people who go to the immigrant adult classes, ESL classes, and they go for one or two hours a day or however many times a week, but the rest of the time they live in their own language.

So, they go home, they only watch Korean or Chinese or Punjabi or whatever television-videos; they speak it with their friends, which is fine.

I mean they shouldn’t stop meeting their friends.

But, I know personally from my experience living in Japan that if all I did was to go to school for an hour a day I would never have learned Japanese.

When I was in my car I listened to English and I’m sure there are many immigrants who do this as well, by the way; we should not exaggerate.

Jill: …who listen to Japanese.

Steve: …who listen to English like immigrants to Canada who will make a point of listening to English radio; I’m sure there are lots who do that.

All I’m saying is that I’ve seen so many examples of immigrants who go to these publicly-funded language classes.

Sometimes they don’t even show up and they want the teacher to say that they attended because they need that for their social welfare worker or whatever it is.

I mean, it’s just rife with abuse.

I always am reminded of one thing that I was told by a company in France when we were trying to sell our system to them.

They said, you know, before we put anyone on a paid language program we give them a copy of some self-learning system and at the end of six months they have to have shown some progress.

If they are not motivated enough to learn on their own through some self-learning process then we are not going to spend money on them to learn with a teacher and I think that just makes an awful lot of sense.

Jill: It does make sense.

That’s right, the people who are motivated are going to learn whether it’s free or they have to pay for it or somebody else pays for it.

Why would an employer want to pay for it if the person really has no interest and isn’t going to learn in the end anyway?

Steve: I mean this is the other thing, you know, we always say yes, the employer should put more money into training and I think they should and I think particularly where the employee is motivated to learn, not just a language, but if an employee is motivated to learn anything, then certainly we as a company have always been willing to help our employees in any kind of a training program.

But, you know, if it’s a matter of English, in Vancouver where you can watch English television from morning to night, English radio, newspapers, you can go meet people, you can join the newcomers’ clubs and, you know, the skiing club, there is no shortage of things that you can do if you want to.

Jill: To immerse yourself in the language.

Steve: And, of course, as you know, we at LingQ don’t believe that this sort of formalized grammar instruction with lessons and work plans for the class and all of these things is particularly useful.

What’s more, if you are in a classroom with 20 people none of whom speak English very well and you’re all taking turns stumbling about in the language, I mean, that’s not really very effective.

So, basically, what I think is that every immigrant should join LingQ.

It’s free, you know, where’s the downside?

What can go wrong?

Jill: That’s right.

Steve: But, no, everything has to become sort of like a social project, you know.

Yeah, they decided to immigrate here, they should have learned English as much as possible before coming here and once here I think the primary responsibility…

Jill: …is on them; I agree.

Steve: And not to be well, we need more money for this that and the other.

You know, it’s a bit like the whole literacy thing.

Again, I think a lot of the money that goes into things like ESL for immigrants, literacy training and so forth, you appeal to people.

Literacy has a bigger appeal because we say yeah, in Canada there are people who can’t read.

They can’t get work; they can’t read the safety manual at work.

We need to help those people; yes, so we’ll raise a bunch of money.

I saw in the paper that Anne Murray or somebody else is going to contribute, so millions of dollars flow to these literacy programs, but we have a bigger problem now than we had 20 years ago.

Why is that?

Why is that?

So maybe flowing more money at these programs may not be the solution.

Jill: Right.

Steve: Maybe it’s at the level of the motivation of the individual, making certain facilities…I mean they can go to the library, you know, and I think audio books are great for people who have trouble reading.

They can borrow audio books and read and they can join LingQ for that matter.

So, I guess, yeah, that was something that caught my eye in the newspaper.

It’s a nice article because it’s not about crime; it’s not about someone being beaten up or shot or wars.

I hate reading about all that type of stuff in the newspaper.

Jill: I do too, it’s so depressing.

Steve: Yeah, so depressing.

So, there you have it.

Jill: I think that’s sort of one of the only articles in there that isn’t; one of the headlines that isn’t depressing.

Steve: Yeah, “Everyone Benefits when Newcomers Master an Official Language” that’s a great statement, yeah.

Alright, okay, everybody benefits when people go to school.

Yeah, that’s good.

Okay Jill, we’ve done that one.

Jill: Okay thanks, bye, bye.

Steve: Okay, bye, bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Mark: Hi, I’m Mark.

Jill: And I’m Jill. Welcome to the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Mark: Today we’ve got our 170th episode and it’s December 3rd, 2007.

Welcome everybody.

We thought today we would talk a little bit about our weekend, as usual.

I know it seems like we always talk about the weather, but we did have a little bit of unusual weather this past weekend.

We got some snow, which especially at the beginning of December is a bit unusual for us.

Jill: And we got it Saturday and Sunday. It’s not often that we have two days in a row of snow either.

Mark: No, for sure.

What’s nice about it is we had our company Christmas party on Saturday night.

There was snow everywhere and that was great.

Jill: Yeah, it was really pretty.

Mark: It certainly makes things more Christmassy.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: We were commenting on the fact that the real Christmas will be 10 degrees and raining probably.

Jill: That’s our typical Christmas.

Mark: Yeah.

At least for our Christmas party it felt like we had a white Christmas, so that was fun; that was fun.

Jill: Yeah, it was great.

Mark: We had both the LingQ staff members there and the other majority I guess of the people in our office who work for the wood company.

We have a joint Christmas party and we had a gift exchange.

What did you get Jill?

Jill: Oh yeah, we did a little gift exchange.

I think $15.00 was the maximum or what we were supposed to spend.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: I ended up with a jewelry box.

Mark: Nice.

I guess we should probably explain the gift exchange itself; how it works.

It was kind of fun.

I guess very often, I don’t know how it is in other countries, but here, especially when it’s a group Christmas party like a company or a sports team or whatever groups might organize a Christmas party, you have some kind of present exchange so that everybody is not feeling like they’re going to buy a present for everybody else.

Typically, you’ll buy one present and either you’ll know in advance who you’re giving it to or, in our case, you buy a present and you don’t know who it’s going to be given to.

Everybody puts their present under the tree and then we pick numbers from a hat and depending on your number you then get to pick whichever gift you like.

Jill: They are all wrapped.

Initially, they’re all wrapped, so the person with number 1 has to go first.

They pick a present and they open it, unwrap it, and then the second person can either take that gift away from the person or open a new one.

Mark: So, if you like what the first guy opened you don’t open another gift.

Jill: You steal it.

Mark: You say wow, that’s really good.

I like that one I’m going to take it, so that person then has to go back and open a new gift or if you don’t want what he has you go open a new one.

Jill: Eventually there are so many that are open that the person who loses their gift if somebody steals it from them they don’t have to open a new one they can go and steal another one from somebody else that is already open and it’s really a lot of fun.

Especially you men, you guys love stealing from each other.

Mark: Well, it’s more that if you see someone who’s got something that they seem to really want.

That’s where it becomes fun, stealing it from them.

Yes, that’s right.

Jill: And I’m so the opposite.

It’s fun to watch and I think guys are different anyway, so I don’t mind, but when I personally see a woman who really wants something and I can tell she really likes it even if I like it I feel too bad, so I won’t take it.

You are the exact opposite.

You will go out of your way to take something that you don’t even want.

Mark: Yes, I did do that. It was worth it.

Jill: And, actually, it really is a lot of fun.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: Everybody had some good laughs.

Mark: That was fun.

My kids were there too.

They were the only kids and you could tell that people felt ashamed taking stuff that they wanted.

Jill: Yeah, you used your kids to get what you wanted.

Mark: Yes, I wanted that stuffed beaver, yes.

That’s what I got.

Jill: That’s right.

Mark: It was a funny looking stuffed beaver, but nonetheless.

Anyway, yeah, so it snowed all day Saturday and then it snowed Sunday until…it seemed to depend where you were.

Like it started raining around my house at around noon on Sunday, but my dad said out at his place it snowed until much later in the day.

Jill: Yeah, I don’t think it started raining…I mean the snow turned to rain…I don’t think it started until about maybe 2 or 3 in the afternoon at my house.

It was big, wet, flakes of snow all day on Sunday.

You could tell it was just right around zero degrees because it was, you know, very wet and then it just started pouring rain and today is, I don’t know, 12-14 degrees outside.

Mark: A huge change.

Jill: Huge change; very warm.

Mark: We got some kind of tropical storms come in from the Pacific and it’s warm and just pouring rain.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I guess this is the pineapple express that they call it.

Jill: I guess.

Mark: Yeah.

Anyway, the short time that we had the snow it was great; it was great.

On the weekends myself and some of the dads from the school try to get out and play touch football and on the snowy weekends it’s just the best.

We manage to play twice this weekend.

Yes, we did.

Jill: Oh, my gosh.

Mark: Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday was really wet because it was kind of slushy by then, but it’s great because you can fall and slide around, oh yeah.

Jill: That sounds really great.

Mark: Yeah, really, you’re welcome to come.

We can arrange an invite.

Jill: Yeah, I think I’d rather stick needles in my eyes, thank you very much.

Mark: It’s funny, a lot of people think that, but really, you know, you just don’t understand.

We’re misunderstood.

Jill: Yeah, whatever.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: But, it was a great weekend too because of the snow it seemed so festive.

We don’t get a lot of snow in Vancouver and it never seems to stick around because it never stays very cold, so even if we do get it usually it ends up raining by the next day, so it was neat to have it for a couple of days.

That really got me into the Christmas spirit, so I made Chris come out with me and get our Christmas tree and put up all our lights and, of course, I have to decorate the whole tree; he wants no part of it.

He never even had a tree before I lived with him.

Mark: When he lived by himself?

Jill: Yeah.

I mean he doesn’t put up any decorations and even last year when I lived with him he did not want a tree, but I wouldn’t let it go, so I got a tree.

Mark: You’ve got to have a tree.

Jill: Well, I know, that’s what I said.

This year he’s learned.

He didn’t even really try to fight it because he knew I would get my way in the end anyway.

Mark: Like with most things?

Jill: Yeah, pretty much.

Mark: Pretty much that how it works, yeah.

Jill: So, yeah, he was very good.

He came out, got the tree and it was great.

I went to the store and bought some eggnog.

Once we were out for a few hours and we were cold and we’d had enough of the snow we went inside and basically didn’t come out again and drank eggnog and had a fire and I decorated the tree and it was great!

Mark: Yeah, I mean there is something nice about the snow and the wintertime, especially when it gets close to Christmas even though it’s not that close still.

It’s quite far away, but still, yeah, it’s fun.

We haven’t got our tree yet, but maybe next weekend.

Jill: Well, you know, it is a bit early.

We wouldn’t normally get it this early, but we have to take it down by the 20th because we’re not going to be in town, so I don’t want to leave it up for the whole time that we’re gone.

Mark: Then when you go to take it out it will be all dried out and there’ll just a house full of needles.

Jill: Oh yeah, it will be a mess.

Plus, you just worry about a fire hazard too.

I mean I guess it’s no different than having wood piled up in your house.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So that’s why I wanted to get it early so that I actually had it for a while, otherwise, there would have been no point in getting it.

Mark: Right, yeah.

Well, that’s good.

What else did we do?

I’m trying to think…because of all the snow no soccer.

That’s why we could all play football.

Jill: So what did Kindre and the kids do then?

Mark: They went tobogganing on Sunday morning.

Yeah, so they had fun there.

Jill: Up at one of the mountains?

Mark: Up at one of the golf courses or the golf course.

There’s a golf course up the hill.

It’s private, but you can sneak on and go tobogganing at whatever hole it is when you first drive into their parking lot and so they don’t seem to mind.

Jill: Oh really?

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: So a lot of people go there.

Mark: Well, I don’t know about a lot, but certainly Kindre and the kids and their friends seem to go.

Jill: Oh neat; I didn’t know.

Mark: It’s great because you’re not tobogganing out onto a street or anything.

You know, you’re on a golf course and it’s down the hill and then you walk back up.

Jill: Oh, they must have loved it.

Mark: There’s lots of snow because it’s higher up the hill.

Yeah, even a lot of the time when there is no snow down here there’s still snow up there.

So yeah, we’ve gone up there the past few years and apparently the dog loved it too.

Jill: Gordie.

Mark: Gordie was apparently chasing the toboggan down the hill and then running back up to get the next one.

Jill: So he got his exercise.

Mark: He was just dead after; running in the snow and there were other dogs there and oh yeah, apparently, he had…

Jill: That’s great.

Mark: Kindre said it was his second best day ever.

His best day being at (?????) in the summer. (?????)

is this park on Vancouver Island where the beach is really shallow for a long way so that the dog could run, jump in the waves and he just did that for hours.

So, anyway, he enjoyed the snow.

Jill: That’s great.

Mark: Yeah, otherwise, I don’t know.

Jill: Well that sounds like a pretty full weekend.

Mark: That was a pretty full weekend.

After that we kind of sat there watching the rain come down.

Jill: Yeah, I was quite depressed, actually, yesterday afternoon and evening once I saw the snow rapidly melting and all the rain coming down.

The snow is so much prettier than the rain.

Mark: Oh, for sure and then the combination just makes for a big mess.

Jill: Mess, yeah.

Mark: The roads yesterday were just horrible, the ones that didn’t have much traffic on them, because it’s just so slushy and quite dangerous too.

Actually, leaving our Christmas party that night Kate and Paul couldn’t make it up the driveway.

That wasn’t so good; damaged his car a little bit.

My dad was out there with them helping them dig it out at one in the morning or whatever.

I mean they were there for an hour trying to dig it out, yeah.

Jill: I wondered that though because your parents have a fairly steep driveway and there was a lot of snow coming down.

Mark: I know.

Jill: And so I wondered when I…you know, we parked outside of the gates to the house on kind of the street, which is where everybody else parked I think and I wondered when I walked down and I saw her car there.

I thought, you know, it’s going to be tough to get out of here.

Mark: I know, I mean, I almost…

Jill: It’s not four-wheel drive or all-wheel drive?

Mark: I have four-wheel drive, so I went down there and I saw her car and I thought oh, I don’t know if I’d leave my car there.

I almost thought about staying up where you were, but then I thought I’ve been up and down that driveway before when it’s been snowing.

Jill: And you have four-wheel drive.

Mark: With four-wheel drive it’s fine going up.

It is actually no problem.

I saw his car there and I thought I’d better get out of here before him because I’ll be stuck behind him otherwise.

Jill: Yeah, they probably should have parked on the street.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: But other than that it was a good night for everybody.

Mark: Oh, it was great.

Jill: Tons of food and lots of wine and desserts.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: It was great.

Mark: It was great; it was great.

Often we’ve done it in a restaurant, but this year we did it in a house and it’s more fun.

You get to mingle more and…

Jill: You’re not confined to a seat at a table the whole time.

You know, you can actually walk around, there’s just more space and you can talk to more people.

Mark: Exactly.

Jill: It’s almost more relaxed too because you’re at somebody’s house, so yeah, it was really great.

Mark: Anyway, that was our Christmas party weekend and snow weekend.

We hope we have more this year.

Apparently, it’s going to be a cold winter, so we might get more snow.

If you’ve got any thoughts about weather or snow or anything where you are, please let us know, as usual, on our forum.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you all for your comments on Friday.

Jill was very happy to receive them.

Jill: I was surprised, yeah, to receive so many, so thank you.

Mark: And we will talk to you in a couple days.

Want to study this episode as a lesson on LingQ? Give it a try!

Mark: Hi everyone, Mark Kaufmann here again for the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

Today I’m joined by Jill.

Jill: Hello.

Mark: How’s it going?

Jill: Good thanks.

Mark: Another beautiful day here in Vancouver.

We were just commenting on the fact that podcast day means it’s going to be sunny; it seems like anyway.

I don’t know why that is, but maybe we only remember the sunny days; selective memory.

Jill: Perhaps you have to be that way to survive the winters in Vancouver.

Mark: It can’t be that bad, it’s sunny every time we do the podcast.

People just say it rains here a lot, it’s not true.

I guess to start with, we did want to cover a few updates to LingQ, which many of you should have seen over the last week or so, couple weeks, and we haven’t talked about, but we probably should to try and clarify particularly the Activity Score.

I’m not sure if we’ve had a lot of questions about it on the forum, we’ve had some, but it’s probably worth going over that score and what we’re trying to do with that score.

What we are trying to do is get some kind of a measure that allows us to compare our members and particularly the effort or the activity level of our members with the intention that in the future we would award some kind of recognition and probably some points as well for those who are most active because those who are most active will learn best.

So, what we have done based on the statistics that we have in the system, which you can see in your overview page… Obviously, we can’t use the listening hours and the words of reading that are more or less manually entered, not because we don’t trust all of you, but it just leaves the possibility open for people to start trying to cheat.

Jill: Abuse, yeah.

You can just manually enter in 100 listening hours even if you haven’t listened at all or update a bunch of content items that you haven’t read.

Mark: Exactly.

Just to remove that temptation, we are not going to include listening and reading in our Activity Score.

Although those are extremely important activities, we assume that if you are doing the other activities you will be doing your listening and reading as well.

We needed numbers that the system keeps tracks of so that…

Jill: …it’s fair.

Mark: It’s a level playing field, it’s fair, exactly.

Having said that then the Activity Score is the number of created LingQs divided by 2, plus the number of learned LingQs, plus the number of words of writing that you’ve submitted in the month, plus the number of events that you’ve participated in, times 60 and that 60 comes from 60 minutes, basically.

Even though a one-on-one for 15 minutes is not a 60 minute event, we still consider it as one event and we multiply it by 60 to give us that speaking score, essentially.

Jill: So this is a calculation that you’ve come up with and really not something that people should worry too much about, right, the actual formula?

Mark: Exactly.

You’re going to see a score.

We’re going to start to put up, display, at least the top performers and it will be a way that you can gage your performance against the top performers or the most active members at LingQ.

It’s just another tool that we want to use to hopefully motivate people to be more active, to do more things, because that’s always one of the difficulties with an online system or remote learning situation.

How do you motivate people to do what they need to do in order to succeed and so, you know, we can’t force people to come to class, so we have to devise different ways of encouraging people to become active, so this is another way and I think it will be quite fun.

It will allow people to compare themselves to other members and to see their score increasing every month as they do more and more.

Yeah, we’re not sure if the formula is in its final state.

I’m sure it will probably evolve a bit over time as we start to see some real scores and, of course, any feedback that any of you listeners have about it we’d be very interested to hear.

We are going to have a Learner of the Month in November who will be our member with the highest Activity Score.

Jill, you’ll be announcing that next week, so that will be interesting.

I guess we will also list the top ten.

We’ll have the Learner of the Month and our Honor Roll, so be on the lookout for that.

I think that probably covers the Activity Score.

Do you have any other thoughts there Jill?

Jill: I think just that the other reason that we’ll have that Activity Score is for us to have a way to award prizes and stuff, eventually, when we have it all working properly and the top people may earn points or prizes or something, so there is a lot of incentive to work hard.

Mark: Right and, hopefully, we can do more and more things with that score over time to make things more fun or to help liven up the community or whatever the case may be.

Besides the Activity Score we also want to mention that we do finally have email alerts on the forum so that now you are able to follow a thread or follow a forum, which you weren’t able to do before short of checking on the site every day to see what new comments have been added.

Obviously, we’ve been receiving a lot of requests for that and, you know, we want it ourselves because we also were having to search the forum for new posts all the time, so that’s great to have and we just want to make people aware of that.

You can either watch a whole forum or you can watch an individual thread and there’s just a tick box at the top of the forum page or at the top of a thread page which you can tick to watch the forum and then you’ll receive email alerts whenever a new post is posted on that thread…

Jill: …or forum.

Mark: Right. Besides that, what else are we going to talk about?

I know we were commenting earlier that our transcriber was asking… Jill, well you can tell the story.

Jill: Well, I think it was on Monday or Wednesday she was doing a transcription for us and she said at the end that she had a feeling that maybe I was having a baby some time soon.

I haven’t talked about it on any of our podcasts, but your dad and you have just mentioned a couple little things here and there that I think were subtle clues.

Certain people picked up on them and certain people didn’t and she was one of them, so she asked me if I was pregnant and yes, I am.

Mark: And you are.

In case anyone else out there has been wondering the same thing, we thought it might be time to mention that.

You are expecting the baby boy in…was it March?

Jill: Well, yeah, March 30th or April 2nd, it depends who you talk to.

My doctor and the sonographer have two different dates.

Mark: March 30th or April 2nd?

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: You think it’s going to be that precise?

Jill: Well, within a week anyway, so somewhere at the end of March beginning of April.

Mark: Okay. By the way, I think it’s going to be a boy.

Jill: So do a lot of people, actually.

Mark: It hasn’t actually…nobody knows.

Jill: We don’t know.

We don’t know even, yeah, we haven’t found out.

Mark: But since Jill seems to want a girl I thought it would be worth calling it a boy.

Jill: No, I don’t necessarily want a girl anymore.

I’m telling you, my nephew changed all that.

Mark: Okay.

Jill: I’m happy to have a boy now.

Yeah, so I really don’t care, I honestly don’t, just healthy.

Mark: Oh, for sure.

Jill: You know, it’s so cliché, but it’s so true.

You just want the baby to have all its fingers and toes and organs and everything and that’s it.

Mark: I guess what brought it up was that we were talking about our Christmas party and you were asking if my wife was going to bring the eggnog.

Jill: Her famous homemade eggnog.

Mark: Because most of the time you don’t get homemade eggnog you get the stuff out of a carton, which is just not the same.

Jill is quite a big homemade eggnog fan, probably eggnog fan.

Jill: I’m a big eggnog fan period, even the store-bought kind.

Mark: So, yeah, you were a little sad that you weren’t going to be able to take part in the eggnog and I was encouraging you to go ahead and have a little.

Jill: You’re always encouraging me to drink, I know.

Mark: Just a little.

Jill: And, actually, you know what, I would have a few sips.

I don’t think that’s going to hurt anything, but I was saying that there’s raw egg in it and I was more concerned about that because, of course, there can be bacteria in raw egg.

It might just make me sick, but it could be very, very, dangerous to the baby, so you’re not supposed to eat that.

Having said that, I’ve baked cookies a few times in the last couple of months and I still can’t resist licking a spoon or having a taste of the batter, which has raw egg in it.

I know I probably shouldn’t, but I’ve eaten that my whole life and homemade eggnog with eggs in it and I’ve never once gotten sick from a raw egg.

Mark: Well, it’s one of these things that people, you know, blow out of proportion.

There are far more dangerous things that you do all day every day than drinking eggnog or eating cookie dough so, yes, it’s possible, but extremely unlikely.

I guess you’re not supposed to eat sushi.

Jill: No, you’re not supposed to eat raw fish.

Mark: Right.

As I was saying to you, I don’t think people in Japan worry about those kinds of things when they’re pregnant; I could be wrong.

All of you Japanese listeners you can let us know.

Jill: Yeah please; I’m interested.

Mark: Please, we want to know.

Let us know on the EnglishLingQ Forum.

But it seems to me, you know, Japanese women eat sushi.

I know that very often in Japanese meals you get a raw egg.

You know, like in sukiyaki you beat up a raw egg and dip your meat in it.

Jill: Oh really?

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: So it’s kind of on the side?

Mark: It’s like in a little bowl.

You crack your egg and beat it up and you put a little soy sauce in it.

Jill: And then you don’t cook it after?

Mark: Oh no, you cook the meat, yeah, and then you dip it in the egg and eat it.

Jill: Really?

Mark: Yeah, it’s good.

Yeah so, I mean, I don’t know exactly, but I don’t think in Japan they worry about it too much.

It’s just one of those things that I think somebody somewhere decided that’s something that we should raise the alarm on and, really, of all the things you do in the day…

Jill: Probably, and I might be wrong about this too, but it seems to me that maybe in North America we worry about these things more than in other countries.

We seem to be told don’t eat deli meat because it can contain Listeria a bacteria that can cross the placenta, don’t eat raw egg, don’t eat raw fish, sushi.

There are quite a number of items and I just don’t think that everywhere else in the world people abstain from all those same things.

Mark: Yeah, I mean I guess because, obviously, some places in the world they don’t have as much choice in what they can or can’t eat, period.

But, I mean to the degree that you can avoid any possible negative consequences you want to avoid everything that might be possibly dangerous.

At the same time, if you’re always worried about stuff…

Jill: …that’s not good for you either.

Mark: And, also, are you worrying about the right things.

You know, like the whole pesticides on fruit issue, which I think we’ve talked about before.

I mean there is no proof anywhere that pesticide residue on fruit does any harm to anybody or has ever done any harm to anybody, but it’s something that sounds like yeah, that sounds like that should be the case, so people worry about it; whereas, in fact, there are lots of things that are far more dangerous to you out there.

Certain things, for whatever reason, grab our imagination and make us worry about them somehow.

Like the raw egg thing; raw egg bacteria.

That could really…so I’m not going to eat any, but really the chances of that happening are so small.

Jill: The chances are slim, but I guess, it’s just do you want to take that chance.

Mark: Well, that’s right.

Jill: I mean, for nine months not to eat raw egg is really not a big deal, so why would you take the chance.

Mark: That’s right.

Jill: I guess that’s sort of more the point and it’s the same thing with drinking alcohol.

I know we’re told here, people think, you know, once you know you’re pregnant don’t touch alcohol; don’t even have a sip.

You know, all my aunts and my mom, not that maybe they drank a lot while they were pregnant, but certainly they drank and all of their children have been just fine.

We were in a taxi on the way to the airport in New York with a couple of British guys.

We were talking about me being pregnant and I said something about not being able to drink.

We hadn’t gone to any pubs while we were there because I couldn’t drink anyway.

He said he had an ex-wife and they had two kids.

He said in his very funny accent that his wife would have told you to basically “screw off” if you told her she couldn’t have anything to drink while she was pregnant.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, she’d had two kids and I don’t think she drank…

Mark: We don’t know what the kids look like.

Jill: Yeah, this is true.

I mean he didn’t say oh yeah, she was a boozer who drank every day, but he certainly made it seem like she had the odd drink.

I just can’t imagine that all French women stop drinking wine completely while they’re pregnant.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean, back in the day nobody really…I mean the doctors didn’t say you were not allowed to drink and everybody turned out fine.

I mean yeah, okay, if you’re drinking a lot that’s going to be bad, but to have a glass of wine with your dinner…

Jill: I think you even said your wife Kindre had the odd half glass while she was pregnant and all three of your children are just fine.

Mark: Yeah.

I mean it’s obviously not…and that’s the problem when doctors come out and they’re just so cut and dried.

Like 100 percent, you’re not allowed to have any alcohol and no this and no that.

Well, I mean, give people a little credit.

Say, you know, be smart.

You’ve got a baby in there, so…

Jill: …don’t go get drunk.

Mark: Don’t go get drunk, but you can have a glass of wine with your dinner and I think some doctors do and some doctors don’t.

Jill: Yeah, I agree.

Mark: It’s certainly not as cut and dried as they make it out to be or as dangerous as they make it out to be; it’s everything in moderation and you’re fine.

Jill: So I might just take a sip of Chris’ eggnog tomorrow night.

Mark: Now, you see, after all that.

Jill: A sip or two.

Mark: Well good.

I guess we’ll end it there and we’ll reconvene on Monday.

Jill: Alright, great, see you tomorrow.

Mark: Yeah, at the party.

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Steve: Hello, you’re listening to EnglishLingQ Podcast. Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: Welcome to LingQ.

We want you to first listen to us speak to you in our language, which is English, I think, and then we want you to sign up for a free account at LingQ.com because there you’ll get transcripts and you’ll get other learning tools that are really going to help you.

So, you have a chance to experience LingQ.

You have a chance to experience the future of language, as we say.

Jill, what are we going to talk about today the Christmas Party?

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: We could.

Jill: That’s a great idea.

Steve: You know, the office is going to have a Christmas party and everybody is preparing some stuff and what are you preparing?

Jill: Well that’s going to be a surprise.

Steve: Okay. Is it a surprise dessert? Is it a surprise main course?

Jill: No, I’m just going to bring, I think, a platter with several different cheeses and some olives and some different little breads and crackers and some dips.

I might make the dips or I might not have time and I might have to buy them.

Steve: Okay, well that’s great. I know Kate’s husband Paul is a keen gourmet chef, so he’s going to be doing something.

Jill: Some prawns.

Steve: Oh, very good.

Jill: Prawns wrapped with prosciutto, I think, and I think we’ve got some veggies coming and a salad and a couple of great desserts.

Steve: Oh good.

Jill: A cheesecake, a chocolate lava cake and then, of course, Carmen is going to be making the two main dishes, I think a beef dish and a salmon dish.

Steve: Yeah and you know Carmen my wife, like she sits down and plans this thing.

She draws everything out on her pad like a little sketch.

Jill: Of the food?

Steve: Of the food; she has it all sketched out. Oh yeah, you’ll see that on Saturday.

Jill: Oh wow!

Steve: Yeah, so then she gets a visual sense of just what it is we’re going to have.

Jill: There’s no messing around with her.

Steve: No messing around, so that will be fun hopefully.

Hopefully we don’t get a big snowfall or something, which makes it difficult for people to get around.

Jill: No, actually, I heard that Saturday night the party and it’s supposed to be beautiful weather for the rest of the week until Sunday and Sunday is when we’re supposed to start getting some nasty winter weather again.

Steve: Okay. Well, you know, last weekend I put up all our Christmas lights, so I’m ready now.

Jill: Oh good.

Steve: Okay, normally I leave it until later, but since we’re having the Christmas party at our place early this year then I had to get organized and hang up the Christmas lights.

Jill: It will be nice. I think everybody is looking forward to it.

Having it at your home, it’s such a nice environment there and Carmen is such a good cook, so.

Steve: Well, we have a little more time.

When we have it at a restaurant then you don’t feel quite as at home.

I hope people don’t leave their glasses on my piano and things of that nature, but we will see what happens.

Jill: We’re too classy for that.

Steve: I know, I know, otherwise we wouldn’t invite them.

One of the things, you know, I thought we might talk about because we have to talk about it anyway, so then I thought we’d talk about it and just, you know, we won’t be self-conscious about the fact that we’re actually talking for other people to hear.

But one of the things we have to decide is what our categories should be in our writing correction because when people submit writing in LingQ what we do is that the corrector will highlight a phrase that is either wrong or inappropriate or not ideal and then replace that with a phrase that is proper usage.

The net result is that the corrected English looks like native speaker English and, of course, we encourage our learners to import that into their system and then save words so that they can really, you know, remember how to say these things correctly.

One thing I should add too, you know, some people say they don’t like to write, it’s too much work and stuff, I think it’s important that people not put too much effort, you know, into re-editing or reworking their writing.

This is not a school essay.

This is not a report for your boss at work.

We want to see what your problems are in using the language.

Jill: So don’t spend a week on one submission trying to correct it.

Steve: No and don’t correct it because the writing is like a record.

It’s a record, a footprint, of the way you use the language and it’s one that is very easy to correct and to identify problems.

If you go back in and edit it and then realize all your mistakes, that’s probably not bad either, but perhaps better would be that if you just take 15-20 minutes, don’t take three hours, just write something the way you would speak and then let our corrector correct it.

Jill: Well, I guess the advantage to doing that is that it’s more like how it will be when you’re speaking.

You don’t have time to go back and reword what you just said or think about it and say it eight different ways until you get it right.

You have to just speak and you’re on the spot and so if you want your writing correction to reflect the corrections that we would make in your speaking then it is better not to spend a lot of time editing and revising.

Steve: Exactly and for a lot of people who are studying English or some other language and who don’t live in an environment where that language is used, I mean they can talk to themselves, they can talk to the wall, but here if they write they have an opportunity to express themselves, to try to use the language, so make it as natural as possible.

Jill: And also the other thing is it doesn’t have to be long.

Steve: No.

Jill: I always tell people who say that writing seems like such an overwhelming task and they don’t want to do it, I always just say you can just write a hundred words, you know, one paragraph, you don’t have to write a lot at a time, write a few sentences.

Steve: But write more often.

Jill: But write more often, yeah.

Steve: Now the issue we’ve got to decide on is the categories because every time there’s a correction made the corrector, you know, in our system identifies it as being one or another type of mistake.

So what we have right now is we have Article because in many languages there are no articles, so it’s very difficult coming from a language where they don’t have articles to figure out when to use “the”, “a”, “and”, so problems with articles are quite frequent; it’s not a big problem.

Jill: The meaning is still understood.

Steve: People shouldn’t get hung up on it; it’s very difficult, you know, to get right.

Then we have Preposition and that’s an awfully difficult one too.

Jill: Very hard.

Steve: Because it’s just habit, like I live in Vancouver, at Vancouver…

Jill: …on Vancouver.

Steve: Maybe, why not, you know, so I mean there are languages where the same word would be used for “in”, “on” and “at”, so Preposition is one.

Punctuation – yeah, in all languages punctuation is an issue.

I’m sure that I would have a lot of punctuation mistakes for sure in my English, especially using colons and semicolons and commas, but Punctuation is there.

Singular and Plural – there are languages where plural isn’t used so, yeah, it’s difficult coming into English.

Then we have Verb, of course, and Verb is a big one.

So the four big fundamental grammar issues are Article, Preposition, Verb and what was the other one?

Jill: Singular-Plural?

Steve: Maybe Singular-Plural, yeah, Singular-Plural.

Now, once we get beyond that we get some tricky issues, like we have a category called Incorrect Usage.

Is that too vague?

We have Unnatural Usage.

Now I don’t know personally what the difference is between Incorrect and Unnatural Usage.

Jill: So those are new mistake types that we added in LingQ and we didn’t use those ones in The Linguist.

I think the reason we came up with those was that sometimes the way somebody says something is not actually incorrect, it’s grammatically correct, but it’s just unnatural because that’s not how the native speaker would say it.

Steve: Right.

Jill: So that’s when something would fall into Unnatural Usage; whereas, Incorrect Usage is when it’s actually wrong.

You can’t say that because it’s wrong; it’s incorrect.

Steve: Right, so it’s incorrect for reasons not having to do with article or preposition or singular-plural.

The other one we had some trouble with was Word Form versus…

Jill: …Sorry, if I could just interrupt you.

Steve: Yeah.

Jill: I guess the Incorrect Usage would really boil down to choice of words, in a lot of instances.

Steve: Alright, okay, yeah, it’s good you raised that because we have this Word Form, Word Order.

We used to have a thing called Choice of Words, which we no longer have.

I was doing some corrections recently and I felt that I kept on wanting to use Choice of Words and, in fact, we found that was the biggest category that most people…yeah, they might make mistakes with articles and with prepositions and with verb tenses or verb agreements and stuff, but the biggest thing is that people use a word that they don’t really understand how it’s used or what the scope of meaning is, so I was kind of thinking we should put that one back in.

Jill: We could probably… Yeah, so instead of having Incorrect Usage we would have Choice of Words.

Steve: Yeah, I think that’s good because any other form of incorrect usage could be an article, it could be a verb, singular-plural.

We also have an Other category.

Jill: If something absolutely doesn’t fall into one of our categories you can explain it using Other.

Steve: Well exactly, so I’d like to go back to Choice of Words because I think, you know, a big part of what we do at LingQ is helping people get a better grasp on their vocabulary and this would then show up in our statistics that someone who 40 percent, 50 percent, of their errors have to do with the words they choose to use, not necessarily the prepositions, the articles, not the grammar issue per say, but it’s just the vocabulary.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: Anything else you’d change in there?

Jill: Well, some people might be a little bit confused by Word Form, for example.

I think when we came up with that we were sort of thinking of examples like we hear people all the time saying “I’m very interesting in learning a second language.”

Steve: Exactly, right.

Jill: What they mean is “I’m very interested in learning a second language.”

Steve: Right.

Jill: So I think that was the type of mistake we were thinking of there.

Steve: Right.

Now, of course, if we say Word Form it suggests that he got close, but he didn’t quite get it.

Jill: And, again, something like that could still I guess fall under Choice of Words.

Steve: Well that’s what I was thinking.

If you say “I am interesting in music” you chose the wrong word.

The word is I am “interested” in music.

You know, a lot of time people confuse the adverb with the adjective or try to use, you know, a noun where they should be using an adjective, so in a sense it’s Word Form, but I’m inclined to take it out.

There’s another reason too and that is where you have the third person singular like “He goes”.

People tend to say “He go”, right?

Jill: Of course.

Steve: Right?

You’ll see “I go”, “You go”, “He go”.

I mean, “We go”, “You go”, “They go”, what’s with this “goes” business.

But people make a lot of mistakes with the third person singular: he, she, it, eats, but if we’re talking about Word Form that’s also in a sense Word Form.

Jill: But that can also fall under Verb.

Steve: Under Verb, so my inclination here… I would like to suggest to our correctors, and we’ll get some feedback from them, that we remove Incorrect Usage, put back Choice of Words and remove Word Form because it’s confusing.

We would leave Word Order in because I think Word Order is clearly a different issue.

It is where you are placing the adjective before the noun or whatever you do along those lines, so we’re going to get some feedback from our correctors.

But, you know, through this podcast, and it wasn’t our intention to talk about this, but we decided we’ve got to have a conversation about it let’s make it a podcast, it would be very interesting to get feedback from people.

What do they find useful, you know, our members?

Do they look at these categories?

Do they look at their statistics?

Do they notice that, you know, they make more mistakes in punctuation or in articles and does that affect what they do?

It would be nice to get some feedback.

Jill: Yeah, it would be great.

Steve: Always nice to get feedback.

Okay, I think we’ve covered that subject.

We’re looking forward to getting feedback and, once again, a transcript is available at the LingQ site, LingQ.com.

You can go there for a transcript, you can go there and join the LingQ Community and you can start increasing your word power.

Thanks Jill.

Jill: Thanks Steve.

This and all episodes of this podcast are available to study as a lesson on LingQ. Try it here.

Mark: Hello everyone, it’s Mark Kaufmann here with the EnglishLingQ Podcast.

I’m joined by Jill today.

We’re actually both back from vacation.

Jill: But you’re tanned and I’m not.

Mark: Yes, well, I went to a hot place.

Before we get going, I do want to mention to all you new listeners or existing listeners that this podcast is only the first part of our LingQ Learning System.

To really learn from this content it’s very important that you go to our website at LingQ.com, find this conversation in our store where you can then read the transcript and look up all the vocabulary that you don’t understand, receive instant translations and use our vocabulary tools to learn that vocabulary.

It’s this combined tool process that will enable you to truly learn from our conversation here today.

With that, Jill, how was New York?

Jill: New York was fantastic.

It was beautiful and sunny every day; not a cloud in the sky.

The first day we were there it was about 18 degrees actually, which is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 68-70 degrees.

Mark: Warm.

Jill: Very warm; we didn’t even need a jacket and we went to the Macy’s Day Parade, which is televised and it’s the hugest parade in the U.S.

Mark: Is that a Christmas parade?

Jill: It’s Thanksgiving.

Mark: Oh, okay.

Jill: It’s a Thanksgiving parade actually; but, you know what, we didn’t even stay until the very end.

I think Santa…I think it’s sort of Christmassy as well, but it’s their Thanksgiving Day Parade, so there are stars.

You know, Dolly Parton was on one of the floats and some musicians were on some of the floats and the Crocodile Hunter’s wife and his daughter were on one of the floats.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So, I mean, we kind of thought we had to see it just because everybody talks about it, but it’s still a parade and for me to… We got up at six in the morning.

Mark: To watch the parade?

Jill: Well, to get ready to go.

It starts at nine and people start lining the streets at six-thirty to be at the front to see it.

We got there at about quarter to eight and we were pretty close actually.

Mark: Right.

Jill: But waiting all that time for it to start, by an hour in we were ready to go, so we left.

Mark: For sure, I can sympathize with you there.

Jill: It’s such a huge deal down in the states though, I can’t believe what…

Mark: Thanksgiving?

Jill: Well, the parade as well.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Jill: And the fact that it’s televised and people will actually sit at home and watch it on their TV; this parade.

Mark: Personally, parades, I mean, I think they’re for kids.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: At least I don’t enjoy…I mean, okay, there’s a parade but, as you say, after 15 minutes I’m kind of ready to go.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, that’s how I felt.

A lot of the floats were spectacular, very well done, you know, definitely not the average parade, but a parade nonetheless.

So yeah, it was great to see it once, but I would not go again.

Mark: Right.

Jill: But, you know, Central Park was just beautiful.

The leaves were all changing colors, so it was absolutely spectacular and I could have spent a whole day in there just wandering around; it was so beautiful.

And we did just tons of shopping; 12 hours one day.

I mean, we were gone between 12 and 15 hours every day that we just didn’t stop.

And my sister – it was mostly my little sister who was determined to spend every cent that she had saved for this trip – she just wanted to go crazy and if we weren’t shopping she had a long face.

And so my mom and I…I literally only bought a few things.

I bought a couple pairs of jeans, a bag and a pair of boots and that was it.

Mark: I was going to say, you’re a pretty mean shopper yourself.

Jill: I am, I am, but I was too overwhelmed there.

There are so many stores, so many great stores, but especially that weekend being the busiest shopping weekend, being right in New York City, it was so overwhelming for me that I don’t really enjoy that kind of shopping; it’s not peaceful at all.

Mark: Right.

Jill: So it was an experience, something that I’ve never had here, but I wasn’t prepared to actually put in all the effort to trying things on, waiting in long lineups, whereas my sister was.

So I would often just sit down and let her go crazy.

She and my mom bought lots and I’d bring them stuff to try and I’d sit.

It was really something to see; it was amazing.

Mark: Were the stores open on Thanksgiving Day?

Jill: No, most of them are closed.

The big stores were closed; the department stores.

Some of the little stores were open, but most of them were closed.

And then Friday, the day after Thanksgiving the Black Friday, is when people line up.

Some of the stores open at four a.m.

Mark: I saw ads on TV for that.

Jill: Yeah and they have these big sales on until noon or one usually, where maybe the whole store is 40 percent off and things like that.

Mark: It always amazes me when I’m in the states at Thanksgiving what a big deal it is.

Jill: Huge.

Mark: In Canada our Thanksgiving is a month earlier and it’s really not a big deal at all, it’s just a turkey dinner.

Jill: Yeah, you get a day off work the second Monday of every October, it’s a statutory holiday, you spend it with your family, usually having a nice dinner, but it really has nothing to do with shopping, nothing to do with parades.

Mark: There’s no real event; it’s a Sunday and it’s a nice turkey dinner and yeah.

The kids at school draw pictures of turkeys and harvest and I don’t know…

Jill: Yeah, exactly.

Mark: In the states, apparently, it’s the busiest travel weekend of the year; people all fly home.

If they’re not living at home they fly home.

It’s a Thursday, Friday is a holiday.

Jill: Everybody says happy holidays to you.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: All the stores, everybody would say oh, happy holidays or if you were asking a question or they were telling you something at the end they’d always say happy holidays which, to me, is what we do for Christmas.

We make a big deal out of Christmas and I think our Christmas is like their Thanksgiving.

Mark: Totally.

That’s what it is, which is just funny.

Like I wonder, it’s just funny how it’s evolved that way because, presumably, at some point things in Canada and the U.S.

were pretty similar.

People celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas in a similar way and over the years it’s evolved in such a way that in the states Thanksgiving is their biggest holiday and for us Christmas is.

They’re similar and both countries have the same holidays, but they are celebrated differently.

I just find it interesting.

Jill: Yeah it is; it’s very interesting.

But yeah, New York was amazing; four sunny days, a couple of days were really, really, cold, but beautiful and sunny.

You know, we saw the Statue of Liberty and one of the museums and the view from the top of the Empire State Building, which is just amazing.

It’s just amazing how many buildings are on the Island of Manhattan; how huge, how tall they all are, how many.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve been to Paris, I’ve been to London and there’s just nothing like New York City; it’s really awe-inspiring.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, I haven’t been there in quite a while, but I went to university out that way and we’d go in to New York every once in a while.

I must say, I never really spent much time there.

Like you probably spent more time there then I did and I was out there for four years.

But that’s the one thing that I got out of it, for sure, was that when you drive right through Manhattan it’s like you’re driving through a tunnel and the buildings are so high on either side of you.

Jill: And there are so many.

Mark: So many.

Jill: It doesn’t end and the throngs of people everywhere; it’s just amazing.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, Tokyo is that way, for sure.

I can still remember being there in a…if you’re in Tokyo and up on the top floor of a building looking out, I mean as far as the eye can see, all you see is buildings in every direction.

Jill: Wow. It’s similar, I guess.

Mark: It’s similar and it’s certainly not like that here in Vancouver.

Jill: No and I was a bit overwhelmed and over stimulated in the beginning.

I actually miss it.

Now that I’m home, I look back and I have nothing but fond memories and I miss New York.

But while I was there my mom and my sister were always saying “we just love the city, we want to move here,” but never once did I actually think that I wanted to live there.

I thought I’m happy I’m going home to Vancouver.

It’s still a city, there’s everything here, it’s beautiful, but it’s peaceful still, to a certain extent, and you can actually drive and get around.

New York, I mean you couldn’t pay me to drive in that city.

It was just horns going constantly, people over the lines, people not obeying traffic signs.

I mean they just do whatever they want and the pedestrians are just as bad.

They walk whenever they want, nobody waits for lights and it was just unbelievable.

Mark: That’s for sure.

Jill: Yeah, that kind of chaos would just stress me out if I had to live in it, but it was really something exciting to see.

Mark: Well, that’s great. It sounds like you had a great time; you’re gushing about it.

Jill: Well, my mom and my sister are planning the trip for next year already.

Mark: Is that right?

Jill: They want to make it an annual event.

Mark: Really?

Jill: Oh, they just loved it so much.

Mark: You know I never really felt that excited about being in New York at all.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: I’d be there and I couldn’t wait to get out.

Jill: Well, when you go to see shows and stuff.

Mark: I never went on like a holiday; I’d go in for something.

I had to go there to somewhere to get something and then I’d leave again.

Jill: Right.

Mark: I never went to sightsee in New York.

Jill: There’s a lot to see in that city.

There are a lot of great museums, a lot of great shows, comedy acts, talk shows…

Mark: Just a lot happening.

Jill: So much happening that you could spend a couple weeks there, for sure.

But anyway, you… It’s funny because we came back…I actually got home at about three in the morning last night.

Another plane came in just as we came in and everybody off that plane was wearing shorts and sandals and they were all tanned and I thought, well.

We all came in in our big winter coats because it was cold, so they were coming from Mexico and you just came from California.

Mark: From California, yeah, we went to visit my wife’s mother who was renting a condo there, so we thought why not take advantage and so we all went down.

She was in Palm Springs or Palm Desert, which is a desert except for where they water and so it was warm; it was warm.

When we first got there it was 30 degrees, highs of 30, but it’s dry.

It’s a desert, so it’s quite pleasant and then it got a little cooler by the end of the week it was down to 25.

Jill: Oh, very nice.

Mark: Which I think is perfect and I think that’s about where it stays most of the winter.

So yeah, that’s why a lot of people from Canada, for sure, from Vancouver, from our area, a lot of retired people will go and spend the winter or parts of the winter in Palm Springs.

That’s a very common thing to do to get away from the cold and the wet and the snow or whatever and go down to the sunnier climes.

Jill: And play golf all winter long.

Mark: Yeah, I mean it was great. We were in this little compound where she rented a condo.

You know, they’ve got citrus fruit trees all throughout in amongst all the buildings and you can go and pick grapefruit for your breakfast.

Jill: You’re kidding.

Mark: Oranges and lemons and…

Jill: You just pick it right off the trees.

Mark: You pick it right off the tree and eat the grapefruit, squeeze some orange juice; like that part of it was awesome.

Jill: Awesome, yeah.

Mark: And then, otherwise, I mean there’s a pool in that complex, right, so my kids were in heaven.

You know, it’s warm and they’re in the pool all day and pretty much that’s all they really wanted to do because, obviously, we don’t have that here.

Jill: They have to go to an indoor pool all winter long.

Mark: You have to go to an indoor pool all winter and yeah, to be there where it’s hot and sunny and swimming around all day near our place, I mean that was a real treat for them.

And then one day we drove into Disneyland in Los Angeles or in Anaheim, actually.

We went to Disneyland, so that was obviously a highlight too.

Jill: Highlight?

Mark: Yeah, for sure, because our kids actually have been to Disneyland in Tokyo a few times, but they were quite small and so to go back, especially the younger ones, they really didn’t remember anything, so it was a real treat for them.

It was good other than the traffic jam we hit on the way out of town.

Boy, that Los Angeles is unbelievable, the highways and the driving and the cars.

Jill: I think the traffic in those huge American cities is something else.

Mark: It’s a whole other level from here. We think it’s crowded here, but it’s not.

Jill: No.

Mark: Which starts to get me thinking when they always say oh, in 50 years Vancouver’s population will double or whatever the statistics they throw out, I always ask myself why?

Why is it going to double?

Why is that a good thing?

I don’t think it has to because it’s just going to be more and more crowded.

Jill: I don’t want it to.

Mark: I don’t want it to either.

Jill: Our infrastructure is not set up for that.

Mark: No. And so then the alternative is all of a sudden now you’ve got these big super highways and yeah, all the buildings and I mean, to me, I prefer smaller.

Jill: Quaint.

Mark: Even when I was in Japan we’d go to Tokyo and, I must say…I lived in a small town in Japan in the mountains and, I don’t know, there were 20,000 people and so then we’d be in Tokyo…I must say, I couldn’t wait to get out.

Not that I didn’t…I liked being there, it was neat.

I mean it’s amazing.

All the people, all the buildings, all the hustle and bustle, but I tell ya’, I was ready to go.

When it was time to go it was just a sense of relief to go back out in the countryside, as you say, drive where you want to drive and no traffic.

Jill: I felt that way about New York.

I loved it, I loved visiting, but when my mom and sister said that they could live there I said there is no way you could pay me to live there.

There’s nothing relaxing about it, it’s just so much stimulation all the time and it was overwhelming for me.

It almost created a bit of anxiety sometimes; I just wanted to get away from it.

Mark: Right.

Jill: I mean now I kind of miss the whole excitement of it, but…even in Vancouver, you know, I live right in a busy part of Vancouver where there’s a lot going on, which would seem busy to you because you live in a very nice, quiet, suburb, which is mostly families.

But where I live in the busy part of Vancouver was not even half as busy as New York and it can’t even compare.

Mark: No, oh no, no, there’s just a whole other level.

Jill: So…

Mark: Yeah, well yeah, I mean I certainly know what you’re talking about from being in New York or just on the East Coast.

In a way, that whole East Coast is one big city.

I mean, okay, New York, where you were, is the epicenter, but I know I prefer things a little more quiet.

Jill: So Palm Desert was a little more mellow.

Mark: Palm Desert was a little too quiet.

Jill: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Jill: Yeah, I’ve heard that because it’s mostly retirees.

Mark: Yeah, it’s mostly retirees, yeah.

So, but, the weather is great and the kids had a ball and it was fun, you know.

Jill: Good.

Mark: And with that, we should probably go because we try to keep these to a reasonable length, so that people who are, whatever…if you’re doing the dishes you’re probably done by now, so you’re ready for us to leave.

So with that, we’ll talk to you again next time.

Jill: Alright, bye, bye.

Study the transcript of this episode as a lesson on LingQ, saving the words and phrases you don’t know to your database. Here it is!

Steve: Hi Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you this afternoon?

Jill: Fine thanks, how are you?

Steve: Good.

You know, today, I want to talk a little bit about pop culture because I kind of feel like a person from a different culture because I don’t follow the modern pop culture at all.

I don’t know any of the names of the singers, the actors, the actresses, etc., so I just thought I would ask you, first of all, who are your favorite singers?

Jill: My favorite singers.

Well, I like a lot of older singers, actually, ones that I’m sure you’re familiar with.

I like a lot of the old country music singers as well as new country music singers, so Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, those types of people.

Of course now there are so many, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, The Dixie Chicks, you know, it goes on and on, so I do like country music and I also like, we were speaking about this before, bands like CCR Credence Clearwater Revival.

Steve: I know them.

Jill: They’re from way back, ha?

Steve: Right.

Jill: I like some Beatles and some Elvis Presley and a lot of older stuff and ABBA, I love ABBA, and I really enjoy a lot of Canadian artists, actually, especially female artists like Sarah McLachlan and Diana Krall.

I also really like Matchbox Twenty.

Steve: Never heard of them.

Jill: They’re from the states. I like Maroon Five, also from the states.

Steve: Never heard of them.

Jill: I like a variety, but I don’t like hip hop, rap, trans-techno, the stuff that you would find generally at nightclubs I am often not a big fan of.

Steve: Well, I don’t go to nightclubs, so I don’t know what I would find there.

I remember the Beatles.

I like country western music a lot.

Yeah, there are quite a few Canadian artists that I like.

I like Shania Twain.

I like Anne Murray a lot.

I think she sings so well, I love listening to her sing.

I’m not sure about Sarah McLachlan and Diana Krall that’s sort of jazzy in a way, isn’t it?

Jill: Diana Krall is, Sarah McLachlan is not.

Steve: Not; okay.

But I don’t listen to music that much because I’m so busy listening to my language learning Russian or Portuguese or whatever, so.

But, yeah, you know, a lot of the sort of rock music when the boys were younger.

When they were 17-18 and they would sometimes borrow my car, when I got back in the car and it was the kind of car that the radio was on as soon as you turned on the ignition and I would just get blasted by this noise, which I never, never, liked, you know, all this different rock music, but Credence Clearwater Revival I like; definitely, I like a lot.

Jill: It’s not hard to listen to; it’s not hard rock.

Steve: No, it’s nice; it’s a bit like country and western music.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: Do you like classical music at all?

Jill: You know, I think I do, but I don’t actually listen to a lot of it and I really don’t know much about it.

I’m not good at naming famous pieces and who sang them.

Of course I know Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, those people, but I don’t really know a lot of their songs.

I guess they’re not songs, but…

Steve: Yeah, their music, their pieces.

But it’s just like anything else, you know, it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

Like we talk about languages, you get used to it.

I have heard these different classical pieces so often and, I must say, Mozart is my favorite.

I can listen to him and I like Chopin, piano music.

I don’t like the modern classical music, but the classical-classical music I enjoy.

But I tell you another group that I enjoy, even though you hear them all the time.

Every time you go to a restaurant, every time you step in an elevator, you hear The Gypsy Kings.

Jill: Yes, I like them too.

Steve: But I like them, I think they’re great.

Jill: They’re fun, yeah, I like them.

Steve: They’re great and they’re actually from France you know even though they play sort of, you know, I guess a modern version of flamenco music.

I like Latin-American music.

I like, you know, lots of different folk music like Russian folk music is beautiful; Spanish folk music.

I even like, of course, you wouldn’t have heard any of this, but the Japanese equivalent of country and western music is called “enka” and it’s all this sentimental, you know, I’m a drunk and my girl left me.

Jill: Somebody did somebody wrong song.

Steve: That’s right.

She left me for someone else and I’m here getting drunk that kind of thing, but it’s fun too.

So, alright, you mentioned nightclubs.

I guess now that you’re a responsible housewife and soon-to-be mother you don’t go to nightclubs as much.

Jill: No, I never go actually anymore.

I haven’t for several years because they just don’t interest me.

I’m not really a late-night person.

I like to get up early and feel good on my weekends and get outside and exercise, so I’m not really one for nightclubs.

I think in my early 20s from about 18 to maybe 23 or 4 I would go sometimes, but I was never one of those people who every single weekend had to go to a club and get drunk and waste my whole weekend.

I never did that even when I was younger.

Steve: Right.

Well, I never used to go and get drunk, but I would go and dance and so forth.

But you’re right, I mean, after a while certainly staying up late loses its appeal.

Before we get on, I’m going to ask you about actors, but, you know, we spoke the last time about the unfortunate incident at the airport where four policemen used a TASER gun to subdue this agitated immigrant and there were some Letters to the Editor this morning in the newspaper.

One person wrote that if the airport had called in four bouncers from the local nightclub that passenger would still be alive today, which I thought was an interesting comment.

I mean, when you go to a nightclub there’s always a bouncer there, right?

A great big guy whose job it is to restrain anybody that gets out of hand.

The term “bouncer”, I don’t know if people are familiar with it, refers to, it’s not quite a bodyguard, but someone who is paid because he’s big and strong and probably skilled in some form of martial arts and it’s his role to subdue any patrons, anybody at the bar or at the nightclub, who gets unruly.

Those people don’t use TASERs.

If at the airport they had brought in four bouncers this fellow might have been hit a few times, but he would still be alive, so I thought that was kind of an interesting comment.

Anyway leaving nightclubs and bouncers aside, movies, what kind of movies do you like?

Who are your favorite actors and actresses?

Jill: I like happy movies, movies where I leave feeling good so, generally, lighthearted movies.

I like dramas as well where there is some suspense and some mystery and some intrigue.

I like some comedies.

Some are so stupid that I don’t enjoy, but some are very well done and if I can laugh for an hour or two that’s great.

I’m not really picky with movies, actually; I will see almost anything.

I’ll even see action movies where they’re really fake and I don’t mind.

The ones that I really will not see are horror movies, really scary, gross, gruesome, awful, movies or ones that are war-like movies based on events where people were really being persecuted or tortured or something like that.

I don’t like to see stuff like that.

Steve: Yeah, I think I agree. I like movies that provide an escape.

I don’t want to see something disturbing, I want to see something that’s uplifting that has, perhaps, some message or takes me to an exotic place.

I like foreign movies whether they be Spanish or Chinese or French or German, something that takes me away, something different; something where the scenery is beautiful where it’s uplifting.

The movies they have, it’s always violence and drugs and sex, you know, it’s just you end up…it’s not uplifting really.

Jill: No.

Steve: It’s a beautiful scene; it’s a story, a nice story that leaves you something.

I mean when you see a good movie you actually come away feeling good.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: And I think that’s the kind of escape I look for in movies. Who are your favorite actors?

Jill: I was going to think about that a little bit.

I’m just trying to… I always have a hard time when people ask me what my favorite song is or who my favorite actor is.

It’s always hard for me to think.

Steve: Let me ask it this way, because we have movies on television, if you were looking at the newspaper to see what’s on this evening, what are the names, which actors or actresses would make you say to yourself, I want to watch that movie?

Jill: I don’t know if that makes it even easier for me.

Probably people like Anthony Hopkins or maybe Al Pacino.

I like some of Robin Williams’ older movies that were quite funny.

I’m trying to think of women actresses too.

There are some of Julia Roberts’ movies that I like.

I don’t know that I really have favorite actors or actresses.

I’m not really one of those people who focuses on one or two people and has to see every movie that they ever make.

I focus on more on what the plot of the movie is and less on who’s in it; although, if it’s not a very good actor or actress that can ruin the movie as well.

Steve: You know, amongst the men, I like Harrison Ford.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: And Tom Hank.

Jill: Tom Hanks, yeah, I like him too.

Steve: Tom Hanks, yeah, I think he’s good.

What’s the name of that Englishman who always plays a bit of a cad?

Jill: Hugh Grant?

Steve: Hugh Grant, yeah.

Jill: Yeah, I like him too.

Steve: He’s tremendous; he’s tremendous. And what was the movie with him and there’s an American woman, actress, who plays this sort of plump English girl?

Jill: Bridget Jones’ Diary.

Steve: Oh, she is tremendous. I mean, that’s so funny and I thought she was English.

Jill: Oh yeah, she did a great job, Renee Zellweger.

Steve: That’s what her name is; she’s tremendous.

Amongst the women I like Melanie Griffin; Griffith?

Jill: Griffith, I think.

Steve: Griffith.

She had this one movie where she plays a bit of a clueless blonde and I don’t know whether that’s her real personality or not, but she does it so well.

I thought she was pretty good.

I like Penelope Cruz in some of the Spanish movies.

I think she’s got a very kind of different look; so, yeah, funny movies.

I’m not a great fan of thrillers, you know, who-done-it type movies.

Yeah, I guess that’s about it.

Popular culture, now we’re both probably quite conservative.

You said that you don’t like rap music.

I mean, to me that’s not even music it’s just noise.

Some of the language, I don’t listen to it, but I’ve read some of the things they say.

I mean it’s just disgusting.

Why that’s even allowed, you know, to go on.

I mean you have some pretty easily-influenced people who listen to that stuff.

No, I think art in general should be uplifting.

I think it always used to be and then we came into the 20th century and we have all this modern music that’s really noise and modern painting that’s supposed to disturb you or you can’t figure out what it’s all about.

To me, art or music should be about beauty; about making things nicer than they are in real life.

You know, the life that we see on movies, in many ways, is much worse than real life.

You know, if someone watched all these American movies they would think that everybody in the United States is one drugs, is shooting people, that we swear every third word.

I don’t think that’s the case, at least not… Maybe I’m out of touch, I don’t know.

Jill: No, I think it definitely sensationalizes everything and, of course, bad things happen, but I completely agree.

When I look at a painting or I watch a movie I want to see something that is beautiful that makes me feel happy and evokes positive feelings.

Steve: Exactly.

Jill: I’m not interested in dark, gloomy, art.

Steve: Yeah, it’s almost like there’s a sort of lowest common denominator; who can shock the most kind of thing.

So no, we need to return to art and music as something that’s uplifting.

And on that note, we hope that our discussion, if it isn’t uplifting, at least is helpful to people in their language study.

There we go Jill.

Jill: Alright.

Steve: Okay, thank you very much.

Jill: Thank you; bye, bye.

Steve: Bye, bye.

Study this episode and any others from the LingQ English Podcast on LingQ! Check it out.

Steve: Hello Jill.

Jill: Hi Steve.

Steve: How are you?

Jill: Good thank you.

Steve: You know, we often talk about what we did over the weekend and it’s mostly happy things.

Last time you were talking about visiting your family or your in-laws in Prince George.

You flew up there and flew back down for the weekend, but there was a very unhappy event that happened at Vancouver Airport about a week ago, which was very much in the news over the weekend.

Do you know what I’m referring to?

Jill: Yeah, it happened several weeks ago. It’s been on the news for quite a few weeks already.

Steve: I thought it was the 13th of October. Yeah, a long time ago; 13th of October it happened, right?

Jill: Yeah, it was like a month ago or something.

Steve: A month ago.

Jill: Yeah.

Steve: You know what I’m referring to, yeah.

Just to explain here and then we can maybe talk about it.

An immigrant to Canada from Poland who spoke no English arrived at the airport, somehow made his way through Immigration and then stayed in the airport for nine hours.

I think it’s because his mother told him to stay by the baggage carousel and to wait for her there.

Jill: And she was also at the airport waiting for him, but somehow they weren’t in the same area; they missed each other.

Steve: Well, because she told him to wait by the baggage carousel, which is, you know, an area that’s not…people who come to greet arriving passengers are not allowed into the baggage area.

Jill: Not the international baggage area, no.

Steve: No, because that’s a customs area.

He, the passenger, the arriving passenger, still has to, you know, go through that final customs control before they’re into Canada so, you know, those instructions were not correct.

He was waiting and waiting and, of course, she couldn’t be there and he got increasingly agitated and then he apparently started throwing things around.

He was a very big man; apparently, he was 6 foot 9 inches tall.

Jill: Oh wow, I didn’t know that.

Steve: Very, very, big man, spoke no English, was getting agitated and throwing things around.

He threw chairs and a computer; I don’t know all the details.

Someone called the police, the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

They arrived and they really didn’t give the man much of a chance.

I think they said something, you know, they addressed a few words to him in English he couldn’t understand and then they immediately hit him with an electric shock with what’s known as a taser gun and then they threw him to the ground.

He resisted very strenuously and so they hit him again with the taser gun and while fighting with the man he died.

I think that’s about the story.

Jill: Yeah, I mean, I heard there was actually a young man at the airport who caught it on videotape and there has been a videotape released of it.

I’ve seen him interviewed a couple of times and his version was that the man, by the time the RCMP showed up, had actually calmed down considerably, was much more calm than he had been and that the police taser’d him once, he fell to the ground; two police officers were on him holding him down.

And this man said that at this point he wasn’t resisting, he was not resisting at all, and then they gave him another shot, which was totally unnecessary and then he died.

Steve: Mind you, we don’t know.

You know, the one man who’s taking this picture with his camera may have the impression that this man was not resisting.

The policemen who were involved in trying to restrain the man may have had a different impression, so I think that’s pretty subjective.

You know, I think everyone’s impression is that the police were unnecessarily aggressive in dealing with this man and, apparently, it’s not recommended that you taser someone twice, you know, in rapid succession.

Jill: No, because what is it 50,000 volts or something?

I don’t know these things very well, but it’s a large number.

Steve: It’s a big shock.

Now, apparently, very few people die from taser guns.

In support of a taser gun is the argument that the alternative is to hit the guy over the head with a big stick or something.

Jill: Or to shoot him.

Steve: Yeah, okay, obviously it’s better to use a taser gun then to shoot him, but the other alternative is to try to restrain him with other forms of violence, bearing in mind that, not necessarily in this case but in a case where a policeman is required to restrain someone who is violent and who might as they say sometimes have almost super-human strength if they’re struggling, then the question is what should you use.

What is going to cause the least possible injury both to the policeman and to the person you’re trying to restrain.

I mean, I don’t know what the arguments for and against the taser gun are.

A couple of things that struck me though in this whole thing… First of all, I must say I am not one of these people who just likes to criticize the police because I think the police have a very difficult job to do.

I mean, we are very thankful to have the police around if we’re being, you know, burglarized or attacked or something like that, so we do need the police and the police need to be able to apply some form of violence at certain times in certain situations.

It would appear that the procedure that these policemen used was not the best procedure, so that was not a model of how to deal with this situation.

Jill: No, I mean, I don’t understand why they didn’t just taser him once.

There were several police officers and from what I saw on the tape it didn’t seem like it was necessary to taser him the second time.

I don’t know if he still would have died having only been taser’d once, I’m not sure, but that seemed unnecessary.

But, you know, the thing that struck me I think even more about this whole situation, tragic situation, is the fact that nobody at the airport, nobody working there, noticed this man standing around for nine hours.

Even if he couldn’t speak English there is body language.

Nobody tried to take him somewhere, sit him down, get him some water and try to help him.

Steve: I know.

Jill: I just think that’s appalling.

Steve: It’s appalling, first of all, on the part of the Immigration officials who somehow processed him through; somehow they communicated with him.

Second of all, yeah, people just standing there.

Mind you, if you’re arriving on an international flight and you’ve been flying for six, seven, ten, twelve, hours and you see someone who is 6 foot 9 speaking a strange language you’re not that interested, to some extent.

It would have been nicer if someone had helped him, but I think the Immigration officials, the airport officials, there is even an immigrant greeting service that receives a lot of money from the federal government and who advertise on their website that they greet 50,000 people a year at Vancouver Airport to help them cope with the stresses of coming to a foreign land, well where were they; where were they.

Jill: Exactly.

Steve: Even from a security point of view, to have someone wandering around the airport, going out of the customs area, going back into the customs area.

I think there is blame to be attached to the policemen who were operating in a, you know, they were trying to make very quick decisions and I think they made unfortunate decisions, but there are a lot of other people to be blamed in the process.

Jill: That was sort of my feeling too is that I just couldn’t believe that not one person at the airport thought that it was peculiar that some man was just hanging around for nine hours and that nobody did anything.

Steve: But, you know, the other thing too is that if this man had spoken even a few words of English or if the policemen, and that’s much more unlikely, but if there had been someone around who spoke Polish or, you know, Czech or some related language, you know.

Obviously, for the policemen when they arrived if they had been able to talk to this man I don’t think we would have had this situation.

Jill: I agree.

Steve: If the man had been able to say it’s okay, okay, I’m okay, please don’t hit me or something or if the policemen had been able to say, you know, take it easy, calm down, what’s your problem?

But there was just no communication.

Jill: No, none.

Steve: Zero communication.

You know, I have on two occasions been in situations where I have seen travelers who couldn’t speak the local language or English and I’ve seen the anxiety and I have intervened.

Once a pair of Japanese girls that were flying on an airline in Canada and once with a Russian man who was blind or partly blind and who was being very sort of not properly helped in a hotel lobby in Holland because people were busy.

The situation becomes much, much, more sort of…the anxiety level of the person just increases dramatically when they can’t communicate.

Jill: Of course, yeah.

Steve: Yeah, but there will be a lot of questions asked about the use of tasers, about the appropriate police procedures for this kind of situation, about the way the airport is organized.

And, you know, I agree with you.

One thing, apparently, this man’s mother was waiting outside and she had someone with her who spoke very good English.

They asked the airport officials and the airport officials made some kind of public address announcement in English, which he would not have understood, undoubtedly mispronouncing his name.

Besides which the area that he was in, and which the airport officials would have know that he’s in the international arrivals baggage area, there is no public address loudspeaker there.

Jill: Oh.

Steve: And they did this and then they reported back to his mother and said no, your son is not in the airport.

I mean that’s just unbelievable.

Jill: That’s not a thorough check.

Steve: That’s nothing!

Jill: No.

Steve: You know, there’s something almost Kafkaesque about this whole thing.

It’s an organization which doesn’t care.

Now you could argue that the individual passengers should also have tried to help and I agree with you, but the system in place is so impersonal and so uncaring that it just grinds and nobody cares; nobody cares for the individual.

I mean, I can’t believe it.

He was accepted as an immigrant even though he spoke no English, so at least someone in the system should have said this man is arriving, he speaks zero English, somebody there should help him.

Jill: Yeah, there should have been some sort of flag or something, I agree.

I just can’t believe that there aren’t lots of other immigrants that arrive all the time who cannot speak any English.

I’m sure it happens, so they need to find a better way to deal with these people.

Steve: Well, not only immigrants.

I mean theoretically the immigrants are supposed to be able to speak English before they can immigrate to Canada, but just ordinary travelers, tourists, they’re under no obligation to speak English.

Jill: Of course.

Steve: So that the procedures at the airport… Yes, undoubtedly, you know, in a way, even though there’s not much sympathy for the police officers, in a way, I feel sorry for them because… I mean, yeah, obviously the mother, the family of this man, are totally distraught, but I think the police officers are traumatized as well.

Jill: Oh, I’m sure they feel horrible. I’m sure they didn’t mean to kill him.

Steve: They didn’t go there with the purpose of killing this man.

They probably overreacted, they probably weren’t properly trained and the situation was exacerbated by the fact that there was no language communication.

It’s at the airport, it’s tense, is this guy a terrorist, who knows, I don’t know.

I don’t know what the policemen were told before they went there.

Jill: No, I don’t either.

Steve: We haven’t been told that.

What was the message given to the policemen?

Maybe they were told that he was a very dangerous man, I have no idea.

Anyway Jill, it’s a really, really, tragic story.

We don’t often have tragic things to talk about, but life does have its dark moments as well.

Jill: Hopefully this unfortunate situation will lead to some better protocol at the airport and these things can be avoided in the future.

Steve: Well and better procedures too with regard to policemen.

They should have had a medic handy if they were going to taser the man.

I think there are a lot of issues a lot of questions that need to be answered here.

Okay Jill, sad story, but there it is.

We will talk again.

Jill: Yes, okay; bye, bye.

Steve: Bye.