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Luke’s English Podcast is an award-winning audio show for learners of English as a foreign language. The podcast started in 2009 and is still going strong. There are now over 550 audio episodes, transcripts, videos, a special series on phrasal verbs and a premium subscription service. The podcast has won 5 awards, received a British Council ELTon nomination and has now been downloaded over 50 million times. You can subscribe and receive updates. 559. The Rick Thompson Report: Brexit Chaos (November 2018) Talking to my dad, Rick Thompson about recent developments in the story of Brexit – Britain’s exit from the European Union. Recorded on 18 November 2018. [DOWNLOAD] Totally confused about Brexit? Want to know answers to some basic questions, like What does Brexit mean? What is the Brexit deal? What is the backstop in Brexit? When […]

Is there another way of talking about past habits without using 'used to'? This is the question that Tim tackles in this video. In it he has to reveal some of the dark secrets of his past as well as some of his present habits, which can't all be recommended.

Write a story (200 words approx.) following the guidelines on page 35 of your student's book,. Choose one of the following titles. Write your story in the comments section below. The luckiest day of my life A day when everything went wrong The most frightening day of my life A day I'll never forget

For three decades, the  Butterball Turkey Talk-Line  has answered the desperate pleas of hundreds of thousands of holiday cooks. As you can imagine, in that time the staff of 50-plus experts has heard some pretty outlandish tales of Turkey Day mishaps and fielded some truly bewildering questions. Following are a few favorite conversations from the Butterball hotline operators. And if you need help this holiday season with your bird, don’t forget to call 1-800-BUTTERBALL. Double duty iStock/Jodi Jacobson A father in charge of thawing the turkey and bathing his toddler twins decided to hit two birds with one stone. “We could hear water splashing in the background, and turns out he has his kids and the turkey in the tub all at the same time,” says Nicole Johnson, Talk-Line co-director. The man was calling to find out if the bath water would be an acceptable method for thawing the turkey. READ MORE...

Everyone knows the story of the first Thanksgiving, when a small group of Massachusetts's settlers celebrated making it through the year by feasting with their Native-American neighbors. But the story of Thanksgiving goes back much further, to ancient harvest festivals, and the holiday has been transformed over time into today's celebration marked by family, food and football. HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS is a warm look at this particularly American celebration. Discover how New York was the first state to officially declare a day of Thanksgiving, and how President Lincoln first made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. Explore period accounts and art that bring Thanksgiving celebrations through the centuries to life, and find out the origins of traditions like the Macy's parade. And why do we serve turkey on Thanksgiving anyway? It's an intriguing look at the sometimes surprising tales behind one of America's most beloved holidays.

Shorten the text  in such a way that all facts are in the summary. Leave out examples, evaluations and interpretations. Skim  the text. You should know what is the  main content  of it. Read the headline carefully. Read the text again to understand more  details . You must have understood the whole text. Make  notes  (use keywords). Underline important words in the text. Form  sentences with the help of your  keywords . These sentences should reflect the main content of the text. Connect the sentences  using suitable conjunctions. The first sentence should describe the main content of the text. Use  Simple Present  or  Simple Past . Write sentences in Reported speech. Sometimes you have to  change the persons . Check  your summary. Watch out for spelling mistakes. USEFUL EXPRESSIONS

This video is about narrative tenses (past simple, past  continuous  & past perfect). We use these tenses to sequence stories about the past. To master the use of these tenses you have to deal with their form, their use and their pronunciation – both for listening and speaking. Use this podcast to help you deal with all of those things, and then start using narrative tenses fluently whenever you describe something. Make your descriptions more detailed and colourful! Here’s the transcript to the mystery story, but with some of the verbs ‘gapped’. Try to put them in the correct tense. Listen again to check. The mystery story Last night I _________________ (walk) home next to the river Thames, when something strange _________________ (happen) to me. It was late at night and I ________________ (have) a long and difficult day at work. There was a large full moon in the sky and everything was quiet. I was tired and lonely and I _________________ (just have) a few pints of bee...

Sky's Mark Stone visits where the first and last British soldiers are buried in the First World War. Both Private John Parr and Private George Ellison's headstones can be seen at the same cemetery in Mons, Belgium. Theresa May will visit the same location to mark the start of a series of high-profile events reflecting the centenary of 1918. A Peace Forum in Paris has been organised by French President Emmanuel Macron and will be attended by world leaders including the US and Russian presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

How to be happy? That's the greatest question of all, in the sense that it is what motivates what we do on a daily basis. All the choices we make stem from a consideration, often unconscious, between which choices would make us probably the most happy. TEST YOUR HAPPINESS    Do you have any tips for being happy? Leave your tip as a comment (80 words). Thanks.  

Guy Fawkes was born in April 1570 in York. Although his immediate family were all Protestants, in keeping with the accepted religious practice in England at the time, his maternal grandparents were 'recusant' Catholics, who refused to attend Protestant services. When Guy was eight, his father died and his widowed mother married a Catholic, Dionis Baynbrigge. It was these early influences that were to forge Fawkes' convictions as an adult. Fawkes and Spain By the time he was 21 he had sold the estate his father had left him and gone to Europe to fight for Catholic Spain against the Protestant Dutch republic in the Eighty Years War. His military career went well and by 1603 he had been recommended for a captaincy. He had also adopted the Italian variant of his name, becoming known as 'Guido'. In the same year, he travelled to Spain to petition the king, Philip III, for support in fomenting a rebellion in England against the "heretic" James I. Despi...