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Hello, my lovely learners. Are you new to Easy Stories in English? Well, you’re in the right place. In today’s episode, I’m going to tell you all about myself, how to use the podcast to best learn English, and which episodes I recommend the most. Keep listening to learn English!

[intro]

Welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from OK to Good, and from Good to Great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today’s episode is a reintroduction to the podcast, for both new and old listeners. As always, the transcript and PDF are available at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com, and you can find the link in the description.

If you’re watching this episode on YouTube, I apologise for the not so good video quality. As you can maybe see behind me, I am in the middle of packing to move. I already packed up my nice studio lights and I don’t really feel like unpacking them. So, I’m sorry the video is not as good as usual, but get excited because I’m moving to a place with much quieter sound, so the episodes are going to sound better soon. 

So, I’m going to start by talking about me, Ariel Goodbody. I’ve been doing this show, Easy Stories in English, for almost six years now, and a lot has changed, so I figured it made sense to have one place where I kind of fully introduce myself, tell you what’s happened over the last six years, and, yeah, just tell you some interesting things about me.

Obviously, in the course of these six years, a lot has happened in general. There was COVID-19, which did affect a lot of how I worked, and actually gave me more time to work on the podcast at first, and there’s also been some pretty dramatic changes in my personal life.

So, my name is Ariel, I’m 31 years old, and I come from Bath. Bath is a small historic city in the southwest of the UK. You might be thinking Bath is a bit of a funny name for a city. Well, yes, it is named after a bath because the Romans founded the city and they discovered hot springs, hot water under the ground. So they built the Roman baths. 

Bath houses of this type are common in many places in Europe, such as Germany and Hungary, and Japan is very well known for its onsen or bath houses. The UK, however, does not have a lot of hot springs, so Bath is pretty unique in this aspect.

Not only does Bath have this special Roman history, but it was also a very popular place for rich people to have holiday houses in the Edwardian and Georgian periods. That’s about two to three hundred years ago. If you’ve read any books by Jane Austen like Pride and Prejudice, or maybe you’ve seen the TV series Bridgerton, that is exactly the kind of atmosphere I’m talking about. Grand women in beautiful dresses, going to balls, having romances, in beautiful country houses. That’s the kind of place Bath is. And I consider myself very lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful part of the country.

In addition to Bath, I’ve also lived in Oxford, Cambridge, a very small town in Devon, which I won’t even name because you will not know it, and I now live in London. As I’m recording this, I’m living in southeast London, but soon I’m going to be moving to northeast London. 

If you don’t know, in London, there’s generally a very big cultural divide between north of the river and south of the river. Generally, South London is a bit cheaper, the transport options are not so good, um, it’s well known for kind of arts and underground culture, but it’s also a lot louder and kind of in-your-face. And then North London is a bit more refined, a lot more expensive in many ways, and kind of has more of that traditional arts and culture, you know, art galleries, cinema, theatre, and so on. This cultural divide is kind of a big deal in London. Actually, when I told my South London friends that I’m moving to North London, several people said, Oh no, you’re becoming a North Londoner. So there you go. 

But I’m really looking forward to moving, and as I mentioned before, I’m moving to a much quieter building, which means the quality of the podcast should hopefully improve. 

Growing up in Bath, I did a lot of youth theatre, which is where I learned this sense of confidence and I learned to love performing. I’ve always loved writing. I just, I don’t know, I just love writing stories and living in a world of imagination. And I’ve always had a strong connection with languages. I was very lucky I had a school that was very good with languages, so I was able to study French, German, and Japanese at school.

Over the years, I also taught myself Esperanto and Spanish, and I’ve also studied other languages here and there. So generally, when people ask me, how many languages do you speak? I say, and this is in order of ability, so from the language I speak the best to the worst, I speak English, Esperanto, Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Mandarin Chinese and Slovak.

I then went on to study linguistics at the University of Cambridge. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. I’m actually oversimplifying here a bit. I originally went to Oxford to study Chinese, and I dropped out after a year, and then I reapplied to do linguistics at Cambridge. 

Why did I drop out? It’s complicated. The course was very old fashioned, but I think mainly I burned out without realising it. And I don’t know, at that age, I had never really asserted my independence. I’d always kind of done what my parents told me. So in many ways, dropping out and reapplying for a course I wanted to do more was a way of asserting my independence, saying that this is what I want. 

And although it wasn’t the best thing to do in terms of, like, life trajectory, you know, I finished university a lot later than most people, I got a full time job way later than most people, so I definitely missed out on earning years. I definitely make less money than other people my age, but I think it was really good for my growth and development as a person.

Shockingly, you will notice a trend here, after graduating the second time, I had burned out again. I burned out in my last year of university in Cambridge. So I really wasn’t feeling like going straight into the world of work, or at least the traditional world of work. I tried making it as a romance novelist for a while. I tried making money by writing romance novels, and I did actually make some money. If you don’t know, romance books tend to be written quite fast, especially for people who publish them online. So I wrote about eight novellas, eight short novels in a year, which is kind of crazy when I think about it. 

But, then, guess what happened? I burned out. It was too much, it was too stressful. Now that I look back, it was kind of a stupid thing to do after burning out academically, but it was also really fun because I really improved my writing skills and it was very satisfying to make money from my writing. However, it wasn’t really sustainable, like it just didn’t feel like something I could continue. And I wasn’t sure what to do. 

So my mum suggested I try doing a CELTA course. CELTA stands for Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults. So basically, teaching English as a foreign language. I did my CELTA course, and I absolutely loved it. That was where I first tried teaching, and I was terrified of teaching before. You know, I thought the students would bully me, maybe students would be mean to me. But no, I had an amazing time. I really enjoyed it. And I realised, oh, I can bring my theatre and storytelling skills to the classroom. 

So following that thread, shortly after beginning teaching, I also started this podcast, Easy Stories in English, because I saw it as a way to combine my creative skills with language teaching and really provide a useful resource for people learning English. Actually, when I started the podcast, when I first had the idea, I thought, Surely someone else must already be doing this? So I looked it up and I was very surprised to find that no, nobody was. So it was a good time to start the podcast.

Now there are much more resources for learning English. There are many more story-based resources, many more interesting materials and that makes me really happy. I was quite passionate about doing the podcast in a certain way because I had done lots of research into language acquisition, which is the science of how we learn languages. So I really wanted to create a podcast that followed the best theory and research. I will talk more about this later. I have some recommendations for episodes where you can learn all about that to be a more effective language learner. 

So when COVID happened, I didn’t stop. You know, a lot of people had time off work or they were at home with the family. But I didn’t stop. I sped up because I was able to move all my teaching work online. And then because I was at home all the time, I said, okay, well, let me do more things with the podcast. So in 2020, I started doing YouTube videos, the email newsletter, extra episodes. I started doing a lot of things and while it was very useful and I’ve continued a few of those things, I also had to take a break for my health in 2021.

Yes, I burned out again. I went on a six month hiatus, a six month break because I had lost the ability to speak. So I’ve talked about this in other episodes. I don’t want to go into loads of detail about it because I did make a YouTube video about this a few years ago. The YouTube video is called How Autistic Catatonia Feels For Me.

But essentially, I was talking about this health condition that I had developed called autistic catatonia. Sometimes I lose the ability to speak or to move easily. Now since then, I have been in a long recovery. I still occasionally have this problem, but for the most part I’m better. And right now I am in the best place ever. I have never been so healthy and happy in my life. So that’s good. 

And I again want to thank everyone who supported me through those six months. A lot of you left really nice messages. So I’m mentioning this here because some of you might go back and see or hear some of that part of the podcast and this is basically just me explaining it again.

Another thing you might be a bit unsure about is my gender because in some episodes of the podcast I was talking with a much higher voice and I was kind of sounding like a completely different person.

There was a period where I was doing voice training to try and sound a lot more feminine. Or, if you’ve bought my book, you will see there is a picture of me on the back where I look very different, um, from now. And the pronouns in my biography on the back of the book are she, so I’m just going to explain it in more detail than I normally would to make it absolutely clear.

So, I was assigned male at birth, which means that I came out of my mother and the doctor said that’s a boy. I knew I was gay from a fairly young age, I guess 13. Um, some people figure it out a lot sooner, but I was pretty sure I was gay at that age. And then later, when I was at university for the second time, I started to identify as non-binary. 

So non-binary means you feel somewhere between male and female, and then I later decided to transition. So when we talk about gender transition, there’s usually male-to-female transition, or female-to-male. So in my case, I was transitioning male-to-female, which means I was a trans woman. 

So, for just under three years, I was on hormones. I was on oestrogen and anti-androgens. So anti-androgens lower your levels of testosterone. And I was basically living my life as a woman, although I still identified as non-binary. When I started the podcast in 2019, that was pretty soon after I started transitioning, and at first I didn’t talk about it on the podcast at all, because I just didn’t want to, but then obviously when I started, uh, experimenting with changing my voice, I thought it probably would be a good idea to come out and explain that all. So I did that. 

And then later on, around the time I had my burnout again and I took my break from the podcast, I actually detransitioned. So detransition is when you were transitioning from male-to-female or female-to-male but then you go back. So I was transitioning male-to-female, and then I detransitioned back to male, although I still identify as non-binary.

Now, the reasons for my detransition are very complicated, but also I don’t know if they’re that interesting. I basically just realised that transition wasn’t what I wanted. I thought it was what I wanted and it wasn’t. There was definitely part of me that wasn’t fully comfortable with being a man before I transitioned and maybe I was transitioning as a way to escape that. 

I will say I’ve always had some difficulties with fully accepting myself in terms of who I am. So I think part of it came down to that. There was maybe some shame and feelings of not accepting myself that were driving my decision to transition in the first place. 

Anyway, maybe one day, I’ll talk about the detransition in more detail on the podcast. Again, like I say, I don’t know if it’s actually that interesting. It’s kind of a controversial topic these days because lots of detransitioners are forced to detransition because of social pressures or financial pressures. And then certain detransitioners are kind of used as a political weapon to argue against trans people.

So I still have many trans friends and for me, it’s nothing bad, right? There’s nothing about my detransition which means that other people should not transition. I just realised it wasn’t for me. I feel very comfortable now living as a non-binary gay man. I don’t regret what I did. There are maybe parts of it I regret, but I believe you can’t live your life with regrets because the regret will eat you up from the inside.

And I also think I’m very lucky to have had those experiences. Going on hormones, feeling all the changes that happen in your body and then being treated as a woman, definitely changes how you view society. There were certain changes in how people treated me that really surprised me, actually, and they’re quite hard to understand if you haven’t gone through it yourself. 

I do think I’ve come to a much greater understanding of how gender works in our society because of my experiences. And I feel pretty privileged to have that. I feel quite lucky because most people won’t go through that. 

So just that there’s no confusion whatsoever, I now identify as a non-binary man. My pronouns are they, he, or she, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t really care. You can use whatever pronouns you want for me. My feeling is that my gender identity is something quite personal. It’s something to do with my own experiences. And whether people call me he, she, they, whatever, doesn’t really affect me that much. As long as they’re doing it in a respectful way, I suppose.

Another thing I’ve talked about more on the podcast, I would say, is being Christian. So I’ve done an episode where I talk about my religion more generally, but basically I was raised Catholic, which is not so common in the UK. The biggest church is the Anglican Church, the Church of England, but they’re both Christian denominations, they’re both parts of Christianity.

I went to a Catholic school growing up, but I was an atheist. I was a non-believer for a long time, between the ages of 14 to 29, let’s say. But when I had my really bad health issues, and I was away from the podcast, and I couldn’t speak, I understandably felt quite hopeless. I felt alone and scared, and I turned to God for help.

And that’s kind of when I realised that I did have this relationship with God. So I returned to the church, but I now go to an Anglican church here in London. I’m very lucky to have found a very inclusive, diverse church in South London. It’s very welcoming to LGBTQ+ people, which was one of the big issues for me growing up.

I don’t know if I could go back to the Catholic church. The Anglican church definitely has its problems. There are some really horrible things in the news right now about some corruption and abuse that has happened in the Anglican church, but I feel very welcome in my church specifically. My church is a lovely space and community that has brought me so much joy and peace, and I do a lot with my church. I sing in the choir, I read, I help with the coffee, and so on. 

In the UK, now, religion is one of those things that a lot of people don’t like to talk about. Most people, or a large group of people, are atheist, or maybe Christian, but they basically never go to church, so my belief, my faith, is important to me, but I try not to talk about it too much, although I did do quite a few episodes on that topic this year. I did do two episodes, uh, called Doing Evil, part one and part two, which are kind of a story about religion. But I think they’re still interesting and useful to non-religious people. 

Okay, so that’s all about me. And now I’m going to tell you how you can best use this podcast to learn English. 

So, how can you use this podcast to best learn English? Well, you’ve probably noticed that there are two types of episodes. There are story episodes and conversational episodes. Now, I only started doing the conversational episodes this year. 

For the first few years of the podcast, I did stories, but I had a section of the episode where I talked a bit about my life or about the topic of the story. Some people complained about this. They said, you take too long to get to the story. And after my hiatus, I went from doing episodes every week to doing one episode every two weeks. And I basically realised that it made sense to split up the stories and the conversations. 

So I would say the story episodes are really good for improving your vocabulary and getting a really good idea of the structure of the language, the different pieces of grammar, whereas the conversational episodes are good for getting more of an idea of how we actually speak in English, how we flow from one topic to another, and then getting more contemporary topics and vocabulary. So contemporary means related to the present day. So more, I guess, everyday topics.

Generally, the conversational episodes are intermediate level and above, whereas the story episodes vary from all four levels: beginner, pre-intermediate, intermediate, and advanced.

So now I’ll just answer some frequently asked questions. I’ll just answer some questions that I get a lot. 

Many people ask, which level should I listen to? And to answer this question, I’m going to ask you some questions. 

So first, are you able to understand the story? I don’t mean are you able to understand every individual word, I mean can you generally understand what is happening in the story? Could you tell someone else what happened in the story? If so, then that’s good. If you can’t understand it, then the level is too high. 

The second question I have is, are you able to focus? If the story is too difficult and you can’t focus on it, then go down a level. Are you motivated to continue? Do you feel like you want to keep listening and keep learning? Or is it so difficult that it hurts your head and you just want to stop? If that’s the case, go down a level.

And finally, regardless of level, it doesn’t matter what level you’re listening to, do you enjoy the story? If you don’t enjoy the story, if you’re not having fun, stop listening to that episode and find one you like. 

The next question I get a lot is, should I listen to the story with or without the transcript? Should I just listen? Should I listen and read? Should I listen then read?

So there are four options here, I guess. The first option is to just listen and not read at all. The second option is to listen and read at the same time. The third option is to listen to the story and then read it. And the fourth option is to read it and then listen to it. 

So what I recommend depends on your goals. One, just listening, is good if you’re busy. I know a lot of people listen to the podcast driving to work, and maybe they don’t have time to read as well. 

Two is good for really getting the pronunciation, especially if your native language uses a different writing system. Listening and reading at the same time is a great way to link together the writing, the spelling, and the pronunciation.

Three, which is listening and then reading, is really good for improving your language skills overall, because that way you are getting the same language twice, but in two different forms. So that way you’re going to really understand and learn the vocabulary better. 

Four, which is reading and then listening, is good if you really want to train your reading specifically. Maybe you’re not so confident with your reading skills, or you’re preparing to go to university, and this is a really great way to focus on reading. 

I think it also just depends on your preferences. I know for some people, they want convenience. They want to be able to listen to the podcast while they clean the house or drive to work. Some people are really serious about studying and will happily listen to the same episode multiple times, read it multiple times, whereas some people would rather go through the whole catalogue. They would rather listen to every episode just once and maybe read some of them or maybe not. 

So figure out what kind of person are you and try different things, see what you enjoy. Of course if there’s an episode that you don’t understand as well, reading and listening at the same time, or listening multiple times, is a great way to make it easier to understand.

The next question I get, and I do get this question a lot, is, should I study grammar? 

So you’ve probably noticed that I basically never talk about grammar on the podcast. And I believe that you probably shouldn’t study grammar. Now, of course, this is different to the way that you’re taught language in most schools around the world. So let me explain.

First, language is just too abstract. Language is not made of these clear rules that we see in textbooks. The way language is stored in our brain is far more complicated and abstract than that. So when you study grammar as specific rules, you either find it very difficult, like it doesn’t work in a lot of situations, or you make mistakes because you apply a rule, but that rule doesn’t always work.

Another reason you shouldn’t study grammar is you’re going to learn it anyway. We all learn languages the same way, which is through reading and listening and communicating in context. So if you just read and listen and communicate enough, you’re going to learn the grammar. You don’t have to study it explicitly. 

Now, if you do want to study it, either because you find grammar fun, or you need a high level of accuracy for writing essays or something like that, I would say wait until your advanced level. So, there is the advanced level of the podcast. If you can understand language at that level, that’s the good time to start studying grammar because that way you’ll probably know a lot of it already and you’ll just be correcting some small areas that you get wrong.

Another question I get asked is, how can I improve my speaking? Everyone wants to improve their speaking. Everyone wants to speak more confidently and fluently sometimes. It’s a question of just improving your language skill in general.

So it sounds strange, but reading and listening a lot more can improve your speaking. Because as we understand more language, as we get more familiar with the vocabulary and the structure of the language, our ability to use the language will improve as well. 

Otherwise, you do, of course, need to practise speaking, but I would say the key is, speak with people who are patient and interested. So find people who don’t mind that you’re slower at speaking, or that you make mistakes, or that you have to explain things, people who are patient, and find people who are interested; people who want to talk to you, and maybe are interested in learning about your culture, for example, or people that you are good friends with, people that you like.

I do think often the thing holding learners back from improving their speaking, the thing that keeps people speaking at a lower level, is their confidence. A lot of it is psychological, okay? And school experiences with learning languages don’t help with this because in school you’re forced to speak and you’re usually not given structure to help you.

So this is quite difficult, like how do you improve your confidence? Honestly it’s worth considering going to therapy or trying therapeutic practices like journaling or yoga to allow yourself to relax. I will say, many people have commented and said that before they listened to Easy Stories in English, they felt very nervous speaking, but after listening to the podcast a long time, they began to relax because it felt like a safe environment, I guess. So find a way to make English feel safe and comfortable for you. 

So if you want a more detailed answer to these questions, I strongly recommend three episodes in particular. They are How to Learn a Language, How to Teach a Language, and Why You Must Read. So in How to Learn a Language and How to Teach a Language, I go into a lot of detail about the theory of language acquisition, so the science behind how we learn languages. I give very clear examples and I tell you how I would learn a language and how I would teach a language. So I think it’s a really good way to get some practical ideas of what you can do and to maybe understand where your study methods aren’t working.

The episode, Why You Must Read, is actually the introduction to my book. Um, I’ll just show you. Here it is, Why You Must Read. So as you can guess, Why You Must Read is talking all about why reading is good, why reading is really, really important for learning a language, and hopefully it will give you some motivation to read in English and show you how to find reading material that is at the right level for you.

So what episodes do I recommend for you to listen to if you’re new to the podcast, or maybe if you haven’t listened to some of the older ones? Beginner level episodes I recommend are The Red Book. I think The Red Book is a bit of a weird, scary story, but it’s also quite fun. I especially like this one. It’s got an interesting twist. Something very unexpected happens at the end. 

Have You Seen This Woman? is a beginner level story that I didn’t think would be so popular, but a lot of people have really liked it. It’s a very mysterious story. It’s not really clear what happens in the end. So if you like a mystery, something a bit more creepy, then I recommend Have You Seen This Woman?

The Pancake Man is a heartwarming story, a story which will make you feel warm and nice. Eyes, Teeth, and Toenails is a collection of three short stories that are really funny. They use a lot of everyday language, but I think they are a good laugh and just, just good fun. 

And finally, there’s a recent episode, The Freezer Door, which is a very dramatic story and maybe is a bit philosophical as well. So if you like some serious drama, something a bit more realistic, then I recommend The Freezer Door. 

For the pre-intermediate level, I recommend A Crooked Old House. A Crooked Old House is another strange, creepy, mysterious story, but again, it’s one that’s really close to my heart. It’s a story that I really enjoyed writing, and I think it’s quite poetic. 

The Labyrinth is a very poetic story, it’s quite sad, um, if you like something, again, that’s a bit more poetic, philosophical, then you’ll like The Labyrinth.

Finally, St George and the Dragon is my version of a British myth, and this one is a lot less serious. It’s a very funny, silly story. And although it’s not St George’s Day anytime soon, St George’s Day is in April, I think this is a fun story to listen to at any time of year. 

For intermediate level, I recommend Doing Evil. That’s split into two parts, part one and part two. Doing Evil is quite a philosophical story. I mentioned it before. It’s about religion, it’s about growing up and realising who you are as a young person, and it explores a lot of issues that I think about a lot. I also think it’s got a lot of fun action scenes in it. 

A Visitor from Chilly Bottom is a wonderful story. It’s actually a story I wrote with another podcaster, Alistair Budge, who does the English Learning for Curious Minds podcast. So if you want something with a bit of variety, because I wrote it with someone else, and Alistair also does some voices in it, then I recommend this episode. It also introduces a lot about British culture and London, and it’s very funny. 

Finally, another creepy, scary story is The Path of Pins and Needles. So this is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood is probably the most famous fairy tale, about the girl who wears a red coat, but this version is based on an older version of the story and it’s very scary, it’s very creepy, which I love because I love creepy scary things. 

And then at the advanced level, there are not so many advanced level episodes, but there are two stories which I think you’ll really enjoy. To Be a Hero is a story, I believe, split into four chapters. It’s kind of making fun of traditional fantasy stories. It’s very silly. It’s very funny. If you know the British writer Terry Pratchett, it’s kind of in his style.

I also recommend Mia the Witch. This is quite an old story. It’s one I wrote many years ago and it’s a love story. I like having very gruesome, creepy, scary stories, but I also love these heartwarming romance stories. And if you like a nice soft tale full of love, then I really recommend Mia the Witch.

So, as I said, I’ve been doing the podcast for almost six years, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without all your support. Over the years, you’ve all really helped me continue the podcast, grow the podcast and do all kinds of things. I’m not working on the podcast full-time at the moment. I also have a teaching job, but by helping me by supporting the podcast and supporting me, you are allowing me to keep doing amazing things. And maybe in future, I will again be able to make the podcast my full-time job and do all kinds of things.

I really want to release more books from the podcast. I want to update the logo. I want to do more projects, and the more you support me, the easier those things will be. So how can you do that?

There is a premium version of the podcast. You probably heard an ad for it at the beginning of this episode. So the premium version has no audio ads. That means when you listen to it on your podcast app, you will not get any ads. I just want to clarify, I want to make clear, when you go on the website EasyStoriesInEnglish.com, that is separate, so you will still get advertisements there. I’m hoping to take away the advertisements in the future. At the moment, they bring me a fair amount of money, which is very useful. So I’m keeping them, but if you would like to make it possible for me to have no ads on my website, then please consider getting the premium version of Easy Stories in English at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Support.

I do very occasionally do bonus episodes on there. I know I haven’t been very good about the bonus episodes. To be honest, I don’t have an excuse. I’ve just been very busy and I’m still not really sure what to do for the bonus episodes. I think now that I’ve started my new job, I’ve settled in, I’m kind of finding a new routine for the podcast. Hopefully in this coming year, 2025, I’m going to kind of clarify what I’m offering as bonus content and be able to give you a more consistent experience.

In older episodes, you will have heard me talk about Patreon. I used to use Patreon to do bonus content. I no longer do that. You can still join the Patreon if you want to get access to some of the old material, but if you want the kind of most up to date version of supporting me, then get the premium version of Easy Stories in English. Have a look at the Patreon. There is some content on there that you can’t get anywhere else, but personally, I think Easy Stories in English Premium is the best way to get the podcast, because you have no ads, no interruptions, and next year, I will try to do more bonus content, okay? 

You can also support me by taking classes with me, and of course you can also greatly improve your English that way. So if you go to EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Classes, you can find all the information about booking a private one-to-one online class with me. Now, as I’m recording this, I’m not accepting new students, because I recently started a new teaching job, so I’m still kind of figuring out how many hours I will have. But if you go to that page, if you go to the classes page on the website, you will be able to see if I’m accepting new students. So, do check there if you want to book classes and you can see if I’m taking on new students. 

You can also join my email newsletter, EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Email. That way I email you every time there’s a new episode. And when I am accepting new students, I usually send an email out there. If you sign up for the email newsletter, you also get a PDF with my top 10 language learning tips.

I’ve already mentioned my book a few times in today’s episode. So, the book is called Easy Stories in English, and it’s a collection of ten stories. Nine of the stories have appeared on the podcast. One of them is only in the books. However, they are updated, and they have pictures and vocabulary descriptions to help you understand. There are four levels of the book. So it’s the same 10 stories in 4 levels, so you can re-read the stories in different levels to improve your language even more.

There is a thing called Kofi, K O F I, you might see a button on the website that says buy me a coffee. So that’s just a way you can give me a one-time donation of three dollars if you want to support, but you can’t do something regular or something very big. 

Of course, there are many ways you can support me completely for free. You can leave me a positive review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I think those are the best two platforms to leave me a review because that’s where most people hear about the podcast. You can also follow me on social media, YouTube, Easy Stories in English, Instagram, @easystoriesinenglish, and TikTok, @easystoriesinenglish.

I was posting short videos of the podcast, parts of episodes on TikTok and Instagram. I haven’t had the time to do that so much recently, but I’m hopefully going to start doing that again. I strongly recommend subscribing to YouTube, because on YouTube, you can see the episodes in video, so you can see me speaking as I record the episode. And for some of the episodes, there are also pictures or videos that show what I’m talking about. So I definitely recommend watching the podcast on YouTube.

That’s pretty much it. Thank you so much for listening, and if you are a new listener to the podcast, welcome! You are now a lovely learner. I look forward to seeing you next time, and keep learning English. Bye!