gsl english — 31 Minutes Of Real British English Answering Your Questions

Transcript کامل قسمت

Hello there everyone and welcome back to the GSL English podcast.

My name is Gideon and this is a podcast for all learners of English to practice and improve in a relaxed and natural way.

And that is exactly what we are going to do today because this is the October Natter.

It is October 2025 and once a month

I create just little episodes like this to have a good old chit chat with you.

So we just have a bit of a conversation together, talk about random topics.

Actually, in this episode, I'm going to be answering your questions and talking about what you would like me to talk about, because earlier in the week, I put a little post out on YouTube

just seeing if you had any questions or things that you would like me to talk about.

And we had some brilliant responses.

So that's going to be the focus of this episode.

And the purpose of this is really just to present the English language to you in its most authentic and natural form.

So

There's not as much of a structure to these episodes.

Nothing is scripted.

This is just English, how it is in a real life setting.

So hopefully this gives you an opportunity to, of course, practice your English listening skills with real English.

But also listen to the flow, the modulation, the different vocabulary and natural expressions that I use.

If you are a returning viewer or listener, you'll know.

Grab a cup of tea if you can.

Grab a cup of coffee.

Relax.

You know, just enjoy this with me.

Life's busy.

Life's crazy.

We don't always have time to study English.

And let's be honest, sometimes we just can't be bothered.

So hopefully this will fill the void of learning something new in English, but not being too boring or tedious.

So there you go.

So, yeah, if you haven't done so already, subscribe.

Yeah.

Look how well Janice is doing, everybody.

Round of applause for Janice.

Was that four claps or three?

Because traditionally I only do three claps.

I can't listen back, so I'm going to do three just for good measure.

Janice is doing really well.

Janice is healthy.

She's a little bit dirty.

She's a little bit grubby.

So I've got to give her a clean.

If you're thinking who is Janice, Janice is the plant co-host that every week is growing.

I think she's starting to get a little bit too tall and might have to prune or stop her from getting too tall somehow.

So if we have anybody out there that knows how to keep Janice under control,

I just had a thought.

If your name is Janice and you're listening to this, I do apologise that I've named a plant after you.

It's a great plant.

The co-host of the podcast.

So technically it's a compliment, but it might be weird.

So if anybody knows how to just kind of control Janice because she's getting a bit big for her boots, growing too tall, let me know.

I'm not too sure.

She's out of control now.

The co-host position has gone to her head.

So yeah, any suggestions on that?

Just going to start off with a little story last week.

You know, I've always got weird and wonderful stories.

My father-in-law asked me to go look at a car for him.

So he bought a new car.

Well, he wanted to buy a new car, but wasn't around to look at it himself.

So he said, Gideon, can you go look at this car for me?

And if you think it's OK, I trust you.

Which is, I don't know why you trust me.

So I said, yeah, that's no worries, but make sure we get the warranty just in case there's any problems.

So I go look at the car.

I'm no mechanic by any means.

I know a little bit about cars.

I know that you need to check the oil and little bits like that.

But that's it.

So I went down there with a friend, looked at the car.

It was a very nice car.

It drove well.

Everything was fine with me.

So I said, yeah, I think you should buy the car.

So he transferred the money online.

I bought the car.

Drove it home.

Absolutely fine.

The next morning, guess what happened?

I could not get it into gear.

So it is a manual car, but I could not change gears.

I could not get it into first, second, third, any of the gears.

The clutch had gone.

The whole clutch system had gone.

The car was broken.

Let me tell you, I was absolutely devastated.

But I learned a lesson from this experience, because at first I was angry at the garage.

You know, you sold me a car, but the clutch doesn't work.

I was angry at myself.

But I kind of thought, you know what?

Sometimes stuff just happens and there's nothing you can do about it.

So I said, all right, let's stay calm.

I phoned up the garage and said, look, we got a problem.

I can't get it into gear.

The clutch has gone.

He said, you are joking.

I said, no, I'm not joking because I'm stuck.

I have a car for my father-in-law that I can't drive.

So anyway, we kept it really kind.

We kept it really amicable.

I took the car down to him.

I said, look, I understand this is not your fault, but it needs to be fixed.

He replaced the clutch, the flywheel, and now the car is driving perfectly fine.

Well, I learned a lesson from this.

Firstly,

It wasn't my fault at all.

So I could have phoned the garage up very angry and said, oh, you've got to fix this.

You can pick the car up, blah, blah, blah.

It started off kind.

And the whole interaction between us was kind.

Everybody was civil.

We were all nice to each other.

And the solution came.

You know, we got the car fixed.

And I thought, firstly, in situations where things don't go our way, sometimes it's really easy to fly off the handle, isn't it?

you know, and immediately going angry.

I think majority of the time, if we just keep it kind at first and calm, I think that really helps to solve situations in a better way.

Secondly, you know, I was beating myself up about this.

I felt really bad.

But my father in law or recommended my father in law to buy a car and the clutch went.

But sometimes things are out of your control and there's nothing you can do.

Mistakes happen.

But you just got to keep on moving forward.

You just got to find ways to fix problems.

You make a mistake.

It is what it is.

How can I fix this mistake or what solution can we find?

And it's just a real eye opener for me, because at first I was massively stressed about it, lost sleep about it.

But sometimes these things just happen in life and there's not a lot you can do about it.

So, yeah, that's been my week summed up.

I hope you've had a good week, whatever you have been doing, whether you're working, having some time off.

I know the kids here in England are just broken up for school for two and a half weeks.

So, yeah, there you go.

So earlier in the week, I asked you, you know, what would you like me to talk about in this episode?

What questions would you like me to answer?

So that's kind of the bulk of today's episode.

So the first question we're going to look at now, I apologize for the pronunciation of these names.

Giovanni Rivetti, 1451.

So he said, hello, Gideon.

Well, I'd like to know what your thoughts about beating the fear of speaking and really beginning to conquer the natural way of speaking in English, please.

And I thought this was a great question to start with.

And actually, we spoke about this.

We speak about this a lot in the podcast about overcoming the fear of speaking, getting past that.

It comes back to the basic answer that face your fears.

I remember when I was younger, I had actually, no, that's a terrible example because I still.

Yeah.

OK.

So when I was younger, I had an irrational fear of clowns.

Hands up.

Don't like.

And I'll be honest with you, that's a terrible example because I still don't like clowns now.

If I see a clown.

Not that I often see clowns, but I'd rather stay away.

So that's a rubbish example.

There's something else I'm scared of.

Spiders.

When I was younger, didn't like spiders.

Lived on my own for a while where the house always had spiders.

So I had to get them out myself.

After a while, I just got used to it and it wasn't a problem anymore because I'd faced the fear.

Likewise, if you want to get over that fear of speaking and

You know, you can come up with these convoluted answers and there are a lot of mental things we can do and psychological exercises we can do to beat that fear.

But in my opinion, in a nutshell, to beat the fear of speaking, you've got to face it and speak.

Now, of course, I think there's levels to that.

You know, for example, if you want to beat the fear of speaking, if you never speak in English, practice speaking on your own at home first.

You know, just get speaking and then start having smaller conversations, smaller interactions where you can.

But honestly, I can't stress this enough.

Face the fear.

So if that fear is talking to a native speaker or speaking up at work in English, face the fear and

And every time you do that, genuinely, it does just get a little bit easier.

It's like anything, if you want to overcome a fear, you've got to face it.

But it was interesting here, the second part of this question, how to conquer the natural way of speaking in English.

Now,

This is an interesting point that you can really develop on many different angles because a natural way of speaking is how you speak.

So you might think, well, I want to sound like a native speaker.

I want to speak with a certain accent, but that's not speaking naturally.

Speaking naturally is speaking English in a way that is natural to you.

So, of course, we can improve our pronunciation, we can improve our accent and fluency.

But I would say if you want to conquer the natural way of speaking English, speak English.

and without trying to sound like someone else, because, for example, the way I speak English is natural to me.

But there might be someone else from the southeast of England, like where I'm from, and their way of speaking English is natural to them.

So I would say if you want to conquer the natural way of speaking English, don't try and sound

like someone else, naturally, if that makes any sense.

Of course, we mimic people for pronunciation and accent.

Like you might hear certain ways that I say something and think, oh, I'd like to say it like that.

I'd like to sound like that.

Alternatively, I don't want to say it like that.

I don't want to sound like Gideon.

That's absolutely fine.

We improve our pronunciation and accent.

But if you want to speak naturally, speak English in the way that you do naturally.

Don't try and sound like someone else does naturally.

If that makes any sense, you know.

There's a difference between imitating someone and improving your pronunciation.

You know, sometimes I used to work with people and they would say, oh, I want to sound like this actor.

I want to sound like that actress.

You're never going to because you are not that actor.

You are not that actress.

We can focus on elements of their pronunciation and take little bits from the way that they say things.

Sure.

But be yourself.

Let your version of how you speak English come out.

And that in turn then helps you to speak more freely and break away from that fear.

Because you're speaking from the heart, you're speaking naturally.

I hope that makes sense, you know, but improve your pronunciation, improve your accent, but do it within the realm of how you naturally speak.

And then there's a second part to this on a more personal level.

How's the life of a man in our age?

I think we're at the same one, more or less.

A normal day of an English guy.

Work hours, weekends, ETC.

Cheers.

I'm 35.

How's the life of a man in our age?

I like being 35.

Yeah, I'm really enjoying my 30s.

I've got a great wife.

She's amazing.

She's my rock.

Got a good house.

You know, life's life's good.

I think I've noticed recently that I've got to look after myself a little bit more.

I used to exercise at home a lot, but I joined the gym just to realize that I am getting a little bit older.

You know, and I am aware that joints start to get more painful.

The back arc starts to ache a little bit more.

So I've realized that I'm not as fast as I used to be at running and things like that.

But I've realized that I need to incorporate more exercise at a gym into my routine because I want to stay fit and healthy when I get to 50 or 60.

I want to be able to run still.

I want to be able to stay active if that's a possibility.

You know, so I'm a lot more tired in the evenings, but I think that's just life.

That's just work.

A normal day for me.

Now, this is an interesting part of my life recently because a normal day used to be that I would be on the computer all day teaching English.

On Zoom.

But that's really cut down recently, and I'm getting to the point soon where I won't actually be teaching English at all anymore online.

So my daily routine is slowly changing.

I'm quite sad about this because I love teaching online, but there's a real reality about it for me.

And that is, unfortunately, it doesn't pay the bills anymore.

Life here in England is just getting more and more expensive now.

And, you know, we try to live a very simple life, but teaching English online.

One, it's just not enough money to live here in England.

And two, it's just not consistent enough.

You know, of course, there's cancellations.

Some months you have more classes than others.

And I just I can't really keep going like that.

So my normal day has actually been changing recently because I have another business, which I started about six months to a year ago.

I'm not going to go into details of what that is because it's not personal, but there's no need.

But that now is starting to take over my daily work and it pays a little bit more and I have more control over it and it is more consistent.

So my other business that I started will take over my daily routine.

And one thing I do like about it, as much as I'll miss interacting with my students online and

And those friendships that I've gained over years is with this new role, this new job, this new business, I'm outside a lot more.

And I have to be honest, I do like that.

I'm outside in the fresh air and it just feels a little bit better.

I'm not sitting down all day.

So my daily routine is starting to change.

With that, but hopefully.

It goes well.

And sometimes in life, you've got to change.

Your hand is forced.

You've got to adapt to certain situations.

There's nothing you can do about it.

But you have to just keep moving forward, don't you?

But a weekend for me, what is a weekend like for me?

I have a rule that wherever possible, I do not work at weekends, even if it means sacrificing a little bit of money,

Weekends for me have and always will be family time.

Family and friends, no matter what, there's enough time to work in the week.

The weeks are busy, weeks are crazy.

All I care about on my weekend is family and friends and just relaxing.

I don't like crazy wild weekends.

Yeah, coffee in the morning, nice dinners, catching up with people.

Yeah, that's it.

So how's life for a man in our age?

It's pretty good.

I can't complain.

I'm pretty happy.

There you go.

Work hours always changing.

As I say, times here in England are getting tougher financially.

So work hours naturally are increasing or having to work a bit harder.

But that's the same for everyone.

You just got to accept it and keep moving forward.

So there you go.

Anas Algamdi W3L said, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the grind.

Not that life has to be constant hard work, but how can we push through on the days we just don't feel it?

I'm not qualified really to answer this, but I can give you my opinion on it.

When he talks about the grind, he's talking about the grind of life.

The daily grind, getting up, going to work, working hard, coming home and then repeat, basically.

Life doesn't have to be constant hard work.

Completely agree with that.

How do you push through on days just don't feel it?

Do you know what I do?

I don't know if this is right, but this works for me.

On days where I just not feeling it, those days where you wake up and you don't want to go to work, you don't really want to, you just don't want to do it.

Do you know what I mean?

I completely understand that.

Rather than thinking about coming home, getting into bed in the evening, personally, this might be right, this might be wrong.

I find I just break up the day.

into small segments.

So I think, right, OK, all I'm going to think about is getting to work and getting to work.

I'm just going to think about the next couple of hours until a coffee break, coffee break to lunch.

And that way I don't think about anything else ahead apart from that small segment.

And then I find that mentally the day goes a lot quicker.

So rather than thinking about, OK, nine to five, I've got this job.

Segment the day.

And it genuinely does help.

So I think, right, I've got this time period.

This is what I have to get done.

That finishes.

I think about the next time period and so on and so forth.

And then before you know it, you're home.

And I find that on days where I just don't really feel like I think we all have those days, don't we?

That helps me to keep pushing through, breaking the day up.

And then where possible, just focusing on something positive, thinking about a holiday that you've had, thinking about good memories, good times, just sometimes just taking the thoughts away from work or everything you've got to do, just focusing on something positive.

And perhaps the reason why you're pushing through, why you're grinding hard.

The next one.

Actually, the next two were all about.

Yeah, we'll put these two together, actually, because they were very similar.

So Johanmarie9795 said, Hi, I feel a real passion when you speak about your country and British culture.

As you have travelled quite a few times, why not share your thoughts about different cultures that you have experienced and the ones you found similarities with your country?

Brilliant question.

And Ximia, Ximia, I'm so sorry, I don't know how to pronounce that.

I think it would be wonderful if you talked about different cultures, your experiences with them, the things that attract you in a certain culture and the things you don't like.

A chat like that would be really enjoyable for us to listen to, especially since your channel brings together several cultures.

Firstly, that's great.

I love the idea of this being a community, a positive community where different cultures can get together.

And I really love that.

Thoughts on different cultures.

Now, one thing for me I've realised with different cultures.

Food is everything.

When I travel,

Whenever I've been somewhere, food, I think, is the best indication of how a culture works and eating with people from that country.

Like I know, for example, I spent some time in Thailand and Philippines and having dinners with locals, having food, a meal teaches you a lot about culture because you realize about that particular culture.

You realise how the food is prepared, how people interact at the dinner table, the different procedures that are involved in the dinner.

And I find the conversations you have over that are always...

a real lesson in that culture.

So for me, no matter what, I found that wherever I've traveled to, food really is everything.

I love food, as many of you know, but to learn something about a culture.

About the about food in particular is brilliant, for example, spend a bit of time in Africa.

Loved that.

But when you see what goes into certain meals like jollof rice and I think it was fufu I had, which is like a different type of kind of mashed potato kind of thing.

But seeing the process of how that's made and how families get together.

And then at meal times, everybody combines in and gets together and has their dinner.

You learn so much about culture, about the humour, about the interaction.

And that to me is what brings it alive.

So for me, traveling and experiencing different cultures.

Has always been food, has always been meal times.

When my wife and I travel, we generally look at restaurants beforehand, where to go to get that authentic experience.

And yeah.

Yeah, I think that's really where I learned the most about different cultures.

I mean, I have been lucky to travel to quite a few different countries and experience different cultures.

And they're all different.

One that springs to my mind that I really did like when I traveled to Singapore.

And then, yeah, I think from there went on to Thailand and Singapore, just the respect of

for where they lived but also each other and tourists absolutely loved that in thailand loved the people same in the philippines um got time to spend a bit of time in this little place called el nido little paradise absolutely loved it did a lot of surfing and just relaxing there then we went to cebu swimming with whale sharks but again

All of these experience came from meeting people at mealtimes, chatting, getting invited to certain.

Things, whatever they're doing and goes from there.

So experiencing culture for me always goes back to food and mealtimes.

Very good.

And then there's an interesting question.

Hi, because I love traveling.

What about your last journey?

You mentioned that you've been in the US recently.

Yeah, this is interesting.

You'll notice that on that episode where I spoke about traveling and going to the US, I didn't talk about why we went to the US.

And I don't know why I didn't say it, but I felt like almost there'll be a little bit of judgment there.

Now, my wife and I, we like to travel all around the world.

We love to go to new places.

We love to experience cultures.

We particularly love city breaks.

We're looking to go to Budapest soon.

But there's one place that we try and go once a year because we know that

Whatever's going to happen, we're going to have an amazing time there.

And that is Orlando, Florida, Disney World.

Now, at first you might say, oh, that's just for children.

Why go to Disney World?

Well,

We find that at Disney World, there's multiple reasons why we like it there.

OK, you have the parks.

They're good fun.

We're big kids.

We love going there and fun in the parks.

But Disney World is a whole complex with monorails, with boats, with buses and with many different hotels and swimming pools and restaurants and bars.

And there's so much to do.

But what we love about it is we spend our money and we know exactly what we're going to get.

And that's one thing with travelling, which is often a bit of a gamble.

For example, if you're backpacking across Thailand or you're Cambodia, Vietnam, whatever it is, you don't always know what you're going to get.

And that might be what you want.

And sometimes that is what we want.

You know, we want to go on holiday somewhere and not know what's going to happen.

It's part of the adventure.

But also.

We want a holiday where we know what we're going to get.

We know everything's going to be fine.

We know, generally speaking, we're going to be safe.

It's a comfort holiday.

And for us, Disney World is a comfort holiday.

We know exactly what we're going to expect.

And that is the holiday I find that we switch off the most.

We relax and we, you know, we don't go into the parks all the time.

We do love all the rides.

We love the atmosphere of theme parks.

But, you know, we'll have a bit of a line and we'll go to a hotel for some lunch.

Go to the swimming pool and then go to one of the Disney parks in the evening and watch some fireworks and go on a couple of rides.

And for us, we don't think about anything while we're there.

And I've realized that that is just what we need once a year.

We need a couple of weeks where we can just completely switch off.

So that's where we went.

We went to Florida.

If you've ever been to Florida, you'll know it's a pretty cool place.

There's loads of different stuff you can do there.

You can do the, what do they call it?

The hovercrafts, but where you go through the swampy areas and find alligators and got this Kennedy Space Center, beautiful shops, beautiful restaurants, go down to the Florida Keys.

It's just brilliant.

So for us, Florida is that holiday destination where we can just completely switch off.

Of course, in the future, we'll do that holiday, but also we do want to do more traveling to unique and different places around the world.

But it's an interesting one because I think as everybody knows now, holidays are expensive.

And we had a holiday last year that wasn't cheap.

It was within our budget, but it wasn't cheap.

And it was really disappointing.

We'd never been there before and the hotel was just disappointing.

The things to do were disappointing.

I'm not going to say where it was, but we were just really disappointed with the holiday.

And of course, you can't get your money back.

And after that, I thought, you know what, we work so hard for this.

We work so hard for the break that I'm going to think twice before just booking a location I don't know.

So that's why in September we said, look, let's just go somewhere we know, go somewhere we know we're going to have a great time.

We know we're going to have fun.

We know what to expect.

So that's why we went back to Orlando and particularly Disney World area.

Yeah, there you go.

There were some more questions, but maybe we'll discuss them in another episode.

Yeah, I think we will.

We'll go through them in another episode.

But if you like this idea for the Natter episodes where you just present your questions...

or your points you'd like me to talk about, or even just share any thoughts or experiences or stories you've had recently, let me know.

If you like this, if you like this style, we'll do it once a month where I answer your questions.

I also thought about a live stream doing one of these Natter episodes live.

but I genuinely don't actually know how to make that happen I had a little look but then I got really confused and then I got distracted looking at cars and how to fix their clutches so if you know how to go live on YouTube let me know and maybe that's a possibility because I think there you'll be able to ask me some questions

off the cuff yeah so yeah there you go and coming back to that idea you know of the fear of speaking don't overthink it it's easy to tell someone not to worry and it's easy to say you know don't worry about it just get speaking but genuinely don't worry about it we're all humans at the end of the day we all get worried about different things so let's just look after each other don't worry about it and just get talking

If you make a mistake, who cares?

Face the fear of speaking.

And I promise it does get easier.

But also.

Improve your pronunciation, improve your accent, do all of that, but speak English naturally from your heart in the way that it comes out for you.

Don't force it.

Don't try and be like or sound like someone else, because then you end up with this weird English that almost sounds like a presentation and nobody likes that.

So there you go.

So yeah, I hope you got a great week ahead.

I hope, you know, things are good for you.

As always, I so much appreciate your support.

And if you are watching or listening to this podcast on Spotify, thank you so much.

Excuse me.

We've had a bit of an increase recently on Spotify.

Yeah, and that's quite exciting.

So thank you so much for watching on Spotify.

If you are, please don't forget to say hello in the comments.

If you're on YouTube and you're new here, always say hello in the comments.

I really do appreciate it.

But for now.

The final comment I would like you to put is if you got to this point in the podcast and you are still listening, you're a legend, you're amazing, write October in the comments.

Thank you so much for watching.

Thank you for listening.

And yeah, have a good one, guys.