Transcript of BEP Ep 2 - Pub Culture

You're listening to The British English Podcast. A show that helps English learners around the world discover British culture along with useful language that natives are actually using day to day. With me, your host, Charlie Baxter. In this episode, I go solo and welcome you into the episodes that are a one man show. Just me, myself and Irene.

I've called my microphone Irene and I'm referencing a movie there. If you didn't know it was one that Jim Carrey was in around the year 2000. Me, Myself and Irene is a comedy, but yeh, anyway, so it'll just be me`, which is a little strange for me, as I've always been teaching through conversations over on Real English With Real Teachers, which is my YouTube channel that I run with Harry, who is in the previous episode, but anyhoo.

I've realised that conversations they require two minds, don't they? It requires often more than one person to add to a conversation and therefore two minds, and when more than one mind gets involved, you can't really predict where the content is going as much. So I've actually found a lot of joy in planning this episode, researching some things, and actually taking just taking some time to think a bit more about British culture and the English language. So yeah, it should be good. We'll see. So sit back and enjoy while I take you into my mind in hope of helping your language acquisition and your cultural awareness.

Because the Brits are often rather confusing humans, especially for the likes of Russians or Germans, or in fact any culture that is more pragmatic than the UK or Brits. Meaning more focussed on dealing with things sensibly and realistically. So, yeah in this episode I go into one of the most important places of culture in the UK in my opinion and others. I wonder if you can guess where I'm talking about, we shall see.

But before I begin, I want to make you fully aware of the British English Podcast Academy, which I am putting a lot of effort into to help you go far beyond just listening to each episode and moving on to the next thing to binge on. In the academy you can get your hands on so much more content and and just to mention three of them right now because it would take a long time to go through everything.

So the first one transcripts, you get the transcripts of every episode, you get vocabulary review videos of all the phrases of interest that come up in each episode and I'll be explaining them through examples, drilling pronunciation and focussing on connected speech so that you know how to put them into a sentence sounding like a native. And then I've got interactive quizzes on that to help you actually engage your brain in what you've been passively listening to, so I've got a lot more, but I won't go on.

I strongly recommend visiting the website, ww.thebritishenglishpodcast.com and you'll be able to find everything you need there. I'd like you to think of these free podcasts as the trailer and then the academy is the actual movie. And yeah, you have to pay for the movie, but it's an amazing experience. But I will say that these trailers are bloody useful and hopefully entertaining. OK. So on with the show.

Right, let's start with a question. Just a question. Yes, a question. What would you say is one of the most strongly associated things with England? So as a non-native looking in from the outside, you might think of, okay, England, a Big Ben or the houses of Parliament and maybe even, you know, the crown jewels or the lady who sits beneath the crown, Queen Elizabeth The Second you might be thinking of her, but you might be thinking, come now, Charlie, I'm current.

I read gossip columns and I'm thinking of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle running off to Canada. I'm not talking about them. Good. Glad you're reading. Glad you're keeping up with the gossip. But I'm not talking about those guys. And if those obvious thoughts are, as I said, too obvious for you, you might be thinking of the music that England has created. Could start with the Beatles and go all the way up to the likes of Adele. The TV shows like Downton Abbey, Doctor Who, or maybe even The Crown. But no, no, I'm not talking about them. Nor am I talking about the James Bond films, the Harry Potter franchise, the sports such as football, cricket or tennis.

I mean, the list really could go on and if you stick around, I might actually just do an episode on all of these and more. But to begin with, I'd like to start at a place that is an everyday occurrence for some, if not many. I'd say maybe most. No. There's some, I don't know, it's hard to say. Anyway, it's all within a building, not just one building. It'll be packed. If it was just one building, oh god it would be heaving? Heaving. That's a good word so it means very, very full or busy with people.

The bar was absolutely heaving. Now, I've given you a clue there. I said a bar. Okay. So, yeah not just one. These are buildings all across England, and I could definitely say the UK here. In fact, every country or culture has a special environment to socialise in and consume a beverage of some kind. Whether it be alcoholic or caffeinated or just simply hot and smelly. But today in this episode of The British English Podcast, I'm going to be talking about the pub.

The pub.

Yeah, the British pub, and why might I be focussing on the pub? Good question. I like that you are asking that kind of question. Well, I think it's really important for non-natives because you'll be very likely experiencing a pub if you come to England, if you come on a trip, a very short trip, you should probably go to a pub. And if you're coming to stay for a longer period of time, you'll be going to the pub a lot. And there's no guidelines to how we interact in the pub.

There's so many little cultural behaviours packed into these tiny buildings scattered across the whole of England or the UK. So I think it's really important to understand these behaviours because it's very obvious when I take non-natives into a pub that they don't know the traditions, they don't know the cultural norms, and so they end up feeling uncomfortable, and I don't want you to feel uncomfortable.

So here are some cultural aspects of the pub that I think are incredibly useful for English learners who are about to travel to the UK or you're already in this drunken isle and maybe you are finding it a bit uncomfortable or you're just interested. So let's get into it. So I want to stress that loads of people go here. Apparently more than three quarters of the adult population go to pubs and over a third are regulars. A regular is somebody who goes regularly and they visit the pub probably at least once a week. So a third of Englishmen are going to the pub once a week.

That's a lot, and yeah, I highly recommend visiting a pub to get to know a bit more about the English. It's free to enter, you don't have to pay anything to get in, usually, very unlikely unless there's maybe a gig going on. But yeah, so it's compared to going into a theme park or Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.

Yeah, it's a lot cheaper and you're actually if I take the analogy further, you'll actually get people talking back to you if you go up to them. So I reckon you should spend some time in a pub to get to know an Englishman. Now I want to say that they would definitely talk back to you if you're at the bar, which is an excellent segue onto the first point, because pubs very rarely include table service. I would say it's almost unheard of. Unheard of.

There are, I suppose, some gastro pubs that you will sit down in. But a gastro pub is the word for a pub that is more focussed on a restaurant. So it's got a restaurant and a bar in the same building and that's called a gastro pub. So you'll be told to sit down and they'll hand you a food menu and say what you havin' darlin'. But a pub, generally speaking, is self service at the bar. So tip number one, don't wait for somebody to sit you down and certainly, certainly don't expect anyone to be asking if they can take your coat for you. If they do, they are more likely going to do a runner with it. To do a runner is to steal something and then run away to leave the area very quickly, to do a runner.

They would do a runner with your coat. Okay, so don't let anybody do a runner with your coat. So get in and head to the bar with your coat on and don't be that tourist who sits down for forty five minutes before realising that no one is coming to take your order. This did, according to the anthropologist Kate Fox, actually happen to a group of Italians. Forty five minutes, that's crazy. And apparently also a French couple she witnessed storm out of the pub complaining loudly about the English saying, ah, what rubbish service, what rubbish service. But they didn't even know that there was no service. There was no service to be complaining about. So, yes. And I just said stormed out. They stormed out.

A great word, meaning to leave a place showing that you're upset, to storm out. If you say something rude to your partner, they might storm out of the room. Oh, dear. You're in trouble now. So, yes don't be that tourist sitting down waiting for service. Go straight to the bar.

Now you're at the bar This is where you might encounter some real English. As you've got the bartender who in this current day is still often British, maybe not English, but British and they might not be from the UK if you're in the likes of London or Birmingham or Manchester or the big cities, the further out of the cities you'll go, the more likely that they will be British or English. So the bartender is there for you to talk to, but also the locals that linger at the bar, linger meaning to stay around somewhere.

So to linger is another good word. It means to stay around for a while, to take a long time to leave or disappear so people would linger at the bar. Often locals would linger at the bar. Here's an interesting thought on culture, on our culture. Brits like privacy and order, very much so. But at the same time, we really like a chat. We like a spontaneous conversation, especially if there's opportunity to have humour involved and very often in a bar, in a pub, there is that opportunity. So it seems that the bar is this area that allows people to have a conversation with a stranger, which is brilliant for you to practice speaking with a local. It might sound scary at the beginning, but if you were to get into it and be brave, it'll be fantastic.

So you could be a lingerer at the bar and you could end up talking very much so with these locals. God, that would be great. That'd be great. Get yourself a pint and stay at the bar because this is culturally acceptable behaviour to start talking to strangers around the bar.

Now I would say that generally speaking, the folk at the bar are going to interact with you differently than those who say sat at a table. They're confronting a bit direct and but at the same time, they're quite approachable because they're talking to you. But they yeah, they're open for conversation, but they will be quite, quite direct maybe. I should also warn you that if you do get into a conversation with somebody at the bar most of the time, from my experience, they will end up talking your ear off about a topic they love to get into.

Talking your ear off is meaning to talk at you a huge amount to the point where you don't want to. This could be about football, it could be about politics currently or just current affairs or something that you just can't relate to in any way. But don't worry, you're not alone as a non-native cause, I and many other locals are very aware of these people that linger or are lurking, you could say lurking at the bar who are waiting for a conversation partner.

Most of the time you would steer clear of them. Steer clear. You would stay away from, imagine steering your car with a steering wheel. You steer clear of them and you do that by the normal things like evading eye contact and you just make a bee-line for the barman so you ignore the surroundings, you just focus on the barman. And I said, making a bee-line for somebody or something. It means kind of going straight towards, you're very focussed, you make a bee-line for something. I was bursting for the toilet, so I made a bee-line for the toilet. So if you don't want an earful from them for the next 15 minutes of wasted time that you could be having with your friends if you're going in a group, then yeah.

Be careful of the locals at the bar, but if you are up for it, get stuck in. Get involved. It's a great opportunity for you to speak and meet a Brit or an Englishman. So if you wanted a private chat with a friend, I would suggest heading to a table far away from the bar or the pool table or the dart board, in fact, that these areas are also a bit like the bar. It's like, oh, I'm up for a conversation with a stranger because I'm near this thing. Yeah so stay away from the pool table, the bar or a social activity like the dart board even, if you want a private conversation.

But as I said, if you want to get involved, then do the opposite. So you've chosen whether to interact with the lingerer at the bar or to bee-line for the barman.

Now, let's talk about queuing, because this is quite a strange, really strange thing. In England, you probably know that we love, we absolutely love to queue for anything. I read in this book that if an Englishman pays attention to actually what they're doing when they're going towards a potential area that they could queue, if there's no one in sight, if there is no person waiting for what you're waiting for, we end up creating a queue out of no one or nothing.

We just stand pretending like we're in a queue and we're forming, we're the first person in the queue. So like at a bus stop, we wouldn't just stay roughly around the area of the bus stop. We would put ourselves right next to the bus sign and turn towards the way that the bus is coming. And we would pretend that we're the beginning person of a queue so that the second person can come and queue next to them. There's many places, post offices are another place that we love to queue.

But in a pub, it seems like there's no queue and so many non-natives that I've gone to the pub with get lost in this situation. They don't really know whether they can just go up to the bar or whether they just have to wait and be taken up to the bar. It is really confusing for some. So it seems like there's no queue, but there actually is, there really is a queue. And if you jump that queue, meaning if you try to go ahead of your turn, people will not like that they will really, really understand that you've broken a cultural behaviour and that is disrespectful.

So it's something that I want to point out to you to avoid. It's really simple, like if you just look at it, you kind of acknowledge who's at the bar before me and and then who's come after me and you're in the queue, you're there. The way to get served is quite complicated. It's simple for anyone who's been brought up in this environment. And maybe your culture has these little quirks but I would say that it's slightly different in the UK.

Okay. So to get the attention of a barman, it's really, really easy to be rude as a non-native or as a non-local, you might disrespect them and I don't want you to do that. So when you go in there, think about not doing obvious things. I think that's a general rule, and again, it could apply to what you have the equivalent of in your country.

But you wouldn't really use your voice either, which is strange. You don't speak when you go up to the bar to get their attention. If they have their back turned to you or if they're doing something, if you were to say, can I get served, please? Or even in a nice tone, can I order something? That is actually a bit rude.

It's really strange to admit that - I wouldn't feel comfortable, well if I did, I would know that the people that I'm with feel uncomfortable. They would be like oh Charlie was just a bit of a dick to the barman and he said, Can I get served? So there's not really any speaking. It seems crazy because, you know, they're a business, they want your money, you want to give them your money but then you can't tell them that and you certainly can't shout. But I think that's, ah no actually, maybe in some cultures shouting is fine, some cultures are very loud and passionate, maybe shouting is fine.

So definitely don't shout and then the large movements are a no, no. Are a no, no. To not be allowed. A no, no. It's a bit of an informal word that is quite young actually like a parent would say that, that's a no-no or that's a big no-no. It just means that something that is thought to be unsuitable or unacceptable. So waving your arms, no. Clicking your fingers, definitely not. Even like making noises on the bar like tapping coins, that's considered rude and annoying. Even a cough, that would be rude. So what can you do?

The aim is to make eye contact so you never stop looking at the barman, look at the barman the whole time and have a face of slightly dissatisfied in life. Not disappointed and not upset, but just like you're really, you're wanting something. I'd like something and I think you could provide it for me. So never take your eyes off of the barman, if they're doing something else, if they're busying themselves with other people, they are very aware. They know who has come to the bar. They know who is next. Usually, unless it's really busy. But yeah, they will come to you. But you've just got to make it very clear to them that you do want to be served. Because as I said earlier, people do linger. People do stay at the bar because they want to socialise. This is the area that you're allowed to talk with strangers.

So if you're thinking, ah, why aren't they going, why aren't they moving away from the bar? This is the place to get the drink. And then you go away and you have it.

But English people need rules in which we can be contrary to what we're used to, which is not talking to strangers. So this is a bubble, an opportunity for people to talk to people. So don't feel annoyed that they're at the bar. Just take your time, make sure that you're in contact with that barman and when they do look at you, when they do make eye contact, this is your chance. But again, no rude behaviour's, no over the top stuff. You've just got to do something very subtle. That is to either just raise your eyebrows, raise your eyebrows. I'm raising them at the moment. Of course, you can't see that because this is a podcast.

So raise your eyebrows or just like lift your chin a bit, lift your chin and maybe you can do both of them at the same time. And hopefully they do the same. That means, yes, I can see that you want a pint. You want a drink. I will come to you at the next opportunity. So they know that you're next. So you are getting ready for your drink to be served, you lucky, lucky person.

One thing I do want to say also is you might get some rowdy pub goer. A local. Rowdy means kind of a bit aggressive and just comfortable with themselves. So they might try to skip the queue. I think there's a difference between skipping the queue and just being very comfortable knowing how to get the barman's attention and that's like a really fine line in our culture. Like you could either say, well done, you've done well there getting their attention before me or if they've gone a bit too far, they've stepped out of that and they know that they've jumped the queue. Then everyone around them thinks, you're a dickhead, you're scum.

So, yeah, there's a fine line. Just be aware that there are those people and you can either compete with them and, you know, try to make that eye contact with the barman or just be patient and know that the barman will serve you. But you've got to make that eye contact. And another tip is to have your empty pint glass or empty glass of whatever you had before if this is your second round, oh I've got to come onto rounds yes, so if this is your second drink, have the empty drink in your hand, but don't have it like high up, that's rude.

Have it like you're leaning on the bar with your elbow and you're just playing with your glass a little bit, but you're also focussed on the barman. I think that's quite important. Yeah, that would be good and money. Money. So I said don't tap the coins on the surface, but do have a note. A five pound note or a ten pound note, probably a 20 pound note if you're in London. Oh dear, prices eh. Inflation. What are we going to do?

So you have your 20 pound note and have it in your fingers very clearly saying I'm ready to buy a pint here. Come on. Come and get it, come and get it. But don't wave it. Don't wave. If you wave it, they'll be like, nah, not serving you, next. So yeah, subtleties. It's a weird one isn't there. Hopefully you can appreciate it. Maybe it's similar to your nation, your culture. I'd love to know. I'd really, really love to know. I think it's different though, so I hope that helps.

Okay, so you're able to get the barman's attention. Great. Really, really good, success. But I said earlier that you might have had another round before that. A round is the group's drink. So if you're with three or four people and you've all had one pint or you've all had one drink, that is one round collectively. I say a round because that's how we pay.

Now, I've heard in the Basque region in Spain, everyone puts money into a pot when they come to a bar or a pub. They put money into a hat or something and then they use that money as like a pot of money to get the next amount of drinks, which is quite cool, I like that. But in England we don't have that, we go by rounds and in other countries that I've lived in, I've noticed definitely that they don't do rounds as much as we do. So in some countries it's fine to buy your own drink and then come back to the table and wait for other people to get their own drink.

But in England it's most common to do rounds. The barman won't accept multiple payments of a group of drinks. So if you say to the barman, can we have three pints of Stella and one whisky and coke? They will expect you to be paying all of that on one card, because we do rounds.

So before you go up to the bar, you've got to think who in the group is going to pay? And are you going to do rounds? That's the first thing you've got to kind of think of. So, yeah, we do rounds. Just be aware of who you're with before you go up. Decide who's going to be ordering because only one person really says what they want. You could look back at your friends who are behind you. Say what you want, mate? Oh, yeah okay, another Carling please. And you? Yeah. A gin and tonic. What gin, Hendricks. Okay, so a gin and tonic with Hendrick's, a pint of Carling and two pints of Heineken please.

That is you deciding that you are going to pay the round and if you're with people that understand this, they will reciprocate. They will do the favour back in the next round of drinks. But this is where you've got to be careful because you could end up losing quite a bit of money here.

If there's like four or five of you, that means that that's four or five drinks. And most people be quite drunk after four or five drinks. So, yeah, it's perfect for two or three people. That's really, really good. Having rounds there.

Anything more than that, then you're probably a local and you go quite a lot and you can stomach quite a few pints. But for me, if I have four or five drinks, I can really feel it the next day. I don't know about you, but yeah. Often people say, Oh, I'm getting too old for this, but I've always felt it. Even when I was 18, if I had five or six beers, I'd be wrecked the next day. I've always had bad hangovers and I've hated people who don't have bad hangovers. I say I don't really trust a person who doesn't have bad hangovers, but there's a lot of people out there that don't get affected.

I want to know if you struggle with hangovers, can you handle your alcohol? That's a good phrase. Can you handle your alcohol? Okay. So the last tip I'll include in this podcast, but as I said, there's a lot more on the academy, I get into much more detail about, you know, the dialogue that people have, the things that people typically talk about and feel comfortable talking about in the pub, what you might expect to talk to people about if they're a local.

I also go into like greetings that locals have for each other and also about the social class. That is a huge thing within English-ness. The social classes. But it's really layered, it's really complex now it's not just about money, not at all. There's many, many factors and it's hard to pinpoint it, but yeah, I go into that in greater detail in the academy along with the, and one fear self-rule. Oh yeah, very good, very good. And one for yourself. What do you think that means?

Anyway, so you can find out all about that on the academy. But the last thing I'll have for you in this episode is about the pleases and thank you's or the P's and Q's. Don't forget your P's and Q's. I don't know why it's Q's I'm gonna search it right now. All right. I just looked it up. How disappointing. Really, really boring. There's no known reason as why it's P's and Q's. I mean there is one, but it's really boring. So it's not worth it. Not worth it for you or me to have to edit.

So yeah, let's just accept it as P's and Q's. The letter P and the letter Q, P apostrophe S and Q apostrophe S. Okay P's and Q's, mind your P's and Q's means mind your manners include please and thank you. This is what I'm saying with you. I think you probably want to say please and thank you three or four times in the interaction within the pub.

I noticed when I was living in Germany, I really didn't know how many was expected. It sounded a bit strange sometimes, I would always say please at the end of the sentence and some locals said what are you doing, that sounds a bit over the top, it sounds like you're really shy, you're really unconfident or you don't know what you're doing. So I think the amount of pleases and thank you's is quite important to not sound too abnormal, too weird. So yeah, probably throw in two or three, maybe four pleases and thank you's within your interaction with the person that you're ordering your drinks from.

So probably be "can I have", and then, "a", and then the drink like "a pint of", "a pint of lager" or "a pint of ale". "Can I have a pint of lager". "Can I have a pint of ale, please". You say it quite casually of course. "Can I have a pint of lager please"? And normally I say a brand. There would be like a Carling, a Heineken, a Fosters, Stella Artois.

Stella is very popular in England. I should say it was. But this is all outdated. Nowadays, pubs don't have just these beers. They've got a few more extras because the trend of IPA's or pale ales just generally is really, really big now and they're starting to wake up to it because most of the time, pubs in the UK are sponsored by a brewery, meaning that they have kind of ownership of the taps and they can only give you those branded beers.

So you would only have the Fosters, a Stella Artois or a Carling as an option, which is a bit disappointing because now I love I love these hoppy, crafted ales that are microbreweries. Micro-brewery is a small place that makes beer and it's less industrialised, less scaled up.

You know, Heineken, that's a huge brewery in the middle of Amsterdam, I think, or the tour is at least in Amsterdam. And yeah, they go worldwide and they say that their beer is the same in every bottle. A micro brewery is a lot less polished, but it's got a lot more interesting flavours, I would personally say. Anyway, the point of this is that you say the brand of beer that you want, so you need to choose the beer before.

And this is a good thing, this is really good. Yes. I've got a good tip for you that I didn't write down, I didn't plan. You can taste the beer. I don't know if many countries do that, but you can taste the beer.

They'll happily give you a taster of maybe probably three beers, and then you're pushing it. You're pushing it, meaning you're pushing your luck, you're being almost rude. Yeah, simple. You're almost being rude, it's a bit like in an ice cream parlour. You're allowed to taste as many beers as you feel like you can have in an ice cream parlour. I dunno if you could have ice cream very often, but when I go you can taste two or three flavours and then you're starting to be a little bit rude. So they will pour you a very, very small amount of that beer in a glass and then you can swill it around, to swill is to move the liquid around in the glass, to swill it around. So you taste it and then you can decide to either have that or maybe the beer that you usually go for.

That's how I would do it. I would probably taste test a new beer that's come out. But if I didn't like it, I'd go back to my safe option. My safe option was a Kronenbourg. That was a fairly good lager. If you want a lager, a Kronenbourg that's very easily found in a British pub but it is not English. I don't know if you noticed, but I said an ice cream parlour.

A parlour, not an ice cream shop.

A parlour is a shop that provides a specific service or product, normally. I only really hear of a beauty parlour or a nail parlour being the place that you get your nails done, which is similar to a beauty parlour, they could include that or an ice cream parlour. Yeah I don't know many more. You could probably play around with the word parlour, but generally speaking, it's when a shop sells a particular service or product, they can have the word parlour after them.

So going back to the dialogue with the barman, you might say please can I have a pint of, branded beer, a pint of Kronenbourg?

Then you'd either say please at the beginning or at the end, and you could shorten it. I'll have a pint of Kronenbourg, please. I'll have a pint of Kronenbourg. Bit rude. Always include a please. Then they'll pour it, they'll put it down next to you.

Then you've got to say cheers or thank you. Cheers is probably more colloquial. So you say cheers for them pouring a pint. Then they will say, that's 5 pound 50, mate. I would say there, kind of like, not like a happy face because no one likes to pay that amount these days. You kind of say a word that suggests that you're willing to pay that amount. Like yeah, cool, alright. As you're handing them the money and then you say once more, nice one. Thanks or cheers, as you pick up the glass and you leave.

So it's almost three to four rounds of please's and thank you's or P's and Q's. So there is my final tip of the episode. But as I said, there's plenty more material for you to go through in the academy and I will be including the transcripts so that you can follow along as you listen. You can read as you listen.

You can also do the interactive quizzes to engage your brain because you've just been listening to this and that's passive learning. We want you to get active. Active learning is way better. It's much more efficient for you and I think it's my job to get you actively thinking with this stuff. So I've said a huge amount of phrases in this episode that are intermediate to advanced and I will be explaining them in detail in the academy in a video giving you exercises to think about how to use them properly. I'll be going over the pronunciation of them and the connected speech and all of that jazz.

So yeah, in the academy it is where I really go into teacher mode. The reason that I'm doing this, if you wanted to know, you could just switch off now. That's the end of the episode, okay. That's all of the English pub culture that I will be giving in this episode, but I just want to explain if you're interested. A podcast, right, it can kind of be one of three ways to be successful. It can either be taking on sponsors, which are companies that want you to tell the world that you're communicating with your audience about their company. Okay. Fair enough. A sponsor, which we're all used to now. It's very, very common.

The second one is a patron, which is somebody who donates to your podcast because they believe in your podcast and they think that you are valuable enough for them to give you a small amount of money. And if a lot of people do that, that's a very successful way of doing it. The third way of doing it is to do a premium version of the podcast. So you give away a free version and then you make a premium version. Now, all of these ways are effective. I've been doing the sponsorship and patron route on my YouTube channel, Real English With Real Teachers for the last three and a half years and I want to change it up.

The reason being you, if you like this content, if you engage with me and you feel like I'm helping you, I don't want to be telling you about other companies. I think that's doing you a disservice. I don't like that and I think it's a waste of your time and a waste of my time.

But if I'm saying no to sponsors, that means that I'm making no money and I don't really want to do patron because in the English learning community I've personally witnessed it not really working. I think it's because most people who are learning English are either studying still and they don't hav ae huge amount of income or they are from another country where the currency exchange rate isn't isn't good or they're just not used to it. And it is not a cultural expectation. In America, donations are very, very normal and I think a tip is kind of like a donation.

So tipping is a big thing in their culture. So it works well for them and in some other countries it works. But from my personal experience, as in English learning community, it doesn't work as well and I don't want to have to rely on people giving me money for no real reason. Obviously it would be funding something that takes a lot of time and effort, but I want you to feel like you're getting something from it.

And that's one of the points that I want to make about the academy. So I want you to feel like you paying me gets you a huge amount of value in return. Two, it's because when I make these videos on YouTube, it's like just making a tiny bit of information and I could go so much further into detail and analyse all of the stuff that I've highlighted. But on YouTube, generally speaking, people have a very short attention span and quite rightly so. You're looking at something you don't have much time in your day to look at that screen because you've got a job, you've got studies, you've got children, you've got a load of responsibilities and so looking at something on YouTube is probably less likely for you to spend a lot of time on.

On podcasts people can be doing other things. I love it. I love a podcast. I go and walk around, I go to a coffee shop, I do the washing, I clean clothes. I sound like Buttons from Cinderella, the pantomime and I say pantomime because the Disney movie or Disney film of Cinderella was slightly different and in the pantomime, they had the character called Buttons. We call it a pantomime. It's kind of like a theatre and it's on at Christmas for the English people, British people. It is a very, very traditional thing.

We always go to the pantomime around Christmas time and usually the story of Cinderella is on. In Cinderella, the pantomime version, there is the character called Buttons and he is basically washing loads of things.

So I'm sounding like buttons by washing and cleaning the clothes and tidying up and doing all those chores at home. Chores. Chores are tasks at home, usually personal tasks. You don't do chores at work really. It's more like the laundry or the washing or things like that. Laundry is the American, washing is the UK. But I like the word laundry actually.

Anyway, so I've mentioned two things about the academy. Why I want to make an academy rather than rely on sponsors or donations. I want to rely on people who enjoy this podcast, who want a lot more from it and they want to engage with it. So as I said earlier, passive learning is listening to something or watching it or reading, reading is also passive.

So those ways of learning are really useful and I want you to balance it. But a shortcut that I've always said and believe in for even learning Spanish and other things is to get active. It's the active learning. So you can think of the world as being active versus passive. Active learning versus passive learning and active is speaking active is writing, active, is anything that activates your brain to actually stimulate thought.

Okay, so if you're thinking about these phrases that I'm teaching you if you're putting them into context, if you're exampling them, I always get my students to example because it is one of the best proven ways to make them remember it better and to feel more confident using it in the future in the real world. So if you get active with this content, then you'll be more likely to remember it.

Okay, so hopefully you understand why I'm making a free podcast supported by The British English Podcast Academy, and that is all accessible through www.thebritishenglishpodcast.com. So go and check it out, see what you like. If you like it, I strongly recommend signing up and if you sign up early then you will get the cheaper price. Because each episode I do, I add more to the academy and then that adds more value. And every time the value goes up, I believe that the price should go up.

So if you get in now, you get it really cheap and then I'm going to honour that price that you signed up at because you signed up at an earlier time where there wasn't as much. So if you go in early, you get it cheap and I honour that price forever for you. Forever. Alright. So that's the academy. Hope you enjoyed this podcast all about English pubs and cultural behaviours. If you want more, you know where to get it. www.thebritishenglishpodcast.com. Sign up to the academy and you'll get a lot more material to really sink your teeth into. And yeah, improve your English language skills along with understanding British culture.

See you again soon on the British English podcast. My name's Charlie, bye!