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Showing posts from July, 2024

025 - What's The Difference Between Great Britain and The United Kingdom?

Hello and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge. I'm actually recording this podcast on February the first. Why am I telling you this at the start of the show? Well, because the UK technically left the European Union at midnight on January the 31st, yesterday, and that might prove to be a very relevant thing for what we are going to be talking about today. In today's podcast, we are going to talk about the difference between the UK, Great Britain, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the British Isles. You might be sort of aware of this already, but I guess for you this is probably a point of confusion and me just listing out all of the countries just now probably hasn't made life any easier and you aren't any clearer on the difference. If I asked you now, what's the difference between the UK and Great Britain, would you be able to tell m...

024 Part 2: The most common mistakes people make when learning English (and how to avoid them)

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge and today it is the second part of the most common mistakes people make when learning English and how to avoid them. In part one, we learned about why you should choose normal content over traditional language learning textbooks, why you shouldn't judge yourself against others, why you shouldn't pay attention to hacks or shortcuts, how you should rid yourself of your fear of making mistakes, and why trying to speak too fast is a terrible idea. So if you haven't listened to part one yet and that sounds right up your street, then go and give that a listen. And just in case you haven't got it right in front of you, you can grab a copy of the transcript and key vocabulary and become a member of Leonardo English over on the website, which is Leonardoenglish.com. Alright then, let's get back into it and talk about the final five most common mistak...

023 Part 1: The Most Common Mistakes People Make When Learning English (and How to Avoid Them)

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge, and welcome to the show where you can learn English while learning fascinating things about the way the world works, and of course, about how to learn English in an effective, interesting, and engaging way. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about the most common mistakes people make when learning English and how to avoid them. So it's a slight deviation from our usual topics of weird and wonderful things that happen in the world, but we've had quite a lot of you asking for more material specifically on English learning. If you are interested in learning English, which I guess if you're listening to this podcast, you probably are, it's probably a good thing to be aware of some of the mistakes that you should be avoiding. If you are hoping to hear specifics in this podcast about phrasal verbs or people making mistakes in pronounc...

022b - How to use a dictionary (properly) to learn English

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the first, the inaugural members-only English Learning for Curious Minds podcast. Let me just start by saying a big thank you for your ongoing membership. The podcast wouldn't be possible without your support and every one of you is the reason that I do the show. I guess that most of you should know who I am by now, but just in case you need a reminder, I'm Alastair Budge. I'm the host of the podcast and the founder of Leonardo English. Today we are going to talk about something that I think is pretty important when learning English, or any language for that matter, but that a lot of people don't fully appreciate. And that thing is the dictionary. Today it is time to talk about how to use a dictionary properly as part of your English learning toolkit. And this isn't just going to be a list of the best dictionaries where afterwards you can go away with a shopping list of dictionaries to buy or apps to download. But I will give you ...

022 - Fake Meat

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge. If this is your first time listening to the show, then welcome. It's great to have you on board and of course, if you are a regular listener, welcome back. It's great to have you too. Regular listeners will know by now that the transcript and key vocabulary for the podcast can be found on the website, which is leonardoenglish.com. If you aren't yet a member of Leonardo English and you want to follow along with the transcript and key vocabulary in front of you, then you can become a member over at leonardoenglish.com/subscribe. The promotional price for becoming a member is ending at midnight on the 31st of January, which is actually the day that this podcast is released. So if you want to lock in that price of just nine euros per month, which is under 10 US dollars, then make sure you head to leonardoenglish.com/subscribe before midnight. Membershi...

021 - Conspiracy Theories

Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good night, wherever you are. This is the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge and today we are going to be talking about conspiracy theories. We'll talk about what they are, the psychology behind why people believe them, what impact they have, and at the end of the podcast, I'll tell you about three of the weirdest ones out there. You'll find out why people think Disney made the film *Frozen*, what animals people think built the pyramids, and who people think helped humans build Stonehenge. Before we get right into it, if you don't have the transcript and key vocabulary in front of you, you can grab it over on the website, which is leonardoenglish.com. If you're not already a member of Leonardo English, but would like to get your hands on the transcript and key vocabulary so that you can follow along as I speak and not miss a single word and get the definitions of any of the less...

020 - Carbon Offsetting

Hello, hello, hello, and it's another day at the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge and welcome to the show. The subject of today's podcast is carbon offsetting. We'll explain what it is, how it works, why some people love it, praising it as an effective solution towards limiting climate change, while others think it is a load of rubbish, and just another example of us kicking the can further down the road. I'm quite excited about this one and it's something that's pretty close to my heart, although you'll have to wait until the end of the podcast to find out what I really think about it. Before we get right into it though, let me just take a minute to remind those of you without the key vocabulary and transcript in front of you that you can grab a copy of it and become a member of Leonardo English over on the website, which is Leonardoenglish.com. Members get the transcripts and key vocabulary now also dow...

019 - British Food Part 4 - The (Earl of) Sandwich

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge and today it is part four of our series on British food, a little sojourn into some weird British culinary history. Before we get right into it, I want to remind those of you listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iVoox, or wherever you get your podcasts that you can grab a copy of the transcript and key vocabulary for the podcast on the website, which is Leonardoenglish.com. The transcripts are super helpful if you want to follow along, and the key vocabulary means that you'll discover a whole load of new words and you won't have to stop to look things up in a dictionary. The introductory promotional price for becoming a member of Leonardo English will end at midnight on January the 31st, so if you want to lock in the introductory promotional price of just nine euros per month then make sure you become a member before then. You can find ...

018 - British Food Part 3 - The English Breakfast

 Here's the text with timestamps removed, repeated text removed, and formatted with new line breaks: --- Hello and welcome to the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Budge.  Today we are on to part three of our mini series about British food, the penultimate part.  In part one, we heard about how London used to be fueled by cheap oysters and how a dodgy batch of them caused the entire industry to collapse almost overnight.  Then in part two, we talked about fish and chips, the true story behind them and why people think they helped Britain win the first and second world war.  And today it's part three, so we'll be talking about the English breakfast.  If you don't know much about the English breakfast, it's quite heavy, it's quite a large meal, so this podcast might be one to listen to on a relatively empty stomach.  Before we get right into the podcast though, this is just a quick reminder that you can find the...